Sovereignty outweighs doom-and-gloom claims on Brexit

From: Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley.

I THANK this paper for publishing the excellent speech by Bernard Hogan-Howe “Sovereignty matters most in Europe debate” (The Yorkshire

Post, February 5). I have been Eurosceptic throughout this new millennium, originally based solely on sovereignty, later immigration, due to the massive flow of immigrants when the Blair Labour government threw open the UK doors, attempting to boost the left-wing vote.

In the last decade, we have seen the ever-expanding and stifling bureaucracy of the unelected liberal-dominated central committee in Brussels, commonly known as the EU Commission. Leavers demand the UK must not be part of a United States of Europe; both Bernard Hogan-Howe and I wholly agree with this policy.

Remainers often appear in the letters pages with their tired boring reasons of money, overplayed reductions of GDP, loss of jobs, doom and gloom, but they never refer to the alreadylost sovereignty that will increase if we remain linked to the EU as its dictatorship expands.

From: Hugh Rogers, Ashby.

YOUR correspondent John Van de Gucht (The Yorkshire Post, February 1) is quite correct when he says that Churchill was a good war leader, but not as effective in peacetime. The same, of course is true of the Duke of Wellington who was a brilliant military strategist, but – in my view anyway – a hopeless Prime Minister.

He is right, too that Churchill espoused further co-operation with Europe, being a prime mover in the establishment of the Council of Europe. But times were different then. Europe lay in post-war tatters and Churchill saw an opportunity for Britain to take charge. But I suspect that like that honest Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, who saw the emergence of a European superstate as “an end to a thousand years of (British) history”, I doubt that Churchill would have been happy to see his country bending the knee to foreigners.

We are not “oblivious” to the benefits of a single market. It was, after all what we voted for back in the 1970s – but we were not told then that attempts would be made to integrate us into a United States of Europe.

From: Graham Branston, Rawdon.

IS the EU’s chief negotiator for Brexit Michel Barnier or Michel Barrier? It seems the latter is more appropriate! Neither side would benefit from a tit-for-tat trade war.