AFTER the humiliation of our Westminster Prime Minister in Salzburg it was clear that it wouldn’t take long before the recriminations would start, but before we start blaming the EU for the breakdown in negotiations, we should look at some facts.
The gullible amongst the voters believed Liam Fox when he said that a deal with the EU would be “one of the easiest in human history”. They believed the Brexiteers when they said that the EU needs us more than we need them.
The government failed to recognise the need for an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. They believed that the EU would be prepared to water down their commitment to the “four pillars” of a free market, free movement of goods, services, capital and labour.
Finally we all failed to recognise how few friends we have in Europe following David Cameron’s leaving the centre-right alliance to throw in his hand with a bunch of extremist parties in Eastern Europe. Now Mrs May is throwing her toys out of the pram and Ian Duncan Smith says the EU is “arrogant, strutting, boastful and bossy”. Talk about pots and kettles!
Anyone with a finger on the pulse in Europe would have seen that the only deals available would either be a complete withdrawal or something akin to membership of the European Economic Area or EFTA, which would mean a continued commitment to the four pillars, in particular the free movement of labour.
Mrs May cannot blame the EU for sticking to their principles. It was the UK which exercised Article 50, setting a fixed deadline of two years for negotiations without understanding what deal was likely to be available. We are now paying for that undue haste. It is her, not the EU, who has let the people of the UK down.
Pete Rowberry
Duns
READ MORE: Letters: Two years of clueless dithering have got us nowhere
IT’S sad to see the Tory party in its death throes, becoming as anachronistic as the dodo bird. Sad because it is unable to interpret the sign of the changing times and is intent upon clinging to its insularity. Perhaps the EU could be accused of much the same fault, and has an even greater difficulty in trying to hold 27 countries together in common agreement.
Immigration has brought the whole problematic future to the fore and few of us realise it. Climate change is the underlying reality our children’s children are going to have to face. Of course there are other political factors explaining why people migrate, but Earth’s resources are going to necessitate a far greater need to share. As John Donne put it: “No man is an island ... each is a part of the main”. We are expected to respect the will of the people in a democratic society, but I maintain that we also need wise leadership.
Now is the time for calm reflection, resistance to right-wing elements and planning for the next 50 years for starters. Scotland is in the best place to be doing this since it can draw from its past history and continue to use the inherent skills for the common good.
I believe that our devolved parliament has been quietly working away and doing just that, but that it also needs our moral support more than ever in these chaotic times.
Janet Cunningham
Stirling
DOESN’T it make you simply purr with pride to witness the resolve and steely determination of “our” inspirational and far-sighted leader when confronting the 27 countries she and her imbecile cohorts have manged to offend gravely with our unilateral departure from the EU?
I shook with pleasure watching her in imperious, arrogant and finger-wagging mode and luxuriated in her fury that she wasn’t being treated with respect. What respect can you expect from a strong, prosperous, unified, forward-looking trading block if you tell them ye dinnae like them and ye want tae tak yer baw hame? I don’t suppose Mrs May ever confronted 27 former friends in the school playground and told them she was going to turn her back on them because she didn’t like them while still calling them her friends, neighbours and allies. Just what might have happened to her in that scenario?
Cameron started it all when he turned his back on the EU when he decided it would be better being outside the tent trying to piss in that being inside the tent pissing out. He cut a humiliated and thoroughly embarrassing figure, since which time it has all gone from bad to worse. Rule Britannia eh?
And the worst part of it all is that “we’ve” forgotten that Europe found its embryo coming out of the worst conflagration in history and when those who had had to go through it and suffer the sorts of horrors we can’t even begin to imagine decided enough was enough and that we needed to go forward strong, together and resolved never to let it all happen again. Short memories, delusions of grandeur and pygmy brains in charge. We have to despair.
Jim Finnie
Pitlochry
In 1975 the UK had a people’s vote to join the European trading area, and now some voters in a part of the UK have voted to turn their backs on these countries. Do these voters really expect the rest of the world to welcome the UK in trade deals when it obviously can’t be trusted?
Bill Kerr
Cumbernauld
HECTOR Maclean and Douglas Turner objected not to the points made by Carolyn Ritchie in her Long Letter about P1 testing (September 20), but rather her disillusionment with the SNP who are approaching this topic as a political battle, rather than listening to the advice of professionals such as Carolyn. Two-faced Tories first supporting “son of Michael Forsyth” testing, then jumping onto a “SNP bad” bandwagon, does not change the validity of the case against testing. Perhaps future letters should address the topic rather than personal attacks on the messengers.
Nigel Macdonald
Glasgow
READ MORE: Letters: SNP should respect the vote against P1 tests
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