YP Letters: Irresponsible ideologues seek to drive us to '˜hard Brexit'

THE other day, I received an email from Philip Davies, my MP, in which, on the Brexit issue, he commented: “I see that you and your Lib Dem colleagues are still in mourning. When are you going to do the decent thing and remove the word Democrats from the title of your party?”

My reply to Philip was as follows: There is nothing democratic about rigging an advisory referendum and then demanding that the outcome (a narrow “victory” of 52:48) be regarded as an irreversible mandate for the most extreme form of Brexit that Mrs May is being driven too by hard-line ideologues such as yourself, Bill Cash etc.

Indeed, you, Bill Cash, John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg and others are to be congratulated on your effectiveness in gaining control of the asylum.

However, the mad irresponsibility of your scheme and the immense damage that “hard Brexit” is certainly going to do requires modest, quiet, level-headed and informed persons such as myself – and many others of the 48 per cent – to do all within our power to prevent the catastrophe of leaving the EU.

We will not lie down and be trampled over. The course of German history in the 1930s was grossly perverted by Hitler’s use of referenda to achieve his rise to power and thereafter cement his position.

It is notable that the West German constitution, post 1945, specifically banned referenda as being the tools of demagogues. Enough said?

From: Geoff Sweeting, Wressle, Selby.

I HAVE the greatest respect for the achievements of Anna Soubry, but her comments (The Yorkshire Post, April 15) are beyond the pale.

Alongside many other Remainers, she seems to have a fantastic crystal ball that can forecast the future. Alongside many other Remainers, all the forecasts so far have been way off beam.

I am astonished by her rhetoric. She insults her Parliamentary colleagues, who need all the support they can get during negotiations with the EU.

She accuses them of going for a hard Brexit, before a single meeting has taken place.

She forecasts doom and gloom for all – and says this isn’t Project Fear, but “real”. What dictionary does she use?

No one knows how the negotiations will end up and it will be two years before we leave the EU.

There will undoubtedly be a transition period after that. Hard Brexit – I doubt it!