The dangers of taking the EU’s conciliatory gestures at face value

SIR – Janet Daley (Comment, October 22) says that the EU finally seems to have realised that this is not a play fight anymore.

But all it has done is move to the planned second stage: start engaging with us enough so that we do not, as Philip Hammond would have it, waste taxpayers’ money on preparing for a no-deal scenario, and keep us engaged until it is too late to start preparing for no deal.

That will make us, in early 2019, more amenable to a very expensive and unforgiving Brexit, or to remaining in the EU on even less favourable terms than we now have. Andrew J Rixon Hertford

SIR – I have read many complaints that trading with the EU without a freetrade agreement would be damaging to our service sector because we would not have access to the “single market for services”.

I do not recognise such a market. Without French qualifications, I could not practise law there, nor drive a taxi or, until a recent (and still flouted) decision by the European Court of Justice, teach skiing in the French Alps. If I could avail myself of a Polish accountant or a Czech insurancebroker, I would consider it, but there is no single market for services thanks to “non-tariff barriers”.

The success of our banking, investment and insurance industries is not due to the EU. It owes itself to our Common Law and, historically, our low regulation. The EU’s MiFiD (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive ) and MiFiD 2, while the foundations for a single market in financial instruments, are classic examples of continental-style codal laws, telling the people what they may do and how they may do it, rather than what they must not do. That is what stifles a service sector and entrepreneurship in general, not the absence of a single market, be it imagined or real. Ian Eyres Oswestry, Shropshire SIR – Theresa May has made an offer of £20 billion to kick-start Brexit negotiations.

EU counterparts have turned up their noses at this. There are now less than 18 months until agreement is meant to be reached.

I suggest that we deduct a pro-rata amount of money from our offer each month until EU negotiators agree to serious discussions. Ted Shorter Tonbridge, Kent

SIR – The question of how much Britain owes the EU under our existing obligations is a matter of law, best determined by lawyers and accountants, not politicians.

How far is there agreement between these professionals? We are not told. Instead we are treated periodically to inane utterances by political negotiators about “insufficient progress”, a phrase so vague as to have no clear meaning. Ian Romer Aldeburgh, Suffolk