Andrew Marshall

• I RARELY congratulate a politician, especially one of Camden’s councillors, and I don’t think I have ever congratulated any Tories for their politics.

But Andrew Marshall’s resignation from the Tory Party is well deserving of praise (Brexit means Tory Party exit for me after 40 years, February 16).

Brexit, hard or soft, will be a disaster for Britain, adding to the chaos which Donald Trump looks set to cause around the world.

But Cllr Marshall must have looked the other way many times over those decades as the Tories undermined much of what has happened to the British people in the 70 years since the last European war, certainly in the last 30 when Tory ideas dominated the political agenda and undermined the welfare state and our basic institutions, leading to the bereft state of Britain today, where all our major utilities, telephones, gas, electricity and water, as well as vital services like the railways, are run to make money for companies with no loyalty to the British people.

And I don’t share his tolerant attitude to MPs of any persuasion voting against the interests of their electors.

One thing is for sure, the Brexit process will be long, slow, and dangerously uncertain and, ultimately, will not solve any of Britain’s problems, or calm the fears and anger of its citizens.

Their key concern was immigration, and was more a reflection of worries about Muslims entering Britain: and most of them are not coming from the European Union, and most are also hard-working and decent people, but that’s another debate.

But the main fuel for the anger which led to Brexit in some areas, comes from the fact that almost all workers have seen wage levels stagnate for a decade or more.

This anger has been intensified by the Tories’ axing of vital benefits supporting people in need, families with children, and even the sick and disabled.

Just last week it was reported that Debenhams has been castigated for paying less than the miserly minimum wage to over 12,000 of its staff; that’s how bad Britain is these days, when an up-market chain store can short-change the people who generate its profits, while a government deliberately attacks the poorest people and fails to ensure workers receive even the supposed legal minimum wage, which is not enough to live on without benefits.

Why have they not been hounding lousy employers with the same zeal they have used on the poor and others?

If all workers received a living wage, just over £10 an hour in London, the benefits bill would be reduced much more rapidly and without the Tory nastiness.

Now, under Theresa May and the Tories’ Brexit deal, we may end up in some bargain-basement tax hell, with those at the top swanning in and out of London in their gold-plated “yachts”, checking on their cash-boxes-in-the-sky flats, while the rest of the country suffers even greater deprivation as taxation funds dry up.

In the new “open Britain” marooned in a world where even Starbucks can already tell sovereign governments what tax it will pay, when, and where, prime minister May will be utterly powerless.

We may be kicked awake up from this idiocy soon, but it will be too late.

Brexit will be a disaster, and if MPs cannot see this and do their damnedest to stop it, they will be failing in their duties.

DAVID REED, Eton Avenue, NW3