For Hammond to drag Brexit out with no progress will infuriate voters

SIR – Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, say that free movement will, in effect, continue after we leave the EU. It also seems that we can’t make trade deals until the EU deems we have had a long enough transition.

While I can see we might need a short implementation period, is the Government saying that we will still be paying £10 billion net a year while this happens and pay a divorce bill?

Surely the EU will drag their feet, as it isn’t in its financial interest to do a deal quickly while it can block us making trade arrangements with other countries.

The Government mustn’t be seen as a soft touch. If it drags Brexit out with no change seen by the electorate, it will pay a heavy price at the next election. Graham Mitchell

Haslemere, Surrey

SIR – Mr Hammond says that “nobody, but nobody, wants a cliff-edge Brexit”, and so the free movement of EU citizens should carry on until 2022.

In his position, with his immense wealth, he may not speak to workingclass people. The British people voted to leave the EU to stop the insanity of continual mass immigration from the EU, but, as always, Mr Hammond and the Government ignore what ordinary people voted for.

For him it is all about money. For those of us who look beyond the money, retaining free movement will increase our population by more than 2.5 million people by 2022, an insane increase. Lawrence Pett

Tamworth, Staffordshire

SIR – The Chancellor, on Today yesterday, suggested that immigration to Britain will stay the same until arrangements that meet the needs of business and the EU have been reached through negotiations. But business is generally against barriers to free immigration, as is the EU.

When we voted Leave, we did so having been warned by the

Government that the sky would fall in and hell freeze over if we did. None of this has transpired. Whatever the disadvantages of leaving the EU, we can live with them.

The Chancellor and his boss are technocrats, cautiously steering Brexit to unknown waters where they need permission to sail. They both need replacing with visionaries who know where they want to get to. Dr David Cottam

Montauriol, Lot et Garonne, France

SIR – Ireland, with EU backing, is proposing that the border between Ireland and the UK should be straight down the Irish Sea, leaving Northern Ireland cut off from the rest of the United Kingdom, somewhat like the position of West Berlin with the rest of West Germany back in the Sixties.

This shows the undemocratic similarity between the EU and the old Soviet Union, which is exactly why so many of us voted to leave the EU. Richard W Turner

Nazeing, Essex