Leave hypocrites like Ineos billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe expose Brexit folly – Yorkshire Post Letters

I’M awaiting the howls of anguish from Brexiteers at the decision of UK billionaire Ineos boss Sir Jim Ratcliffe to renege on his promise to build his new 4X4 in South Wales. He now plans to do so at a site in France near the German border.

You’d have thought that having committed to Wales in 2018 as a sign of faith in the manufacturing future of a non-EU UK, this Leave-backing businessman, reputed to be Britain’s richest, would have done his patriotic duty and put his hand in his pocket to support Brexit Britain even if costs turned out to be higher than expected.

No such luck I’m afraid. Fellow Leave supporter Sir James Dyson now prefers Singapore and Sir Jim chooses France, a country derided by the Brexiteers as full of enterprise-stifling red tape.

Business in Britain operates in an international context. Almost half the shares traded in London are owned by non-UK people and companies. Famous names like Harrods, Cadbury and Rolls-Royce or Jaffa Cakes of United Biscuits are foreign owned (they’re part of a Turkish conglomerate). But living in a Palmerstonian timewarp where Britannia still rules the waves with potential gunboat diplomacy, Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers cherish a notional sovereignty which might partially work for China or the USA but never can for Britain given our size, history and geography.

For example, the UK is likely to lose access to the Schengen area criminal database just as the Irish Republic imminently becomes a full member thus improving Ireland’s ability to tackle serious crime. But the ‘sovereign’ police forces in the UK will have to fight international crime with the methods of 1951 rather than 2021.

I agree with the First Minister of Scotland who stated that “Boris Johnson is failing to grasp or accept that responsible, independent countries in the modern world have to collaborate and work with others, and at times pool sovereignty for the greater good, for the greater well-being and prosperity of their populations”.

Well said Nicola Sturgeon and thanks Sir Jim for showing the gruesome reality of Brexit.

From: Roy Turner, Hollybank Avenue, Upper Cumberworth.

NO surrender please Boris Johnson. We leave the EU. We select our laws, rules and regulations free of any control from the EU. If not, walk away and cancel negotiations. Forget the doom and gloom forecasts, we will work it out.

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