The Chancellor fails to grasp that sovereignty lies at the heart of Brexit

SIR – Philip Hammond is quite wrong when he says that our first priority in negotiating Brexit must be prosperity (report, June 28).

When we voted for Brexit, we voted to leave the EU: nothing more or less. Of course prosperity is important, and it will come when we reclaim our sovereignty and control of our own affairs. We have always been a successful trading nation, and have no place in an inward-looking, protectionist federal Europe. Bob Pugh Ringwood, Surrey

SIR – I am fed up with commentators and politicians lazily trotting out the line “people didn’t vote to be poorer” to justify any proposed violation of Brexit. In fact, the people did just that.

The logic is clear. Since everyone from the Governor of the Bank of England to the Chancellor of the Exchequer threatened that we would be financially worse off after Brexit, even with drastic economic measures and emergency Budgets, any vote for