Broken Brexit
So the strong and stable David Davis has ducked the big row of the summer by tamely giving in to demands for divorce bill first, before trade considerations.
Neither has the strong and stableruthdavidsonachieved very much. She wanted a Norway deal to be on the table but thegovernmenthasstucktoits guns – at the end of the day Parliament will merely be offered the choice of a new negotiated deal or World Trade Organisation (WTO) status.
And so we risk becoming a new Greece. Labour’s chance to influence events may well be gone. Imagine the govern- ment falls just as we come out of Europe. The Brexit deal takes away passporting rights and due to WTO rules we can’t get a special trade deal for our car industry. How much inward investment will we lose? How much vital tax revenue will be gone? In that circumstance Jeremy Corbyn may well find it difficult to raise cheap loans to engage in public works which could give our discouraged businesses a boost. Investors will see the UK as a basket case. Independence may even become a more pragmatic option!
This last election was crucial – only a hung Parliament would have put the sensible ETA (Norway) deal back on the table. Only a hung Parliament could have given us a second referendum. I only hope that at some time in the future, legal rules concerning politicians telling blatant lies will be retrospectively applied to the blue on blue lies which disgraced our European referendum and our once-admired democracy.
ANDREW VASS Corbiehill Place, Edinburgh I have just returned from holiday in France, and before leaving Ouistreham, the site of Sword Beach in the D-day Landings, I walked down to the beach there and found the memorial erected for the 70th anniversary of the Overlord assault. On the stone are the words of Winston Churchill, spoken on 7 May, 1948:
“Men will be proud to say I am a European. We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think as much of being European as belonging to their native land. We hope that wherever they are on the European continent they will truly feel here I am at home.”
Were his words, and the huge sacrifice of life on all sides, all in vain?
ISOBEL MORRISON Tweedbank Ley, Innerleithen So Chancellor Philip Hammond has accused the EU of “posturing and chestbeating” in its demands too.
The UK as a whole, not its constituent parts, voted to leave. The Brexit means Brexit Tories seem to be aiming for a complete walk away with no deal. The Chancellor forgets the first phase is to leave; once out the UK has left. No more favours, no more automatic entitlements or opt-outs any more. After the lies, insults and bad grace hurled at the EU before, during and after the EU referendum, the 27 other countries are in no mood to be generous to Westminster and give in to its demands, let alone objectives. And the latter are as yet undocumented and no Queen’s Speech is as yet forthcoming. Also, the hung government has still no deal with the DUP, so its position in Brussels is still unstable. Added to the Tory-inflicted mess is the fact that the Leader of the Opposition is intent, too, on leaving the single market and customs union.
Out is out and the EU rightly will have the last word to say to a Westminster that has been, since joining the EU, an awkward and petulant member.
But we Scots voted to remain, so yet again we are being dragged out against the democratic wishes of the population. That’s the true force of EVEL – English Votes for Everyone’s Laws.
JOHN EDGAR Gilmours Avenue, Blackford