We can never go back to pre-EU economy

JUST as Ruth Davidson makes a welcome, sensible demand for a softer Brexit, Richard Mowbray (Letters, June 13) steps in to tear her down, insisting that “unilateral free trade” (hard Brexit) is the only viable route to a prosperous economy for the UK, which presumably encompasses Theresa May’s alarming mantra that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.

Doubtless the Singapore/Hong Kong-style tax haven economy that post-Brexit Britain will become will make some rich people richer still; that is after all why some of the global rich (Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and so on) are so keen on the masses supporting it. But more prudent (and, dare I say, more informed and intelligent) “free traders” have a problem with the social consequences of that model. In the current issue of The Economist, hardly the playbook of the centre left, its editorial rightly asks why “no politician has seriously answered the question of how the economic pain of Brexit will be shared”? It warns voters that “no one has prepared them for the scale of the hardship they will endure in Brexit’s name”.

Mr Mowbray’s ultra-free market position is a mix of fantasy and nostalgia, which coalesce in his unfounded confidence that Brexit will deliver cheaper food (without any regard to its quality, or to the impact of climate change on food production). Whatever economic arrangements we make post-Brexit, they will be new and untested, with all the uncertainty that that entails, not something familiar and convivial that we simply “go back” to once the weight of EU restrictions have been lifted from us. Changed global politics and trade conditions make it impossible to go back to anything resembling Britain’s pre-EU economy. As someone who would still prefer it if the insanity of Brexit was not happening at all, the attractions of the Norwegian model of relations with the EU, that Mr Mowbray so derides, seem as obvious to me as they do to Ruth Davidson, the SNP and some of the Labour supporters who voted against a hard Brexit last week.

Mike Nellis,

Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Community Justice,

University of Strathclyde School of Law, Lord Hope Building, Glasgow.

I AGREE with Iain Macwhirter’s suggestion that Scottish voters would embrace cross-party co-operation on promotion of the single market following the General Election (“Davidson and Sturgeon have common cause on Europe”, The Herald, June 13).

However he thinks it “may be naïve” to envisage the First Minister and the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party having the vision to attempt to enter into such an understanding. He may be right but we must recognise the extent to which we realised, last Friday, the dramatic shift that had taken place in the exercise of our democratic responsibilities; the people, being far more aware of the facts than we were a year ago, have spoken. We must thank Theresa May for giving us that opportunity, although it was not her objective.

In this context our role, not just as voters but as citizens who believe that our continuing membership of the single market and customs union is essential to our economic and hence social well-being, is to write in such terms to our MSPs and MPs.

If we do so in sufficient numbers we can be confident that our representatives will listen to us, the politicians having no choice but to recognise that they will pay a significant price at the next General Election if they fail to do so.

John Milne,

9 Ardgowan Drive, Uddingston.