What do we say when children ask ‘Why?’

WHERE are we going now that we are freed from the “monster” that lives in Brussels?

One of your correspondents recently wrote that the job would not be finished until we had recaptured pounds, ounces, gallons and miles. Is this really what the “mighty” Brexit success (to use the PM’s words) means?

Brexit will provide some advantages. So-called start-up companies in areas like IT will be able to get more government funding but how many jobs will this mean in the near future for us in the South West?

We will also be able to go back to the good old “booze cruise” to France to bring back up to 26 bottles of wine and six bottles of spirits, tax free. How this amount of alcohol will help to build our resistance to Covid no one will explain, and won’t it also mean that we spend less on Westcountry cider and Cornish wine?

As mentioned in a recent letter to this paper, the 2018 Government report organised by Devon MP Mel Stride showed that even with the “fantastic” but “thin” Brexit that Mr Johnson has snatched, our economy will be down by over 6% in the coming years. Such a decline means that our future Government will have considerably less tax money coming in, even with our reduced payments to the EU.

Doesn’t the Government need as much investment money as possible to finance the rail line from Plymouth via Okehampton to Exeter or to improve the A303? And social services, the NHS and our schools are just rolling in it...

Recently, the former spokesman for the National Intelligence Committee, Lord Ricketts, and the former top policeman in London, Lord Blair, both stated that our national security and crime busting abilities would be deeply reduced by Brexit. Neither man is known to be a “woke leftie”.

They reported that in the last decade we were able to chuck out 12,000 foreign criminals and bring 1,600 UK criminals back here for punishment.

Now our reps will be able to attend Europol meetings but would not get the details. Our police, pre Brexit, could instantly get info from the EU on the computer in their cars about criminals: not now.

Terrorists from the UK will be able to hide in the EU far more easily and our border authorities will have far less information at hand when they question inbound travellers.

“Taking back control”...?

People will blame the 27 EU nations for this system that the UK helped to draw up. It’s as if the 27 are playing football and we want to insist that they play rugby and get angry when they say no.

How many other negatives are yet to show themselves in our new “sovereignty”.

A few UK travellers have already been stopped from entering

Holland as they didn’t have the right paperwork. A straw in the wind?

And given that most Brexiters agree that we will be poorer, expensive holidays in the US will be out so we will have to rely on EU destinations!

However, by far the gravest Brexit outcome is the widening distrust in politicians of all brands; this can only get worse as we discover how much false information we were fed about the “low tax and low regulation” UK (or England?).

I wonder whether the leaders who fed us this tripe (Mr Johnson says that he is fitter than a butcher’s dog) will have a convincing answer when their children and grandchildren ask them “why?”

Jeremy Hall Exeter