• THE referendum was criticised because it presented only a binary choice between two systems of government – to continue being ruled, top-down, by a currently, apparently benign European oligarchy or to return to democracy – while we should have been asked what “Leave” should look like if we defied the establishment’s intention and voted for it.

We can’t be surprised by the clamour for us to keep voting, but if we are facing neverendum then next time we should be asked what Europe should look like once we have been balloted into submission.

Europe’s euro-currency experiment introduced a unified currency ahead of the political unification needed for it to work. Consequently what has transpired is that, utilising the single market, so-called “freedoms”, goods and services moved to the poorer peripheral countries, capital moved to Germany and where the actions of the ruling troika caused unemployment labour has been free to move out altogether.

All good neo-liberal stuff. As readers of The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe, by American economist Joseph Stiglitz, will appreciate the single currency has thus led to the divergence of European economies rather than the hoped-for convergence. We must all be aware of the growth of political extremes that have followed in its wake.

We should be asked whether, when we are finally coerced into staying in Europe, should it be fully politically unified, as originally intended, with the troika determining all member countries’ budgets and foreign policies, or should it go through a period of managed fragmentation with, for instance, the possibility of Germany being asked to leave the eurozone?

CHRIS GRAHAM
Tollington Park, N4