AN election now or in the near future will clearly be a single-issue election – Brexit – and yet the result of the election will be used by political parties to justify subsequent actions: SNP for an Independence referendum, Tories for a no-deal Brexit and Labour for whatever it happens to believe in.
If all of the parties are desperate to give the people the choice then the logical step is a referendum. Either stay in or leave with no deal. The decision should then be implemented and the following election can be around the manifestos of each of the parties without the toxic issue of leaving or staying in the EU.
Bill Eadie,
Giffnock.
I MAY be being incredibly naive, but I can only see one way to start to mend the deep divisions throughout the United Kingdom. Surely the only course of action is to call a second referendum on EU membership?
A second referendum must not be advisory but binding so we avoid the verbal gymnastics as practised by John Redwood MP when he tried to suggest that the 2016 referendum was binding when it was clearly advisory. It should be made very clear to all voters the implications of each option. If Leave then the inevitable result is leaving the EU on a specified date irrespective of whether there is a deal in place or not. If Remain, then Article 50 will be withdrawn and we stay in the EU.
In these circumstances voters cannot claim that they have been duped or did not realise the effects of their vote. One difficulty is deciding who will provide information to voters and who will police the mechanics of the referendum. Given the breaches of election law perpetrated by the Leave campaign and the willingness of the Prime Minister to destroy democracy by any means gives rise to the assumption that an independent body oversee the process verifying documentation before issue.
If we genuinely want the will of the people this is the only solution and those who oppose this course of action, we must assume believe they cannot achieve their goal without chicanery.
David Stubley,
Prestwick.
GORDON Bannatyne (Letters, September 5) is absolutely on target with his analysis of our present situation with regard to leaving the EU.
First, Theresa May’s negotiating team was not forthright enough in making it abundantly clear that the UK, implementing the result of a referendum, was leaving the EU, and it was only a matter of discussing how – deal or no deal; preferably a deal, but being prepared to walk away with no deal (Boris Johnson’s sensible position, albeit, stupidly derided by delusional Remainers who actually seem to imagine that they can somehow negotiate an equitable deal with No Deal off the table – sheer lunacy from people who do not live on this planet.
Secondly, the EU certainly is petrified that if one member leaves, this could be the start of others deciding to do so.
Thirdly, Remainers do indeed seem to be subscribing to a form of democracy whereby they only move towards implementing decisions that they agree with; we can see this bias in Remainers’ calls for a second EU referendum in the hope that their preferred option would carry the day (the logic for this seems to be that "we are now more informed about what we’re voting for"); however, this conveniently ignores the question thrown-up by the logic – even if they were to get a Remain vote – of a third or fourth referendum: this is delusional nonsense which would condemn any government to a permanent state of doing nothing.
Of course, with their present dither-and-delay concerning the EU issue, we can all see that this is what many Remainers are extremely good at – doing nothing.
To whom it may concern: note this and vote accordingly at a next election.
Philip Adams,
Crosslee.
I READ Gordon Bannatyne’s anti-EU diatribe with sadness. He seems to have swallowed the Brexit pill whole. I presume that he is a fan of our current Prime Minister and his gang of dubious, disingenuous gang of truth-distorters.
He asks how we managed before we joined the EU and answers his own question with "perfectly well". But that could, indeed, apply to any other EU nation before it joined. He misses the point that political and economic unity is the strength of the EU when dealing with large power blocs elsewhere in the world. That’s why nations join in order to achieve a better status than before.
The UK is the one and only nation trying to leave. The rest have the common sense to avoid such arrogant individualism, the embodiment of which we saw in the contemptuous, reclining posture of Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Commons recently.
Mr Bannatyne claims that those who want to avert No Deal are "scaremongering". I presume, then, that he is happy to ignore those people who may be dependent on a regular supply of medication, business supply chains and the many vulnerable individuals who do not have the ability to cope with prices increases.
We have already been warned by the British Retail Federation and the Road Haulage Association and others that we are in for a hard time. To ignore these warnings as "fake news" is worrying.
Dave Stewart,
Glasgow G11.
STEWART Chalmers (Letters, September 5) writes that Westminster has had a century to sort out the issues to which I refer (Letters, September 3) when proposing a Royal Commission on the British Constitution. In doing so he misses the point.
For example, life peerages as we know them date back to 1958, the current voting system based on the franchise for over-18s to 1969, referendums to 1975, and the devolved administrations to 1999. The current arrangements have developed piecemeal over Mr Chalmers' century, resulting in a hand-knitted Heath-Robinson contraption of a constitution.
Now that its wheels and wings have fallen off and its engine has blown up, the people of the UK deserve a sleek, efficient and up-to-date model – perhaps like the one we built for our German neighbours.
Peter A Russell,
Glasgow G13.
Read more: We now have final proof that our politicians are not to be trusted
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