Maximum political integration is needed to combat globalisation’s ills

I NOTE with interest Rebecca McQuillan’s article (“Just who will speak up for the anti-Brexit moderate millions?”, The Herald, December 28).The aim is the common good. Politicians all over the world struggle with this concept.

First they have to promise to support what most within their local area consider priorities. Then they have to reconcile this with the party’s policies for the nation state. And this is all within one nation state among almost 200 in financial globalisation.

A global perspective on the financially driven common good? Essentially the Western world wants to hang on to what it has – wealth soared in the West from about 1800 to 2000; the rest are now set on taking it all back – it’s their turn. Globalisation and population numbers enable this.

It is difficult to stop such a trend that is supported by Wall Street and an increasing 70 per cent of the world. A long-term solution will surely only be found from the maximum political integration, not division.

Can anyone stop the horrendous implications for the world of the rise of the robots, for example? Ian Jenkins, 7 Spruce Avenue, Hamilton. I LEARNED recently that two private companies have “earned” more than £500 million since 2013 for carrying out personal independence payment assessments for disabled people. However, apparently six out of 10 of the 90,000 claimants who appealed against these decisions won at tribunal having endured a long period of anxiety and a stressful appeal process.

We hear the opinion expressed that the EU referendum result was not only about dissatisfaction with the EU but was, in part, an almost incoherent cry of rage on the part of the many who suffer at the hands of the plutocrats who run this country.

If there is an element of truth in the “cry of rage hypothesis” Brexit is a judgment not only on the corporatocratic principles which have dominated policy making for nearly 40 years. Too many of Rebecca McQuillan’s “moderate millions” have watched with apparent indifference the suffering of those on the margins of our society.

Out of 30 OECD countries the UK is the joint sixth most unequal, and is the third most unequal in Europe, according to The Equality Trust. Let us hope we who consider ourselves to be moderate have got the message. John Milne, 9 Ardgowan Drive, Uddingston.