Can Boris Johnson take back control of Brexit after David Frost quit Cabinet? – Yorkshire Post Letters

CAN we hope that Lord Frost’s resignation (The Yorkshire Post, December 20) marks a turning point in the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU?

Yorkshire flooding farce fails to dampen Liz Truss and Foreign Secretary’s leadership ambitions – The Yorkshire Post says

Lord Frost’s resignation letter makes clear that he was pursuing a far right, small state, agenda, and this is not what the great majority of the British public want.

Most people want grown-up politics that ensures that the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland is maintained, and that the UK and the EU develop a favourable trading relationship that cuts down on unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy. We need a free flow of goods across borders with our closest neighbours.

It is clear also that we need to be welcoming to seasonal workers who will ensure that food and flowers do not rot in the ground, and that our abattoirs are able to process livestock in the same orderly way they did before Brexit, thus ensuring that farmers and horticulturalists can stay in business, and consumers have access to high quality, high welfare British food.

For good measure the Prime Minister should sack the hard line Home Secretary Priti Patel. the unimpressive Agriculture Secretary George Eustice, and the Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan who thinks that our sell-out trade deal with Australia should be the blueprint for future trade deals.

From: Richard Wilson, Chair, Leeds for Europe, Leeds.

ALTHOUGH we can guess at the likely conclusion, it is good that MPs will have the chance to review the now finalised trade deal with Australia (MPs to scrutinise Australia free trade deal as benefits questioned, The Yorkshire Post, December 18).

It is unlikely that the International Trade Committee will find much benefit in the deal for Britain. As NFU president Minette Batters puts it: “There appears to be little to benefit British farmers …on the face of it, this is a one-sided deal.”

The prospect of further scrutiny from MPs might discourage Ministers from repeating these mistakes in talks with other countries, though.

We should have had the upper hand in negotiations, as Australia’s economy is much smaller than ours, but the UK government threw away this advantage in its desperation to sign something quickly. Other potential trading partners will have seen our weakness and set their strategies accordingly.

MPs should ask if “Global Britain” trade deals such as the one with Australia will compensate UK firms for all the lost business, extra costs and added bureaucracy – further increasing from next month – of Boris Johnson’s European Union exit agreement a year ago. All the evidence is that they cannot.

From: Helen M Smith, Station drive, Ripon.

THERE is much talk of the taking away of our liberties by the imposing of Covid “restrictions”, which are actually public health measures designed to limit the spread of the virus.

This government likes the fact that people are getting angry, because while our backs are turned it is rushing three Bills through parliament which will impact our liberty much more.

They are the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Elections Bill and the Nationality and Borders Bill. Let’s just say if the Suffragettes were alive in 2021 they wouldn’t have been heard. The Bill will seek to stop protests if the police think they are too noisy and disruptive.

Likewise with the Elections Bill, we would have to produce photo ID to vote at a polling station. Again, you may think that’s fair enough, that’s not much to ask? But imagine if you were homeless or of no fixed address or unable to afford photo ID.

Voter fraud is such a tiny nut of a problem it does not require such a sledgehammer to crack it. The issue of vaccine passports becomes insignificant when faced with this prospect.

Did you also know that the Nationality and Borders Bill means that if the Government thinks someone deserves to have their British citizenship taken away, for whatever reason, then it can strip them of said citizenship without notice?

Think none of this affects you? Think again. The freedom you take for granted in this so-called democracy is being eroded every day, thanks to an increasingly authoritarian government.

From: Malcolm Parkin, Kinnesswood, Kinross.

THOSE who criticise the Conservatives for a Christmas party should perhaps remember the Labour of 1979 who left the UK with 28 per cent inflation and the Winter of Discontent.

The next Labour experience, mercifully ending in 2010, took us into pointless wars and made us the target of terrorists.

A sense of proportion is always denied to the clangers of the Conservatives.

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