21st November, 2022
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Readers of The National
SCOTLAND
ALEX Orr’s excellent letter (Brexit chickens come home to roost as new era of austerity begins, Nov 16) gets straight to the heart of the major cause of the crippling economic and social predicament that now faces the UK.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement is mightily depressing reading, particularly considering that expert opinion considers he has delayed spending cuts until 2025 in a blatantly political decision that tries to mask the economic basket case that the UK has become until after the next General Election.
Unsurprisingly, whilst he warns ordinary people of the financial pain ahead, he continued to allow the Truss mini-Budget decision to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses, a decision made possible by abandoning EU legislation. As Tory apologists claim that our woes are directly due to international instability and the results of Covid, many economic experts claim that Brexit places the UK in a unique economic position that has witnessed a drop in Gross Domestic Product of more than 4%. Factor in the incalculable loss of staff from areas like the NHS and it is clear that Brexit is a cancer riddling the UK economy.
Yet it is not simply a case of the self-inflicted economic harm of Brexit. Brexit has polarised the UK politically more than any time in the last 100 years and released a Pandora’s Box of rabid right-wing xenophobic political bile into the mainstream of the Tory party and UK political life. The Conservative MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, is the living embodiment of these rancorous and callous views. The man who claimed an exorbitant sum for his most recent expenses as an MP, and who claimed in true Gradgrindian style that people could live off £3 a day, regularly cites Brexit as a reason why asylum seekers ought to be thrown back into boats and returned to France tout de suite. This inhumane and chauvinistic rhetoric may charm the Daily Mail, Express, Sun and Telegraph’s readers but it highlights the stark difference between the little Englander and the majority of the rest of the UK
Brexit has created the Gordian Knot that is the Northern Ireland protocol, an issue exacerbated by the refusal of the antediluvian DUP representatives to form a Stormont Assembly and which continues to jeopardise the hard-won peace in the province, as evidence by the bombing of a police patrol vehicle in Strabane.
The Labour Party, even in the face of recent polls that show a clear majority for a Brexit reversal, still peddle the line that they can make Brexit work, though present little or no evidence to demonstrate how they would achieve this inconceivable feat. Lest we forget, the people of Scotland voted by 62% to remain in the EU but will be among the worst affected economically by the recession. As indy supporters on Twitter are fond of saying – you Yes yet?
Owen Kelly
Stirling
ALEX Orr’s excellent letter (Brexit chickens come home to roost as new era of austerity begins, Nov 16) gets straight to the heart of the major cause of the crippling economic and social predicament that now faces the UK.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement is mightily depressing reading, particularly considering that expert opinion considers he has delayed spending cuts until 2025 in a blatantly political decision that tries to mask the economic basket case that the UK has become until after the next General Election.
Unsurprisingly, whilst he warns ordinary people of the financial pain ahead, he continued to allow the Truss mini-Budget decision to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses, a decision made possible by abandoning EU legislation. As Tory apologists claim that our woes are directly due to international instability and the results of Covid, many economic experts claim that Brexit places the UK in a unique economic position that has witnessed a drop in Gross Domestic Product of more than 4%. Factor in the incalculable loss of staff from areas like the NHS and it is clear that Brexit is a cancer riddling the UK economy.
Yet it is not simply a case of the self-inflicted economic harm of Brexit. Brexit has polarised the UK politically more than any time in the last 100 years and released a Pandora’s Box of rabid right-wing xenophobic political bile into the mainstream of the Tory party and UK political life. The Conservative MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson, is the living embodiment of these rancorous and callous views. The man who claimed an exorbitant sum for his most recent expenses as an MP, and who claimed in true Gradgrindian style that people could live off £3 a day, regularly cites Brexit as a reason why asylum seekers ought to be thrown back into boats and returned to France tout de suite. This inhumane and chauvinistic rhetoric may charm the Daily Mail, Express, Sun and Telegraph’s readers but it highlights the stark difference between the little Englander and the majority of the rest of the UK
Brexit has created the Gordian Knot that is the Northern Ireland protocol, an issue exacerbated by the refusal of the antediluvian DUP representatives to form a Stormont Assembly and which continues to jeopardise the hard-won peace in the province, as evidence by the bombing of a police patrol vehicle in Strabane.
The Labour Party, even in the face of recent polls that show a clear majority for a Brexit reversal, still peddle the line that they can make Brexit work, though present little or no evidence to demonstrate how they would achieve this inconceivable feat. Lest we forget, the people of Scotland voted by 62% to remain in the EU but will be among the worst affected economically by the recession. As indy supporters on Twitter are fond of saying – you Yes yet?
Owen Kelly
Stirling
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