IN two years’ time the UK will be out of the EU. Existing EU trade deals will be history, collaboration on security and intellectual futures, and lucrative subsidies cannot be assumed to continue; unless alternatives are in place there is a high risk that the economy will suffer.

However, almost a year since the referendum, Brexit ministers have nothing of substance to say about that precarious future, except that they will seek the best possible deal for the UK. They are fiddling, the economy is at risk of burning, and there has been no sustained challenge either by politicians or the media to elicit a coherent post-Brexit plan. The electorate is being fed on platitudes about trade deals but there is nothing to show that the economic realities have been anticipated and planned for. Belief in a successful outcome has become no more than a blind act of faith.

Without a shred of evidence to show that they have plans to anticipate and mitigate adverse effects, Brexit ministers swagger and tell us the Government has everything under control. Meanwhile leading figures in the EU have begun to indicate, unsurprisingly, that they are not about to make life easy for the UK in upcoming negotiations. The Government’s belligerent response to this is a sure sign of insecurity and fear.

The UK is about to be unceremoniously dumped by Europe. The writing was already on the wall when David Cameron returned empty-handed from his last-ditch negotiations in Europe prior to the Referendum. It is time for politicians to stop prevaricating, face reality and plan alternatives to shore up the post-Brexit economy.

To be of any real value to the economy however, negotiations must bear fruit in actual trading. Triggering this and the resultant flow of real currency will take years, and we have not exactly seen a rush from other countries to the UK’s doors to strike new deals. We can have confidence that the UK has outstanding products and services to offer, but we need others inside and outside the EU to be prepared to buy them with hard currency for our economy to benefit.

The outlook for such real trade has been entirely missing to date. The Government says it has a clear plan for Brexit, but cannot or will not tell us what it is. How can the electorate make informed choices based on such a dismissive approach? We need to hear what its plans are, for whatever the outcome of negotiations, within two years we will be out on our own in an increasingly competitive world.

Each of the political parties must tell us what it expects to achieve with both the EU and the rest of the world, and how that will affect the economy; and one can only hope that the media will get beyond political soundbites and froth, and demand that politicians provide the electorate with this information in the run-up to the General Election.

Gerry Seenan,

Eglinton Terrace, Skelmorlie.

SINCE its inception, first as the European Coal and Steel Community and then as the European Economic Community (with its flagship Common Agricultural Policy), the EU has been run largely for the benefit of France and Germany: a quid pro quo between French agriculture and German industry. In pursuit of a political union, the two countries launched the euro, but without a fiscal, debt and banking union to underpin it.

To this end there are rules about annual fiscal deficits (not to exceed three per cent of Gross Domestic Product), on aggregate national debt (not to exceed 60 per cent of GDP) and on the balance of trade current account (a persistent surplus must not exceed six per cent of GDP). France blatantly flouts the first two, and Germany the third. The latter's trade surplus has reached nine per cent of GDP, and is still rising because the euro, unlike the former Deutschmark, cannot be re-valued to re-balance Germany's trade. The rest of the Eurozone is screwed instead.

The UK's imminent departure highlights the EU's internal problems. Our enormous annual net contributions to the EU budget, the high tariffs we must pay on cheaper food from outside the EU, plus the higher prices we pay to buy the produce of EU farmers, together fund the Common Agricultural Policy. The main beneficiary is France (an EU-subsidised bread-maker in almost every remote village), with Spain and Italy not far behind. If the UK were to operate free trade after Brexit, the food and wine industries of these countries would falter as they lost UK market share to producers in the rest of the world. Professor Patrick Minford calculates that sourcing food and drink from the wider world, and not from within boundaries of the EU Common External Tariff, would reduce UK food prices by eight per cent.

The newly elected French President, Emmanuel Macron, knows all this, and wants either an indemnity of €100 billion from the UK to cover future “losses” for the EU, or for Germany to fill the gap with a European fiscal union. Germany refuses to do this, and views the UK's departure with equanimity. We have the option of declaring unilateral free trade on all goods and services to the greatest advantage of our people, or of trading with the EU under WTO rules and tariffs. On average the latter are about three per cent, much less than the post -referendum devaluation of sterling, which has caused our trade deficit to fall by 50 per cent.

