Brexit referendum was a straight choice between Leave and Remain - Yorkshire Post letters

JOHN Turley’s obsession with remaining in the EU appears to have become an obstacle to rationality (The Yorkshire Post, May 27). Let me spell it out for him. The referendum required us either to vote ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’. There was no opportunity to decide whether we should leave with or without a deal.

The decision not to offer the electorate any nuanced form of referendum was consciously taken by a pro-remain political administration, which calculated that this was the most certain way of obtaining the ‘Remain’ result it wanted and expected.

Having miscalculated, it has whined ever since – just as Mr Turley has whined – that the question it chose to put was too simplistic for so complex a matter.

If Mr Turley genuinely is incapable of grasping the dishonesty of such a position, I cannot help him.

On the other hand, if (as I suspect) your correspondent elects not to understand it then no one can help him.

As to his irrelevant rant against the influence of wealthy ‘Leave’ campaigners, one can only suppose Mr Turley labours under the misapprehension that David Cameron wore rags and lived in a tenement slum before taking up residence in Number 10?

From: Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden, Goole.

JOHN Turley says that nobody voted for no deal and no leading Brexiteer advocated it during the referendum campaign. Perhaps he has never read Article 50 which makes it quite clear that leaving without a deal is the default position if no agreement is reached. This was known during the campaign so, yes, 17.4 million people did vote for it, as did Parliament when they triggered Article 50.

If the issue was not discussed during the campaign then Mr Turley, and other Remainers, cannot absolve themselves of responsibility as they had every opportunity to raise it.

Brexiteer must be next leader

From: Dai Woosnam, Scartho, Grimsby.

OH dear. How can anyone take Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, seriously?

This is a chap who, a few months ago, likened the EU to a giant prison camp. Nothing wrong with that. Tony Benn was warning 25 years ago that we were walking into a federal prison of our own making.

But where Mr Hunt holes himself below the waterline is that he voted Remain in June 2016. Therefore, is it not extraordinary that a leading Government minister then wanted his own populace locked into an EU that he saw as a prison? The next Tory leader must be someone who voted Brexit in 2016. We have had enough of Remainers sabotaging the Brexit ship.

From: Bill Tetlow, Bedale.

IN her column on April 11, Jayne Dowle advocated the lowering of the voting age to 16. She stated that her 16-year-old son’s passionate opinions, and her 13-year daughter’s views had persuaded her to change her views.

But in her latest column (The Yorkshire Post, May 23), she then stated that she had found some election literature so offensive that threw them into the recycling bin before her teenagers arrived home.

Make your mind up, Jayne. If your 16-year-old son is not mature enough to see such leaflets for what they are without you censoring them, he is not mature enough to be voting.

From: Barrie Crowther, Walton, Wakefield.

THE Brexit Party wins by a large majority but no congratulations were offered to those interviewed on the BBC afterwards. There is certainly bias from this so-called neutral broadcaster. All we get is the sour grapes of the Remoaners who cannot stand losing.

From: Jarvis Browning, Fadmoor, York.

NOW that Theresa May is going, will that keep the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg quiet?

Trump won’t solve paradox

From: Brian H Sheridan, Lodge Moor, Sheffield.

I AGREE with Mr PL Taylor who identifies the paradox that the United States is at once the most progressive and antediluvian country in the world (The Yorkshire Post, May 25).

How can a nation which has delivered so many positives to the rest of the world tolerate a state such as Alabama which treats women as second-class citizens by banning abortion even in the case of rape or incest?

I would add the further anomaly of Republican dependence on the National Rifle Association which perpetuates romantic notions of the Wild West by treating the right to bear arms as paramount. Little wonder the US has the highest rate of gun-related deaths in the “civilised” world.

To be fair, America is a divided nation, with the conservative Bible Belt States of the South a far cry from the more liberal North East. However, I can’t imagine anyone less likely than President Trump to drag the benighted southern states into the 21st century.

Supporting workers’ pay

From: Martin Flanagan, Catterick Garrison.

THE attack by Cecil Crinnion (The Yorkshire Post, May 27) on Jeremy Corbyn over the minimum wage is totally unjustified. To call it a bribe for 16-year-olds – firstly, they can’t vote so why bribe them?

Why should someone wait until 25 to obtain a living wage? In that time they may have married, had children and had to start married life on less than half the minimum wage.

It would cost, yes, but the same arguments happened when the first minimum wage came in and we survived. A bribe? No, just getting workers’ rights sorted.