SNP and Brexiteers both guilty of hypocrisy – Yorkshire Post Letters

BERNARD Ingham rashly predicts an EU break-up (The Yorkshire Post, March 31). Unlikely, for no country looking at Britain’s shoddy departure deal negotiated by Boris Johnson will follow that example. Grumble they will but leave, no.

However, he’s right on Scottish National Party inconsistency about the EU. In March 1971, I came across an all party anti-Common Market rally in Trafalgar Square. It was poorly attended but Winifred Ewing, the first SNP MP, gave a memorable speech against the then EEC. I quoted her for years afterwards.

Fast forward and in the independence referendum the SNP knew the EU was hostile to breakaways and would not allow an independent Scotland to join. So Scotland would have to stay outside the EU.

Now Britain has left the EU, the SNP will have Scotland apply to join the EU if it wins a referendum. Inconsistent? Yes, but Conservative governments under Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major saw Britain enter the EEC, help form the EU and accept the Maastricht Treaty. Inconsistency about the EU is not limited to north of the border.

From: Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden, Goole.

I WAS pleased to see Sir Bernard Ingham suggesting that Boris Johnson should push the EU to accept that their project needs a fundamental change of direction. The elephant in the room has always been the incoherence of so-called monetary union. It will never work properly without a debt union which, in its turn, requires greater fiscal union and which, in its turn ,requires greater democratic participation.

Germany is reluctant on the first, France on the second and the Commission on the third. They have run aground and Angela Merkel’s 16-year tenure has failed to re-float the project! Her reputation will surely unravel after she leaves office.

If your Leeds for Europe and other pro-EU correspondents wish to be taken seriously, they must show that they understand these matters and outline their solutions.

From: John D Clark, Burnsall.

WITH vaccine procurement, the EU believed that its combined purchasing power would be crucial. They didn’t seem to realise that speed and flexibility are required. If we are to succeed outside the Union, something which we should all want, we must do things our way and not the EU’s way.

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