IT is no coincidence that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) report noting that the UK economy will perform worse than all other advanced and emerging economies was published on the three-year anniversary of the UK leaving the EU.

Our economy is set to contract by 0.6% in 2023, worse than other economies including sanction-hit Russia.

One contributory factor in this is of course Brexit. We have witnessed the damaging economic impact of leaving the EU, with the UK set to be 4% poorer than if it had stayed in it, according to the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. This is set to knock £80 billion off the UK’s gross domestic product and about £40bn off exchequer receipts.

READ MORE: UK economy to perform worse than most major countries, including Russia

Further evidence, if any were needed, of the damaging impact of Brexit is the recent research by the Centre for Business Prosperity at Aston University. This has found that withdrawal from the EU and the introduction of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement has resulted in a 22.9% slump in UK exports.

This considerable contraction of the UK trade capacity signifies some serious long-term concerns about the UK’s future exporting and productivity.

The UK Government itself even noted that the much-trumpeted Australian trade deal will raise economic output by less than 0.1% a year by 2035, while Brexit has raised food prices by 6% and drained the workforce.

Brexit is one of the greatest acts of economic self-harm by a nation, and the figures from the IMF are evidence of the UK reaping what it has sown.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh

AS Scotland remains tethered to a shrinking UK economy, which the IMF forecasts will be at the bottom of the G7 economies, below Russia, a friend made me aware of a little-known Edinburgh site. It is the Summer House at Moray House, on the north side of Holyrood Road, where the 1707 Treaty of Union was signed.

It was signed here and not at the parliament because those who signed away Scotland’s statehood were terrified of a crowd of Scots who were enraged that their nation was being “bought and sold for English gold – such a parcel of rogues in a nation.”

So, for their own safety, they retreated to this summer house in a private garden to sign away Scotland’s sovereignty in peace.

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Another little-known fact is that the Treaty was to impose on Scotland a malt tax, which existed in England to pay for its war with France. However, the Scottish parliamentarians balked at this tax, so Scotland was exempted. The exemption didn’t last long because the “Union” imposed it on Scotland anyway in 1725, sparking riots in Edinburgh and Glasgow where nine people were killed.

Suppressing a nation’s history, constitution, and language is what colonisers do, because if the colonised people had this knowledge, it would be harder for the coloniser to exercise control.

It’s time the Scottish people became reacquainted with their suppressed history and constitution, a constitution that guarantees their sovereignty over any government. Because when armed with that knowledge, they can break free.

Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh

SHOULDN’T Windsor Foodshare chief executive Sarah Kember resign in abject shame for allowing the poverty of those who are forced to depend on this food bank to be flaunted before the media for no other reason than to promote a monarchy that has displayed just how out of touch it is with real life in this sixth biggest economy in the world (Backlash over royal food bank visit, Jan 28)?

And where is the dignity of the volunteers, who were kept in the dark about the visit, pandering to the inane questions put to them by a royal couple pretending to understand the tribulations of those struggling to make ends meet in the very system they are the pinnacle of, and therefore directly responsible and culpable for the hardship many are enduring?

If this visit shows anything, isn’t it just how bad and corrupted British life has become, where the rich are now running publicity stunts like this pretending to care, filling a few cartons with food donated by struggling ordinary folk, while they swan off back to their swanky lifestyle just as soon as the cameras have stopped rolling?

Doesn’t this latest British establishment “let them eat cake” moment demonstrate how the Windsors have become just as divorced from the reality of ordinary people as were the French Bourbon Kings and the Romanovs of Russia?

Hasn’t the British monarchy also reached its historical terminus, in reality a curious oddity that visitors to the majestic palaces will come to realise was the undemocratic anachronism that was the pinnacle of a system that restricted the prosperity of the British people to the point where in the sanctioning and acceptance of poverty by the millionaire parcel of rogues in government it was the need for food banks that prospered, not the living standards of the hard pressed actual wealth-creating citizens dependent upon them?

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

COMMON decency would remove the need for the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Bill (High hopes and loophole fears as Scotlands hunting legislation updated, Jan 29).

Of course, on Crown Estates the hunting fraternity have been given a loophole. One must gain permission to enter the ground to check that a pack of hounds is not chasing the terrified fox for miles before ripping it apart. As I know too well, foxes kill lambs. One clean rifle shot may be required to solve the problem and protect the lambing, but not in support of cruelty and social privilege.

Iain R Thomson
Strathglass