We were warned about a sudden economic blowout but what we have experienced instead is a slow puncture - Yorkshire Post Letters
From: Peter Packham, chair, Leeds for Europe, Roundhay, Leeds.
Your May 18 report on EU entry-exit delays is a timely reminder that, despite the promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’, Brexit is very far from done.
What British travellers are experiencing is not arbitrary European bureaucracy - it is the straightforward consequence of choosing to leave. The queues and biometric checks are simply what happens when a country gives up the rights of membership.
And the costs keep arriving. The European Union's ETIAS travel authorisation scheme will shortly add fees and pre-registration to every trip. Professional qualifications go unrecognised across European borders. Touring musicians face visa costs and permit requirements that remain unresolved. The OBR estimates Brexit has reduced our trade intensity by around 15 per cent, a drag that compounds quietly year by year.
We were warned about a sudden economic blowout. What we have experienced instead is a slow puncture: gradual, persistent losses of convenience, opportunity and influence.
Consider the evidence from our own recent choices. The UK has paid to rejoin Horizon Europe - a programme from which, as a net beneficiary thanks to our research excellence, we previously extracted more than we contributed. We will rejoin Erasmus in 2027.
These are welcome decisions, but they illustrate a costly paradox: we are now paying, programme by programme, to reconstruct fragments of what full membership once provided - with no say over the rules, and at terms set by others.
It is rather like cancelling your monthly mobile contract and discovering that pay-as-you-go costs more, covers less, and comes with no customer service.
The so-called boiling frog warning is, as it happens, a myth: real frogs sense danger and jump clear before serious harm is done. Ten years after the referendum, it is time Britain showed the same instinct.
If we want frictionless travel, recognised qualifications, full access to research and educational programmes, and a voice in the rules governing our continent, the financially hardheaded as well as the idealistic answer is the same: rejoin the European Union.