And the SNP thinks Brexit will scupper us. (“Sturgeon’s Brexit mandate move”, The Herald, May 15). Come on, get real.

Richard Mowbray,

14 Ancaster Drive, Glasgow.

I AM not sure where Russell Vallance gets his figures from concerning the UK contributions to the EU’s pension fund (Letters, May 15). The current estimated fund cost is around €63.8 billion. But that depends on the chosen interest rate when you calculate it and also if you use the “reasonable present value” option. The latter would give a lower figure of €43.1bn. If 33 per cent of contributions are paid by salaried staff then this figure falls even further to €29bn. If you allow 12.2 per cent of that total to be the UK’s contribution, then the cost to the UK is just over €3.54 billion, or £3 billion.

Mr Vallance also quotes a figure of 15,000 administrative staff as likely to be receiving a pension. The European Commission had 32,546 employees as at January this year. To that must be added 9,582 staff at the European Parliament, 3,500 staff at the European Council, and 11,579 at other EU Institutions. That gives a figure of 57,207 employees rather than 15,000. Divide £3bn by this total and the cost to the UK would then be £52,441 per employee and not £500,000 as suggested.

He also believes that safeguarding EU and UK citizens’ rights should be fairly straightforward. It is anything but. At the moment we are all EU citizens whose rights are protected by European law as enforced by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). When the UK leaves the EU then these rights are in limbo. Furthermore any new arrangement will have to include the concept of “reciprocity” as defined under Article 217 of the Treaties where it states that the EU may conclude “agreements establishing an association involving reciprocal rights and obligations” with a departing member state. The question is how will this be achieved? For instance, a UK national within the EU will be protected by the ECJ despite not being a citizen of the EU. But an EU national in the UK will not be protected by the ECJ if the UK courts are deemed superior. There is therefore no reciprocity.

Mrs May suggested this week that EU nationals will indeed have their rights protected regardless of the fact that the UK will be a “third country”. But she doesn’t say how. As the ECJ is the only legal guarantor of these rights, then will its case law extend into the UK in the same way as it extends into other third countries like Norway where it is done via the European Free Trade Accociation Court? If not, and EU nationals are not protected in the UK, then correspondingly UK nationals in the EU cannot expect to have their rights protected as they are no longer EU citizens. The belief that this can all be sorted out in months is fanciful in the extreme.

Robert Menzies,

2 Burnbrae Gardens, Falkirk.

IT is often asserted by anti-independence commentators that there is little difference between Scottish and English politics and levels of political radicalism.

It is clear that the Brexit vote has delineated areas of difference in UK politics. Interesting that diverse, multi-cultural areas like London, Liverpool, Cardiff and Scotland (in its entirety) voted for a shared more outward kind of politics.

Some of those areas of former working-class prosperity which were badly hit by Thatcherite closures and subsequent Blairite neglect have voted for a more insular stance, misguided but understandable in terms of their local conditions.

Most modern analysts would accept that we are influenced by our history, our interaction with it and our knowledge of it.

In Scotland, the desire for a sensible resolution to the political debacle that is Brexit may stem from a political awareness that continues to draw from the rationality of the Enlightenment, often praised as “common sense”. It may also draw from the long-standing tradition of valuing literacy and democratic access to our universities.

If you are unaware of the Peterloo Massacre or the 1820 Scottish Radicals who were executed or deported for demanding democratic rights , it is harder to work out the value of Theresa May’s promises to look after working people.

Mrs May has been resolutely opposed to any discussion of alternative Scottish narratives to Brexit.

The Tory Party's assertion that there will be no independence referendum before 2022 indicates that this is very much on their mind.

For those of us in the pro-independence lobby, the tactic must be to grit our teeth. Prepare for storms ahead and keep steady. Many factors can throw marbles under the horses' feet.

Maggie Chetty,

36 Woodend Drive, Glasgow.