Letter: Stop Euro-heckling

Sir: Did no one explain realpolitik to John Major before Corfu?

If you are the leader of a country creaking from a century of underinvestment, which clings to its Atlantic past and the nostalgia of empire and which prefers shouting obstructively from the sidelines of Europe to negotiating constructively at the heart of it, how can you expect to be consulted ab initio by those who know where they want to go and have come to expect little from you but negativism and demands for special concessions?

How other members of the European Union must feel let down by Britain's failure constructively to counterbalance Franco-German power.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN SMITH

Lindfield,

West Sussex

26 June