RHYS Tanner, while offering a reasoned account, makes some rather unfair and sweeping comments about Remain voters in the recent referendum.

He forgets that we had a referendum over forty years ago in which this issue was settled by a big margin, following a debate much more open and honest than the recent one (it has become usual to forget or misrepresent just how thorough that debate was). Some people have for many years harboured a growing objection to what they felt as the loss of their country. Many “remainers” are now in that same position: we have lost what we thought of as our country. It will be many years – at least ten and probably more, if ever – before we will be able to assess, if only pragmatically and materially, who was right in this debate. The sense of loss felt by many of us will not evaporate soon. We are a divided country – in more ways than our differences over the EU – and all sides will have to accept this.

This is not bitterness, or snobbery, or self-righteousness. It is a plain statement of how things are.

I would certainly contend, however, that the worst effects Mr Tanner attributes to the EU are substantially the result of UK government policies and lack of effective enforcement of regulations. This certainly applies to the cheap labour Mr Tanner complains of, where often inadequate labour and wage laws have been quite deliberately even more inadequately enforced, to the detriment of honest employers and their employees, and making native employees less attractive. While EU fishing laws are a problem, it is the awarding, by the UK government, of licences to big industrialised fishing businesses rather than to the more eco-friendly local coastal fishermen that has needlessly exacerbated the situation in our native industry. Because of this, I don’t expect an improvement for most people when we leave the EU; indeed, we are more likely to find that many people will be deprived of the protection provided by the EU.

By all means, let’s have less of the sour grapes, but that means all sides respecting others’ differences, for they are not going to be reconciled soon.

Barry Tempest Romulus Close Dorchester