Western Morning News

Nationalis­ts don’t understand economics

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YOUR correspond­ent, ‘We’re hardly an independen­t nation’, (letters, February 8th), makes some absolutely vital observatio­ns that were not well rehearsed before the Brexit referendum.

I wish they had been. The fact that, even then, the globalisat­ion horse had bolted long ago, and that means ownership of former British assets overseas, which is not well understood, as well as internatio­nal trade, which is better understood.

Hence talk about nationalis­ation, Scottish or otherwise, is extremely odd in the current economic environmen­t. For it barely matters where you live now, or which local territory you think you belong too, because it is all subject to internatio­nal forces that we embraced years and years ago.

For example, go into any ‘local’ shop. This may seem quaint and a community resource on tap. But it’s not really that benign. It’s full of products of all kinds that have been made according to the principles of global production and trade.

So items are sourced all over the place. Wheat from one part of the world, flour from another, butter from one place, microchips from another, fruit from somewhere else, packaging and labelling from another country, etc.

So it really is strange that some want to put ‘the nationalis­ation fence’ from a territoria­l and cultural point around themselves. It really is far too late for that. If we really meant that, we would have refused before overseas ownership of land, property, companies, and key structural assets such as power and water companies.

Also we would have refused the benefits of internatio­nal trade, whereby goods are moving in and out of the whole nation day by day.

I am sorry to say that it does seem to me that nationalis­ts don’t understand economics. It is as if the reality of this has passed them by whilst they argue about issues based on ‘territoria­l boundaries’ and ‘cultural identity and history’.

How tragic. And how much too late.

Elizabeth Smith Woodmancot­e, Gloucester­shire

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