Let’s look at the upsides of the election

The Houses of Parliament in London - Credit: PA

While there was plenty of doom and gloom in this week’s mailbag, some said it wasn’t all bad for Remainers on election night.

Silver linings time:

? The DUP are irrelevant again.

? The ERG have been neutered (unfortunately not literally) by the size of the Tory majority.

? Rees-Mogg is back in his box.

? Farage has been humiliated.

? So have UKIP

? Labour’s next leader has to be better.

? Likewise the Lib Dems.

? The pro-European movement is not going away.

? Millions of young people are engaged with politics like never before and right now are hurting and angry. The hurt of 1992 led to the victory of 1997. Never give up.

Keith Parker

Slough

MORE: More voted against pro-Brexit parties than supported them in the general election

Surely, to paraphrase one of Boris Johnson’s heroes, Winston Churchill, leaving the EU at the end of January would “not be the end, not even the beginning of the end, but may just be the end of the beginning” of years of trade and social talks with the EU and other countries around the world we already have trade deals with as members of the EU.

Bob Chequer

I have just heard Tory peer Peter Lilley say that after Brexit: (1) “Eurosceptics will no longer be able to blame all our problems on Europe” and (2) “Euro-enthusiasts will no longer be able to look to Europe to solve all our problems.”

What Lilley does not realise is that he has given the perfect justification for remaining in the EU.

In (1), he effectively admitted that, in blaming all our problems on Europe, Brexit promoters had misled the public and therefore the referendum result should be declared invalid. In (2), that by voting Leave we had rendered ourselves incapable of solving some of those problems caused or unaddressed by our government, whereas the EU, through the ECJ or otherwise, could have either addressed them or forced that government to do so.

Leaving the EU will make the British public weaker, since Westminster will effectively become unaccountable over such problems, except after a long wait for the next election.

Paul Smith

– Send your letters for publication in this week’s edition of The New European to letters@theneweuropean.co.uk