EU systematically stripped the UK of its assets, long before Brexit idea
IMUST refute the comments expressed by C N Westerman on the Letters and Opinion page of October 26.
To start with, the UK left only the EU institutions on 31 January 2020 but has not yet fully left the EU in its entirety as the UK is still following EU rules and regulations during the transition period.
The goal of Brexiteers is to once again become a sovereign and independent nation, to determine our own laws and destiny without interference or influence from a foreign power. The UK will still trade with the EU albeit on different terms.
During the last four years, it is the EU that has chosen to break cooperation with the UK, with their constant and continual breaches of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the last 10 months have magnified this. The UK is already negotiating several bilateral trade deals that include the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan. This could not be done without cooperation on both sides. It was the EU and not the UK, that dictated that all negotiations were to conducted through the EU bloc negotiators and the UK Government negotiators, and not with member states leaders.
It has not been Brexit that has shut down factories, but the EU actively encouraging businesses to move from the UK to abroad, through the means of EU grants and loans at very low interest rates.
Up to June 2016, Cadbury moved their factory to Poland in 2011 with an EU grant. Crown Closures, Bournemouth (was Metal Box) went to Poland with an EU grant and the loss of 1,200 jobs. ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with an EU bank loan, and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs. British Army’s new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in Spain, using Swedish steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in
Spain with an EU grant, rather than Wales. The EU systematically assetstripped the UK long before Brexit.
Any policies of racism and hatred, often and mostly directed at the indigenous people of the UK, are being perpetrated and fueled, not by Brexiteers, but by the actions and behaviour of some remainers who will still not accept the democratic result of the EU referendum. John Nicholls
Kingswood