Michael Barnier drinks champagne as British negotiators sign cheques and box us in
SIR – Juliet Samuel (Comment, May 14) is right: the Government’s December concessions on Brexit cash and the Irish border boxed us in and defined the parameters of the “end game”.
Without anything being conditional on the cash, Britain’s biggest bargaining chip disappeared. By agreeing to no hard border, we have agreed to maintain “full alignment”, that is, in a customs union or single market. No wonder Michel Barnier and his EU negotiating team were seen drinking champagne at the time.
Is Theresa May’s team being very clever, or simply negotiating badly? Alan Law
Streatley, Berkshire
SIR – Feeling dispirited at the EU response to our Brexit proposals?
Have a look at the Egyptian Pharaoh’s response in the Book of Exodus to the demands of Moses to let the people of Israel go: hearing but not acting on what is said (Exodus 7:22); accepting the demands under pressure, but then going back on his word (8:15); ignoring the evidence (8:19); saying the right thing but with no intention of doing it (8:29); arguing with the truth because he does not like the demands (10:10); changing his mind at the last minute, when he thinks the Israelites are trapped by the Red Sea – the Irish Border? – (14:13).
Theresa May is no Moses, so I hope God is on our side. John Myhill
Hethel, Norfolk
SIR – With the intervention of Nick Clegg, David Miliband and Nicky Morgan, why should we be subjected to the outpourings of a has-been, a nearly man and a never was, when their views are contrary to the elective wishes of the people? K A Campbell
Gibraltar SIR – As someone who voted with the majority for Britain to leave the EU, I naively, as it turns out, expected Parliament to respect that result, as the two main parties pledged in their manifestos at the election last year.
It seems now that what the majority of the people want and what the majority of MPS are now determined to get are two entirely different things.
If Brexit fails it will be because of an arrogant deceit by many MPS. This will make future manifestos not worth the paper they are written on. This is surely the right time for a new centre-right party to be born. It will have nothing to lose and many millions of votes to gain. David Taylor
Lymington, Hampshire
SIR – We have a Prime Minister who seems to believe that what is needed at this stage is to be cunning and sly, when what the country needs is a Prime Minister who is inspiring, enthusiastic, confident in the people of the United Kingdom, and able to see over the EU’S horizon.
We buy more from the EU than we sell them. They really want our money. We provide security and intelligence resources. We have forces willing to defend Europe, and troops in Estonia.
Yet we have cravenly capitulated on one thing after another. We have allowed the EU to interfere in future internal affairs of the UK. We cannot even make a proper stand on regaining coastal fishing waters, which our ancestors held for 1,000 years.
For the past two years we have had a leader who seems to have given away every card we had, demoralised the country, and engendered a feeling of national humiliation, and to whom none of the inspirational words of Shakespeare or Churchill apply.
The Conservative Party is going to pay a huge price if it lets Mrs May continue to do things in the way she is doing. If Tory MPS doubt this, they should reflect that not so long ago Labour was out of power for nearly 20 years. Jonathan Clark
Cardiff
SIR – I feel I should rise to the defence of the Prime Minister.
She has the singular capacity of making a Horlicks of things. Major Narindar Saroop
London W1