I actually agree with Mr Rhodes
I rarely agree with Peter Rhodes, but he is on the money in responding to the Daily Telegraph correspondent who complained that he had ‘never experienced the mess and mayhem that we find ourselves in at the present time’.
Rhodes (June 29) is right that things have been much worse in the past, and I agree that ‘the idea that everything was better 40 years ago is a delusion that has haunted humanity for at least 20 centuries’.
But then he spoils it by quoting a trade deal in Pavia 1,200 years ago and asserts that since a trade deal was possible then one can be done now. The deal that was done then was to allow English merchants into Pavia to trade with the Italians. The one the failing May Government is seeking is to exclude foreigners from the UK and us to turn our back on Europe, and this is something the young do not want.
The nostalgic belief on the Brexit right that things were better when they were young is not a harmless illusion of elderly people – the correspondent who replied to me on June 1 talking about the ‘wilderness’ we have been living in during recent years was not merely nostalgic, but talking about a world that does not exist.
But it will do if Brexit is not reversed. As the election showed in June 8, the biggest factor in voting now is age. The old Tory voters and Brexiteers, it’s time for them to back off and let the young have a future, particularly those who were not 18 at the time of the second EU referendum last year but will have to live with the consequences. Why keep on denying them a vote on their future relationship to Europe?
Trevor Fisher, Stafford
