Mob culture could be the least of our worries after Brexit

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

In response to Ian Richards’ letter I would agree that no politician should encourage or excuse a violent response should the UK remain in the EU despite the referendum result.

However, I think there is a much greater risk to the country should we fail to leave, in the form of apathy and disillusion with the very idea that this is a country where events are determined via the ballot box.

Many millions of people may feel that any election, whether local or national, is a waste of time and that any candidate encouraging them to vote is at best naive and at worst a liar.

This could have far more profound long-term consequences than a few people, however reprehensibly, being whipped up to throw things by various extremists.

Alan Brown
Bromborough, Merseyside

The UK is being manipulated by the EU

I wonder why it is always the red lines of the British government that are a problem, but never the red lines of the European Commission. The commission – technocrats with no electoral mandate or authority for pan European governance – always trump individual nation states and have a blatant disregard for electoral mandates within its member states. This was made crystal clear in the way the EU manipulated and deceived Greece with its bailouts, as the testimony of Yannis Varoufakis (the former Greek finance minister) makes plain.

The UK is similarly being manipulated. The ideals of the EU are positive, but its modus operandi and its structures are poisonous. It would make such a huge difference if the commissioners were elected from the EU parliament and the EU parliament actually governed, instead of being a rubber stamp for the commission.

It is the trumping of the electoral mandates of member states and its closed, partially democratic structures that have turned people against the EU. It is very difficult to be persuaded to vote Remain when the EU is so deeply dysfunctional and dictatorial in its relationships with member states.

Lyn Atterbury
Pila, Poland

We cannot justify the suffering of animals

It’s clear the human race has lost all sense of morality. I had hoped that as my life progressed I would see less and less cruelty to animals, but now I see horrors reported in the press and social media every day.

Your report on the genetic manipulation and cloning of poor little monkeys in China to give them the symptoms of schizophrenia made my blood run cold (“Chinese lab creates monkey clones with schizophrenia”). The utter misery these innocents will face in their terrible lives fills me with despair. How anyone can justify such calculated cruelty towards defenceless animals on the basis it could possibly assist human beings is beyond my comprehension.

How can anyone work in labs involved in such vile activities? Aren’t they haunted by the suffering of the poor animals they leave behind every night when they go home?

I am sure defenders of such horrors will claim it is worth it to help humans. This is an utterly immoral and astoundingly callous, selfish mantra, and I want no part of it.

Penny Little
Great Haseley, Oxfordshire

Congratulations to David Davis

I am delighted to be one of the first people to congratulate David Davis in his success at securing a role as an adviser – against tough competition, I assume – for the construction firm JCB.

The company must be relieved to have secured such a high-profile figure in these unsure times; their generous offer of £3,000 per hour, I feel, is commensurate to his undoubted expertise in digging a huge hole for himself!

Experience like this is invaluable for the excavations of tomorrow.

Robert Boston
Kingshill, Kent

The Euro

This isn’t exactly about Brexit but it’s a peripheral issue: 20 years ago the euro was worth about 65p and now it is worth about 90p. That’s an adverse change for the pound of nearly 40 per cent. So why is there popular self-congratulation on the decision not to join the euro?

Ian Crook
Address supplied

A solution to the Article 50 problem

Suppose that the government/parliament wanted to delay Brexit by six to nine months (for a people’s vote, or whatever reason) but that the EU wouldn’t agree (don’t want UK to participate in the MEP elections, don’t think the delay would clear up anything). It seems to me that there is an easy way around this. The UK could unilaterally revoke Article 50 and then immediately re-submit an Article 50 letter to the EU.

Dr Mark Vaughn
Blewbury, Berkshire