Brexit based on host of false pretences
AS an ardent Remainer and internationalist, I have been suffering severe annoyance, bordering on depression, ever since the 2016 referendum. And recent events - coupled with reading the letters of people like Tom Trust,
Paul Mercer and co - have left me teetering precariously on that border.
It’s not just being on the losing side, but the overwhelming feeling that the whole issue was based on a host of false pretences.
I don’t know how many MPs have been trying to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum as
Tom Trust says (September 3) but I will unashamedly admit that is what I would dearly love to happen - and I don’t believe it would be undemocratic, as long as it was done by a people’s vote.
What has been wholly undemocratic, in my view, is the extent to which voters have been deceived for years about the EU and our relationship with it.
Most of our ‘popular press’ has made a gradual and complete transition since before the 1975 referendum (in which twice as many people voted to remain as voted to leave) from outright enthusiasm for the EU to boosting their sales by poking fun at it and telling lies. Tom Trust says we have seen a ‘gradual loss of sovereignty to people we can’t directly vote for or against’, thus alluding to the popular misconception that all EU legislation is enacted by the EU Commission MEPs are directly elected, and the other body voting on EU legislation, the Council of the European Union, is composed of ministers from member states.
But he really hits the irritation button when he describes the EU as ‘malevolent’.
Is our current Commissioner
Sir Julian King ‘malevolent’? Are the 900 or so Brits working in EU institutions ‘malevolent’? Were our representatives in the EU parliament and the Council of the European Union (within both of which we have more voting power than 24 of the other 27 countries) being ‘malevolent’ when they voted for 95% of EU legislation and against only 2% of it?
I’m constantly irritated at how supposedly mature people (Tom Trust is a retired teacher) can indulge in this sort of childish caricaturing of EU officials as some kind of comic book villains.
Now where did I put those antidepressants?
Francis Kirkham Nymet Rowland, Mid Devon