In what is essentially an apology for the part played by Jeremy Corbyn in the post-referendum fiasco (Hard remainers wouldn’t accept a soft Brexit. Now we’re all paying the price, 7 December), Owen Jones takes remainers to task for not reaching out to leavers and instead making them feel like “nothing but easily duped simpletons”. Perhaps he, like me, tried reaching out – and got nowhere.
The dirty tricks deployed by Vote Leave tapped into something in working-class communities that the late Richard Hoggart identified 65 years ago in The Uses of Literacy as the defining sentiment of “them and us” – “them” being those outside your own community who hold sway over you, tell you what to do, control your life from a distance.
In the face of so much high-volume lying, it is not surprising that we failed to persuade leavers that they had got the wrong “them”; that “them” was not officials in Brussels, but rather a home-grown alliance of rightwing Tories, destructive fanatics and ruthless profiteers. I reject the idea that it is patronising to tell people in the communities in which Jones and I both grew up that they have been screwed.
Emeritus Professor Glyn Turton
Baildon, West Yorkshire
• Not only “the rest of us in the pro-EU camp” but millions of people in the UK and elsewhere are already paying, and will for decades pay, for this protracted UK/EU disaster. Leaving aside all other considerations, it was folly to allow such a matter to be decided by a simple majority of voters in one ballot. It was the 2016 referendum that should have been an indicative vote, not the parliamentary votes taken when many others already felt betrayed. This allowed leavers to blame remainers and the EU for delays to negotiations.
Whoever might be available to blame, I retain the hope that more of those who live through whatever happens next will recognise a UK constitution tested to destruction.
Jan Dubé
Peebles, Scottish Borders
• As a committed and unapologetic remainer, I refuse to be lectured to by Owen Jones on why I should share the blame for the government’s shambles over getting a deal with the EU. The 2016 referendum was deeply flawed in its conception, design and execution. Just because Labour misguidedly went along with all this nonsense doesn’t mean that remainers should have held their noses when the result was announced and worked for the best deal possible.
Two particular reasons stand out. First, the referendum result was only narrowly in favour of Brexit, reflecting a country split down the middle. In such circumstances, remainers had every right to stand firm in the hope of reversing a bad outcome. Second, if “taking back control” was the clarion call for leavers, how on earth is a deal (including Theresa May’s ill-fated effort) where we become mere rule-takers rather than rule-makers an acceptable compromise? It suits nobody. Perhaps the real culprit here is our broken, adversarial politics.
Emeritus Professor David Hunter
Richmond, North Yorkshire
• Blaming remainers for the dire Brexit situation we are now in is like blaming the Resistance for causing the Vichy government’s hardline policies. Here in Scotland, remain is still the default position – we still have the EU flag flying outside Holyrood. Two of the four nations voted to remain in the EU; presumably Owen Jones thinks we should just have knuckled down and accepted the will of England and Wales? As to Jones’s example of Norway as a soft Brexit option that we remainers scuppered, Norway’s relationship with the EU involves the free movement of people. That was never going to be an option for Brexiters, hard or soft. Brexit belongs solely to the Brexiters.
John Warburton
Edinburgh
• Owen Jones concludes correctly that this Brexit is a tragedy that was avoidable. When Boris Johnson made it impossible for the DUP to support his withdrawal agreement and withdrew the whip from his remain-supporting MPs, he threw away his slender majority and was at the mercy of parliament. There was then a moment when a government of national unity was possible, led by Ken Clarke, who would have negotiated a soft Brexit (with the UK remaining in the single market and customs union). But Labour would not countenance such a course unless Jeremy Corbyn was the interim prime minister – and the rest is history.
Tony Jolley
Wigan, Greater Manchester
