‘Newly-knighted Blair was the one who really sparked Brexit’ – News & Star

YOURcorrespondence interlocutions about Brexit (The Cumberland News, December 31) brings us full-circle to the man who sparked it with his education x3 universities-for-all policy: step forward the newly (and controversially) knighted Sir Tony Blair.

Like it or not, he has had more influence on modern Britain than other post-war prime ministers, along with Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher and did win three successive elections with overall majorities, which proves that you CAN fool most of the people all of the time.

Before Blair became PM net migration to Britain had never exceeded the tens of thousands: its peak had been 77,000 in 1994.

But one year into Blairs term it leapt to 140,000, and when Labour left office in 2010 it was a quarter of a million a year, which the Con-Lib coalition was unable to reduce and which, does anyone doubt, was the prime motivation of Brexit?

Contrary to the alarmist Remainerpredictions there were no long lorry tailbacks at ports, empty supermarket shelves or financial markets panic, just a (worldwide) staff shortage, exacerbated here by a surfeit of uni undergrads.

It is true worldwide trade benefits have yet to appear, but that can partly be explained by historicalaversions, for instance the Irish-descended American president (remember his last-but-one predecessor threatening us that we would be last in the queue if we votedLeave and the former French ambassador to the UKs only half-joking recent observation that Anglo-French relations were the worst since Waterloo?).

Nevertheless, at least one excellent thing has emerged from Brexit: yesterday (Thursday January 6) the Environment Secretary was to announce to the Oxford Farming Conference Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery schemes to rewild Britain, with farmers paid tohalt the decline in biodiversity in place of EU subsidies.

The popularity of countryside excursions during the lockdowns indicates that this means more to most people than unsustainably cheap food.

Richard Lennox,Henry Street,Langholm

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'Newly-knighted Blair was the one who really sparked Brexit' - News & Star