MR IAN Mean’s article Dated Feb 5 gives a rose tinted unicorn vision for UK business post Brexit. But the reality for most UK business’s is far from rosy.

At the end of the transition period, UK will loose many of the trade agreements and a multitude of bilateral trade agreements the UK currently uses, thus making exports and imports less competitive not more. No wonder the Britain’s former international trade chief, Sir Martin Donnelly described Brexit as: ‘giving up a three-course meal for a packet of crisps’.

Even worse is that this Kakistocracy of a Tory government has not increased the capacity of UK ports to handle the increased custom checks, which is an inevitable consequences of a hard Brexit. It is only this week Michel Gove finally admitted the truth, that imports and exports to and from the EU will be subject to custom checks. Indeed Andrew Opie, the BRC’s director of food confirmed this when he said that ‘higher prices and empty supermarket shelves were the inevitable consequences, without a dramatic upgrade of channel ports next January’. These shortages and higher prices will of course hit the poorest and most vulnerable in the Stroud Constituency the hardest, especially the children.

D. Bryce

Stroud