There is no excuse for the way this country is treating asylum seekers

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We must be able to exercise our democracy to end the cruel incarceration of asylum seekers (iStock/Getty)

By what democratic mechanism is the Home Office able to act in the way that seems to be autonomous and without accountability, treating asylum seekers in ways that are inhumane, heartless and cruel, creating a nasty stain on the quality of our humanity, unlawfully holding people in removal centres for months despite courts ruling they can be released?

We are a prosperous nation, can make choices and have no excuse for treating people in this way, unless that is what we want to do, and I certainly do not. Who are those who want to treat other human being is in this way? Should not someone be called before a parliamentary committee to explain and justify their actions? This is supposed to be a democracy, so how should I exercise my democratic influence in this respect? It is not good when so many of us are ashamed to be British.

Dennis Leachman
Kingston upon Thames

Boris Johnson seems to know little about our current trade agreements

You report that Boris Johnson believes that the UK must leave the EU customs union in order to develop trade agreements with South American countries.

Is he unaware that the EU, and therefore Britain as an EU member, has had a cooperation agreement with the Mercosur countries, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina, plus latterly Venezuela, since 1999, and negotiations between the two blocs for a free trade agreement are well advanced; that the EU has a free trade agreement with the Andean Community, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia, plus preferential treatment for Bolivia; and that there has been a comprehensive free trade agreement between the EU and Chile since 2003?

One assumes he has been told, but either he wasn’t listening, or the facts don’t support his agenda.

David Humphrey
London W5

The UK is in crisis, and our elected officials are doing nothing to change it

Have the papers ever been so full of bad news? Leaving aside for a moment the deteriorating state of international relations, and looking just at our own affairs, we read that morbid obesity in Britain is due to double by 2035, that we are becoming the biggest consumer of cocaine in Europe, that we are devising Orwellian methods of keeping asylum seekers in detention centres rather than releasing them as the law requires, that thousands of young migrants who have the right to enjoy the benefits of British citizenship are denied that right by the unreasonable cost of making a series of applications.

Meanwhile, our health service, our schools, our police and our prisons are in crisis. Millions of our citizens are living in poverty, depending on charity and food banks to survive, and the UK economy has just posted the worst quarterly GDP figures for five years.

So what is the government doing about all this? Answer: getting its knickers in a twist about Brexit, and uttering official platitudes that convince nobody. We simply cannot go on like this: we are becoming the laughing stock of Europe, and we seem to have no idea how to resolve the problems which the disastrous decision to leave the EU has created.

So, please, let’s call the whole thing off. I’m not entirely confident that the present lot are actually capable of governing the country, but at least if they were able to stop haggling over Brexit, they might have time to try. And perhaps we might start to look forward to a time when the poor, the sick, the homeless and the dispossessed live in a caring society, rather than one that turns its back, and we could be proud again.

Jeremy Lawford
Exeter

Despite the majority wanting to stay in the EU, Brexiteers are determined to go through with their disastrous plan

So a recent poll suggests a marginal lead for the UK to abandon Brexit, and that in itself is largely to do with a changing demographic. This is not as a result of a change of heart by a few Brexiteers in the face of the plain facts that Brexit is a disaster in the making.

The EU has made it clearly obvious from the outset. Leaving the EU will have negative consequences for our relationship with them. That’s our choice. Unfortunately Brexiteers are blinkered by their own rhetoric. You only have to watch Question Time audiences to observe aggressive “proceed at any cost” attitudes. Why? Leading Brexiteers have done a very good job at galvanising their supporters, but who will shoulder the blame when it all goes wrong?

Simon Watson
Worcester

Trump’s North Korea strategy is becoming increasingly terrifying

What are we supposed to make of the quite extraordinary on/off tactics of Kim Jong-un and President Trump over the ill-fated summit talks?

If it weren’t for the overwhelming need to lower the political temperature in the region, we could dismiss it as a farce of some magnitude. Both leaders are attention-seeking eccentrics who warn glibly about the “nuclear option” apparently without any sane notion of what the outcome would be.

If it is true that today’s nuclear bombs are a hundred times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, then even speculating on it makes one shiver. Kim Jong-un needs the summit because the punitive sanctions threatened by Trump would impoverish his economically dependent country even further.

It is in trying to make sense of Trump’s strategies that one could become too cynical for comfort. Could it possibly be that he will restart the talks, arrive at some “fix” that results in a peace agreement, collect his much mooted Nobel Peace Prize, win valuable points at the midterm elections, and then with a characteristic flourish, renege on the whole deal? Surely not?

Name supplied
Address supplied

Things are not looking good for the prime minister

Theresa May must be delighted. A dispute about abortion in Northern Ireland is just what she needs. Like a hole in the head. Well, there’s not much else going on at the moment. Can we sniff an election in the offing?

Barry Tighe
Woodford