FOR once, I find myself in complete agreement with James Gray. There is, indeed, “a lot of twaddle being talked about Brexit. “Stop worrying ... a clean break” he writes in your newspaper of July 13. How comforting, condescending and misleading. 
A sort of north Wiltshire version of the bus which assured us £350 million a week would be immediately pumped into the NHS, should we vote to leave the EU.
 Lies which were supported by the likes of Johnson ( now let loose to clown his way, on our behalf, around the world) Gove and Farage and with help from Farage’s friend from the USA, Robert Mercer.
What did the people vote for in the referendum? A fair playing field it was not. A vague idea in the hope that Tory party problems would miraculously be solved? Cameron’s downfall, now repeated by May’s rejection on June 8, yet now negotiating, with no mandate, for the terms of a Brexit? 
An idea based on false information yet with no concept, since none could be available, of the consequences? Mr Gray is on record for writing, in this newspaper, that anything less than a 60/40 per cent result in the referendum would be invalid. Yet when 48 per cent voted to remain? I recommend Graeme Bell’s letter, ‘Gray area’, in the July 14–27 edition of Private Eye, Mr Gray’s second appearance in recent weeks.
Mr Gray writes that there is no such thing as a hard, soft, red-white-and blue Brexit, nor anything in between. Yet the Government is now struggling to achieve a deal with the EU. How does he manage to ignore this? Does he think his constituents so very naïve? Sir Nigel Sheinwald, former ambassador to the EU, predicts that there is a one-in-three chance of Brexit talks even collapsing. He must consider them important.
Gray makes brief mention of the World Trade Organisation. We are, of course, already a member, as one of the 28 EU countries. He skirts around there being no likely change to our present trade within the EU because “more comes this way than goes that way”. This presumably assumes that, post-Brexit, we will retain free access to the EU, as if we were still a member. Cloud cuckoo land. 
Mention, unsurprisingly, is also made of immigration, the mantra of the far right. No mention is made of EU membership in this context. Just another assumption that his version of a future UK will swiftly become self-reliant, able to pick and choose at will. This at a time when the NHS is struggling, banks are making plans elsewhere, lawyers are registering in Ireland to ensure EU advocacy and, of course, the pound has dropped in value. And we have yet to even leave! Vacate our place at the table after all that has been achieved so far? Join Norway in the EEA, no say but still pay? Let us remind ourselves of a few facts, in no particular order.
1. The EU is larger than any individual economy in the world.
2. 44.6 per cent of UK exports of goods and services, at present tariff-free, are to the EU.
3. 53.2 per cent of UK imports and services are from EU fellow nations, also tariff-free. This constitutes just 16 per cent of the EU’s total exports. Remember the Italian Minister ridiculing Boris Johnson’s bluster over Italy selling less prosecco should we impose a tariff?
4. EU membership gives UK business preferential market access to over 50 countries outside the EU. Switzerland has trade deals with 38 countries. Canada and Australia each have 15. Canada is still in negotiation with the EU over free trade. This has, so far, taken seven years. The EU has just, following four years of talks, agreed the mutual removal of tariffs between the EU and Japan. Gray’s plan is to jettison our present status in world trade and start all over again.
5. Over two million UK employees work for companies reliant to varying extent on investment from the EU. Add to this grants from the EU to the North East and Cornwall, for example, supporting the laudable aims of Michelle Donelan MP, just unfortunate that she represents a Government cutting education, the basis for her argument concerning shortage of skills in the UK.
Returning to James Gray’s latest appraisal of the world scene and his advice to us all, let us dwell, but briefly, on his vision of the future. Shut up shop, cancel some 43 years of participation and re-establish ourselves as “the great maritime and trading nation”of his imagination – a new East India Company perhaps, or a Darien scheme, Good Queen Bess and Francis Drake? I suggest that you contact Rowan Atkinson or Monty Python to fine tune your act, Mr Gray.
JAMES SAXTON
Zander Road
Calne