No self-respecting state wanting to leave the EU would contemplate shackling itself to an EU customs union (Editorial, 11 April). We would have little or no say with regards to any future deals negotiated by the EU and no ability to negotiate our own deals. Worse still is the lack of reciprocity arising from no longer being a formal party to EU trade deals. Take the EU-Canada trade deal. Britain will be forced to give access to Canadian goods, but Canada will neither be obliged to give reciprocal access to British goods nor have any incentive to do so. Then there is the matter of the complex interaction of a customs union with the single market. The less said about the virtues of a soft Brexit incorporating a customs union the better.
Yugo Kovach
Winterborne Houghton, Dorset
• “Two years of recession would follow no-deal – IMF” (Report, 10 April). Can this be the same IMF that warned in 2016 that a leave vote would lead to immediate recession, a stockmarket crash and a collapse in house prices?
Brian Simpson
London
• Natalie Kehr’s suggestion that there should be three candidates in each constituency with differing Brexit opinions (Letters, 12 April) shows a sad lack of knowledge of how European elections actually work. Here in Scotland, we inhabit one giant constituency with six members. All her shades of grey could get in, with three to spare. There is unlikely to be time to change the rules to turn the election into an opinion poll if that is what she intended, and the Europeans might have something to say about that.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
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