Rejoining EU is best way to counter Russia

From: Jas Olak, Vice Chair, Leeds for Europe, Roundhay, Leeds.

IN A speech warning of “misery across Europe and terrible consequences across the globe” if Russia wins in Ukraine, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says we need to counter international aggression in three ways – economic security, deeper global alliances and military strength.

Rejoining the European Union will help deliver the first two. With EU members more ready to assert themselves militarily in the wake of the invasion, probably the third one, too.

Brexit – with suspected connivance from Russia – wrecked our reputation abroad. Renouncing it will enhance our global standing and probably mean greater influence for Britain in the “reboot, recast and remodel” of the world order Ms Truss says is needed among democratic, peaceful nations in the wake of Russian aggression.

From: Stuart Ebden, Dalegarth, Buckden.

AS far as I can make out, the chief (possibly the only) ‘opportunity’ created by Boris’s bodged Brexit, has been for ‘Vlad’ Putin to assume the imminent collapse of the EU and make a start on reassembling the Soviet bloc via his abominations in Ukraine.

That being so, it seems to me incumbent upon us to make approaches to our former EU partners with a view to re-entry and so help to protect the West from further incursions by this despicable man.

From: Michael J Robinson, Park Lane, Berry Brow, Huddersfield.

YOUR correspondent Paul Morley recently picked up on Canon Storey’s still banging on about his belief that the Brexit vote was carried by 31 per cent of the voting public.

There are local elections coming up, and I wondered if it would help to consider an illustration. Suppose there were ten electors, and three voted one way, two voted the other way, and five decided not to vote. As Mr Morley says, those five cannot be assumed to have favoured one way or the other. What they are doing by not bothering to make clear their preferences by casting their ballots, is saying that they are content to go along with whatever outcome results from the count of the ballots of those who do vote. They are tacitly agreeing with the majority of those who do vote. Quite the reverse of what the venerable cleric claims to be the case.