I was interested to read Philippa Watts’ letter (For me, Brexit means losing my identity, 24 January) and her views on leaving the EU, with which I fully sympathise. As British expats who have lived in France for over 20 years, my husband and I have not only lost our identity, we are completely disenfranchised. David Cameron, who had promised to restore the vote to those who had lived abroad for more than 15 years, failed to do so. Theresa May also said she would make it her priority, but nothing more has been heard.
We are British born and patriotic, but we don’t exist even though we have families in the UK and pay certain taxes there. We have a great interest in French politics yet can’t vote in the presidential election and feel strongly that the EU is vital for peace. Thus our position, as well as that of thousands of others, is precarious and very worrying. No one seems to care and, unlike the French in London, we have no deputy or representative. So what’s to be done?
Jill Watts-Jones
Piolant, France
• I agree entirely with Philippa Watts. Many on the left support Brexit because of the direction in which the EU has turned: neoliberalism, eurozone austerity, forced privatisation and so on. But citizenship can’t be reduced to economic policies. The fact that I have strongly disagreed with just about everything British governments have done over the past 10 years or so does not in any way reduce the importance of British citizenship to me. That importance lies in the rights that I gain from it, and the identity components of language, culture and history that go along with it. My EU citizenship is as important to me as my British citizenship. I don’t want to lose either of them, not least because I can cling to the faint, perhaps naive, hope that one day, through the actions of citizens, such policies in both cases may be changed.
Professor John Wrench
Esbjerg, Denmark
• I have just applied for a replacement passport a year before it is necessary so I can continue to carry the 12 stars for as long as possible. I am old enough to remember life before the EU, but would like to retain my European identity. The inflated “cost” of the EU as claimed by the Brexit campaign was £350m a week – about £6 a week for each British citizen. I would be prepared to pay about £300 a year to the EU to retain the rights of European citizenship as well as my British one. Could there be a way of allowing me to do so?
Huw Jones
London
• This week my new driving licence arrived, with a union flag where there was none before. On the top right hand corner there is still an EU flag with UK in the centre. When is the next redesign due?
Gillian Bassett
Great Barford, Bedfordshire
• Philippa Watts writes: “I consider myself a European first, a Brit second.” Perhaps she should consider the position of those of us who voted leave because we see ourselves as “citizens of the world”, embracing a genuine internationalism that does not demand membership of a narrow continental capitalist project.
Dr Harry Harmer
Eastbourne, East Sussex
• Like Philippa Watts, my partner and I feel we are losing our identities. However, she is mistaken in thinking it is only her generation. We come from the same generation as her parents, so “became” Europeans in our 20s, or at least officially began to. I had never previously given much, if any, thought to being British and these days, like Philippa, I consider myself a European first and only British by circumstance. I have no truck with small-minded patriotism, particularly of the sort we see glibly paraded about on a regular basis. I am proud to still be a European and feel ashamed at being associated with a backward-looking nation. The standard fallback of almost every politician and vested interest is that we can’t deny democracy. If what we are witnessing is democracy then I fear the term is vastly compromised.
Jim Divers
London
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