Letter: I didn’t fancy it either

Leaving the EU was a democratic decision, and if any particular person or group of people doesn’t like it, we’ve still got it. As I keep saying, I voted Remain, but when the Leave vote gained a majority, I didn’t spend time and effort snivelling about it. The people had spoken.

I think that many people didn’t want to be part of a European super-state, which was where the EU was heading. I didn’t fancy it either, but thought that it would be something we’d have to endure for the sake of the advantages of European unity.

This leads me to my next point:

I don’t think anybody much objected to trading agreements. Being optimistic for once, I think we might get them back. Businesses (on both sides of the English Channel, I suspect) are wanting to trade: and money talks.

Next on the agenda:

Northern Ireland. OK, Boris fibbed or fudged, but those are things that I think come naturally to him. In this case, perhaps it was all that could be done.

The situation with Ireland isn’t as awful as it was, but it’s been left full of ambiguities.

These are the results of historical factors.

Catholic constancy in Ireland.

Brutality by English rulers as perpetrated by Oliver Cromwell, William of Orange and by others, including the Irish aristocracy and establishment.

Allowing over a million to starve when the potato crop failed.

Disastrous alliances by way of royal marriages (like between Spain and the Netherlands.)

Catholic religious fervour leading to cruel and fanatical oppression.

Catholic expansionism, or expansionism by monarchs who happened to be Catholic, like Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil himself.

I expect everybody is sick of hearing me say this (definitely my family is!) but Ireland is the hard edge of the big stain of centuries of appalling European history.

It can’t be washed out: it can only be ignored and mitigated. What the Remoaners haven’t grasped is that its Europe’s history as well as ours.

The issues at stake with the EU now are trivial, and can be fudged again.

If anybody wants to make life more difficult for us by linking this to the possibility of Northern Ireland leaving the Union and joining the Republic, here’s my suggestion: don’t. Pretty please!

That one will take much longer to sort out than a few factory-made sausages.

Finally, and I’m surprised that Cyril didn’t mention this, but Brexit has meant that we could and did lead the world in opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and supporting that brave country in its heroic struggle against totalitarian tyranny.

Boris did himself and the rest of us proud on that one, however useless he might otherwise have been.

Let’s make him our special envoy to Ukraine!

Ruth Grimsley

Oak Park, Sheffield, S10