Polly Toynbee welcomes parliamentary delay and deadlock because “three long years since the referendum … make that close result look more obsolete with each passing week” (Even if May’s rotten deal gets through, this will fester on, 12 March). Though naturally, if remain had won the referendum, Polly would be telling us that the people had spoken and their will should be obeyed for a generation. Presumably if Labour were to win the next general election but the Tories and anti-Corbyn Labour MPs were to manoeuvre for years to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of Downing Street, they would eventually build a case that the election result was obsolete and need never be implemented due to the deadlock which they themselves had created. The same applies to the approximately 500 remain MPs in a Commons of 650, most of them Tory and Labour elected in 2017 on manifesto commitments to implement the result of the referendum but some now openly saying that they seek to block Brexit. As time goes by, the issue becomes ever clearer: are we a democracy or does the establishment have the right to block anything that threatens its orthodoxy?
Christopher Clayton
Waverton, Cheshire
• The impasse over Brexit arises from the fact that parliament lent sovereignty to the people and never worked out how to take it back. That is why it is now haunted by one event, the referendum result, and paralysed by fear of two consequences: ignoring that result, and allowing a no-deal Brexit to happen. Theresa May’s deal has no genuine support, so we need a way out of the impasse. Here is one that will do no damage to anyone (maybe it’s a unicorn, but we rationalist remainers are surely entitled to those now): 1) revoke article 50 before 29 March and explain to the nation why; 2) take part in the European elections properly and enthusiastically, to give UK citizens and non-UK EU citizens a chance to pass judgment on this; 3) after the economy has picked up, as it will, hold a general election in the autumn to give UK citizens a second chance to pass judgment. 4) get on with our lives.
Charles Turner
University of Warwick
• Polly Toynbee rightly says that Jeremy Hunt gave one game away by saying that a second referendum would stop Brexit, but he also gave another away when he said “the consequences for failure to deliver Brexit would be devastating” for his party – thus making it clear that he was putting party before the national interest.
Dennis Twist
Clun, Shropshire
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