Letter: My Brexit vote hasn’t been respected but I’d still vote to leave the EU

June 23, 2026 marked ten years to the day since the UK took the monumental decision to leave the European Union.

In the largest democratic vote ever held in the United Kingdom, 17,410,742 people voted to leave the EU.

I am proud to say I was one of them.

Yet my vote to leave ten years on has still not been respected as Northern Ireland remains colony-like under EU control with an Irish Sea border and the people treated as second-class citizens having to follow EU laws we don’t make and can’t change.

It was a UK-wide vote and that meant all of the UK should have left together, like how we first joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 and that later became the EU.

Looking back the reasons why I voted for Brexit are still as relevant today.

I still believe all of the UK should control its own borders and make its own laws, and if the vote was held today I would still vote as I did in 2016 to leave.

The corruption, agitation and petty vindictiveness of the EU continues. One particularly nasty example of that evil intent was illustrated when the EU attempted to withhold a lifesaving vaccine during the Covid pandemic from the people of Northern Ireland – such a low thing to do and just pure evil.

To me, EU rule was ‘Evil Union Rule’ in 2016 – and in June 2026, EU rule is still ‘Evil Union Rule’.

Stevan Patterson, Castlederg, Co. Tyrone