Realities on Brexit costs

BILL Carmichael (The Yorkshire Post, June 10) insults half the British electorate with his phrase “the losers of the 2016 referendum attempted to overturn our democracy”.

We had well-founded worries about what would follow if Britain left the EU (particularly if it left in the head-banging, hooliganish way which was ultimately the case under rabblerousing Johnson) and we tried very hard to get some pause for reflection.

There was an indecently narrow margin in favour of leaving and it called for dialogue, creativity and consensus, none of which was offered by the skedaddling Cameron or the outof-depth May.

Better leadership would have sold skilfully the need to stay in the single market (if only for Northern Ireland’s sake let alone for the economy but oh no, we had to “f... business” in order to appease the Tories’ new best friends, the hard-Brexit faction).

My goodness we were right to have had those worries.

Reason finally looks like returning through those likely to be the new Tory regime once Johnson implodes, surely not long from now, and there will be the inevitable request to rejoin the single market.

Had our worries been listened to and thought about, May would have proposed a single market solution in the first place. She could have put it to a referendum and it would probably have won a bigger majority than the initial one. A bigger majority would have demonstrated that MORE voters were in favour and therefore our efforts would have been seen for what they were – a defence of democracy, not an attempt to overturn it.

At some point a British cabinet minister must make this point and help to heal the wound inflicted on those of us who spoke up and marched against May’s and Johnson’s over-hasty unthinking crowd-pleasing.