Dear Sir,
I feel that Eileen Brewis was being disingenuous when she stated in her letter in last week’s Newton News that our MP, Phil Wilson, supports a vote on the Brexit outcome.
The so called People’s Vote is not intended to be a vote on ‘Deal or No Deal’, rather, it is intended to also offer the option to remain in the E.U. That is, to deliberately ignore the democratic will of the majority of voters who voted LEAVE. However, a straight ‘Deal or No Deal’ Referendum would be preferable to another General Election.
We are in the position that we are now in because our Parliament voted to put the decision of Remain or Leave to the people to decide and were so out of touch with the feelings of the voters on the matter that they had made no plans on how to implement a LEAVE decision. (Politicians getting it all wrong again?)
If we have a re-run of the Referendum and the result is the same, does Eileen Brewis think that our Parliament, which has spent two years squabbling and lying to the voters (80% + of voters at the last election voted for a party who promised to implement the strict LEAVE mandate) is capable of implementing our proper exit from the E.U.?
In a Parliamentary debate on Brexit our MP stated that he was opposing a motion. His reasoned argument for doing so was, simply, that his father, a pitman, had been made redundant twice! This does not strike me as the cogent argument of an MP who has, “an insight into the processes of trade etc.”
I do not profess to be an expert on international trade as practiced by the E.U. Indeed few of our MP’s will so profess, since for the last 40 plus years these matters were dealt with exclusively by Brussels. However, I respect the views of the European Research Group, with the ex. Government Brexit Secretary, David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg as members. I suggest that Phil Wilson avails himself of their research which demonstrates that there need not be a hard border in Northern Ireland if the E.U. was to apply its customs and trade rules in a similar fashion that it does at other external borders and with other third party trading partners. For Example, the E.U. Rules require livestock to be checked at external borders. In Holland the checking is done 16 miles away from the border port of Rotterdam.
I disagree with Eileen Brewis that the benefits of leaving the E.U. were not accurately reported. Taking back control of our money, law making, trade and borders seem to be pretty definitive benefits to me.
The difficulties being experienced in Leaving is down to the fact that MP’s told lies just to get elected to thwart Brexit. The Momentum /Labour party is now stating that they will vote down ANY deal and may even support another referendum with a Remain option! Where was that in their Manifesto?
Politicians find themselves unable to take a united position on Brexit because some who now oppose Brexit got elected on a Manifesto which promised that the Labour/Momentum would implement Brexit. Our MP, Phil Wilson voted for Brexit Article 50 to be implemented and then has voted against his Party’s Manifesto promise to LEAVE the E.U. What he is doing is as undemocratic as a second Leave/Remain vote!
As for Neil McKee’s insinuation that the Tesco price rises are due to Brexit, I would only point out that, even before the Brexit vote, another, cheaper, supermarket was available adjacent to Tesco. He may even discover that his weekly shopping bill will be less than it was at Tesco before the Referendum!
Yours sincerely,
Alastair P G Welsh
