[LETTERS] Brexit: Britain has lost her operational leverage

Problem is that Britain is predominantly a service-driven economy; financial, business and professional services that is. And you will have observed that fellow EU states, with high per capita incomes, offer better bang for buck for Britain's export services presently.

Friday, August 05, 2016

Editor,

RE: "Brexit: Britain will emerge the winner” (The New Times, August 3).

Problem is that Britain is predominantly a service-driven economy; financial, business and professional services that is. And you will have observed that fellow EU states, with high per capita incomes, offer better bang for buck for Britain's export services presently.

Unfortunately Britain lost her operational leverage via globalisation (the British don't make trinkets anymore; China settles this score.) And against a backdrop of dire balance of payments and an alarming deficit, Britain can only cautiously invoke financial leverage to jig the beat.

Unless manufacturing jobs are re-shored to Britain from the far east, the perceived wisdom points to a Brexit-lite—just like Norway—so as to gain access to the common European market into which Britain sells more than 50% of her output, not to Semei Kakungulu land via Masai Mara.

Ggwanga Mujje

I absolutely believe the British empire is not about to come to a standstill. What made London the financial, educational, logistical hub of the world is not because it’s in the EU, but because of its centrality to global dynamics. This has not changed.

Actually as Yash Tandon argues, now London has more room to manoevre and innovate, without being tied down by EU regulations and incompetent members—the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). No, London has not fallen.

Dave