Time for Labour to drop its 'Make Brexit Work' slogan and start being honest: Yorkshire Post Letters

Your correspondent Ken Cooke points out a report on a popular Leeds festive fair being cancelled didn’t mention that it was caused by us leaving the European Union (The Yorkshire Post, October 11).

A similar thought occurred to me while reading your article the following day about calls for the Government to make hiring temporary foreign workers easier.

Three-quarters of firms are struggling to fill vacancies – hitting productivity and investment. But there’s no mention of how Brexit and abandoning freedom of movement has made it more difficult to fill such gaps with willing workers from nearby countries.

Apparently, PM Liz Truss “promises to relax immigration rules to boost growth”. At best, that’ll mean more bureaucracy and red tape unnecessary before Brexit.

Unsurprising then, “three-quarters of firms think investing in the UK has become less attractive in the last five years”. It would’ve been good to see spelt out why that might be.

Your Yorkshire Evening Post sister title was less ambiguous that same day with a report on how public bodies are “struggling to recruit and retain the skills they need to regulate effectively” post-Brexit.

The Public Accounts Committee highlighted its impact on food standards, animal welfare and competition law.

"Six years after the Brexit vote and with key international trade agreements still dangling years out of sight, repeated delays to implementing a new import regime continue to impact British businesses and increase risks to consumers,” says committee Chair Dame Meg Hillier.

A favourite excuse of Ministers and your pro-Brexit correspondents is that our economic woes are caused by international matters outside our control.

But the above this government – or the next one – could tackle. Brexit’s to blame and reversing it the solution to issues The Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post report on that are holding back the British economy.

Given the likelihood it’ll be the next government, it would be good if Labour dropped the silly “Make Brexit Work” slogan, acknowledged Brexit’s harm and propose policies to tackle these issues.

Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden, Goole.

Richard Wilson of Leeds for Europe (The Yorkshire Post, October 11) quotes an opinion poll showing 71.3 per cent support for rejoining the EU.

Those polled obviously weren’t aware that rejoining the EU would require us to enter the Eurozone with average annual growth of only 1.37 per cent over the 20 years between 2000 and 2019. So much for the supposed benefits of the single currency and the single market.

Why does Richard Wilson think we would fare any better if we joined that club?

As for Canon Michael Storey’s belief that a referendum should require a majority of over 50 per cent of the population to be valid, why didn’t he apply the same rule to the 1975 referendum and why wasn’t he in the Brexit vanguard?