YP Letters: Elementary mistake on the fine art of negotiating Brexit

From: David Gray, Liversedge.
Brexit Secretary David Davis.Brexit Secretary David Davis.
Brexit Secretary David Davis.

SURELY your Blackfriar columnist misuses Sherlock Holmes (The Yorkshire Post, November 16) over Brexit?

While the detective would surely collect his data to establish his theories, the last thing he would do is to divulge his thinking or the data that he was basing that thinking on, until he had double checked. He would then swiftly divulge his conclusions (with much gusto).

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Other such fictional detectives have used the same method. If Blackfriar had understood that, he would have also understood how real-life negotiation is conducted.

Brexit is a large real-life negotiation and there will be reasons why data cannot freely be divulged out of sequence before negotiation points are raised and, hopefully, concluded to the UK’s satisfaction.

From: Roger Backhouse, Upper Poppleton, York.

THERE is talk of a second referendum. It would, in fact, be a third if you include the 1975 vote, but it would settle nothing.

The last felt like a contest to see who could be the next leader of the Conservative Party rather than a sensible debate about the pros and cons of leaving the EU. Neither side came out well.

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The EU and Nato are organisations created to deal with historic problems. Both are now outdated.

The EU’s one-size-fits-all approach, lack of direct democracy and elaborate prescriptions are unsuitable for today’s real problems.

We should be thinking 
about what Europe really 
needs – and it will be nothing like the EU.

From: Don Wood, Howden.

JOHN Cole (The Yorkshire Post, December 16) has now let the cat out of the bag.

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By reading Nick Clegg’s 
book on how to stop Brexit, he is at last admitting that the ‘Remoaner’ camp have not accepted the democratic vote to completely leave the German-controlled EU.

From: A Hague, Leeds.

QUESTION Time on the BBC has been my favourite for years, although Brexit every week is spoiling it. Peston on Sunday is now rivalling it, as tact is used rather than insults.

From: Max Nottingham, St Faith’s Street, Lincoln.

AT PMQs, Theresa May is increasingly impersonating Margaret Thatcher (The Yorkshire Post, November 16). Be yourself, Prime Minister.