Dealing with America

SIR – A few months ago, standing beside David Cameron at a press conference in support of the Remain campaign, Barack Obama, the US president, said that if Britain voted to leave the EU we would go to “the back of the queue” for a trade deal. This was because the US preferred to have trade arrangements with blocs of countries rather than individual ones.

It is therefore ironic that, after three years of negotiations, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and the EU has collapsed because of disagreement between EU member countries.

Perhaps President Obama would like to reconsider Britain’s position in the queue. Sandy Pratt Dormansland, Surrey SIR – I am not convinced by Nigel Hopkinson (Letters, September 4), who, as a former civil servant, believes that Whitehall would never dream of failing to carry out the wishes of our elected ministers – such as Brexit.

I remember a conversation a few years ago in which I was arguing for Nigel Farage and his campaign to leave the EU. I was talking to a woman who had been a leading civil servant. She said it could never work because the administrative unravelling would render it virtually impossible.

I remember thinking that, of all the possible arguments to stay in the EU, hers was about the most spurious. Edward Thomas Eastbourne, East Sussex