Just what would Britain be like in 20 years’ time if we stayed in the EU?

sir – In his interview with Tim Stanley, Sir Vince Cable (Men, September 6) said one of his objectives when Brexit negotiations are concluded is to have a popular vote on whether we proceed, or whether we go back to the status quo.

As Allister Heath points out (Comment, September 7), “the public will no longer tolerate the status quo”. That is what the EU referendum told us, as did the 2017 general election.

The EU status quo will not remain so for long. The EU has to move towards federalisation to survive. As Jeremy Warner wrote (Comment, September 6), the EU is “still a million miles from the consensus needed on debt mutualisation, fiscal transfers, and large movements of labour to achieve a sustainable monetary union”.

The project will roll on until it succeeds or implodes, and many of us who voted to leave see the risks of remaining as unacceptable. Just once I would like Sir Vince and the other prominent Remainers to set out what they see as Britain’s role and status in 20 or 30 years if we were to remain in the EU and a United States of Europe were about to become reality. Mike Herman

Ware, Hertfordshire

sir – As about so much, Nick Timothy (Comment, September 7) is wrong to assert that there will be a compromise with the EU over Brexit. The EU elite’s logic is not the logic of business or markets, it is the logic of power.

Merkel, Macron, Barnier, Selmayr et al are not looking for some clever deal, even one that is tipped somewhat in their favour. They are determined upon exacting surrender.

Why? Because for them it is not a matter of holding the creaking EU structure together, but of binding member states ever more tightly together into an increasingly centralised proto-superstate.

To achieve this end, dissent from the dogma of ever-closer union must be punished and, where possible, resistance from recalcitrant states crushed. For them, this absolute requirement trumps everything else, even the Union’s economic wellbeing.

In turn, we in Britain must realise that regaining sovereignty is likely to involve pain. But so many sacrificed so much in so many struggles to keep our freedom, that we must not give it up now for a mess of pottage on which in the longer term we would choke. Terry Smith

London NW11

sir – The more the insults from the EU flow, the more we can be assured that David Davis is doing a great job. Fred Sommers

Eversley, Hampshire

sir – A spokesman for the EU Flags Proms Team (report, September 8) says that Mozart, Handel and Bach would presumably not be welcome in London during the Brexit dark ages.

May I gently point out that when these men of genius came to London we were not actually EU members. Professor David Allison

New Malden, Surrey