The problem isn’t Brexit, it’s that we don’t make anything anymore - Yorkshire Post Letters

The argument that the present condition of the British economy results from Brexit is made without acknowledging many other factors which have led to our present position. Three examples would help to illustrate our situation at present.

Although the railways were invented in this country our latest deliveries of suburban trains are from the CAF company of northern Spain and our remaining railway workshops exist without the capacity to design and build our own trains rather than those constructed from assembly kits shipped from other countries.

When politicians need to make an urgent journey they fly in a Dassault Falcon because we no longer make civil aircraft in this country other than the supply of components to other European manufacturers.

For many years Nigeria, a former British colony, has obtained military supplies from China because we no longer make any military equipment suitable for use in the circumstances required by a third world country.

The British Harrier aircraft would have been a suitable candidate for the Nigerian air force as it had the capacity to deliver weapons in the fight against insurgents but without the costs associated with a high performance supersonic jet fighter.

The leaders of both Conservative and Labour parties see legal and financial services as the only growth areas and many wealthy individuals have added to their fortune by replacing the supply of British made goods by those made in sweatshop factories in the third world.

Unfortunately for us those same countries around the world have grown tired of making bottom of the market goods for British consumers and have realised that their way to prosperity is to trade within their own economic blocks and develop their economies by turning their supply of raw materials into finished products at home so as to remove their dependence on manufactured goods from the more affluent nations.

None of this has anything to do with Brexit.