Take a gander

I am not surprised that Paris Gourtsoyannis is a very confused young man (Splash, 29 March).

Canadian by birth; brought up in Belgium; gets a Greek passport and then, “the Greek passport decided where I

ended up: in Scotland”. But, of course. Not Greece?

Forgive me if I question where he is at, as we used to say. What he seems to fail to understand is that, as an outsider, he can always go home to Canada if we regain sovereignty. For those of us who are natives, born and bred, there is nowhere else to go.

When, without our say-so, the EEC transmogrified into a multinational bloc which had ambitions to become a new country, many of us were appalled. When we (and I include myself in that) voted for entry to the EEC in the 1970s, we were given cast-iron assurances that this would not affect our sovereignty. It was a trading bloc, pure and simple. Fools that we were, we believed them.

We were not to know, as one of those who tricked us into agreeing to join said, that by the time we discovered how we had been lied to, it would be too late to do anything. Wrong.

The Government will have a perfect right to decide who stays in the UK if and when (a very big if, as the Remainers are back to their old tricks in Parliament) we leave the EU. The fact is that Mr Gourtsoyannis was a Canadian. One of my uncles settled in Canada, where he had a vote when he emigrated in the 1940s, because he was a British subject, as were Canadians.

He was very cross when he had to become a Canadian citizen to stay on there many years later. As a sovereign nation, it was Canada’s right to demand that.

Bearing that in mind, I would have thought Mr Gourtsoyannis would understand that sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, as they say in Newfoundland.

ANDREW HN GRAY Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh