MADAM,

I fully support Dr Anthony Owen’s assessment of the predicament in which we find ourselves, through Brexit (‘Prevent Brexit happening,’ 25th January). I see this as the greatest crisis our nation has faced since the Second World War, all the worse for being entirely self-inflicted.

There are many arguments against Brexit. To me, as a former international businessman, the most urgent is the fate of our nation which depends like others on taxes, to maintain our ’welfare state.’ That to a large extent must depend on the condition of our international business.

We joined these European institutions 43 years ago, because we are ourselves Europeans (just as Texans and Californians are also  Americans), and are currently in full EU membership, giving us enormous economic benefits, particularly access to the Economic Union which accounts for 44 per cent of all our business. The City of London alone paid £66 billion in UK taxes last year, well over half the cost of the NHS. How to replace that now we are witnessing the start of the break-up and dispersal of what has been acknowledged as Europe’s financial capital? Apart from the City, there are a lot of worried businessmen currently supplying goods and services to the other 27 EU states and wondering how they will balance their books.  The US trade deal does not begin to answer that problem since the US is already our largest single nation customer, apart from the EU but only a third as big.

Business is done between businessmen, whilst governments set tariffs, which between the US and UK are already minute. The fact that 56 per cent of our foreign trade before the referendum, is outside the EU, means that we are already hard at work exploiting foreign markets, as our nation has done for centuries past.

I cannot accept that ’red-tape’ paperwork is a valid reason for self-harm, nor is the European Court (including British judges), which regulates the rules of the world’s biggest market. Can it just be immigration then, without which for a start, the splendid NHS couldn’t function? Yet the nation’s largest cities, excepting Birmingham, which have the largest concentrations of immigrant workers: London, Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, all voted ’Remain.’

This is not a matter where we can just sit back and accept whatever happens. There must be another referendum, once the final results of negotiations become public. Then let the people decide with their eyes wide open, if the terms are good enough to accept, or whether we are better off to remain in the EU. That would be democracy in action.

Clive D Lindley

(Monmouth)