BREXIT — who will pay?

It is now clear that Brexit is going to cost the country an awful lot of money; not only the £39bn to buy ourselves out of our existing treaty commitments, but ongoing billions in extra civil servants and in reduced output in the manufacturing and financial services sectors. And a no-deal Brexit will cost us even more.

These are predictions made in December by a Brexit-supporting government, so cannot just be dismissed as ‘Project Fear’.

So, the question is: who is going to pay? It will not be the well-off sector of our community — this government has already shown how it favours them with tax breaks and the mega-rich will always find a way of protecting their money.

Nor will it be the pro-Brexit media moguls whose low-tax off-shore status is threatened by EU tax avoidance plans, and neither will it be prominent Brexiteers such as Nigel Lawson (already taken out French residency), Jacob Rees-Mogg (already moved his investment bank to Ireland) or Nigel Farage (secure with his fat MEP’s pension payable in Euros).

No, the people that will pay are those that always pay — the poorest sectors of our society who will pay via higher prices, worse services and lower welfare; and how long do people think that the ‘triple lock’ on state pensions will survive a cash-strapped right-wing government?

Now that the consequences of Brexit are better understood, we clearly need a second referendum to see if nationalistic sentiment still outweighs financial and social considerations, or whether the whole idea of Brexit should be abandoned.

John Moon, Abbotts Ann