Letters: 'If Brexit should have worked better, how?'

So the "real" version of Brexit should have had stronger effects on the national economy than the 4 per cent decline, as agreed by all reputable economists.

6 per cent negative effect? 10 per cent?

Even Liz Truss... More trade agreements with Australia and NZ whose meat exports will threaten farming here?

The Australian trade rep was amazed that we gave them everything that they wanted.

Should more small UK businesses have had to close due to job losses?

Should our tourism industry have received even fewer EU visitors?

Cutting Erasmus was mad enough for students but it also harmed apprentices and young UK workers, deprived of useful work experience abroad.

And "watered-down Brexit" has made it far more difficult for school parties to visit; these future business leaders' decisions could well have been in our favour.

Many English universities are struggling financially partly because EU students face increased bureaucracy while our musicians don't even try to organise work in Europe.

And British scientists deprived of participation in the Horizon programme, are struggling to catch up.

The Scottish Football Premiership clubs intend to close down their academies because English clubs, unable to easily employ EU 18-year-olds, are stealing young Scottish talent.

Wasn't Brexit going to make us a stronger nation?

But the Johnson arrangement for Northern Ireland is one factor pushing the North to rejoin the South so even our territory might soon be Great Britain (Alone).

Left behind areas (and that is no criticism) such as Cornwall used to benefit from significant EU subsidies, the "Get Brexit Done" Government guaranteed (!) that Levelling Up would replace those subsidies.

Did the Brexiteers mean it?

When Rishi Sunak was PM, he gave a handsome chunk of those funds to Tunbridge Wells in Kent because a Tory MP there needed to polish his reputation.

Would a "full-blown" Brexit have made things better for "the left behind regions"?

As for the deeply dangerous AI, the EU has already passed legislation.

In the UK we await something similar.

Further, EU AI laws are being debated in the European Parliament and Council.

The UK had representation on both; Mrs Thatcher insisted "always have a place at the top table".

What must she now be thinking about our puny response to the challenges of participating in the European team?

As for the soon-to-be-initiated biometric checks (face photos and fingerprints at the frontier) on all "third country" citizens; we chose to demote ourselves to this position...

There is no logic in claiming that "they" are punishing us.

That opinion is the one that insists that if the UK chooses to play golf from hole 18 back to hole 1 the other 27, playing normally, should calmly tolerate our disruption.

As for policing, we have excluded ourselves from the Schengen Info System by which criminality details are shared.

Mr Farage "rages" against the ECHR favouring criminals but he chose, on our behalf, to cut the UK off from essential policing tools.

Many of us are still unable to recognise how we were manipulated to advance the careers of certain politicians.

As of April this year, Statista found that 33 per cent of British voters thought that leaving was correct whereas 57 per cent thought it wrong.

Democracy?

And can we not act as a community and insist that "neglected" areas, rural and urban, should genuinely benefit from levelling up rather than blaming Brussels for anything and everything?

Team membership is now essential as never before.

That we diminished ourselves on the world stage by that act of self-harm has pleased Putin, Xi Jinping and soon to be re-elected (?) Trump makes the propaganda from the fossil fuel criminals more difficult to counteract.

To block eyes and ears on the EU lies beyond comprehension but to argue that we should have had an even "stronger" version...

Jeremy Hall 
Exeter