YP Letters: End the EU talks charade and start making trade deals

Protesters in Parliament Square during a pro-EU People's March For Europe in London.

IT is obvious from the “negotiations” that the EU has no intention of coming to any agreement other than the UK staying in the European Union or that we pay an outrageous amount of money to leave.

It seems to me that this is just bullying scare tactics by unelected inadequates who see the bottomless trough that they have supped at for so long disappearing over the horizon.

It is pointless carrying on this charade until March next year. For the sake of our own economy, and for the economies of the other 27 countries in the Union, we should tell the Brussels negotiators to forget it and look to the World Trading Organisation rules and begin making trade agreements with as many countries as possible.

From: Roger Whitaker, Hardwick Road, Pontefract.

ISN’T it strange that there are thousands of EU regulations that the UK has had to accept which were decided by EU ministers and implemented into UK law without UK parliamentary scrutiny? Having not caused MPs of any party concern, there is great concern from the opposition parties about ministers in the UK Parliament having the same powers.

From: Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden.

AS for our economic and diplomatic influence in the wider world, these will depend upon the policies we adopt and the actions we take after we have left the EU. Do Remain supporters have so little faith in this country that they doubt our ability to continue making a vital contribution in international affairs?

From: Hugh Rogers, Ashby.

TERRY Maunder (The Yorkshire Post, September 9) presumes to criticise ministers of the Crown, without, it seems, having any idea about what the function of a minister actually is.

Let me enlighten him – a minister is a politician whose job is to act as a frontsperson, a public relations functionary, in order to maintain the link between his department, Parliament and, by extension, the people.

Without this “lay” ingredient in the command chain, civil servants might very well take decisions which might seem to them to be correct, but which might fly in the face of the wishes of the electorate and/or commit the Government to expenditure which, in the broader scheme of things, is unsustainable.