The Brexiteers lied to Scotland and I don't want them running our country

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I do not understand why if England wants to leave the EU the rest of the UK cannot remain (EPA)

Dumfries was recently visited by Jacob Rees-Mogg on his short speaking tour of Scotland. It would appear from the local reports that he was speaking to a mainly Conservative audience: perhaps it would have been better if Mr Rees-Mogg had spent more time listening to the 62 per cent of Scottish residents who voted to remain in the EU, and perhaps explaining why he moved his company office to Ireland so that it can continue to trade in the EU.

I also do not understand why if England wants to leave the EU the rest of the UK cannot remain, after all, the UK is made up of four countries and our wishes as a nation should be respected. I know Wales voted to leave but I also understand they have changed their minds. Please, don’t anyone say I’m racist or nationalist, as I was born in Lincolnshire but choose to live in Scotland because it is a much more caring society which puts people over money.

I am sure that Mr Rees-Mogg’s invited audience would be delighted with what he had to say but those of us who live in the real world realised some time ago he is not Mr Nice Guy: he’s a very selfish, rich man.

The Brexiteers lied to the nation, and they are facing charges of financial irregularities. They are not the kind of people I want running this country.

Susan Lammin
Dumfries

Pro-lifers show intolerance by hanging around abortion clinics

Responding to J Longstaff’s assertion that calling for buffer zones around facilities offering abortions is an example of intolerance, I cannot but suggest that the pro-life brigade are themselves showing intolerance by intimidating women using these services, even if only by being there in numbers and displaying anti-abortion posters. If they feel so strongly about conserving life they might be better employed using their time and energy in activities aimed at helping people in parts of the world where men, women and children are at risk of death by war, disease and starvation.

Patrick Cleary​
Devon

Bye bye, Boris

Adam Forrest’s article on Boris Johnson urging Tory MPs to focus on “chucking Chequers” rather than May was accompanied by a photo of Mr Johnson carrying a red, gold-embossed leather folder, suggesting he still has a ministerial role. Thankfully, given his juvenile focus on alliteration, mixed metaphors, bombast, lying and self-promotion rather than on policy of any sort, he no longer has any such responsibilities. Long may that last.

Beryl Wall
London W4

Home Office shows no compassion

Your report on the killing of Afghanistan refugee Zainadin Fazlie by the Taliban after he had been forcibly deported by the Home Office back to Afghanistan is shocking but entirely unsurprising.

When the Home Office trots out its stock response – “We do not routinely comment on individual cases” – it is all too clear that what they actually mean is: “We don’t give a single solitary damn about individual cases but we obviously can’t say so.”

A later article on the same day reported on the alarming number of white terror suspects in UK and mentioned National Action’s aim to achieve a “white Britain by any means necessary”. Two apparently very different sides of the same coin?

D Maughan Brown
York

For shame

Public and Commercial Services Union leader Mark Serwotka may be wrong to claim that the “Labour antisemitism row was created by Israel to distract from ‘atrocities’” – why the speech marks? – but it is naive beyond belief for your editorial to suggest there has been no conspiracy.

Do you seriously imagine that the Israeli government has not used its considerable influence to foment this row, as well as used its considerable influence with British Jews who publicly state that they “have a problem with anyone who criticises Israel”, to say nothing of the Israeli prime minister and his ambassador weighing in? The only trope in evidence here is not antisemitism but rather the hand-wringing of campaigners who uncritically conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism, a trope that The Independent apparently has not the journalistic integrity to unpick and a trope, I dare suggest, encouraged by the Israeli government. Shame on you.

The history of South Africa and of Northern Ireland indicates that those who experienced oppression as second class citizens under the Anglo-ascendancy, the Boers and the non-conformists, are inclined to make bloody sure they are not the same position ever again – and they know oppression. Unfortunately, then, they know the other side of the coin. The persecution of the Jewish people over centuries and continents does not, however, justify the actions of the state of Israel.

Martin R Paine
Exeter

It’s not too late to turn back

As a fringe European country with a distinct historical and cultural identity and its own social and economic structures, Britain would be survive and thrive as an independent entity in the modern age. However, after four decades of EU membership and hard work at adaptation and assimilation, it was equally unwise to push for the exit and head for another 40-year search for a new identity in a much faster moving world.

Two years after the referendum, it seems that the reversal has proved more troublesome than the Brexiteers had expected even at the first step, while the promised benefits have not been and are unlikely to be realised: no huge savings to upgrade the NHS, no rush by trade partners and in a smaller world, no benefit from assertion of that elusive sovereignty. But troubles abound and the deadlock persists.

In the circumstance, another referendum held with open eyes can resolve the deadlock or at least pass the buck to the electorate.

Hamid Elyassi
London E14