May's Brexit plans are leaving voters feeling 'unrepresented'

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Prime Minister Theresa May leaving Downing Street in London (PA)

How I agree with the sentiments expressed in James Moore's article (If we want a proper movement against Brexit, Labour needs to split, 17 January) saying how unrepresented he feels at this time.

There must be millions of people for whom the current political parties do not represent them. Many such as myself, who voted to remain in the EU referendum, feel totally ignored by the current leadership. I despair when I see the opposition in the form of Jeremy Corbyn on television or in Parliament – there is no way he is going to dent the confidence, or change the direction of travel, of this current Government.

I do so wish that a coalition of political parties and individuals within parties would join together to bring a loud political voice spelling out the disaster a hard Brexit would be. The list of downsides to what Ms May seems to be proposing is almost inexhaustible.

Regrettably the decision made on the 23 June will change our relationship with Europe: that's democracy. But, as has been pointed out, because of the binary nature of the referendum question, this does not give this Government a mandate for making the biggest changes to all our lives for 50 years.

Furthermore, the thought of hitching our wagons to the Trump juggernaut on the other side of the Atlantic makes one shudder.

MS Foord
Whitby

It is a truism that when politics and economics collide, economics wins every time. That's why all attempts by Ms May to control immigration have failed. A strong UK economy has drawn in people from within and without the EU, eager to live, work and study in a successful country.

But she needn’t worry – by trashing the economy with a hard Brexit, she will soon put a stop to that.

Bruce Napier
Willington

We were told that among the leading reasons people voted to leave the EU was a desire for reduced immigration and globalisation. Theresa May has always been obsessed with reducing immigration and so has eagerly adopted this single interpretation of the referendum result as the central plank of her policy. But what of the people’s concern over globalisation? How can her promise to create a global Britain, with new trade deals encouraging a significant increase in globalisation, be in any way a reflection of what the electorate voted against?

Richard Francis
France

Judging from the Prime Minister’s speech, it seems that she does not want a soft Brexit, or a hard Brexit, a grey Brexit or even a red-white-and-blue Brexit, but a Schrödinger’s Brexit, in which we are out of the EU and in the EU at the same time.

Martin A Smith
Oxford

Poor treatment of immigrants will only get worse

Your report on the increased detention of EU citizens is alarming, for it exposes serious legal abuses. Essential to a civilised, democratic society is that the authorities should only interfere in the liberties of any person, citizen or otherwise, according to the law of the land, and should do so without preference or favour for wealth or social status. Yet we see the immigration service acting to serve the partisan political purposes of the governing party.

Furthermore, their tendency to detain poor immigrants is an abuse crying out for redress. This country is lurching into xenophobia and a form of fascism, and when we are liberated from the protections that Europe gives us matters will, I believe and fear, worsen considerably.

Francis Beswick
Stratford

Overreaction to Boris Johnson’s comments

If mentioning the Second World War causes a fit of the vapours across the EU, it really is time for Britain to leave.

Dr John Doherty
Stratford-upon-Avon

The Scottish government seeks to stir division

The SNP’s leader in Westminster, Angus Robertson, used Prime Minister’s Questions to sow further division and grievance as he painted the Brexit plans outlined by Theresa May the previous day in the worst possible light.

He quoted numbers of jobs that could be lost in Scotland along with cuts in income per person based on what some of his colleagues have chosen to characterise as the “hardest of hard Brexits”. Yet this ignores any benefits from a potentially reasonable deal that leading figures in the UK and EU governments have now reconfirmed they hope to achieve. It will not be easy, but equally both sides recognise that compromises will be required for the best outcome.

The Scottish government on the other hand seeks only to stir division and discord, proposing options which it knew in advance neither the UK or the EU could accept. Meanwhile, for all Angus Robertson’s bluster and mock outrage at what might be, reports of Scotland’s current lacklustre performance in terms of jobs and growth, compared with the rest of the UK, show the reality of the SNP government as UK unemployment reaches a 10-year low while Scotland’s figure increases by 11,000. It appears that the SNP’s none too subtle attempts to keep a second independence referendum as its prime goal are having a negative impact in the real world in which the rest of Scotland has to live.

Keith Howell
West Linton