As French business and economics students, we have a solution for Brexit that could stop misleading referendums for good

To all key decision-makers in Brexit negotiations (including head representatives of the UK and members of the European Union), we write to you as a group of first-year business school students; we are all under 25 years of age.

As part of a final task for a course titled “Political Economy and International Relations, From Geopolitics to Geoeconomics”, supervised by our teacher Dr Fabio J Petani, we wish to convey a tentative recommendation to inspire your ongoing debates and decision-making processes.

The times are maturing, slowly some may find (we see no hurry or reason to rush such momentous processes), for some “initial” decisions on matters we are not sure we understand clearly.

We are uncertain as to how Brexit will play out in the future (beyond the UK), and we are confident that most of you share such uncertainty. Your collective behaviour suggests to us that this complex process of separation was not, is not (and perhaps will never become) an easy coordination of international relations. This is because there are multiple actors, various legitimate claims of sovereignty and a muddle of institutional conventions, bureaucratic procedures and conflicting interests involved.

We know you know that no one can understand what this entangled confusion will mean in practice, and at the very least citizens and representatives should be granted the right to change their minds and look for compromises that may hold in the long term, based on more complete information for their electoral decisions.

The task of casting a simple In/Out, Remain/Leave vote, without really knowing what either option means, seems unfair, but this letter is not intended to just be critical, but critically constructive.

Whatever you decide between the time you receive this letter, and the end of the Brexit “transition process”, please try to keep in mind that the world is always in transition. So whatever a minority or majority of people at any given time and place decides to vote, no voters should be put in the position of closing political debates “once and for all” for themselves and others, independently from the legitimate constitutional right to call for advisory referendums.

Outcomes also are transitory, not definitive, and the importance is to diffuse to the public and to electors the information pertinent to the political decision involved in the referendum.

In order to prevent this domestic UK problem from getting worse, and igniting similar problems elsewhere in the future, Brexit could lead to useful reform which we could turn into a single (not definitive) recommendation for the future management of European relations, at least as far as referendums are concerned: to avoid pushing people in any part of Europe to take decisions that deeply affect a majority of European people. Future referendums on complex issues (like national identity, international trade, EU membership and separation) should be negotiated, and clearly explained before the vote, not after any such referendums.

This would allow future voters to understand what their political representatives are seeking their advice for, and why.

We believe that setting and defining complex problems at stake in advance in such referendums would make decisions on matters of international relations, security and economic prosperity more democratic in the true sense of giving the power to adequately informed people.

We recommend that the above referendum reform is not considered “after the Brexit transition”, but that it is integrated in negotiating and managing this process. This would help to minimise the risk of a precedent in European constitutional matters, which may justify similar initiatives elsewhere at later stages. Wishing you all the best in this and future challenging transitions.

First-year students of the Inseec School of Business and Economics (supervised by assistant professor Fabio James Petani)
Lyon, France

Jeremy Corbyn must know that bringing doctors and nurses from abroad to fill the gaps in the NHS must leave equivalent gaps in the countries from where these doctors and nurses come.

Countries such as Poland or Portugal, India or Ireland are in as much, if not more, need of such talent than we are; they are not exactly awash with surplus doctors, nurses or other specialists.

Advocates of freedom of movement cite internationalism to support their argument. But the very core of internationalism is respecting and supporting other nations and most importantly doing them no harm. Freedom of movement does just that. Freedom of movement is a combination of individualism on the part of doctors or nurses who turn their backs on the society that invested so much of their scarce resources in their training on one hand, and beggar-my-neighbour, petty nationalism on the part of the host nation on the other.

In the colonial days, Britain plundered the natural resources of other countries. Today, we are invited to plunder a far more precious resource, the human resource.

Fawzi Ibrahim
London NW2

Kevin Rudd, the former Australian Labor prime minister, was elected in 2007 on a promise to introduce a national broadband network, connecting 98 per cent of premises, at an estimated cost of A$15bn.

The latest estimate to complete the ongoing but much reduced Australian project is A$51bn.

Downloading a two-hour movie on a 5G phone takes just 3.6 seconds versus 26 hours on 3G.

Labour’s plan to provide broadband across the UK is like offering free coal for life.

John Doherty
Stratford-upon-Avon

The idea of free broadband for all requires consideration but the thinking behind it is sound in terms of evening the playing field for UK citizens. Access to information is a key part of this. Back in the day there were houses with a full set of encyclopaedias, while others had a Dandy annual. Today, there are homes with fast broadband and homes where it is intermittent or non-existent.

Privatised companies have a duty to their shareholders to maximise profits and as such will not be inclined to run fibres to under-served communities. Under this system, the playing fields will forever remain uneven. Sadly, many state schools don’t even have a field, having been forced to sell it by various cash strapped councils.

Brian McCusker
York

It is indicative of the dismal state of British democracy when none of the parties on the ballot appeal or do justice to your vote. Who do you vote for? The Conservatives, who seek to deliver the people’s will of the referendum but whose appalling social policies seek to hurt those same people? The Labour Party, whose social policies are humanely good but who question the will (and wisdom) of the people by seeking to put a second referendum? The Liberal Democrats, who brazenly seek to cancel a legitimate democratic vote because they don’t like its outcome? Or the Brexit Party, which has, for the past year, championed the referendum vote and people’s will for real change, only to sell out in a shady deal with the establishment (ie the Conservative Party) at the last hour? I will, unfortunately, not be voting in this general election.

Angelos Sepos
Exmouth

I’m very grateful that my family and I were not born into the sort of deprivation that might have rendered us vulnerable to abuse. But I’m also thankful that we weren’t subject to the sort of privilege that seems to turn some people into heartless twerps.

Susan Alexander
South Gloucestershire