BREXIT: Better to stop it altogether

I wonder just how broad a world view he has and whether he can recall the situation in pre-European days regarding pets travelling to and from Britain.

We are frequently told by Brexit enthusiasts that any difficulties regarding abandoning our membership of the EU are Europe’s or somebody else’s fault, quite omitting to appreciate that it is Brexitism that is causing difficulties.

If other countries can’t be blamed, there is always the option of blaming and demonising our fellow citizens who don’t agree with us; a most regrettable, but all-too-common psychological mechanism.

Jonathan Arnott emphasises that the EU – by which he ought to be referring to the other countries in the EU – wants us to remain “because it needs our money to keep the project afloat”.

Let us look at the purely British scenario in this way. In Britain we are required by law, whether we want to or not, to pay taxes to the Government “because it needs our money to keep the project afloat”. We are not given the option to abstain just because we don’t want to pay up.

Should we follow the path that he advocates and opt out of paying taxes to the British Government? After all, we never get back all the money we pay in so, following his logic, we should leave and not pay any money at all.

Does he want us all to leave Britain on this basis? Where would we go? Another smaller island outside Britain’s jurisdiction? Some of the wealthy already do this with much of their money to a disgraceful extent. There wouldn’t be room for all of us.

One of my main concerns with anti-Europeanism is an unfortunate narrowness of view and seeming inability to exercise any critical faculty regarding opinions expressed, or the consequences of what is advocated.

I suggest that there is a tendency in some who want to break away from our neighbours to sweep away reasoned argument and the enormous volume of authoritative opinion and on-the-ground evidence of how bad such as move would be, and has already become for Britain, whereby they insulate themselves in a straightjacket of blind and deaf prejudice or conviction.

What I find unforgiveable is how this wave of anti-Europeanism appears to be driven by a small group for whom power seems more important not only than money, but than the wellbeing of the whole country.

We, ‘the people’, and many of those in positions of power who believe that we would be better off voting in favour of leaving Europe, and those who are certain that we would be better off remaining as EU members, would all suffer. We have ended up in what one might call a digital civil war.

We would all be victims unless we put a stop altogether to this move for Britain to leave the EU. It would be no good wishing afterwards that exitism hadn’t happened.

Ken McDonald,

Green Batt,

Alnwick