Leaving the EU

Re: The View From Ottawa, June 25; Are The English Mad?, John Robson, June 27; Brexit Fallout: A Crash And A Coup; Don’t Disparage The Voters, Fr. Raymond J. de Souza; The State Of The Kingdom Is Strong, Boris Johnson, all, June 28.

In spite of the recent referendum results. I don’t believe Britain will leave the European Union. The referendum was consultative, not mandatory. The process for leaving is complicated and convoluted. Britain must give two years’ written notice and Prime Minister David Cameron has indicated that won’t happen until October.

Based on its record, during the exit negotiations the EU will find a way to patch things up, likely by making bloc-wide changes to the immigration rules. Boris Johnson, or whoever becomes the next prime minister, will say those changes are fundamental and warrant another referendum; in the second referendum, the British people will vote to stay in the EU.

Of course, the changes won’t be fundamental but mostly superficial, but the government will say they are sufficient to justify a second vote. By then, the British people will have had a considerable time to consider the dire economic consequences of Brexit and will change their minds.

Garth M. Evans, Vancouver.

At a time when Canada and the United States are negotiating to conclude the Trans Pacific Partnership to create the world’s largest trading bloc embracing most Pacific nations, Britain has voted to withdraw from the existing largest trading bloc, the European Union. The ostensible reason behind this decision is to take control of the national sovereignty that is threatened by the trans- national EU. With Britain heav- ily dependent on the EU for trade and investment, such a decision is sloppy at the best and self-defeating at the worst.

Mahmood Elahi, Ottawa.

One has to be amused by the political, economic and cultural elitists who are running around since the Brexit vote l i ke Chicken Little shouting, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” It will be interesting to reflect in a year or two if much, or any, of the dire predictions have been anything but a minor blip on the historical radar.

Hopefully, the lasting fallout of this experience will be that “the will of the people,” that is the average citizen, will no longer be disregarded and disrespected, as seems to have been the case. And our politicians, including those in Canada, take seriously the impact of their imperious decision- making before unilaterally imposing rules, changes, laws and the like ( including how we are to elect said politicians). Otherwise they, too, might find themselves in a not dissimilar situation.

Jim Church, Kelowna, B. C.

Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose is quoted as saying “there is no substitute for the direct democratic voice of a country’s citizens in determining the answers to critical questions about their own future.” I hope she didn’t mean it. The Brexit vote is a clear example of why governments should never rely on citizens to make decisions about grave issues.

Firstly, citizens elect governments to make decisions, and referendums are a copout of that responsibility. More importantly, (and with obvious exceptions), the average person is incapable of making well- researched, and sometimes tough decisions about what is right for the country and its place in the world. Most are only interested in “today,” vote in their own self- interest and are easily swayed by propa- ganda. I hope all Canadian governments ( regardless of their stripes) will have the confidence to stand up and make the tough decisions that are in the best long-term interest of our country.

Michael Taylor, West Vancouver, B. C.