Brexit is starting to resemble a grisly Halloween tale

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The tide is turning when it comes to Brexit (AFP/Getty)

If, according to recent polls, most Britons now believe that Brexit is a huge mistake, then why is this country still pursuing it?

It reminds me of one of those spooky, thunderstorm scenes in an old Dracula movie, where a young naive couple are desperately looking for somewhere to stay for the night and decide to head for the creepy-looking castle on the top of the hill.

Despite numerous warnings from horrified locals pleading for them to “Turn back now – while you still have the chance!”, the couple determinedly carry on regardless, ignoring all logic, instinct and their better judgement because they have previously been assured by “Farage”, the local village idiot, that the “Count’s B&B” is the best in the area.

Howard Henry Smith
Vale of Glamorgan

No, Brexit will not cause other countries to leave the EU

The Catalonia crisis and other recent events elsewhere in the EU have prompted Brexiteers to revive a favourite false narrative (or lie, in plain English) that Brexit is the first domino that will lead to other EU countries clamouring to leave. They can’t get away with this propaganda again.

Both sides in Catalonia have appealed to the EU for help, and an independent Catalonia would apply to join the EU. The latter can’t be seen to take sides in an age-old internal dispute; and Brussels did not cause the Spanish Civil War. Meanwhile, the Dutch political parties have just formed a coalition government: Geert Wilders’s anti-EU, far-right PVV is not in it, he is not prime minister. The victor in the Austrian election, Sebastian Kurz, is pro-EU and wants to strengthen it. His Czech counterpart, Andrej Babis, has said he wants his country to play an active role in the EU. Populism does not equate with EU-phobia.

Nor do the two leading EU players, France and Germany, conform to the Brexiteers’ nonsense. Macron is the most pro-EU French president in a long time. Front National leader Marine Le Pen renounced her previous Frexit policy, saying that, having listened to the French people, she no longer believed France should leave the EU or the euro; her more militant number two has split from the FN. Astoundingly, this major story was not even reported in the Brexit media: I wonder why. The German far-right AfD will probably not be in new German governing coalition, which will be headed by the pro-EU Merkel: anyway, AfD’s pitch is no longer anti-EU but anti-immigrant. And its popular joint leader, Frauke Petry, has resigned.

In reality, it is the Brexiteers’ separatist flagship which is adrift in the Channel – cut off from the continent by the fog of their own delusional claims.

Rod Chapman
Sarlat, France

We cannot continue to rely so heavily on the service industry

The Institute for Fiscal Studies is downbeat about Chancellor Philip Hammond’s room for manoeuvre in the forthcoming Budget. It is increasingly hard to conceal that current economic policies are failing.

Recently, David Davis reminded us that 80 per cent of our economy is in services. Against this background, it is small wonder that the economy is not thriving. Only service industries which export their services increase the wealth of the Nation. Some service industries help to facilitate wealth-creation but the majority simply move wealth about within the economy. Making money from money creates no wealth but it does redistribute it!

We have neglected our wealth creators. Real wealth is created through mining, building, renewables, farming, manufacturing and tourism. Although making our own manufactures instead of importing them helps our economy, exporting the profits instead of reinvesting them (because the companies are foreign-owned) does not.

It is failing to rebalance the economy and too many imports of things we should be making ourselves which is making us poor.

David McKaigue
Address supplied

Votes for prisoners

Surely the fundamental principle in the debate about granting prisoners the vote is that politicians should not have the right to withdraw the franchise from any adult? The issue is not restricting the rights of prisoners but rather restricting the rights of the legislature to select those who participate in electing it. No matter how unsavoury it may be to countenance very unpleasant individuals having the right to vote, the alternative breaches one of the fundamental principles of democracy which is universal suffrage.

Colin Burke
Manchester

Not all opinions are equal

Of course it’s not true to say that Brexit voters are thick. Nor is it necessarily true that those with lower educational attainment are less clever. But cleverness is not wisdom.

At the risk of attracting opprobrium, in my experience people who have not been exposed to the debate on complex subjects that accompanies further and higher education, nor regularly involved in complex decisions, are more likely to be influenced by arguments based on prejudice, mistrust of difference, immediacy of action, self-interest, misdirected patriotism and false promises. They may also be too ready to dismiss the advice of “experts”.

I genuinely believe that all people are of equal worth, but I do not believe that everyone’s opinion is equally valid where decisions on horribly complex issues are involved. Such is the dilemma of democracy and the shortfall of the 2016 referendum. Dare any MP who thinks in this way speak out?

Patrick Cosgrove
Bucknell

Will of the people

The Spanish demonstrators’ anti-independence banner in your front page picture today says “38 per cent is NOT Catalonia!” Strange, I thought the bar for “the will of the people” had already been set at 37 per cent?

Andy Knott
Bath

Why should we celebrate Lewis Hamilton?

Why should we in Britain be excited about the sporting prowess of a wealthy resident of Monaco?

Susan Alexander
Frampton Cotterell