A bungling Parliament will damage Britain by voting against no-deal

SIR – The next parliamentary vote in the coming week will be on whether to accept the shameful Withdrawal Agreement, along with its useless Political Declaration. It makes a laughing stock of our sovereignty, and should be howled down, since it may tie us into the EU for ever. (Can no one in Government understand that the EU’S “best endeavours” to reach an amicable exit for the UK will always result in “regrettable” failure?)

Parliament then moves to a vote on whether it will accept a no-deal Brexit. Good luck with that, Brexiteers, given the pro-eu leanings of too many of our elected representatives, who are not remotely interested in the democratic wishes of the electorate.

No-deal will be emphatically and idiotically thrown out, leaving us at the mercy of EU negotiators and facing the indignity of an extension of Article 50, possibly far into the future.

In decades, I have never witnessed such inept bungling. It is beyond comprehension that the Conservative Party appointed a pro-remain PM, allowing her to appoint a majority of Remainers to the Cabinet. She has been pushed around by ministers and broken solemn promises to 17.4 million voters.

The next election, which may be upon us quickly, will be interesting. “Carnage” may not be an adequate description. Bill Thorpe

Wigan, Lancashire

SIR – The Ifo Institute’s projection (report, March 7) that a no-deal Brexit would cost about 0.5 per cent of GDP to the UK and the EU generally, but 5 per cent (10 times as much) to the Irish economy, emphasises the madness of Parliament ruling it out at this stage.

The EU has used the Irish border issue to impose a backstop that, by keeping us impotent subjects in an ever-more overreaching political project, will destroy the remnants of independence we still enjoy. It has done this only thanks to the wholehearted cooperation of the current Europhile Irish administration, which has gambled on the UK being so terrified of a no-deal outcome as to rule it out.

It is astonishing that a sticking point, adopted for ulterior purposes, and alarm at perfectly survivable inconveniences should dictate the whole future trajectory of our nation. Dugald Barr

London W8

SIR – Consider this scenario: chaos on the roads and in the transport system; public services suspended; the NHS at the point of breakdown; factories, businesses, and government offices closed for days, even weeks, on end; frantic hoarding of food; disorder on the streets; families riven by dispute.

I do, of course, speak of Christmas, not Brexit. We “crash out” every year. Yet even the Governor of the Bank of England does not complain about the economic consequences of our irresponsible self-inflicted catastrophe. Robert Neal

Tansor, Northamptonshire