Brexit: Is it time to move on and get over it
Mr Cliff will not give way he wants to keep on asserting that we who voted leave were misled. I for one was under no misapprehension and had resolved to vote leave years and years prior to the referendum. I know exactly what the single market is and am under no illusions about the nature of the customs union and how it functions.
I knew also that the argument on NHS funding was spurious. The point there being we have the choice once we repatriate our contributions to choose to increase spending on our own priorities. That is irrefutable although Mrs May’s capitulation in phase one of negotiations has limited our immediate opportunities pledging us to a £40 billion divorce settlement for no good reason.
Mr Cliff continues to argue the debate was skewed by immigration. As I pointed out previously this issue has consistently topped the concerns of voters for years and years. Freedom of movement and EU enlargement made the problem considerably worse. Mr Cliff may have seen this highlighted recently by a voter in Barnsley on a recent edition of Question time.
Immigration of the order of 300k per year is a serious issue. It inevitably imposes rapid change, stresses access to services and housing whilst exerting downward impetus onto pay rates. To point this out is not to deny that our NHS, in particular, requires migrant doctors and nurses. It should urge us both to train more here and address retention rates for skilled staff. I suggest wide-reaching NHS reform is needed here.
The implications of a vote to leave were spelt out clearly and not even the unwelcome attempt by Obama, the IMF, the bank of England, JP Morgan, Ryanair, the OECD, Cameron and Osborne could prevent us voting leave. The one notable absentee for his lukewarm hedge your bets attitude is Corbyn who still has treachery and political advantage on his mind.
If Mr Cliff really did not grasp what leave meant then he should of. Mrs May and her tinkerings have everything to do with political arithmetic presently in place, not any doubts about what a divorce from the EU should look like.
It really is taking back the right to fully govern oneself and all that entails. To trade freely to submit to our own courts and enact our own tax, spend and macroeconomic policy. What is so wrong in any of that? It is what nation states do and for me, without it, there is no democracy worth a candle.
Mr Cliff needs to move on past his misplaced faith in a corrupt centralising anti-democratic institution which is doomed to fail because of its very nature. People eventually become disenchanted with being ruled and controlled by edict, worse still when it fails to deliver. The principle of centralisation and collectivism is not to be preferred to taking control of our country and deciding for ourselves. Move on and get over it!
Martin Bristow
Wolverhampton
