Theresa May’s idea of a Brexit that can please the Labour benches
SIR – In her letter on Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader (report, February 11), Theresa May, the Prime Minister, wrote that “the urgent task at hand is to find a deal that honours our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland, can command support in Parliament and can be negotiated with the EU”.
Strange: I thought it was to honour the wishes of the British people, as expressed in June 2016. Eve Wilson
Hill Head, Hampshire
SIR – Does Mr Corbyn’s plan for Brexit include a mechanism for the United Kingdom to leave the “permanent customs union”?
If not, it will be worse than being trapped in the backstop. If it does, the EU will surely insist that the backstop will still also be necessary. Professor Richard Bauckham Cambridge
SIR – Jeremy Warner protests too much about the supposed impact of unilateral free trade (“Abolishing tariffs is too politically toxic to work”, Comment, February 8).
The controlling factor here is the currency exchange rate. Using the Institute for Fiscal Studies figures he quotes, it would take only a minimal depreciation of sterling to offset the 2.8 per cent average tariff, well within the bounds of the predicted fall in the pound on leaving the EU. David Starkie London SW8
SIR – The EU is a failed experiment. Its administration has bankrupted Greece, and Italy is on the brink of financial disaster. The EU is not democratic nor is it benevolent to its subjects.
Over the past two years the EU has been intransigent: obstructing rather than negotiating. The main problem now is uncertainty, and a second referendum would prolong that uncertainty and resolve nothing.
If we don’t reach an agreement we obviously haven’t got a deal. So no-deal would be a fact, not a decision to be made. Whether we agree a deal or not by March 29, most of the work is still to be done. The differences are that with no-deal we regain £39 billion and there is no backstop. Nick Yates
Brighouse, West Yorkshire
SIR – Alan Sked (Letters, February 11) asserts that the new Brexit Party registered by Nigel Farage will be fascist on the grounds that it will have no national executive committee. I imagine, however, that its leader will be elected, and its policies determined, by the whole membership, which will also have the power to remove him.
It is not clear why placing control in the hands of a small NEC rather than the whole party is less democratic. To describe it as fascistic is, I would suggest, to go just a tad over the top.
Professor Sked, as founder of Ukip, is in danger of overtaking Ted Heath as the longest political sulker in history. David Cockerham
Bearsted, Kent