My late mother trained as a nurse in Glasgow in the 1940s and witnessed the birth of the NHS. Having grown up in a village in rural Scotland where nobody ever called the doctor because they wouldn’t have been able to pay the bill, she often told us of the revolution in healthcare which the NHS made possible, and about the gratitude of ordinary folk nursed free of charge in hospital through diphtheria, tuberculosis, scarlet fever and the like. I can hardly imagine her reaction on hearing that only 70 years later the United States wants the NHS to be “on the table” in a future trade deal (Trump snubs Corbyn and eyes up NHS in trade talks, 5 June). Have we already forgotten how things used to be?
Susan Tomes
Edinburgh
• As bizarre as the proposition might seem, I presume that if the US’s position is that something as fundamental to our way of life as the NHS is going to be on the UK’s side of the table in any post-Brexit trade negotiations between the UK and the US, then the UK could argue that gun control should be on the US’s side.
After all, and to use Donald Trump’s own words, “when you’re dealing on trade, everything is on the table”. I am sure that there are many in the UK who would much prefer to have the US as a major trading partner if it took steps to address the carnage caused by its virtually unregulated gun market.
Harvey Sanders
London
• So can we expect the Brexit bus slogan to be changed to “Let’s send our £350m a week to the US instead”?
Daryll Twigger
Almondbury, West Yorkshire
• Far better for Britain to remain in the EU than to become the 51st state of America. Protecting our NHS must now stop Brexit.
Helen Evans
Ruthin, Denbighshire
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