Letters to the Editor: Bregret special edition

Reaction now has a letters page. Email the editor with responses to our articles. Most views, observations, complaints, and perhaps even the odd compliment, thoroughly welcome.

In our first edition of Letters to the Editor Reaction readers answer the call and express their Bregrets as Brexit approaches… or does it?

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Sir,

I Bregret the extent to which the issue has dominated our politics and policymaking, to the exclusion of almost all else. I do hope the benefits of Brexit come to outweigh the opportunity cost of a few years of treading water in domestic and social policy. Right now I fear that’s a forlorn hope.

Ben Gadsby

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Sir,

Only one regret. Not taking the Norway option at the start of this when it did not seem that controversial. By that I mean staying in single market and leaving the customs union – telling Ireland and EU that the Uk will not be putting up a hard border….. up to Ireland and EU do the right thing.

Richard Mocatta 
Reaction subscriber (living in Norway)

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Sir,

My biggest “Bregret” was in trusting the Government and the Civil Service to be honest in the way they dealt with the referendum result. I voted to leave so I assumed that politicians would swing behind the result – however reluctantly – and would seek to implement a result that honoured the referendum. They have failed to do so at just about every turn despite most of them standing on a platform of doing just that in the 2017 General Election.

I now think that “no deal” would be better than “May’s Deal” because I would rather have economic uncertainty and political certainty, rather than economic certainty with political uncertainty continuing for many years to come. With “no deal” the politicians cannot backslide. In short, Brexit has made me believe that all politicians and those involved in government really are self-serving liars and charlatans.

John Godsland

PS Keep up the good work!

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Sir,

My Brexit regret is that we did not include exiting the Eurovision Song Contest in negotiations.

Adrian Wakeford

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Sir,

We should never have used the Article 50 process. It was designed to make leaving the EU as nasty as possible and was designed by a remainer in the House of Lords. We should have sent them a short letter saying we would leave a year after the referendum, and included the telephone number of the Number 10 Downing Street switchboard. Call us if you want to talk about a free trade deal. We would like to carry on purchasing your cheese. Au revoir.

Catherine Neave
London

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Sir,

I’ve had a few… writing as a remainer who immediately post-referendum came to the conclusion we just needed to get out in an orderly and damage limiting way.

1. Writing endless presentations/papers for my company’s Brexit committee ending with a comment “It is not yet clear what the outcome will be however it is expected that some form of deal will be done in time for the business to plan for all contingencies. In the meantime it is not recommended we spend on contingency planning.” And still having to write “It is not clear what the outcome will be…”

2. Believing the government had the faintest clue what they are doing.

3. Believing the Conservative Party understood what it means to run a business and what you therefore need the government to do for you.

4. Believing that the EU would not have as its top priority making leaving as painful as possible so no-one ever wants to try to leave ever again.

5. I most regret the fact that too many people will never trust the government ever again to do anything competently as they have demonstrated an utter failure to manage this process.

6. I regret recently trying to explain to people over lunch how there might be a majority for not leaving without a deal, but the parliamentary process made it far from clear how that could happen unless the government introduced primary legislation. It made me sound far too excited by the whole process and everyone asked if we could stop discussing Brexit now please.

Matthew Hewitt

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Sir,

With regard to your article on the subject of Brexit Regrets, which I had long since thought were known by the simple amalgam “Bregrets”, I have only one to report.

I regret believing that the outcome would be respected. In an astonishing act of naivety, I had though our long and glorious history of respecting the verdict of voters would also apply to the referendum.

Had leave voters remained organised and conducted a Continuity Leave campaign with as much determination as Continuity Remain, then perhaps we wouldn’t have been undercut at every turn by politicians who’ve given lip service to respecting the outcome whilst at the same time negating any benefit it would have had.

Joe Marjoram
Leeds