Letters | 22 November 2018

There is no ‘good’ Brexit

Sir: David Harper claims to know ‘what the population of the UK voted for’ in the EU referendum (Letters, 17 November), yet no definitive Brexit plan was ever offered by the Leavers. That is one reason why the government, having prematurely triggered Article 50 and recklessly established its ‘red lines’, has been floundering in an attempt at damage limitation. Harper’s disparagement of the single market ignores the fact that any gains from new trade agreements with non-EU countries would be greatly outweighed by the costs of leaving it and would require exports to these countries to grow at a rate that is unfeasible.

He refers to building ‘additional trade agreements’ on the WTO solution — apparently unaware of our post-Brexit loss of EU-negotiated trade agreements with 82 countries (including Japan and Canada), plus pending agreements with 22 countries and negotiations with a further 21 (such as China and India).