AS Theresa May battles to get her deal through Parliament, the task of turning a 149-vote defeat into victory remains immense, further heightened by Speaker Bercow’s resistance to a further meaningful vote ("Speaker tells May not to put her deal on Brexit to MPs again", The Herald, March 19).

Prime Minister May will arrive at this week’s European Council having failed to secure the necessary parliamentary approval for her deal, and seeking an extension of Article 50.

A very short extension would enable her to return to the Commons and present MPs with a brutal choice: my deal, slightly revised following the European Council meeting, or no deal.

It is more likely, however, that the EU will insist upon a deferral of some time. As Donald Tusk’s spokesman said last week, our 27 partners will demand “a credible justification for a possible extension and its duration”.

This is, of course, the best approach by far and it should be noted that this part of the Brexit process is the easy bit.

More time is exactly what is needed, to consider calmly and deliberatively the various options of Brexit on offer, to judge whether any of them are worth pursuing, and then to put the least-worst option to the people in a referendum.

If Mrs May can seek to push her deal through the Commons on three or even more occasions, it is unreasonable that the electorate should not be given an opportunity to vote on this, now they know what it actually means.

Whatever happens, this is just the beginning of a very lengthy process.

Alex Orr,

Flat 3, 2 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh.

MUCH effort has been expended this week in attacking the House of Commons speaker, John Bercow, for making a ruling based upon Erskine May, the parliamentary procedural handbook.

I believe that Theresa May is entitled to feel ill-served. She should be asking the Attorney General, Solicitor General and other highly paid advisers around her why the possibility of such a ruling had not previously been flagged up and taken into account. After all, it was raised with the Speaker by two Labour MPs, Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant.

This represents another episode in the omnishambles formed by Mrs May's efforts to implement the decision of the British electorate in the EU referendum

Ian W Thomson,

38 Kirkintilloch Road, Lenzie.

IN The Art of War Sun Tzu wrote: “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

In the Brexit process, the Prime Minister has certainly employed quite a lot of tactics.

Bob Scott,

Creitendam Lodge, Balmaha Road, Drymen.

Read more: Theresa May remains determined MPs should get another vote

KENNETH Roberts (Letters, March 18) states that we elect a Parliament that has the sovereign right and duty to make decisions about the running of the country and is obliged on all policy issues to discuss, evaluate and decide on all national issues. But what if Parliament is not in full possession of the facts, which is what happened with the Treaty of Accession to the European Community?

In the run up to the signing of the treaty Labour tried and failed to stop Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath from signing until Parliament had been given a full opportunity to read the final text. Mr Heath scraped the vote through by 309 -301 even though MPs did not see the wording of the Accession Treaty until a month after it was signed, and only then did it become clear that they had been duped. Geoffrey Rippon, the Conservative Minister leading the negotiations had lied to Parliament when he had told them that Britain would have permanent full jurisdiction over the whole of its coastal waters up to 12 miles. In fact, British boats would only have exclusive rights to fish up to six miles and within that range still be under Community rules. Far from being permanent this was to be reviewed after 10 years and would only be extended if all Community states agreed.

British farmers were also betrayed, since 90 per cent of the Common Agricultural Policy budget was used to subsidize inefficient French farming. Even the Solicitor-General Geoffrey Howe, whose task it was to enact the 13,000 pages of Community directives and regulations into EU law questioned whether Parliament really had the authority of the British people to do this. In 1992 Douglas Hurd, the Conservative Foreign Secretary, commented after signing the Maastricht treaty: “Now we've signed it – we'd better read it." The same deception would play out in the drawing up of the European Constitution and Lisbon Treaty.

In April 2017 I wrote in this paper that as Brexit progressed the magnitude of our politicians' duplicity and incompetence would begin to unravel and it would become painfully clear to UK citizens just how much was surrendered of their national sovereignty by both Conservative and Labour. I am sorry, Mr Roberts, but Parliament has now shown it is totally incapable of making decisions. Leaving the European Union on March 29, 2019 with or without a deal was enshrined in UK law. Now Parliament is reneging on that law and has no idea what it wants.

Morag Black,

3 Leeburn Avenue, Houston.

WHY do politicians, commentators and supporters of Brexit continually harp on about the duped 17.4 million who voted Leave, refer to them as the majority in the country and repeat ad nauseam that it would be a betrayal of democracy to hold a second referendum when in fact 29 million did not vote to leave?

Further, I agree with your recent correspondents stating that referendums should not be part of how we are governed, but if the trend is to continue then a 60/40 split should be the minimum required to carry a vote and casting a vote either in person or by post should be compulsory. Only then can any winning vote be legitimately described as the will of the people.

James Martin,

43 Thomson Drive, Bearsden.