ACCORDING to Dr Ron Dickinson (Letters, February 21) we have already had a "disastrous delivery of Brexit". This is a surprising comment when one considers there is a still a long way to go with the negotiations before a final deal will be put to the both Houses of Parliament for a vote before Brexit in March 2019. He also assumes wrongly that people like me who voted to remain cannot accept the result of the democratic UK-wide referendum. Whistling in the dark springs to mind.

Granted the EU has made all the running thus far and would appear to hold most of the cards due to Michel Barnier, EU Chief Negotiator being a stickler for the rules and regulations (26,911 words on the sale of cabbages) – when it suits him. However, there is much to ponder especially when you drill down the figures and discover we currently have an unsustainable £85 billion deficit in goods with the EU (for which we pay a net £10bn for the privilege) yet with the rest of the world we are in balance and where we do most of our £550bn export trade . Then there is the small matter about filling the financial black hole once Britain leaves when a number of counties like the Netherlands have already given a resounding No to Brussels.

Furthermore we are not the only country suffering imbalance of trade with Germany – take, for example, the US, where President Trump expressed his annoyance with EU trade policy, saying "it may morph into something big" and it was "very, very unfair". Watch this space as the US ramps up the pressure on Fortress Europe.

Given the above, the so-called unity of the EU will be soon be placed under increasing pressure as the realisation dawns on them that it doesn't hold all the cards and vested interests within the individual countries in the EU come to the surface.

Ian Lakin,

Pinelands,

Murtle Den Road,

Milltimber,

Aberdeen.

UNDER clause 11 of the EU Withdrawal Bill, the UK Government announced that, with Brexit, it wanted to repatriate to Westminster all the powers returning from the EU, before passing relevant ones to Holyrood. The SNP Scottish Government shouted "power grab", and made a song and dance about devolution being undermined.

Now the UK Government offers to transfer directly from the EU to Holyrood the "vast majority" of relevant powers, reserving a few that require UK-wide co-operation until joint frameworks are established – and then passing them to Holyrood. The Scottish Government shouts "power grab".

There should be no surprise that this is the tactic played by a separatist government. The worry is that, given the SNP’s poor record in administering the powers it already has, how is it going to cope with a further 111? The current shambles over the absorption of the British Transport Police into Police Scotland ("Plan to merge police with transport force has been delayed", The Herald February 21), and the purely political motivation for insisting on effecting it, does not encourage confidence that the Scottish Government will exercise these wider responsibilities for the benefit of the people of Scotland.

Jill Stephenson,

Glenlockhart Valley,

Edinburgh.

TO the extent that Theresa May and her Brexit team say anything remotely coherent, it's easier to identify what they want to stay the same rather than to change. She wants security cooperation to remain, Boris Johnson applauds free movement, David Davis is all for regulation and Michael Gove wants farming subsidies.

It would thus appear the existing relationship serves our interests very well. So it's a question of semantics: finding words to indicate we have "taken back control" and have an "independent trade policy". Since we have little to control and less to trade surely the EU 27 can indulge us with some helpful mistranslation.

Rev Dr John Cameron,

10 Howard Place,

St Andrews.

THE news that Theresa May is to hold an eight-hour inner-cabinet meeting to hammer out Brexit objectives as part of a “road to Brexit” series of events ("Crunch Cabinet talks to hammer out Brexit objectives,” The Herald, February 22) comes a bit late in the day if it seeks to dock the Rees-Mogg tail that wags the Tory leadership.

That horse has bolted.

R Russell Smith,

96 Milton Road, Kilbirnie.

DAVID Davis proposes that the UK should maintain the same regulations to ensure standards for our products as the EU has. This, he says, will ensure frictionless trade across the Channel and the Irish border. Jeremy Corbyn says the UK will “have to have a customs union” with the EU. Both men seem to be talking sense, until you realise that the easy way to achieve these results would be to remain in the EU.

WK Brown,

61 Killermont Road,

Bearsden.

ALISON Rowat's article ("Corbyn's threat to the press on spy claims is wrong move", The Herald, February 22) sheds an interesting light on an apparent paradox. Why has the leader of the Labour Party, who surely should be representing the interests of working people, consistently sided either tacitly or openly with the more rabid right wing of the Tory Party to achieve a hard break with the EU? Every piece of research shows that such a break will be catastrophic for working people, cutting real economic growth, removing workplace rights and producing a race to the bottom in wage terms.

The answer to this conundrum may lie in a little-publicised piece of work by the Fabian Society, which identified that one of the overriding characteristics of those voting Leave (and, incidentally, those supporting Donald Trump) was authoritarianism. They strongly favour draconian punishment, even including the death penalty, for those whom they regard as transgressing their social norms. Jeremy Corbyn's action over the press is entirely consistent with this model, showing his innate authoritarianism. The same could be said of his record over voting; before he became party leader, he was renowned for the number of occasions on which he voted against party policy. Once in leadership, he punished severely those of his MPs who did not support his effective love-in with the Eurosceptic Tories. Not an edifying spectacle.

Dr RM Morris,

Veslehaug,

Polesburn,

Methlick,

Ellon.