There's a reason why Labour isn't pushing to re-join the EU - Yorkshire Post Letters

A number of letter writers (Yorkshire Post, October 25) try to convince us that the current economic and political problems in the UK are due to Brexit and that the answer is to re-join the EU. There is no substantial evidence to support this view, however.

The two most similar EU members to us are France and Italy. In both cases, unemployment is far higher than in the UK.

In France, industrial unrest is even greater than here and there is currently a scandal over the murder of a girl which apparently had a racial motive. In Italy, the new Prime Minister has been described as a neo-fascist and the national debt is still far higher than ours.

The Euro has been just as weak as the pound and, for the first time, it has now fallen to parity with the US dollar.

Clearly, then, the EU is no safe haven for struggling countries. In the case of the UK, the history of EU membership is the devastation of our manufacturing industry.

Many products which we used to make for ourselves, from cars to pills, by 2016 were made entirely or largely on the continent and then imported. That is why we had an annual trade deficit in goods of around £110bn. Why tolerate that all over again?

The letter writers claim that there is a growing popular demand to re-join the EU. That is not true and if it were the Labour Party would be making the case to do that. They are not and that is because they want to win the next General Election and opening that can of worms would not help.

Neither, if successful, would they want any first term to be dominated by renegotiations and then a new referendum. For the UK, the EU boat has sailed and many of us are extremely glad about that.