It is a ludicrous assertion by Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats (We must fight for betrayed leavers as well as remainers, 18 January) that people who voted to leave the EU did not vote to leave the single market. Anyone with a grain of intelligence knew that no longer having open borders – one of the key elements of the leave vote – meant it would be impossible to remain in the single market. How does that square with Mr Farron’s unsupported claim that “polls show” 90% of voters want to remain in the market? People were well aware of the effect of a leave vote and politicians do themselves no good by trying to cloud the issue to engineer yet another referendum. Mr Farron might well be surprised to learn, in the unlikely event a further referendum were to be held, that the majority vote to leave might well increase, not decrease. What then? A third referendum perhaps.
Malcolm Pithers
Wakefield, Yorkshire
• Tim Farron may be right about what happened in pro-remain Richmond Park; but he fails to draw the same conclusion from the Sleaford and North Hykeham byelection a week later. The same tactics used there at least enabled the Lib Dems to leapfrog Labour, but failed to dent the large pro-Brexit vote achieved by the Tories and Ukip. It will be interesting to see what tactics are employed in the upcoming Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent Central byelections, which also appear to be in pro-Brexit areas.
There is a saying: “Wake up and smell the coffee”. I only hope that Lib Dem candidates in the May local elections don’t spend all their time arguing about a second referendum and concentrate instead on local issues. Their time would be better spent arguing for desperately needed reform of local government finance and structure. In or out of Europe, we need to grasp this nettle in England if democratic local government is to have a viable future.
Cllr John Marriott
North Hykeham, Lincolnshire
• Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and 18 others had their Labour Leave manifesto published on this page the day before the referendum with no reference to immigration, rather a concern for workers’ rights. Some voted leave on this prospectus. As Tim Farron said, a theft of democracy is taking place with Theresa May reassigning these votes to the anti-immigrant faction.
David Reed
Northampton
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