YP Letters: Democracy and Brexit put on trial by judges

I AM beginning to wonder if we live in a democratic country or not. Consider when the EU referendum vote was announced, the Remainers sought a judicial verdict to overturn what was a democratic vote for the people by the people.

The outcome was a “pass the buck” referral to Parliament, yet it does not dismiss the fact that those who asked a judge to determine the future of the country were in essence asking one person to give favour to their wants, and over-rule the majority verdict of the populace. Is this democracy?

Another example and I sympathise greatly over this issue. I am anti-fracking. Yet, because the democratically-elected persons who by a majority vote allowed fracking to begin, have now been castigated and the anti-fracking brigade have taken this issue to court, hopefully asking one person to favour their opposition. Again, is this democracy?

Why bother with local elections, or national elections, Parliament and Prime Ministers, because it seems regardless of the results from all these official and democratic elections, the losers can simply apply to the judiciary to ask for an overturning of the result?

From: Mike Lacey, Hill Rise, Elloughton, East Yorkshire.

DURING the 1960s I served at sea in the Merchant Navy. I kept many of the letters I received from family and friends, and today I was looking through some of them.

One of the letters sent to me on my ship in Australia by my father and dated March 22, 1968, included the following: “You have probably heard that the country is still in a mess and that we have had a hard Budget with all sorts of indirect taxes and increases, including 4d on a gallon of petrol (equivalent to 0.37p on a litre today) and an increase to £25 a year for a road fund licence, which will make life even more difficult for everyone.

“It means that the prices of lots of goods are increased. One of these days, perhaps, everything will sort itself out, and this ‘seventh heaven’ that numerous politicians have been promising us for the past 20 years will eventually arrive.

“There is no doubt that everyone is living in a more affluent state than was our lot before and just after the war, but I suppose affluence, like poverty also has its problems.

“The strange thing is that while everyone appears to have plenty of money to spend, and is spending it, the country is we are told in a bad – and sometimes very bad – financial state, and that if we don’t do something about it pretty soon everybody will be down the drain.”

Three years later we joined what was then the Common Market.

When the letter was written, I was 25. Now I’m 74 and I have to ask, does anything ever change?

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

TWO former Prime Ministers have made some telling comments. In discussing the Brexit vote Sir John Major says that “the tyranny of the majority” should not apply in a democracy.

He obviously prefers the tyranny of the minority which explains why he never gave us a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 which gave birth to the euro that has caused low growth and high unemployment across Southern Europe.

Tony Blair says that he could have held a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in 2005 but did not do so because he thought he would probably lose it. That was the Treaty that gave the EU its current legal personality and considerably extended its powers in a way that many of those who voted to Leave so resent.

Tony Blair also says that Brexit could be halted because offering the public a ‘Soft Brexit’ would make them realise there was no point in leaving the EU and they would reject a ‘Hard Brexit’. Maybe Mr Blair wasn’t paying attention during the referendum campaign, but I thought we had already had this discussion. The prospect of ‘Hard Brexit’ was debated, via Project Fear, and was therefore factored into the vote.

Neither of the former Premiers addresses two fundamental points. That there will be insufficient time to hold a second referendum within the two years allowed for withdrawal, and, that once served, we do not have the right to withdraw our notice of leaving.

From: Arthur Quarmby, Mill Moor Road, Meltham.

NO point in MPs scrutinising Britain’s Brexit proposals because these will be automatically thrown out by EU fury at the prospect of losing their second-biggest paymaster.

The terms which they will seek to impose will be astronomical and horrendous, and what we shall have to do is to face down those impossibilities.

From: Karl Sheridan, Selby Road, Holme on Spalding Moor.

THE doom and gloom from Philip Hammond in his Autumn Statement frankly does not bode well for the future. I must admit that although we voted to leave the EU, it appears to me that we are going to be made to suffer by the powers-to-be.

I have the distinct feeling that those who control the EU will be determined to make it as eye-wateringly hard as they can in allowing us to sever relationships, purely as an example to others contemplating doing the same.

This Government should focus on stopping the financial leakage within this country before inflicting more austerity. Not only that, but it should cancel extravagant schemes such as HS2 and the Heathrow expansion, the latter no doubt infringing carbon pollution figures. Heathrow might be great for business, but at what cost to the rest of us?