Brexit continues to dominate the minds of British people who are divided down the middle as to whether to have a hard or soft Brexit.
Basically the split is between the young generation and the old generation. The way things are going it appears Brexit is hurtling towards a crash landing very soon. The Tory party is divided between the leavers and remains, the prime minister Theresa May is stuck in the middle not knowing which way to jump. The choice is between a rock and a hard place. Similarly the Labour party is divided on this issue. With these two major parties are at logger heads with each other and on top of that have divisions within their own parties, which is a recipe for disaster for their forthcoming negotiations with the EU.
People who voted for Brexit thought that they could just walk out of EU and have a clean break without any problems or issues to be resolved or negotiated in connection with the economy, jobs of the British workers, Irish border, status EU citizens in UK and British citizens in Europe, UK’s participation in the Space project, Airbus project, foreign business investment to UK, security arrangements, type of tariffs to be applied to both imports and exports, joint research projects, visas, flights between UK and Europe. Without resolving these Britain cannot just walk away, it will have to face the music and deal with it.
Analysis has shown each of the government’s four Brexit scenarios, including a bespoke deal, would leave Britain poorer. A study has found that voters, even those who backed Brexit, feared that leaving the European Union would come at “too high a price”. Brexit will cost UK public services £40bn a year under the government’s preferred deal, rising to £81bn in a ‘no deal’ scenario. Theresa May’s preferred option would increase the cost of non-tariff trade barriers by £23bn. Brexit has also caused a drop in the value of pound sterling.
I hope good sense will prevail and a proper deal is done in the interest of the country and not in the interest of a political party or group of individuals with vested interests.
Baldev Sharma
Rayners Lane, Harrow
