Brexit promises a complete fantasy

Dear Sir,

This week the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has delivered a report in which he advised that as a consequence of Brexit, households in the U.K. are approximately £ 900 poorer.

Mark Carney also said that the U.K. economy was 2% smaller than forecast before the E.U. Referendum, despite the strength of the global economy and the Bank of England's emergency cut in interest rates after the Brexit vote.

However, the impact of Brexit has probably cost households more than the £ 900 stated by Mark Carney because as George Osborne has pointed out the economies of the other European countries turned out to be "much, much stronger" than expected two years ago.

The dire consequences of Brexit were confirmed this morning when the latest G.D.P. figures revealed that growth for the first quarter of 2018 had fallen to a dismal 0.1%, the worst figures since 2012. However, in reality the G.D.P. figures for the first quarter of 2018 make even worse reading because per capita G.D.P. had shrunk by 0.1%,

Now I read that the Chief Executive of H.M. Customs and Excise has advised the post-Brexit customs system favoured by Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and other leading Brexiteers could cost businesses up to £ 20 billion per year because under this system, firms would have to pay £ 32.50 for each customs declaration.

Leading Brexiteer, John Redwood, has said that if this system "is going to cost this much it is the wrong system"; clearly it is the wrong system.

The U.K. would be far better off remaining as a full member of the E.U. for which its contributions in 2016 totalled about £ 13 billion, which is only 65% of the anticipated cost of running the customs system favoured by Boris Johnson and his colleagues.

To make matters even worse, the Brexiteers keep on repeating their mantra that "Leave means Leave", but then get very angry when the E.U. takes them at their word and excludes the U.K. from the E.U.'s Galileo project worth 10 billion Euros. The E.U. states that in respect of the Galileo project, it is simply a matter of law that the U.K., which is not planning to remain in the E.U., has to be treated as a "third country" and therefore cannot have the same encrypted information as members of the E.U. or be involved in the system's future development.

The Brexiteers have to understand the you are either in a club or you are not; that the idea of eating your cake and having it was always ludicrous and that the E.U. would never allow the U.K. to have the ability to "cherry pick".

When this is understood, there is only one sensible option left.

Article 50 has to be cancelled and the sooner the better.

Then by remaining as a full member of the E.U, the U.K. would enjoy the substantial fruits of E.U. membership by protecting jobs in the manufacturing, financial and services sectors with the all important frictionless and free flowing trade we desperately need in order to prosper. We would also then enjoy all the other benefits of full membership of the E.U. (which we already had) including political, scientific (including space exploration), medical research, health and welfare, environment, education and cultural.

How much more financial pain do the people of this country have to suffer and how much more of the farcical Brexit negotiations do we have to endure now that the Brexiteers' promises during the E.U. Referendum of a golden future outside the E.U. are fully revealed for what they always were - a complete fantasy and a travesty of the truth ?

Yours faithfully,

Robert Douglas,

2 Hollycroft,

Congleton CW12 4SH