Jungle challenge

dangerous as a basis for major change. He also tells us ‘federalism can stop independence’. The trouble with that one is that some of us remember George Robertson telling us that devolution would stop nationalism – we’ve heard that before! Also, is there an appetite for federalism? WILLIAM BALLANTINE

Dean Road Bo’ness, West Lothian is the ethics of putting country first at a time of grave difficulties in which he (David Davis) is our pilot?

At a time when industry tells us that their vital interests are to see negotiations proceeding immediately, we depend on the Irish turning a blind eye to our plans to do trade deals which change our food regulations – making smuggling from north to south much more likely. You would have thought that our three Musketeers of Brexit (Johnson, Gove and Fox) would have kept such plans quiet, and not put them into a letter to the Prime Minister.

And Brexiteers have managed to reassure farmers that loss of cheap foreign labour will be avoided, and that free trade deals bringing in cheap food will not wipe them out. Such trust!

With less than a year after Christmas left to work out a complex deal, the possibility is that a “no deal” solution is the only agreeable solution which such disagreeable people seem likely to agree on. Then as food prices go up, or as food from Europe rots at the borders, there will be a rush to get these free trade deals which will bring down the prices in the shops. A strong and stable panic will drive us into some unequal and unstable deals.

If spoof Enid Blyton novel Five On Brexit Island had produced such an unlikely plot, I would never have read it in my far distant childhood. ANDREW VASS Corbiehill Place

Edinburgh Kezia Dugdale’s jungle adventure has ended but how will her Labour colleagues welcome her back? I fear it may be a case of “out of the frying pan and into the ire”. BILL DREW Cairn Road

Kirriemuir