The real deal?

sir – I do hope that the Cheshire agreement struck between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar does not represent a betrayal of Brexit.

EU officials now seem to be “optimistic” about a deal. But if Britain ends up in vassalage, the Tories will be annihilated at the next election.

I await the reaction of Nigel Farage to whatever deal our negotiators agree with the EU. The latest developments suggest betrayal and compromise – and anyone who voted for a clean split from the EU should be worried.

Dr Alistair A Donald

Watlington, Oxfordshire

sir – A poll has suggested that, in the event of an early general election, the Conservatives will win a very substantial majority if Britain has left the EU on October 31 with a mutually agreed deal (the outcome for which Boris Johnson is striving) or without one – not the preferred option, but preferable to the impossibly bad terms hitherto insisted on by the EU.

Leaving after this date, whether with or without a deal, will apparently result in a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives 14 short of a majority.

How unsurprising that parliamentary machinations, and in particular the Benn Act, have aimed to frustrate the first two outcomes – the second explicitly, and the first through convincing EU negotiators that they need make no accommodations. Seldom has the national interest been so transparently subordinated to party politics. Dugald Barr

London W8