LETTER: My children will pay the price of Brexit

Having gained from free education in the new universities, a wider choice of jobs and careers, final salary pensions (some index-linked) and the opportunity to splash out on buy-to-let housing, some older people are now wanting to deny young people the prospect of living and travelling freely in Europe.

They claim that it is immigration which is to blame, but buy-to-let cuts down the scope for young people to buy and own affordable homes, especially on the top of paying off student loans, and this would still have been the case with low immigration.

The elders have swallowed the drip-drip-drip of 40 years of disparaging reporting on Europe - for which the “journalist” Boris Johnson is partly responsible - and fallen for the lies, wishful thinking and outright bovine ordure of fellow “journalist” Gove, the man with a track-record of belittling experts with whom he disagrees.

This was a referendum for which there was no obligation to call.

We elected a majority government which should have been left to govern.

Unfortunately, there was no need for a coalition partner - who would have vetoed a referendum - and so the malcontent tail was allowed to shake the shaggy Tory dog.

Even the reasonable imposition into the legislation of a threshold majority (like they did in the Scotland Act 1978, the poll was held in 1979) would have given a breathing space for pondering and fired a broadside across EU bows.

This will prove to be a sorry business.

The people for whom I reserve my sympathy are those of my children’s generation, who will suffer the double-whammy of the 2008 recession and the enforced withdrawal from Europe.

Even the gloating mug of Nigel Farage will dissipate in time, even if somebody sees fit – heaven forbid – to give him a knighthood or an alternative gong.

Guy Cudmore

Meaowgate

Bourne