No political or popular support exists for rejoining the EU: Yorkshire Post Letters

Ken Cooke’s arguments (The Yorkshire Post, December 3) can be demolished in a word - Maastricht.

Margaret Thatcher’s comments on the Single Market in 1988 were predicated on the then EEC being an economic community.

She fell in 1990 because she was opposed to the Maastricht proposals which foreshadowed a step-change towards monetary and political union. Churchill said “We are with Europe, but not of it. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed”. Integration was not envisaged.

In his letter Richard Wilson can delude himself with polling figures that suit his argument, but another poll shows only 29 per cent think we should actually consider rejoining the EU.

It’s a fair bet that some of them haven’t made the connection that Richard Wilson refuses to acknowledge - rejoining the EU means adopting the euro which brings low growth and loss of democratic autonomy.

There is neither political nor popular support for EU membership.

From: Tony Galbraith, Elloughton, Brough.

In his letter (The Yorkshire Post, November 17) Ken Cooke uses the familiar tactic of selectively quoting statistics to further his cause, in this case of the UK re-joining the EU. He is far from being the first to do this, but it nevertheless distorts the true picture.

Mr Cooke is correct to say that the OBR predicts a four per cent reduction in our GDP due to Brexit but does not mention that they say it will be over a 15-year period, which considerably reduces the power of the point.

It is also true that, for the first time, the value of the stocks and shares listed on the Paris bourse exceeds that of those on the London stock exchange.

In fact, in actual trading in equities, insurance, currency exchanges and in the management of investment funds, Paris remains well behind London. According to the latest Global Financial Centres Index, London is second only to New York as a financial centre. Paris is put in 11th place.

Mr. Cooke and his friends should stop trying to make mountains out of Brexit – related molehills and start telling us how they would overcome the true economic damage of UK membership of the EU namely the decimation of our manufacturing industry by the flood of imports from the EU.

From: Gordon Lawrence, Sheffield.

I believe Covid has sabotaged nearly every aspect of our attempts to introduce an effective Brexit.

Brexit theorists want ultimately to implement a growth strategy based on a market-oriented economy impelled by enterprise and innovation. One of the central ideas of Brexit was the wish to escape the economic hearse that impedes the EU with its interfering and stultifying bureaucracy.

The policy of Truss and Kwarteng failed miserably as they tried to cut taxes and free up the British economy. They ignored the risky fiscal situation that now rules the global financial system. The measures were prematurely introduced and naively mishandled, as well as bovinely presented and as a result have lost most of their credibility.