People Voted on the Basis of Untruths
By Philip Gough
I disagree wholeheartedly with Mr Booth-Smith (letters, July 26) when he says there is little point in going over what he calls ‘accusations’ made during the referendum campaign.
The £350 million a week for the NHS was a lie; imminent accession of Turkey (bringing millions of Muslims to our country) to the EU was a gross distortion (with the present Turkish government it could never happen); and ‘all our laws are made in Brussels’ is without foundation, as is an obligation to resign ourselves to a federal Europe.
People voted to leave on the basis of these untruths. That is why they won’t go away and they still need to be challenged. To top it all, the leave campaign has been found to have broken electoral law on four counts and the source of its funding is under investigation, as is its use of data trawling firms.
Mr Booth-Smith cites its threat to exclude the UK from the Galileo project as an example of EU ‘vindictiveness’. The EU Commission proposed the idea of Galileo in 2002. Britain and Germany were opposed. After all, there was GPS (owned by the US government) was there not? In the light of current political developments in the USA, and the increasing importance of satellite technology in everyday lives, it appears to have been a very prescient decision to go ahead with a European controlled system. The Galileo programme is fully funded by the EU and managed the by the European Commission. You and others Mr Booth-Smith, want us to leave the EU. Just as in any club, you cannot leave and expect to retain the benefits of membership, in this case, participation in Galileo.
Galileo is a shining example of what the EU does well: it is visionary, a counterweight to US dominance with many countries working to their strengths across borders. It is only one of many such projects. I want the UK to remain at the heart of these as a major European power in the EU rather than a diminished Trumpian poodle outside it.