YP Letters: Margaret Thatcher, not the EU, led Britain out of its economic woes

SIR Patrick Stewart’s interpretation of economic history exemplifies the wishful, flabby thinking of a large rump of Remain adherents.

He claims that the EEC, as it then was, was the key lever in the UK’s transformation when it emerged from the basket case it had descended to in the 1970s to its success in the later 1980s and beyond.

He downgrades Margaret Thatcher to a minor role in this achievement. This is typical Remain nonsense.

I ask Sir Patrick, what role did Europe play in dropping the top income tax rate from a staggering 83 per cent to 60 per cent, the standard rate to 30 per cent and thus creating an incentive for enterprise?

In what way did the EEC act to democratise the unions and halt the fast erosion of a large segment of British industry?

Did the EEC privatise most of the burdensome nationalised industries and alleviate their sapping load on the public purse? Brussels played no role and was spiritually against this liberal economic agenda: regulation, regulation, regulation was, and is, their forte.

It is weakness, not strength, that Sir Patrick and the Remain lobby regularly dredge the waters for non-existent pearls in their attempt to defy the result of a clear-cut decision by the electors of this country.

From: Don Wood, Howden.

MEMBERSHIP of the House of Lords needs reform (Bill Carmichael, The Yorkshire Post, May 4). No ex-MPs. No ex-civil servants and no one who has worked in politics, councils, the EU etc. No one under 35 and nobody over 75. No lawyers of any description. No judges.

What this country needs is an Upper House drawn from people who have experience of the real world, Engineers of all the disciplines, medical doctors, plumbers, scientists (not political scientists as there is no such science), chemists, entrepreneurs, Joiners and unskilled workers like dustmen.

Such people would have far more knowledge of the world, how it works and its problems.

From: Jarvis Browning, Main Street, Fadmoor, York.

FOR goodness sake, stop blaming each other for not being able to sort out the customs union.

It’s the EU that’s being awkward and the opposition parties that are not helping the issue.

This is an all-party issue to respect the referendum for leave. If the EU don’t like it, so be it.