Brexit is too important to concede to ‘grandad knows best’ – Yorkshire Post letters

LIKE Tom Richmond, I watched Sir Bill Cash’s finger-jabbing declamation on Oliver Cromwell in wonderment; half-hoping that he might explode. Fortunately, Cromwell’s head ended up on the block (The Yorkshire Post, April 13).

Tom Richmond: Thank you Hilary Benn for exposing Brexit dinosaurs like Sir Bill Cash

Thanks to Hilary Benn for respecting the gravity of the situation and acting calmly but firmly. If he were in a different Labour Party place, might we have an Opposition worthy of the name?

On April 11, Jayne Dowle gave us a timely reminder that Brexit is far more than conceding that “grandad knows best” to a broad spectrum of Cash-style views expressed in this and other columns.

In 2016, David Cameron chose to gamble with the nation’s long-term future and that of his party, in his abject failure to get a grip on his right wing. Many Brexiteers recoil in horror at the prospect of a “United States of Europe”.

Is it really so strange that our children and grandchildren see themselves as part of a changing EU evolving on those lines? It sounds most tempting when set against being even further subsumed and dominated by the United States of America which, for millions, is far from being the heaven on Earth which Hollywood and TV would have us believe.

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

WHAT a disappointing article by Tom Richmond. Instead of dealing with the substance of the issue of Parliament seizing control of Brexit from the Government, thereby reducing the Prime Minister to the status of messenger, he highlights the trite put-down by Labour MP Hilary Benn of Tory MP Sir Bill Cash, who was addressing the serious constitutional consequences of such actions. Describing the latter as a bully and dinosaur is not helpful.

Then we have the mischievous accusation that the Leavers had no credible plan for Brexit. The obvious plan, which would have respected the red lines of all parties and was offered more than once by the EU, was for a Canada-style free trade agreement, which could have been accompanied by tariff-free trade during negotiations, thereby avoiding a cliff-edge departure. The Northern Irish border issue is soluble with the “sincere co-operation” we are entitled to expect under the treaties, but which has been absent because the matter has been “weaponised” in an attempt to make Brexit seem impossible.

A new Tory leader could raise us from the torpor of the current debacle and get this matter resolved, as described, in a way that no reasonable democrat could object to.