A Great solution

only part of the UK with a land border with another EU state.

The Leave campaign and those voting for Brexit were to an extent doing so largely on the basis that immigration from the EU would face greater controls. It is therefore hard to see that the free movement of EU nationals can possibly continue, as this would see EU nationals coming into the Republic then on to Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. It is also unlikely the EU would allow an open door policy with a non-eu state.

Reference by Mrs May to a Commontravelareabetween the UK and Republic of Ireland, dating from 1923, is no longer relevant. Both of these countries joined what was the EEC at the same, ensuring that this area could continue. On Brexit this becomes void.

It is difficult to see how an open border could continue between a UK which is looking to limit immigration from the EU, and a Republic of Ireland which allows for the free movement of EU nationals.

ALEX ORR Leamington Terrace, Edinburgh Grant Frazer (Letters, 26 July) mentions the UK referring to itself as “Great Britain”. The original use of the term “Great” Britain was to distinguish this island from the smaller Brittany, currently part of the French state.

The peoples of these two “Britains” had been similar in ethnicity, culture and language. I have been in Brittany with Welsh and Cornish people who could understand and be understood using their own languages. There is a tune known in Wales as Captain Morgan’s March and in Brittany as Gwir Vretoned (“True Bretons”) and also known in Cornwall.

There is a historical account of a French army containing Bretons and an English one containing Cornishmen refusing to fight each other when each heard the other side playing “their” tune. Refusing to fight those who share cultural characteristics, or human ones for that matter, seems to me a “great” idea.

DAVID STEVENSON Blacket Place, Edinburgh