YP Letters: Alignment with EU rules for now is price of orderly Brexit

T wouldn’t be acceptable for us to accept EU legislation beyond March 2019 directly onto our statute books. However, what might be acceptable is for the legislation to be firstly scrutinised and approved by the UK Parliament.

I think such a process could even have some positive benefits, in that it will provide great visibility of what has been, in the past, a secretive process of legislation being directly transferred, without question, onto our statute books. It will continue, of course, to be legislation concocted in private by Brussels bureaucrats, and then rubber stamped by the undemocratic EU ‘parliament’. A parliament where the UK, with 73 out of 751 seats clearly has no influence whatsoever.

Of course, it would be far better if such a process could be restricted to legislation that directly affects trading. Some EU legislation is quite unnecessary in order to have a trading relationship. No doubt, though, we will be asked to implement lunatic bills to make transgender toilets compulsory as well as daft rulings on the size and shape of potatoes and carrots.

In the name of an orderly Brexit, though, our MPs may have to hold their noses and just pass these ‘alignment’ bills as far as possible. Indeed, it’s difficult to see how an alignment bill would fail to be passed, as the Europhiles will surely support such legislation and, pragmatic Eurosceptics will also fall in line, in the hope they can repeal such legislation further down the line.

Further down the line, our relative strength in the relation to the EU may improve as we gradually build up more trade outside the EU. When that does happen, we can start to remove some of the dafter legislation we’ve had to implement post 2019.

From: John Cole, Oakroyd Terrace, Baildon, Shipley.

MY MP Philip Davies has, on more than one occasion, has forward the argument that Brexit must go ahead because, should it be thwarted, there would be significant resentment on the part of those who voted “leave”.

Mr Davies has hinted that this resentment might present itself in some unpleasant manifestations. To the best of my knowledge, he has never quite specified “rioting in the streets and blood running in the gutters” but there has been an undertone of menace in what he has said.

It is the very poorest of arguments for a policy that it must be proceeded with because those who got it wrong in the first place are likely to kick off big style if it is not proceeded with.