Letters: Ditching May is the best chance of ditching Brexit

The reluctance of the Tory plotters to knife her while Brexit remains in the balance is understandable. Less so is why the EU should continue to try to prop her up, as we saw when Jean-Claude Juncker praised her as a ‘tough negotiator’ even as it became clear that her incompetent administration had failed to bring the DUP onside.

Surely the best course of action for both the EU and Remainers is that May goes and is replaced by someone who truly owns this disaster, like Johnson, Gove, Davis, Fox or even Rees-Mogg?

This might make negotiations temporarily uncomfortable and would increase the risk of no deal, but it would also guarantee the next election being fought on a ‘hard Brexit or Remain’ footing, and most probably long before May 2022.

Given what the country now knows, I am confident that Britain would take the latter option.

Daniel Hunt, Wolverhampton

As I don’t usually vote Labour, agreeing even partly with Alastair Campbell’s column in TNE Issue 73 is probably good for my soul.

His suggested slogan for the Remain camp – ‘tough on Brexit, tough on the causes of Brexit’ – is sound. However it not only looks backward but also conjures up Blair, which is counter-productive in many quarters. I suggest instead ‘Exit Brexit: Acknowledge the Anger, Cure the Causes’. But he’s right in that, IN or OUT, these causes have to be addressed and, until they are, we shall remain an unpleasantly unfair and divided land.

Peter Watts, Berwick-upon-Tweed

I fly to Northern Ireland on business virtually every week and it is not uncommon for me to share a flight with Brexit hardliner Owen Paterson. A week or two ago I happened to stand next to him at security in Belfast and, having seen him get roasted a couple of times on TV about the border issue, I was compelled to ask him whether he was there to help sort out the border mess he and his cronies had created.

I was so staggered by the reply I thought I would share this so your readers can see the quality of those who are supposedly driving the bus.

‘This should all be easy,’ he said.

‘It is being made far more difficult than necessary – electronics can sort all this.’ And here’s the good bit: ‘They had a much more problematic border between India and Pakistan and they have sorted that out easily enough.’

The last time I looked, aside from the military peacock dance undertaken on the border for tourists that seems well-managed, is not the rest of the India/Pakistan border one of the largest smuggling routes in the world and particularly problematic for harbouring Islamic terrorism?

Richard Goodwin, Richmond

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In her speeches Arlene Foster says the people of Northern Ireland don’t want to be in the customs union or single market. Her cohorts in the DUP say the same.

Yet the people on the ground say different and at the referendum, Northern Ireland voted 56% to 44% to Remain.

Stephen

I’ve been buying the TNE now since inception and most interesting it is. However, despite the many pages of critiques, opinions and analysis, it is missing a major element of what I want to see. We are desperately waiting for our hero to appear.

Somebody with enough weight, influence and presence to confront the madness and stand up and be counted and say ‘ENOUGH’.

Isn’t there anybody there with the guts to stand up in Parliament and say it? There used to be Parliamentarians who put their country before personal aggrandisement. Where are they when we need them?

So I say to you: Find our hero, and soon.

L J Ball, Devon

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