MPS must find the courage to stand up for their constituents in opposing Theresa May’s deal

SIR – My MP, David Davies, tells me that the vast majority (his words) of his constituents are angry and disappointed with Theresa May’s Brexit deal, and are urging him to vote against it on December 11, but in spite of this he is unlikely to do so.

Our Prime Minister is not only destroying Brexit – but, far worse, she is also destroying our democracy.

Antony Mackenzie-smith

Abergavenny, Monmouthshire

SIR – It seems that Michael Gove’s political compass has been dropped so often that it no longer points in a credible direction.

Last week, writing in a national newspaper purporting to favour the Withdrawal Agreement, he did not even mention the EU veto that many believe is the agreement’s principal mischief, one that he himself appeared to wish to renegotiate – a wish Mrs May rejected when, two years late, she offered him the job of Brexit Secretary. Sir Richard Storey Bt

Malton, North Yorkshire

SIR – There I was thinking that Michael Gove was an intelligent politician who could see through something so obviously bad as Mrs May’s deal.

I must have missed something.

Alan Moss

Cheadle, Staffordshire

SIR – Professor Sir Brian Harrison (Letters, December 3) contrives to miss the point about the 2016 referendum.

The very fact that holding referendums is not normal practice in British politics lends enormous significance to the result when one does take place. At no point was there even the suggestion that the Brexit vote was to be merely advisory: those who now argue that it was are being disingenuous. “We will implement what you decide,” were the emphatic words of David Cameron at the time.

In the wake of the result, the Government’s duty was to honour the wish of the British electorate: to leave the EU. To talk, as Professor Harrison does, of “keeping both party and country united by seeking a practicable compromise” is to ignore the wishes of all who voted, for Remain or Leave. Nobody voted for a “compromise”; that is not what referendums are about, by definition.

And does Professor Harrison imagine that if the result had gone the other way, the Government would have been striving ever since to reach “a practicable compromise”?

Philip J Ashe

Leeds, West Yorkshire

SIR – Professor Harrison states: “Until 1975, referendums had long been found useful by authoritarian regimes abroad, whereas Britain pursued democracy through parliaments responsive to the electorate.”

The problem is that Parliament and the Government are no longer responsive to the electorate – otherwise the decision to leave the EU would have been upheld by all MPS. As it is, many of them have allowed their personal preferences to take precedence over those of their constituents, and have been using all means available to frustrate, delay and overturn the result of the referendum.

Janet Heath

Thrussington, Leicestershire

SIR – Mrs May has negotiated a deal to which she knows Parliament will not agree. A second referendum will almost certainly follow.

The public, bored to distraction by the shenanigans of our politicians, either will not bother to vote, or will feel they must choose to stay in the EU – and the liberal elite will have got the result they wanted in the first place.

David Nunn

West Malling, Kent

SIR – As soon as Jenny Jones’s cat decides to leave, she leaves (Letters, December 3).

In 2016, my cat earned the nickname Referendum because of her habit of standing astride the back-door threshold for ages, unable to decide whether to stay or go.

Pat Cooper

Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire