Shouting the other side down won’t advance the Brexit debate | Letters
Critics of Brexit have focused on the damage it will do to our economy, but there is a greater damage and that is the threat it poses to our democratic system. In a democracy dissent must be allowed and the voice of the opposition must be heard. Brexiters, rather than listen to the dissenters, seek to silence them. The abuse directed at Philip Hammond by leavers (Tory Brexiters turn their fire on Treasury, 9 October) suggests that they are unwilling to engage with the difficult reality of the negotiations; they just seek to suppress the uncomfortable facts.
What we instead see is the encroachment of Orwell's newspeak on the political dialogue: bad news is turned into good, the message in the media should be encouraging, inconvenient awkward facts about the costs of Brexit should be ignored and replaced by the warm words spoken about Brexit by such as James Dyson. One positive message from Dyson is more credible than the collective expressed anxieties of the CBI and the City. They seem to wish to control the political debate so that when the Brexit begins to have significant negative impact on the economy, both the media and Westminster remain on message, and so that when the negative effects of Brexit impact on people's income, the media story will be one about wicked Europeans doing the British down that will absolve our political leaders from any blame for the post-Brexit economic mess.
Derrick Joad
Leeds