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Scraps from the table

The recent tirade of angry letters to this page from concerned Brexiteers is rapidly moving from the ridiculous to the bizarre.

John Crook (SA, October 3) talks about an “eye-watering” deal with the USA. He needs to understand what this means, beyond the president metaphorically sticking his fingers in our eyes.

The UK presently sells £112 billion to the USA and imports only £70 billion of goods (pink book stats 2017) Presently it is one of the very few markets with a trade surplus in our favour. The EU, rightly, prevents swathes of cheap, processed, chemically laced or genetically modified meats and foodstuff flooding into Europe. It is the prospect of this material now flooding into our islands, ruining UK farmers in the process, which so excites US trade negotiators. And what in future will we export to the USA which we cannot now? I’ll tell you. Zilch. There are no significant restrictions on US imports from the UK, and I can say that as an exporter with years of experience. OK, Trump has begun to ramp up car tariffs, but then Brexit will speed the inevitable demise of car manufacturing here anyway, as Brexit think tanks happily predict.

I have worked in the USA for a time and I can assure John that ‘America First’ is not a slogan, it’s a way of life. Whatever the USA needs from us they simply buy, via huge, leveraged, private equity funding. These acquisitions are cleverly put together so the UK acquired interest ends up funding its own acquisition viz Manchester United FC, Liverpool FC, and Cadbury Foods.

Sadly, like so many of the vocal, yet insular, backward facing and misguided minority, Mr Crook harks back to a glorious past that never was and looks forward to an unrealistic future that was sadly will not come to pass.

The effects of this lunacy will manifest in political instability in Europe and United Kingdom penury over the next 50 years.

How bright the future could have been, proudly going forward together with our partners in Europe, who, like the overwhelming majority here, believe in liberal democracy, social justice and worker protections, climate action now and mutual security bound together with uncompromising high standards across food and manufactured goods.

Instead we propose to slither along on our collective bellies seeking the benevolence of one Donald Trump, and seizing any scraps he will throw from his Presidential table.

Ashamed of our once proud, talented and tolerant country, doesn’t begin to describe it.

John Stooke, Haydon End, Swindon

No border controls

The Labour Party Conference voted this year to extend the free movement of people to all countries of the world. This would give Britain no border controls at all.

It also voted to give the vote to all people resident in Britain. This new policy of extending the vote to everyone in Britain even if they are only here on a temporary basis is most unusual.

No other country in the world has opened its borders to this degree and given the vote to temporary visitors in this way.

Steve Halden, Beaufort Green, Swindon

One big holiday

Thomas Cook’s ‘fat-cat’ bosses should pay back every penny of their bonuses.

By now the majority of Thomas Cook’s holidaymakers are back in the UK. The huge operation was paid for by us taxpayers.

While the public foot the bill using money that could have been invested in more policemen, teachers, nurses etc, Thomas Cook’s directors walked away with millions of pounds in bonuses. Life’s one big holiday now for them. Disgraceful.

Jeff Adams, Bloomsbury