IT’S ironic that before 2014, ‘Europe’ was not in the top 10 list of issues that concerned people in Britain.
Yet now, leaving the EU has for many become an article of faith.
However, the causes of many of the issues on which people voted to leave lie elsewhere; the EU has become a convenient scapegoat, and leaving will not address those underlying issues, particularly those of an economic nature.
And if we take immigration, one of the headline issues of the referendum, the Migration Advisory Committee report on EEA migration to the UK (Sept 2018) showed that EU citizens in the UK make a net contribution to the economy.
At the same time, EU legislation allows members to send back anyone who, after 3 months, does not have employment or the means to support themselves. We have signally failed to use EU legislation to address one of the the issues for which we blame the EU.
Surely the big challenge for the country is how to bring people together across the great divide that Brexit has revealed.
Dr Peter Lumsden, via email
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