Brussels won’t budge

SIR – Is it any wonder that senior Whitehall sources accuse the EU negotiators of intransigence, when they misunderstand the EU’S position?

Your report (August 6), “No-deal Brexit ‘will break EU’S own laws’,” quotes a phrase from Article 8 of the Lisbon Treaty: “a special relationship … founded on the values of the Union”. These values are not negotiable; they are enshrined in EU laws and regulations. Mike Hames

Cradley, Herefordshire

SIR – It is increasingly obvious that obdurate Remainers are manipulating the Brexit negotiations, as they have been from the beginning. If and when the EU agrees to an even more unfavourable version of the Chequers proposals, this will doubtless be presented as an achievement: Theresa May and her team will have saved us from “crashing out” without a deal.

When will leading Brexiteers start to spell out what would be involved if we operated under World Trade Organisation rules? I seem to remember being told during the referendum campaign that if there was no satisfactory outcome to negotiations and we switched to WTO rules we would still be better off – even in financial terms – than if we voted Remain. There needs to be a counter-offensive to Project Fear. Who will mount it? Hilda Ford

Corsham, Wiltshire

SIR – Our ministers moan that a no-deal Brexit is contrary to the EU’S own laws.

We don’t want a deal with the EU; we voted to leave it. We voted to have the freedom to make deals with friends and neutrals, and ignore the hostile powers in Brussels. Let us not fall into the trap of selling our friends and buying our enemies. Nick Martinek

Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

SIR – Liam Fox says the “theological obsession of the unelected” in Brussels is standing in the way of a deal being agreed (report, August 6).

Am I alone in regretting the increasing and ignorant use by politicians and the media of theological as a pejorative word? Do they mean ideological – or maybe political?

Rev Canon Bruce Duncan Salisbury, Wiltshire