Dump the Prime Minister – there is no point in another six months of Brexit indecision
SIR – The thought of six more months of Theresa May handling the Brexit process is as grim as it comes. The Conservative Party must be prepared to do whatever it takes to get rid of her – and soon – to give this country some hope that it will have a competent, forward-thinking leader to replace an abject failure in handling a pivotal point of the United Kingdom’s history.
The party has a chance to recover if, as a start, Theresa May is removed before the local and EU elections. It’s up to its members from grass roots to Cabinet level to ensure this happens. Barry Gibbs
Wimborne, Dorset
SIR – Our masters have now decreed another six months of indecision. No one wants this. What is the point? The EU will not change the Withdrawal Agreement. It has been rejected by Parliament three times and ought not to return there.
What on earth did Mrs May say to the EU summit that made them think that she had a plan for getting the agreement through Parliament?
Both the EU and the UK say that they are ready for a no-deal exit. We should set a date and work towards it. Mrs May should stop wasting time on talks with Jeremy Corbyn or anyone else. Colin Garrett
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
SIR – David Cameron, in his Chatham House referendum announcement, said that “ultimately it will be the judgment of the British people in the referendum that I promised and that I will deliver. You will have to judge what is best for you and your family, for your children and grandchildren, for our country, for our future. It will be your decision whether to remain in the EU on the basis of the reforms we secure, or whether we leave. Your decision. Nobody else’s. Not politicians’. Not Parliament’s. Not lobby groups’. Not mine. Just you. You, the British people, will decide. And it will be the final decision.”
I wonder which of those words the bulk of our MPS are apparently incapable of understanding? John CJ Eaton
Bingley, West Yorkshire
SIR – Your columnist Philip Johnston (Comment, April 10) avers that the hidden power of the mandarinate is basically benign but is forced to intervene when incompetent politicians foul up. He then suggests this was forced on them “because her [Theresa May’s] entire negotiating strategy was flawed from the outset.”
Alas, that strategy was guided from the outset by the senior bureaucrats whose creature the witless premier chose to become, rebuffing all offers of far better negotiators than she. If it failed catastrophically, which it did, was that accidental or deliberate? The answer is the latter.
Also unseen but extremely effective was the bureaucratic demonisation of what, with shrewd preparation, could have been a friction-free switch from EU trading rules to WTO rules, the supposedly disastrous no deal which panicked media and Parliament.
Shades of 1938-1940. Today there is no Third Reich, no threat of war, but the bureaucratic lust to grovel before foreign interests is unimpaired. So we remain the servants of Brussels because Sir Humphrey has decided it should be so, and our PM and MPS haven’t the guts to contradict him. Frederick Forsyth
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Are we really the first country in history contemplating buying our way into servitude? Roger Noble
Burnham-on-crouch, Essex
SIR – Do I start to eat my emergency stockpile of Italian tinned tomatoes and pasta or keep it safe till Hallowe’en? Kathy Webb
Burnley, Lancashire
SIR – Mrs May must be in it for the Air Miles. John Porter
Poole, Dorset