General election should be in spring

WHERE is the sovereignty Catherine Pickles wrote about as a benefit of Brexit in her letter, ‘Lies, lies and more lies? (Letters, February 3).

All an illegal immigrant wishing to come to Britain has to do is to get to Ireland and cross the undefended Anglo-Irish border into Northern Ireland, job done. No sovereignty there.

When Rishi Sunak went to Stormont to greet the Sinn Féin first minister, it seems he had to be accompanied by the prime minister of a foreign country, the Irish Republic. That doesn’t suggest any degree of sovereignty over its territory by the British state.

When it comes to lies, Boris Johnson did not lie when he promised that leaving the EU would allow increased immigration from the rest of the world.

Currently the population is forecast to rise by six million over the next 10 years or so. That is an increase of about 10% every 10 years, mostly the result of immigration which has always been high under the Conservatives, going back to when Enoch Powell was in charge of bringing in labour from across the Commonwealth. The Rwanda scheme is a gimmick. What is there to keep deportees in Rwanda and stop them from heading back here?

It was something of a surprise to find that your correspondent Edward Kynaston agrees with Keir Starmer that the unelected House of Lords, which is packed with

Tory appointees, including the worst prime minister of modern times, now foreign secretary, David Cameron (as a lord, he does not have to go before the elected House of Commons to account for his actions), should be abolished.

In a federal Britain, including Wessex (with a population 10 times that of Northern Ireland), the House of Lords would be replaced by the federal parliament.

As the papers reported, 66% of voters want the government to go. That should be enough to trigger a general election which should be this spring, and not dragged out for another 10 months. I’d make that the law for the Wessex parliament if the ruling party ever became that unpopular.