Brexit: Now it makes even more sense

Peter Wardle and Nigel Jones (February 7) suggest that a rerun of the 2016 referendum is justified on the basis that “we now know what leaving the EU means”. However, when we voted to leave the EU we knew that it would mean at least an end to uncontrolled immigration and to legal oversight and interference from Brussels. It wasn’t exactly a difficult concept. However, if we accept that some voters may have been unclear about the finer details of leaving or remaining there should be absolutely no doubt in their minds now. Who would want to remain a member of an organisation where paying members are vilified or ignored when suggesting change; where leaving becomes an exercise in punishment; where the bloated executive management of the organisation is unelected and sneeringly dismissive of the views of a fully paid up member and where club rules are amended and expanded without much regard for the impact on individual members. Common sense suggests that any organisation run on this basis won’t last long. What we couldn’t know at the time of the referendum was that by 2019 mainland EU would be awash with right-wing extremists in mainstream politics, that Italy would be in recession and in significant political dispute with France and that the French and German economies, the backbone of the Eurozone, would be flirting with recession. Taking what we know now with what we knew in 2016 confirms that the UK electorate may be more astute than the majority of our politicians. Let’s just Leave; it’s not a difficult concept. Dave Workman Poor Peter Wardle (February 7). The UK faces its greatest challenge since the 1940s and he chooses to trivialise this momentous and deeply divisive issue by bemoaning the possible inconvenience to his travel plans! Strangely on the next page he is accorded the rare privilege of a second anti-brexit letter, this time flogging the referendum “dead horse”. Predictably, elsewhere in the letters pages, our local European Commission “spokesman” also weighs in with his taunting “Mystic Meg” prediction of a Remain win the second time around. Gentlemen, you need to be careful what you wish for. If Parliament were to be foolish enough to emasculate itself by abdicating its mandated responsibility to deliver Brexit by precipitating a further EU referendum, then the constitutional consequences would be radical and far reaching. Centuries of parliamentary primacy would be swept aside if the sovereign people conclude that our tribally obsessed elected representatives cannot be trusted to deliver on the big issues. With the precedent of referendabased democracy established, and regardless of the Brexit outcome, another Scottish referendum would quickly follow. Next in the people’s vote queue would be issues that Parliament has dismally failed to resolve such as English devolution, Local Government funding, NHS funding, social care provision and, most important, constitutional reform (including Second Chamber abolition or replacement and a written constitution). Meanwhile Donald Tusk with his shameful reference to Hell has demonstrated that the European Commission is a modern secular equivalent of the old Counter-reformation Papacy that ruthlessly attempted to supress heresy. Only blind faith can explain this curious devotion to an unelected bureaucracy and its enforcer, the European Court of Justice, to which English and Scottish law is now subordinate. In or out of the EU, it is only a matter of time before the UK, as the modern day Luther, becomes the inspiration for the creation of a new fully democratic European community of Sovereign Nation States. The “Political Union” fantasy will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Roger White I am not clever enough to understand why the EU, with its directly elected MEPS and council of elected ministers, can be described as undemocratic by Brexiters. But even I can see that Jacob Rees-moggs’ recent call for Parliament to be shut down by the Queen, so that MPS can’t vote against a ‘no deal’ exit, is grossly undemocratic. This begs the question of who is “taking back control” through Brexit. The Brexiters clearly don’t want it to be our elected MPS in the British Parliament. So who do they want to take control? Or is this the wrong question? All the evidence since the referendum is that they don’t want anyone, MPS or otherwise, to discuss how Brexit could best benefit the UK. On the contrary, all the Brexiters’ efforts have been directed at closing down debate. Now that’s undemocratic. Roger Chapman Parliament has been gridlocked for months over Brexit and the signs are that the latest meaningful vote, which has been delayed again, is unlikely to resolve anything. In the meantime, Theresa May’s government moves us closer towards an un-planned “no deal” Brexit which her own civil servants have estimated will lead to a loss of 2.8 million jobs in the UK. The same sources estimate 1.75 million jobs lost under Theresa

May’s preferred option of a comprehensive free trade agreement (outside the single market and the customs union) and 0.75 million jobs lost with a “Norway style soft Brexit” (remaining in the single market but with no influence). It is important to note that Government figures for remaining in the EU are that there would be NO impact on jobs and that the UK economy was the fastest growing in Europe at the time of the EU referendum. It is now at the bottom of the pile with negative growth reported in December 2018. Politicians told us that “Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy, the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation” (John Redwood); “The free trade Agreement that we will do with the EU should be one of the easiest in human history” (Liam Fox) and that “There is no plan for no deal, because we’re going to get a great deal” (Boris Johnson). These bold assurances ring very hollow now, when after two years of negotiations, all we have agreed with the EU is a departure deal (that has been rejected by our own parliament) and a loose agreement to start negotiating future trade arrrangements, which will take many years. As the harsh reality of Brexit is so far away from the promises made in the referendum campaign, Theresa May should recognise that she does not have a mandate for either her deal or no deal, but she carries on regardless. She appears to think that she must pursue a course of action that she knows will be damaging to the UK because it is what 52 per cent of voters voted for in 2016, when none of these figures was available. An economic hit of this magnitude will severely restrict the opportunities of young people in particular, who will also lose their right to live, study and work across 27 other countries and the many benefits that go with that, such as access to free healthcare. We should not allow their future to be blighted by accident and young people will not forgive us for denying them such opportunities. As Parliament is failing us, the British public must be allowed to exercise our democratic right and have an informed say on the result of the Brexit negotiations, choosing whether to accept the outcome or to recognise that our current deal is far better than any of the alternatives and to remain in the EU. Alison Born