WHILE I agree with Larry Cheyne's analysis of the circumstances leading up to the EU referendum in June 2016 (Letters, August 8), he then predicts that, as a consequence, the UK might be involved in a major war within the next few years. I sincerely hope that he is wrong, if nothing else because the circumstances underpinning the events he lists are unlikely to have any serious parallel, at least in the near future.

With the benefit of hindsight, the Nazis became the dominant party in Germany and Austria because the civilian population of the Central Powers suffered increasingly severe privations during the last couple of years of the First World War, as a result of the Royal Naval blockade. They then regarded themselves as being forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty not because they had been militarily defeated, but because of the manoeuvrings of a shadowy international financial clique, led by Jews. This belief was widely held. There then followed several years of simmering domestic unrest as the political extremists battled it out on the streets for supremacy, coupled with a period of hyper-inflation which destroyed the savings of the many middle-class people, forcing more to adopt extreme views. Finally, there was a worldwide depression.

However, if Mr Cheyne does draw comparisons between the behaviour of the parties then and now, perhaps it might be more appropriate if the EU negotiators were to take a more conciliatory line, rather than behaving like the allied powers who sought to crush Germany.

Christopher W Ide,

25 Riverside Road, Waterfoot, East Renfrewshire.

I BET the Roman Empire thought the good-times would never end but they did as history proves is inevitable; so is the case with the British Empire. A metaphor for this decline is to walk along Great Western Road in Glasgow with its majestic sandstone period properties built in yesteryear by entrepreneurs with the profits from slavery tobacco and sugar now lying subdivided into flats and nursing homes. A stroll through neighbouring Maryhill gives one a more accurate picture of the reality of 21st century life as it impacts many of its citizens. The relevance of this observation to the impending Brexit is that the mindset of those driving the process is still in the 19th century and those who will profit from Brexit are the same group whose inherited wealth stems from the past and who post-Brexit won’t be eating chlorinated pheasant for their tea.

Brexit is happening because the rich are desperate to keep EU scrutiny away from the myriad of tax havens they created during the era of Empire which have been instrumental in protecting their wealth status and power, so stop squabbling about Brexit which nothing short of armed insurrection will prevent happening and wisen up to why it is happening and why Westminster is so compliant.

David J Crawford,

85 Whittingehame Court, 1300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.

ALEX Orr (Letters, August 7) is to be congratulated on pointing out that the UK “cannot cherry-pick what regulatory aspects of the EU it wants to remain aligned with”. The very term, cherry-pick, was used by Brussels in its original response to Britain’s decision to leave.

Yet the Government, bowing to continued popular clamour not only for it to be devising conditions for withdrawal but even to be making public the details of ongoing Foreign Office discussions with EU officials, has proposed measures which, as Mr Orr reminds us, were always unacceptable.

For this whole business of EU/UK negotiations is of course a charade.

Not only do the four freedoms, engraved in tablets of stone, and the hundreds of thousands of pages of EU law comprising the Acquis Communautaire remain sacrosanct, but any proposal Westminster may offer to the European Commission is also subject to approval by the EU Parliament, by qualified majority voting in the European Council and by ratification in each of the remaining member states.

Article 50 in the Treaty of Lisbon (simply a re-ordered version of the rejected European Constitution) is a specious device to discourage members from even contemplating withdrawal and since it is Lord John Kerr’s signature that is the most significant of the four appearing at the foot of the European Constitution’s draft document, he must be fully aware of the contents of Article 50 and its cynical reference to negotiation.

As it appears that he is an adviser to Scotland’s First Minister, there is no excuse for Nicola Sturgeon’s attributing the delay of her promised second referendum to Westminster confusion over Brexit ("Sturgeon hedges on Indyref2 call after PM summit", The Herald, August 8) – or, of course, for not disclosing the true prospects of an EU region like Scotland becoming a member state of the EU.

Mary Rolls (Mrs),

58 Castlegate, Jedburgh.

OVER the past few decades the UK has had a succession of uninspiring and ultimately unsuccessful political leaders of both main parties, and none of those who reached the ultimate position of Prime Minister has been an outstanding success. But the present incumbent, Theresa May, is surely now almost certain to be the least inspiring and the least impressive of them all, and I fear she will go down in history as the one who led the British nation into several decades of economic, international and political decline.

Mrs May was almost invisible during the two-year campaign prior to the Brexit decision, and despite apparently being a Remainer she made virtually no effort to take part in the two-year public debate. Finding herself thereafter in Downing Street almost by accident, she has meekly followed “the will of the people” (which we should not forget was by a very narrow majority after a disgracefully xenophobic campaign) and has made no effort to modify the damaging effects on the British economy, or the reduction in international influence which is inevitable over the next few decades.

The main problem for Mrs May is of course her own political colleagues in Westminster. To placate them the long-term interests of the nation are being sacrificed, on the altar of protecting the narrow Conservative majority in the House of Commons and thus control of parliament for the next few years. Such is the nonsensical system of government that we continue to put up with in our so-called democratic union of nations. It’s time we in Scotland opted out.

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.