YP Letters: Government of Heath not a role model

“TO govern is to serve – this government will be at the service of all the people, the whole nation. Our purpose is not to divide but to unite and where there are difficulties to bring about reconciliation.”

So said the Right Honourable Edward Heath before entering Downing Street in June 1970. Remind you of anyone? There then followed over the next four years a time of economic turmoil, industrial disruption, terrorist threats, corruption in high places, social divisiveness and despair in certain quarters, with the declaration of a state of emergency.

While not wishing to embrace a post-Brexit counsel of despair, I do hope that 2016-2020 does not replicate too closely this particular period of British history.

From: Sergi Singh, Chamberlain Road, Hull.

IN a new wave of support for Brexit, the Union Flag, as opposed to the EU blue rag, is now being flown over large parts of Italy as that country begins to mutiny against rule from Brussels. At 48 per cent before our referendum, anti-EU feeling in the country has increased massively after we showed it can be done.

Whatever way you look at it, the EU is a spent force. Meanwhile economics expert Patrick Minford has advised Theresa May to trigger Article 50 as soon as possible, saying that it could lead to a growth of around four per cent in economic output and boost in living standards, an area where one or two per cent is considered good.

So again we have to ask why is our Prime Minister delaying the inevitable departure? She has her orders from the UK electorate and in a democracy that is enough. Only in a dictatorship would the leaders override a mandate from the people.

From: Don Burslam, Elm Road, Dewsbury Moor, Dewsbury.

BEING in or out of the EU should simply be decided on whether it benefits the country or not. I respect the views of those who favour Leave on economic grounds but not on personal prejudice, like the gentleman who was overcharged in a café in Rome years ago which has turned him against Italy and the continent ever since.

The vote was clearly based on misrepresentation and untruth, not only during the campaign but also for years before. It would indeed be foolish and misguided to consider the nation and future generations bound by this result.

Unless the politicians show more sense than they have up to now, the harmful effects of this disaster will be felt for years to come. This will include farming, financial services, depressed areas, the environment and trade. There is also the prospect of Scotland leaving the UK in an attempt to stay in the EU.

From: Terry Palmer, South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley.

AS we all know, every one of our South Yorkshire Labour MPs went against the majority wishes of their constituents by voting to remain in the undemocratic EU. As usual, they knew best.

Will these MPs be voting in favour of EU Article 50 which begins the process of leaving, or yet again will they know best and be voting against the majority of their constituents? A simple yes or no will suffice.

From: Tim Mickleburgh, Boulevard Avenue, Grimsby.

I SEE those who supported Remain are now saying that the vote was lost because the public was misled. Are these the same Remainers who backed “Project Fear” and a belief that withdrawal would produce an emergency budget that never happened?

From: Frank McManus, Longfield Road, Todmorden.

BERNARD Ingham resurrects the canard about Labour’s 1983 manifesto being a suicide note.

Your readers would do well to obtain Michael Foot’s book Another Heart and other Pulses from a local library and read that the suicide was Britain’s, via Margaret Thatcher’s abandonment of our industrial base and our stock of local authority housing and her clinging to the EU with loss of sovereignty via the treaties of “Maastricht” (a trick not a treat) and the subsequent “Lisbon” which Gordon Brown signed so reluctantly.

Foot, of course, was well ahead of Thatcher in the 1982 polls, but the Tories gained from the Falklands factor and the deep rupture between Labour and the Liberal Alliance which gave over 100 MPs to the Conservatives by vote splitting.

With the SNP entrenched, we need a popular front to displace the Tories.

From: Edward Grainger, Botany Way, Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough.

Bernard Ingham is “in a serious state of depression” over politics and the economy.

Sir Bernard should really get out more. He would discover that, surprise, surprise, many of us simply want a better Britain, something every Prime Minister since the war has promised using the “fair shares for all and equal opportunity for all” mantra that recently both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have espoused.

This Christian philosophy is one that has clearly found favour with the Corbynites and with all reasonable thinking Conservatives.

But I fear we can only look forward to a country as divided as ever, with, as Baroness Boothroyd so ably put it, those who have the wealth surging ever more surely to acquire yet more. At the last count it was about two per cent of the population.

From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.

AS the EU empire shudders from crisis to crisis, it becomes increasingly obvious that the British people made the right decision to leave. The eurozone austerity has caused youth unemployment rates in parts of the EU to rise to 51 per cent in some major countries.

Combined with the migrant and security crises, that is a very grim outlook for the EU’s young people for years to come. By contrast the UK is far more likely to escape the worst of such crises now that the wise counsel of the British people has prevailed.