Dear Editor,
It’s pathetic that Kemi Badenoch and Reform UK whinge ‘Brexit betrayal’ over the ‘Brexit Reset’ trade deal struck earlier this week by Keir Starmer’s Labour government – and I speak as someone who didn’t even vote Labour at the last election.
Tell me: what have the Brexiters delivered over the past decade? Nothing. Yet it was their ‘wonderful project’ – a panacea to solve all our problems! The only thing they’ve been good at, is moaning about politicians who are, at least, trying to make the most of their mess.
And what of their beloved Brexit? So far, annually, it has delivered a 5% plunge in GDP (CER), a £27 billion loss of exports (LSE) and a 15% reduction in trade (OBR). The trade deal with Australia and New Zealand, negotiated by the Johnson government, transpired to be a lot more beneficial to those two countries than it is to the UK – a fact now acknowledged by its architect, George Eustice.
The three most recent trade deals with India, the US and the EU, will actually boost the UK economy by billions. And the irony is that they have been delivered by a Prime Minister who supported remaining in Europe – not a Brexiter, please note. And all they can do is whinge about it.
And on the matter of whinging, isn’t playing the victim and blaming everyone else one of Trump’s favourite pastimes, the current global king of whinging and whining? He’s constantly whining about how horrible everyone is to poor, little, hard-done-by America. It should not be forgotten that this was a tactic harnessed by Hitler to devastating effect, something not to be forgotten so soon after we commemorated VE Day. It is a slippery slope.
The trade deal with India is widely reported to be beneficial to the UK economy. If Brexiters don’t like the idea that we may have an increase in Indian migration, they should have thought of that, given this would be an inevitable consequence of throwing out our fellow European neighbours – we did warn them.
The US deal is consequential, as it has saved 250,000 jobs linked to the UK car industry, jobs that would have been lost no-thanks to the insane recklessness of Trump. On agriculture, the NFU president Tom Bradshaw described the deal as “fair and balanced”. It was never going to be the full-fat deal promised by Farage/Johnson, and we were warned at the time by President Obama, never to expect it. But some chose to believe the lie that a glorious US trade deal would be a consequence of Brexit. Did the Brexiters deliver it? You know the answer.
And as for the recent EU deal, there is a long list of trade and industry organisations who have given it the thumbs up, along with several major supermarkets here too. Less talked about is that we will now be aligning our food standards with the EU, so the spectre of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fuelled beef is thankfully now off the table for good.
So beware the windbags bemoaning it as a ‘betrayal’, because that’s all they are – empty vessels. Just listen to them. They want to ‘make Britain great again’, even though they failed to do so themselves and – my goodness – they had enough time.
So much for the fair and following wind of Brexit. Following through with it was their betrayal.
Richard Hare,
Woodbridge, Suffolk
