On my recent visit to Malta I read a letter entitled ‘The bright side of Brexit’ by Jonathan Deeley, (The Times of Malta, May 11).

At first I thought it was a tongue in the cheek joke but on reflection I realised he really does believe the rubbish pumped out by the mainstream media English newspapers. He quotes manufacturing as being at a 30-year high.  What has obviously passed him by is the fact that the UK is no longer a world rated power in manufacturing.

Brexiteers love to talk about how we will be a manufacturing powerhouse when the facts quoted by heads of businesses clearly state that these jobs are gone never to return. We do produce lots of things designed to kill people and sell them to whoever can afford to buy them but that trade is not one that fills me with pride.

Mr Deeley quotes a 2.8 per cent pay rise in three months but carefully omits to quote the record length of recent pay freezes which put a great many families on the breadline and led to the proliferation of food banks. His quote of record employment is another meaningless statistic as it omits people over 50 who are unemployed and very likely to so remain.

As for the pound being a strong currency, tell that to anyone changing sterling to euros. To state that sterling is the strongest performer in the G10 nations smacks of Alice in Wonderland. The hard facts are that we are being led by an incompetent bunch of low performers in government who are up against a much more intelligent group of negotiators at the EU table and their performance is an embarrassment to watch as they blunder from one catastrophe to another.

Already big businesses are setting up main offices in the EU to make sure that their operations will not be compromised by a disadvantageous Brexit deal. We in Scotland voted strongly in favour of remaining in the EU and if we were to be independent of the UK I would be only too happy to see an English Brexit while we remained in the EU.