Kevin Walls makes the argument to ‘listen carefully to Patrick Minford’s thoughts on Brexit’. I could not agree more – but I would go another step and communicate what lies behind those thoughts. My point remains that the people deserve to know on what basis Professor Minford (and particularly those politicians pushing us to a hard Brexit) believes the UK would thrive free of the shackles of the EU).

As we watch British Steel, another on the list of once-great British manufacturers, fail and the Brexit party claim that protecting manufacturing would be a central plank of their non-existent manifesto we should reflect again on Minford’s recipe for post Brexit success. Unilaterally abolish tariffs and eliminate essentially all UK manufacturing and agriculture.

Minford was indeed a cheerleader for Mrs Thatcher’s reforms which saw UK manufacturing decimated. My own experience of that was working on the UK Renewable Energy Programme and watching the shift from supporting research and development to build our own wind turbines to buying the technology from overseas with the result now that essentially all our burgeoning wind industry relies on imported technology (much of it made in Denmark and Germany – who took a completely different approach and did very well from it).

While it may yet be too early to tell whether the wholesale move from leading the world in technology and engineering to the ‘service economy’ pays off there are a lot of people who would love to swap a zero hours Mc-job for a well-paid, skilled position making world leading products. The EU does not prevent us from manufacturing or exporting (see Germany, France, Italy) that was our choice.

Minford’s analysis is interesting but it relies on conditions that nearly everyone would regard as unacceptable. Walls may look forward to unleashing the ‘buccaneering, entrepreneurial spirit’ but for most that would mean more unstable, lower paid and insecure employment, huge cuts to services and much greater inequality and that might better be described as miserable.

Patrick Dyke

Brobury