Matthew d’Ancona asks: “All you Brexiteers. That business about ‘taking back control’. How’s that working out for you so far?” (Journal, 8 April). He gets a whole page to flesh out his question. On behalf of Brexiteers, of which I am one, I can easily supply the answer. No, it’s not working out for us at all. Absolutely not. Parliament has seen to that.
Both houses, but especially the Commons where power lies, have employed every conceivable device available to it to frustrate and sabotage the vote of the UK people in the 2016 referendum which the Commons itself instituted, and delay the implementation of article 50, which was supported in the manifestos of both main parties in the 2017 general election, namely by at least 450 MPs out of 650. That is what they brazenly promised on millions of doorsteps.
A compromise deal is staring both Tories and Labour in the face as Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn negotiate behind closed doors – namely for Mrs May to accept the customs union and for Labour to agree no second referendum.
It will not happen. Labour will not agree because at least 75% of its MPs and 80% of its middle-class membership are remainers, and the whole point and purpose of a second referendum is to win a majority to reverse the people’s vote of 2016.
That is the sole reason they want another referendum. Labour has deserted the working class. And I say that as an 82-year-old who has voted Labour all my life and belongs to a Salford-Manchester family that has been totally Labour, even belonging to the Clarion Club at the turn of the 19th century. We are being betrayed.
All voters in the 2016 referendum believed their votes mattered; parliament is putting that right. How stupid we were. People don’t matter; MPs matter.
Michael Knowles
Congleton, Cheshire
• The comments by Geoffrey Cox mentioned by Matthew d’Ancona – “I just feel we have underestimated [Brexit’s] complexity” – reflect what has been increasingly obvious as the sorry saga of Brexit unfolds: the sheer impossibility of the project.
The constantly receding Brexit day adds a further Alice in Wonderland quality as the whole enterprise comes to look more and more like an attempt to unravel a woollen sweater to restore the original fleece: not just impossible but ludicrous and foolish in the extreme and likely only to end up as a tangled mess of knots.
No wonder it’s driving everyone mad! It’s about time politicians of all persuasions acknowledged this essential truth. Sorry, people, you were offered an impossible dream.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
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