Gisela Stuart (“Let’s put an end to the sneering at the Vote Leave folk”, Comment) accuses people who question the status of the referendum as “London-centric, sneering and belittling”. Without sneering, may a provincial reply?
Stuart states that politicians have a duty to implement a “decision” taken by 51.9% of the voters, that there is “no going back” and that “there is no second referendum”. Yet she ignores the fact that the referendum had only advisory status and that in the UK, parliament is sovereign (the position of both Leavers and Remainers).
She also overlooks the fact that a leave decision implies significant loss of constitutional rights and duties to UK citizens and UK organisations, a vote that would have been reversed if 1.95% had voted the other way.
Leavers, she says, wished to take back control of borders, of taxation and of their laws, yet the UK has shared control of its borders within the terms of the Commonwealth for over a century, and despite the fact that the UK’s taxation system and laws are clearly different from those of other EU countries. According to her, political parties and democratic institutions “mediate between mob rule and bureaucratic tyranny”, yet our political parties were not relevant to the referendum campaign.
The referendum was apparently about “democratic accountability” that has been eroded, even though the people voting in the plebiscite have no accountability and the devolution of powers to regions, towns and communes within EU countries such as France, Spain and Germany is arguably significantly more “democratic” than the UK’s dysfunctional Westminster-centric system.
Stuart claims that the result was about “creating new institutions”: however desirable this may be, during the referendum campaign, there was strikingly little if any discussion of the creation of new institutions. She may be right that those voting to leave did so because they are unable to “get their child into the school of their choice”, because they “can’t get a GP appointment” and have no chance of “buying their first house”, but that is not the fault of the EU but of more than 30 years of UK government policy.
Martin Bygate
Haddenham, Bucks
I share the anger, shame and despair of tearful youth (“Poll reveals young remain voters reduced to tears by Brexit result”, News) but 70-year-old Englishmen don’t cry. Or so I thought. Prior to showing some friends an old lead mine near where I live, I was checking the details of a rare wildflower called lead wort, which only grows in such places. On reading that the Peak District lead mine spoil heaps are listed in an EU habitats directive as being of European importance, I welled up. We are turning our backs on an organisation that bothered itself over a tiny white flower of no commercial value, along with a host of other matters we heard nothing about during that angry, shameful and desperate campaign.
John Filby
Ashover
Derbyshire
These are important times I know, but would it be unfair to suggest that the use of “chaos”, “rancour”, “pitiful”, “wreckage” and more of this sort in the first column of your Brexit leader could be considered a tad over the top. I got the message
But the sun is still shining. All over the country, cricket and tennis are being played in parks where children’s laughter can be heard coming from the playgrounds. There are festivals and fetes, car boot sales, there is cycling, riding, walking and pints being drunk and food being tasted in pubs.
Emotive rhetoric should be kept for people who are really hurting – the poor, the weak, the sick, the ill-educated, refugees and people caught in war zones. So please turn down the volume on Brexit. We are where we are and now would be a good time to write clearly, fairly and responsibly so we can move forward positively into a slightly unknown future.
Steve Bird
Brandon, Warwickshire
