Starmer should tread carefully

■ THERE can be no denying Brexit presents Labour with a dilemma. Like it or not, we are out of the EU and we’re not going back. The arguments have moved on and we, as a country, simply have to make the best of it.

I believe eventually we will rejoin the customs union in some way but it could take years. In the meantime, the Tories’ bad Brexit is costing the country dearly and it’s ordinary people paying the price.

We need a clean slate and only then can we start to rebuild our relationship with our EU trading partners. This, I believe, a Labour government could and should deliver. But Keir needs to realise he can’t please everyone – that’s an impossible task.

Jon Clarke, Birmingham

■ The Labour Party may be making a historic mistake in ruling out rejoining the EU.

Most of the opinion polls carried out between November and the end of May showed more respondents stating that they would vote for rejoining the EU in a future referendum than stating they would vote against. Even the current Government now seems to appreciate that Brexit is harming the economy.

I have consistently voted Labour in general elections for more than 40 years but I would now consider changing my vote to a pro-EU party.

Paul Johnson

Ilford, East London

■ How Keir Starmer would square no re-entry into the single market with the Northern Ireland conundrum, where only a customs union holds the solution to the current deadlock, is a mystery.

How he would square this with reducing border paperwork and checks is equally puzzling.

He wants to make Brexit work but instead harnesses himself and his party to the current doctrine of all-out, no compromise, no surrender. I want an opposition that acts like an opposition, and I can see little to distinguish this from our present government.

Trevor Rigg, Edinburgh

■ It strikes me that Keir Starmer has little choice but to say a Labour government would not take Britain back into the European Union.

The sad fact is that xenophobia still burns bright in some places, including in northern heartlands that Labour needs to regain at the next election. We all saw what happened when Jeremy Corbyn promised a second EU referendum before the last election in

December 2019.

Colin Gatrell Ventnor Isle of Wight

■ I think Keir Starmer is trying to avoid the next election being all about Brexit, which I can understand. But at least if we get the current lot out there could be better relations with the EU and then surely anything is possible.

It looks like holding one’s nose and voting for the least awful alternative is once again (as always) going to be the only way forward. Tim Hutton, Leeds

■ Labour’s Brexit plan is all well and good but how are they going to achieve it?

Keir Starmer has a credibility problem. He has pledged many things he hasn’t fulfilled. Just saying he is going to do something isn’t enough any more after the present government. We need the details. Gillian Melrose, Torquay, Devon

■ I think Keir Starmer has shot himself in the foot by saying there’ll be no return to the EU.

Most people I have spoken to regret us leaving our biggest trading partners after realising that Brexit was built on lies.

Gerry Scales

Bromley, South East London