Let’s vote again

So now Boris Johnson tells us that he must oppose Theresa May’s plan. How will he do that? The honest way to oppose it would be to join with those of us who want a second referendum.

After all, the Brexiteers’ claims in the first referendum have largely been shown to be false. The Brexiteers said it would be easy to get a deal with Europe. Now we hear the EU trashing even the Chequers plan.thebrexiteersspenttwo years in government making attempts to dominate the discussions, such as through having “the row of the summer” (as David Davies put it) and failed. Now they want a scapegoat for failure – and Theresa May will do fine. But even if he wins, will he get a No Deal through Parliament? Will Parliament settle for surrendering our sovereignty to World Trade Organisation rules?

The referendum told us we would have freedom and prosperity in WTO rules. Now we see Donald Trump threatening to wreck the WTO system because it has not been fair to America. How much fairer is it, then, than the EU? How effective will it be by the time we join it? Is it unlikely that Parliament will settle for that?

Given that problem, the Brexiteers may need an election to help them take forward

their opposition to Chequers. Their best hope of winning that is simply to rely on the weakness of the Labour leadership, unimpressive to all except the cultic Left. The Brexiteers will prefer an election to a second referendum – because they know they will probably lose a second vote.

They should (if they have honest intentions) accept the challenge and declare a new referendum to be a reasonable way of letting the public make a real choice. The last one, after all, was simply a “blue on blue” propaganda contest. Only a fair contest will settle the lasting animosities which a short period of Tory government has (yet again) unleashed.

ANDREW VASS Corbiehill Place, Edinburgh

has said: “It is very simple really, we cannot spend more than what we raise.’’

There is a very profound lesson in this for the SNP. A lesson that should be borne in mind by their newest recruits and army of zealous marchers

and enthusiasts. Do we really want an independent Scotland, whose deficit has been reckoned at £13 billion by their own experts, to suffer in the manner of Venezuela? This is not scaremongering. It is a very real prospect that

could endanger our children and grandchildren.

Assertions from SNP leaders about what others will do will not pay crippling NHS, pensions, welfare and other bills in an independent Scotland. It is not a cliché. We are stronger, in every sense, when we face things together.

ALEXANDER MCKAY New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh

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