Rafael Behr concludes that “the UK will give up wealth in exchange for sovereignty” (This is the last exit to Brexit. But in truth, there was only ever one road, 8 December). We did not have to look very far in that same edition of the Guardian (US nuclear warhead standoff ‘has significant implications for UK’, 8 December) to see what sovereignty actually amounts to. It was a timely reminder that the UK has always had to rely on others – in this case, the US – even for what successive British governments have described as the “ultimate assurance of our national security”, a reference to the so-called independent nuclear deterrent.
As the late Anthony King observed in his book Who Governs Britain?, if sovereignty means acting independently without outside interference, the UK “is no longer remotely a sovereign state”. He added: “Nor are the vast majority of other states in the world.”
Richard Norton-Taylor
London
• Rafael Behr makes an eloquent and powerful case for the view that, deal or no deal, Brexit has always entailed an exchange of wealth for sovereignty. I agree that in an interdependent, economically integrated world, the pursuit of national sovereignty is a delusion. Nevertheless, we should not dismiss the idea, implicit in the Brexit project – and occasionally made explicit – that not everything can be reduced to the calculus of the market, for some ethical, social and cultural values are beyond price. For Brexiters, the restoration of national sovereignty or independence is such a value. For others, it might be the preservation of life on Earth. But in both cases, the issues at stake are misrepresented if they are framed in terms of a trade-off between competing goods.
David Purdy
Stirling
• Rafael Behr’s panoramic view of the Brexit saga is very nearly spot on. His thesis – the UK will give up wealth in exchange for sovereignty – needs one important caveat: the UK’s privileged class will give up a large slice of our (very real) wealth in exchange for their (totally illusory, for most of us) sovereignty.
Chris Mitton
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
• The printed headline to your editorial (10 December) states “Boris Johnson would be to blame for a no-deal rupture with Europe”. As every dispute mediator knows, the solution is to find a formula that will resolve the immediate issues, save face for both sides and be unlikely to be triggered in the future.
The obvious solution to the sovereignty issue is to have a mutual termination notice provision: if the EU wants to introduce changes that Britain cannot agree, it must give six months’ notice of that intention; equally, in that case, Britain can give six months’ notice of its intention to terminate the trading arrangements. In theory, this could result in another round of tortuous negotiations, but in practice that is unlikely to happen and, in the current circumstances, is a risk well worth taking. Once the dust has settled, the parties would learn to live together and sort out their differences in a constructive way. The alternative is catastrophe for both sides.
Andrew Hillier QC
London
• It is sadly appropriate that Boris Johnson’s pre-referendum gimmick was a bus. He has finally succeeded in throwing the UK under one (Boris Johnson: no-deal Brexit now a ‘strong possibility’, 10 December).
Mike Galvin
Winchcombe, Gloucestershire
