Stop the navel-gazing and reform the EU

“DEFEAT for EU Withdrawal Bill would be democratic sabotage”, says Andrew Mckie (The Herald, June 12). Surely that suggestion is rather late. The democratic sabotage of the EU Referendum was started by the lies spread by the Leave Campaign during the referendum campaign.

It is especially galling that you should print this given that two-thirds of the people in this country voted to remain in the EU but are being dragged along by the shambolic Brexit forced down our throats by Tories out of touch with Scottish opinion and by Labour which has not yet realised that there is a place called Scotland.

What you should be campaigning on is that we are a European country and that the whole EU including Scotland will be permanently damaged by Brexit and trivial amendments to a daft Withdrawal Bill will leave us all in an isolationist backwater called Britain. If only British and Scottish politics would stop their navelgazing and concentrate on reforming the EU. Strip the our inclement weather in March. It is staggering to think that four days of heavy snow could have such an impact on our output. To make matters worse, there are hawks on the Monetary Policy Committee who want to slow the economy (to prevent it from over-heating, to use their term) by increasing interest rates. An economy as anaemic as ours really doesn’t need higher vehicle fuel prices, higher home fuel costs, higher mortgage costs and lower real wage growth. But don’t worry, I am sure that those good old Brexit people will have a formula for correcting all those anomalies. Francis Deigman,

12 Broomlands Way, Erskine.

GIVEN the recent history of catastrophic failures in both public and private sectors, and susceptibility to fraud and hacking, anybody who seriously thinks that an IT solution will solve future customs and excise issues must be out of their Brexit-addled minds. Douglas Mckenzie,

Crawhill Lodge,

Westfield, West Lothian.