I feel I must take issue with the first paragraph, if nothing else, of the ‘To the Editor's desk’ column by Kamaldeep Bhui in the August 2016 edition of the journal. ^{Reference Bhui1} To begin with, I am surprised that ‘shock waves of worry’ among people fearing social division and financial insecurity have just arisen following the Brexit vote. It seems to me that social division and financial insecurity have been growing in this country for some years, and that divisions in wealth are now at a level not seen since the 19th century. All this has happened while we have been members of the European Union, and the European Union has done nothing to ameliorate it. In fact, in its susceptibility to lobbying by big business, Brussels may even have made the situation worse.

I am also surprised to read about ‘better collective interventions to tackle health inequalities’, as the European Union has been the problem rather than a solution for large swathes of the European population. It is well known that emergency financial bailouts to Southern Europe have had such stringent conditions attached to them that many people in Greece, Portugal and Spain are suffering from terrible poverty and their health has been declining markedly. Suicide rates have increased in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece, and levels of mental health have declined. Alcoholism and drug addiction have also increased. Malaria has made a reappearance in Greece – a country where it has not been seen since the 1970s. All this should be blamed fairly and squarely upon the European Union.

As for ‘greater trust and cooperation’ being at the heart of the European project, one only has to listen to the vengeful and threatening comments coming from people in Brussels about making Brexit difficult to realise that they were not our true friends and could scarcely be trusted. I think it is about time we abandoned this starry-eyed idealism about the European Union and got real.