Why are there people still vainly trying to justify Brexit? - Yorkshire Post Letters

The Greek philosopher Epictetus is credited with saying that “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

Rarely can this have been truer than of those who vainly continue trying to justify the UK’s so-called ‘Brexit’ from the EU - including in the YP’s letters pages.

Time and time again we are treated to their tired misunderstandings and misrepresentations of what the EU is and how it works and their diminishing of the impacts of the UK’s decision to leave.

The same old claims about the EU being undemocratic, on an exorable path to political union and/or military union, a ‘club for political egomaniacs and billionaires’, are repeated with no evidence to support them.

If such correspondents could at least write in to explain which parts of the process of adopting EU legislation they think are undemocratic that would be something.

Or perhaps pro-Brexit correspondents could explain how leaving the Single European Market - which the UK had a huge hand in creating and which is celebrating its 30th. anniversary - benefits us in any way?

Another favoured argument in such letters is that academics and experts are not to be trusted.

Experts like John Springford at the Centre for European Reform no doubt whose modelling has estimated that lost tax revenues to the Treasury due to growth foregone because of ‘Brexit’ in the year to the end of June 2022 stand at around £40bn.

Perhaps those who dismiss such findings could supply us with their own calculations to disprove them? Or explain how this loss of revenue helps the government to meet pressing challenges in these straitened times of growing social and economic stress?

The failure of Brexit is now so palpable that even many leading Brexiters are admitting it has not worked out as they hoped. Whilst polling confirms that public support for Brexit has shrunk to the lowest levels so far recorded.

Fortunately, it does seem that increasing numbers of us are able to learn from experience and alter what we ‘thought we already knew’ about ‘Brexit’ in the face of the facts.