SINCE the referendum on EU membership, I have felt increasingly incredulous, angry and despairing. Incredulous that enough people fell for the lies and false promises of the Brexit enthusiasts or allowed their xenophobia to cause them to produce a narrow majority for leaving. Angry that since then, those who voted Remain have been ignored completely, or even reviled, by the cabal of right-wing extremists that has executed a very effective coup. Angry that the narrow majority has somehow become “the clear will of the people”. Angry also that Jeremy Corbyn and his fairyland Marxists have colluded in this seizure and misuse of power. Despairing, because it looks ever more likely that the machinations of the ideologues and shady financial dealers will cause a disorderly exit from the EU.

The consequences of such a disorderly exit will be bad enough for the majority. It has now become personal for me and for all those with health problems that require regular medication. I have a rare blood cancer which makes it necessary to take daily a chemotherapy drug that is manufactured in Germany. What chance is there that the fabled stockpiling of medicines Theresa May has promised will necessarily include this compound, since it is only needed by a few tens of thousands of patients?

Maybe I should be thankful that unavailability of the drug could mean I don't survive to see the other awful consequences of the Brexit madness. But the least that we should be offered, despite Mrs May and her cheerleader in your columns, Andrew McKie ("A second EU ballot would be both pointless and damaging", The Herald, July 31) is a chance to vote on the possible outcomes, ideally with the option to reject the whole evil fantasy.

Dr RM Morris,

Veslehaug, Polesburn, Methlick, Ellon.

THE UK faces its biggest decision since the Second World War and without an opportunity for the public to refuse a deal that is not in the country’s interests, Theresa May will once again wilt in the face of the bully-boy tactics of her party's backwoodsmen. Brexit is simply too important to be left at the mercy of truculent political ideologues.

The certainty of a People's Vote in which the public can reject a bad outcome will empower Mrs May to face down the Tory lunatic fringe. There's more than a whiff of the Charge of the Light Brigade in this rush to the cliff edge and its only too clear that Brexiter leaders share Lord Raglan's reckless disregard of the facts and of reality.

Rev Dr John Cameron,

10 Howard Place, St Andrews.

IAIN Mackenzie (Letters, July 30) suggests that David Cameron should have been building better alliances within Europe before embarking on the referendum.

He is no doubt correct in that view but Mr Cameron would also have been better building alliances within his own party before taking us into such an unnecessary and calamitous error.

Or perhaps he should simply have faced-down the remaining "bastards" within his own party (©John Major, 1993).

TH Hamilton,

42b Saughton Crescent, Edinburgh.

JAMES Martin (Letters, July 30) comments on my contribution of July 28. “Where to start?” he asks.

Well, one usually starts at the beginning of a letter and, given a long enough attention span, reads through to the end. Had he done so, he would have found the political references (Iain Macwhirter’s Herald article of July 25, “We should beware of the rise of media-savvy populist Right”) which I considered bewildering, as I had made quite clear. The quotation of the medieval scholar Alcuin appears in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations in response to the commonly-held claim, “Vox populi, vox Dei”, the people’s voice, the voice of God. If Mr Martin’s scorn is based on carelessness, it is regrettable; if it is synthetic, it is the despicable device of setting up a straw man to knock down.

He concludes with the hope that in the event of another EU referendum “common sense and decency will prevail”, implying that the majority of British voters, already exposed to so much public opprobrium, lacked even common sense or decency, a reflection not on the people who exercised their democratic right to the ballot box, but on the tactics of those who so patently despise them.

Mary Rolls (Mrs),

58 Castlegate, Jedburgh.