EU ‘democracy’

SIR – One of the most irritating things about opponents of Brexit is their quite unjustified assumption of the moral high ground.

Those of us who voted to leave the EU are used to being accused of stupidity and racism; but I wish somebody would ask the likes of Ross Charlton and RI Robinson (Letters, April 8) – to say nothing of Tony Blair, Andrew Adonis, Anna Soubry and the rest – why they are so besotted by an organisation which is corrupt from top to bottom; which, by acting as a giant protection racket, forces some of the poorest nations even further into poverty; and which has much the same attitude to democracy as the so-called Islamic State.

Admittedly EU officials don’t go around slitting the throats of people who disagree with them, but the idea that the people of Europe should have any real say over how they are governed is anathema to them. What on earth is there to admire? Michael Hickford

Wrentham, Suffolk

SIR – Mr Charlton is unhappy with the result of the referendum and is not prepared to “roll over”. That, he thinks, would be “simply bowing to public opinion”.

Naively, I had thought that this was the nature of democracy – however uncomfortable for those outvoted. D Jean Bantock

Rearsby, Leicestershire

SIR – Mr Charlton is right that leaving the EU is far from a simple process.

He argues that we should remain in the EU because our laws, industry, commerce and finance are integrated with it. But he does not question how we arrived in this situation. Successive governments have pretended that the EU is a simple trading arrangement between member states, while handing more powers to Brussels.

If the true nature of the European project had been explained to us from the outset, we would have extricated ourselves far sooner. Robert Jewell

Nottingham