Quitting EU without acceptable deal would mean handing NHS to US business

I assume that uppermost in the minds of those who protested at President Trump’s visit was his inhumane treatment of Mexican families at the US border. And rightly so.

However, I suggest that there is at the very least one other reason for taking up our metaphorical cudgels, that being the relationship between Trump, Brexit and the National Health Service. Of course he is all in favour of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal. He will be well aware of the enthusiasm of the Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox, and that of his fellow Hard Brexiteers for the opportunity such a Brexit will bring to hand over the NHS to US businesses.

If we leave the EU without an acceptable deal ministers will have little choice but to accept the terms the Trump administration dictates. At the top of the US list of demands will be unfettered access to the NHS.

Was it the “will of the people”, or at least those who voted Leave in the referendum, that our health service be “Americanised” by Liam Fox and his long-standing US allies?

We, the people, Leavers and Remainers alike, must not allow this coup, seen by the extreme hard Right as an opportunity to complete the Thatcherite revolution as they define it, to succeed.

JOHN MILNE Ardgowan Drive, Uddingston

Theresa May is being attacked from all sides over a White Paper on Brexit that some like to call a “fudge” (“May faces escalating Tory turmoil over Brexit plans,” 16 July).

Yet surely a compromise was always the likeliest outcome of doing a deal with the EU, one where both sides have to make some concessions. Hopefully, in the process of accepting some give and take the negative impacts on both the UK and the EU can be reduced and tangible benefits to both sides retained.

The alternatives to a compromise, of either simply walking away from the EU with no deal, or as the SNP would have it, remaining in the EU in all but name, with all the responsibilities and most of the costs of membership but no say, would simply and unthinkingly deliver at the two extremes the worst of all worlds.

For a negotiation to succeed generally both sides tend to feel they have given away a little bit more than they feel comfortable with. In contrast, one side getting everything they want is not a negotiation at all but simply capitulation.

KEITH HOWELL West Linton, Peeblesshire

May I suggest that our politicians follow the example of the Catholic Church? Instead of swaying back and forward or suggesting another referendum, on the last day of this session the doors are locked and remain locked until they come to a unanimous decision.

JAMES WATSON Randolph Crescent, Dunbar