Letters: Vote In for a chance to steer Europe’s destiny

So far nearly all the arguments deployed by politicians, the press, and even in Letters to the Editor, have been depressingly short-term and insular. Hardly anyone seems to be taking a broader, longer-term, geostrategic view.

We Brits are Europeans. We may live on an offshore island (though within sight of the mainland and connected by a tunnel), but we are part of Europe and have been tied up in its affairs since well before the start of recorded history.

Have half of us taken leave of our senses? Do we really think it wise, let alone remotely intelligent, to deny ourselves any further opportunity to shape and steer the destiny of our continent? Do we really want to condemn our grandchildren to Little England powerlessness when, but for the imbecility of their forebears, they might have been part of the directing triumvirate, with Germany and France, of one of the world’s five major power blocs (assuming that the others will be China, India, North America and Russia)?

We need to vote to stay, and then to get stuck in as the powerful, enthusiastic, leading member of the Union, which surely now is our rightful place in a world which we will then continue to be able to shape, And this means we must for ever stop whingeing, demanding special treatment, and general shilly-shallying, and instead show the other members that we are still a force to be reckoned with, capable of co-operation and leadership.

Richard Thomas
Winchelsea, East Sussex

Euroscepticism is yet another manifestation of Britain’s post-empire, post-workshop-of-the-world, retro stage, in which yearning for the glories of the past takes precedence over facing the realities of today’s and tomorrow’s world.

The tawdriness of Ukip, the regressive jingoism of the Conservative Party and the desperate clinging to our alliance with the US and nuclear arsenal in order to “punch above our weight” are not only further signs of this, but also of our decline. They are indicative of a retarding loss of national identity that all post-empire societies experience, whether they be Portugal, Spain or China. Few, like Japan (and now China), take the bull by the horns and forge ahead with a newly crafted identity suited to the new world they find themselves in.

Exiting the EU will be harking back to a past that has ceased to exist; but, worse still, it will firmly entrench the retro-Conservatives, whom a truncated UK and changes in constituency boundaries and party funding will make politically unassailable for decades. Retro-Tories out for their own self-aggrandisement, like Boris Johnson, are only too well aware of this and willing to exploit it to the full by, inter alia, harping on about a theoretical parliamentary sovereignty, while ignoring Britain’s democratic deficit that is all too redolent of a feudalistic past.

It is now vital that England, like Scotland, drops its negative, anti-EU reactionism and crafts a new, positive, forward-looking identity, if it is not to become just another post-empire backwater.

Frank Richardson
Forncett St Peter, Norfolk

The decision to vote In or Out should be informed not by history but by geography. Our prime EU marketplace is worth more than $16trn and it is to be found on our doorstep, unlike the markets that the outers want us to prioritise.

John Whitehead
London EC2

Well done Jenny Jones AM for speaking out (letter, 19 February) about the expulsion of industry from London. Several hundred thousand jobs are at stake, more than 10 per cent of the 32-borough total.

A growing part of a great city’s economy is being kicked way beyond the places Baroness Jones mentions. In Tottenham and Barking, Edmonton and Park Royal, Hayes, Croydon, Walthamstow, Dagenham and elsewhere, big swathes of occupied industrial accommodation are being offered up for suburbanisation. In every high street, and each subtly mixed locality, the smaller scale industrial activities are being stripped out, replaced with only housing.

My own small manufacturing business has been a part of the metropolitan economy since 1947, making aluminium trays and trolleys, providing good jobs and proudly exporting to 30 countries. We have no interest in leaving our city, do not want to drive to a shed behind shrubberies elsewhere; we would rather fold the company.

We are part of London, we welcome its complexity and its growth, we participate in its remarkable entrepreneurial momentum. Yet we now feel unwelcome and threatened. Last summer we had to move to make way for a housing estate. Our new home, behind Asda on the Old Kent Road, now seems destined also to become a place of only homes.

London’s industry does not get to vote and there are no lobby groups speaking up for us, yet I hear us calling out as loud as our many small voices can: please London, turn your inventiveness towards building the type of city we surely all want, a joyously mixed city, able to accommodate and welcome. Do not expel us, rather embrace us, because a good city has industry.

Mark Brearley
Kaymet London Ltd
London SE1

Boris may prance and pirouette for press and public but his personal ambition might yet prove the decisive factor in the dissolution of the UK.

If the country as a whole votes to leave the EU and, as is likely, the Scottish people do not, then the oddly quiescent SNP, secretly delighted by the timing of the referendum, will have all that it needs to push for another vote on independence, a vote it will almost certainly win.

Boris is not a stupid man, but above and beyond the normal reach of moral or political constraint, he is an ambitious one. The ruthless Tweedledum-Tweedledee games of a bunch of old Etonians and family Johnson could well prove the tipping point in the disintegration of the UK.

Christopher Dawes
London W1

So Boris wants us to divorce Europe so that we can renegotiate (again!) and remarry on better terms. Brilliant!

Why does anyone still take this man seriously?

George Binney
London NW2

We are frequently told that the basic state pension is now £115 a week. My 85-year-old mother only gets £70 a week. I queried this with the Pension Service, I assumed there must have been a mistake.

However, it seems that despite the fact that she has diligently paid all her National Insurance contributions, they confirmed to my amazement that this is the correct amount for a married (albeit long separated) woman of her age.

It seems that a generation of women, who were encouraged to stay at home to look after their husbands and children, are now only entitled to 60 per cent of the state pension. This is sex discrimination and just plain unjust. What is the Government going to do about it?

Caroline Moxley
South Brent, Devon

So, four months to go, and we are already in the silly season, with all sorts of deliberately misleading stories being told, and daft questions being asked about What Brexit Will Mean to Each of Us.

I have just one. Do we all understand that Brexit will mean the end of the booze cruise and grocery shopping in Calais? I suspect that is more important to more individuals than the politicians realise. I hope those individuals know what they stand to lose when they vote against all the Polish dentists and Romanian builders coming here to work for them.

Elspeth Christie
Kirkhaugh, Northumberland

In pursuing the legal rights of Gypsies and Travellers I hope lawyers like Sasha Barton will not forget the concomitant responsibilities that go with them (letter, 22 February).

From long involvement in public parks I am aware not only of the constant threat of legal trespass to these places of public benefit but of the associated total disregard and damage done to them by her clients.

I know of no other group which has such contempt for the conventions and laws by which the rest of us strive to live.

Dominic Kirkham
Manchester

Your editorial of 20 February (“Let them boycott: local councils should have the right to refuse goods produced in Israeli settlements”) completely misses the point: the job of local councils is to run local services, not to dictate the country’s foreign policy.

That is the job of central government, whose policies are vetted by the electorate at the general election.

William Stockler
London NW3