Tory party left us with Brexit disaster

DEAR Editor, It’s now over six years since the Referendum. Some say it is too soon to judge the results but it is worth seeing how we are doing so far.

Since the Referendum the pound has dropped 15% against the dollar. This has meant our imports including oil, gas and food have increased in cost by 15%. The Office of Budget Responsibility still considers that our GDP will be 4% lower than had we stayed in the EU.

The Financial Times estimates this to amount to a £100bn loss in output and £40bn less revenue to the Treasury each year.

The latter represents over75% of our spending on defence and the armed services and almost 25% of our spending on the NHS.

The fishing industry considered the deal ‘paltry and pathetic’. Farmers have suffered a loss of seasonal workers, trade deals that are detrimental to their industry, and a serious loss of subsidy.

Small and medium size businesses recently told the cross-party UK Trade and Business Commission that they were facing an ‘existential threat’ due to Brexit red tape.

The Northern Ireland Protocol, part of the ‘oven ready deal’, threatens peace in Northern Ireland, a trade war with the EU and sends the much-vaunted trade deal with the USA from the backburner into the dustbin. It also threatens our EU Horizon science funding, with UK scientists stating the effect for UK science could be ‘catastrophic’.

But let’s talk of the benefits of Johnson’s Brexit deal. We now have the chance to manufacture noisier vacuum cleaners, though, of course, we couldn’t sell them to our nearest neighbours. Our new immigration policy allows us to hire a plane for £500,000, not to fly to Rwanda. Best of all, Rees Mogg states that we have saved £1bn by not doing the checks on imports of EU goods that we didn’t need to do when we were in the EU – the logic of the madhouse!

This is a disastrous state of affairs. The fact is that prior to the Referendum the British people were lied to, lied to by someone who has subsequently been proved to be a habitual liar.

Of course, the Tory party now realises that he is an electoral liability and, of course, they will get rid of him.

But we must not forget that many in the Tory party always knew he was not fit to be Prime Minister, but still supported him.

They supported him to gain power, just as he saw Brexit as a means to personally gain power. Our ire should not just be directed at Boris Johnson, but at the party that allowed this disastrous state of affairs to come about.

Mike Baldwin, by email