YP Letters: Labour can't stop Brexit clock ticking

YOU may recall the failed Remain campaign that lost the 2016 EU referendum. More than 200 Labour MPs were at the heart of that discredited shambles, including our local MP Mary Creagh who despises her own constituents for having voted largely for Brexit.

Having been beaten once, the Labour Party, again, are spearheading another vain attempt to in effect overturn the result of the very referendum which they singularly have refused to accept as legitimate.

Despite all the arrant nonsense from Keir Starmer and Chuka Umunna, and idle bombast spewed out by the Labour Party and their deluded anti-Brexit allies in various trade and industrial bodies, there is one all commanding fact which they wilfully choose to ignore in the hope that the electorate can be misled.

Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon gives the leaving country two years to negotiate an exit deal and once it’s set in motion it can’t be stopped.

Triggering Article 50 has started the clock running down. After March 2019, the treaties that govern membership no longer apply to the UK. On the day those treaties become null and void, our trading arrangements with the EU revert to WTO rules.

The UK has no need to compromise on any single facet of its objectives.

From: Ian Smith, Colston Close, Bradford.

THE EU Repeal Bill, which is central to the plan to leave the EU in 2019, will be debated in Parliament this month. That Bill aims to release Britain from more than 40 years of the supremacy of EU laws, and to repeal the 1972 treaty that made Britain a member of the EU. But many may not realise the impact of it not passing through Parliament, being that Britain will remain under the remit of EU law.

But we hear reports of MPs planning to oppose the Bill. Any effort to do so, or to dilute it via a succession of wrecking amendments, would effectively prevent Britain leaving the EU and would fly in the face of the decision Britain made to leave the EU. They talk of a “soft Brexit”, which is a contradiction in terms – one of half in and half out, which is clearly not leaving the EU.

MPs should work to make a success of Brexit, not try to frustrate the referendum result of this democracy.

From: Don Wood, Howden.

IS John Cole (The Yorkshire Post, August 31) having a laugh due to a warped sense of humour, or is he truly so ignorant of the workings of his beloved EU?

In his latest diatribe against Brexit, he states that “we did not give up sovereignty to the EU”. Does he not know then that EU law takes precedence over British law? And that the misnamed European Court of Justice is able to over rule our Supreme Court?

What is that but loss of sovereignty? If we have not given up sovereignty, then why can’t we sign trade deals until we leave the EU?

Why do we have to buy only 900w vacuum cleaners? Why do we have to buy very expensive light bulbs which give off very little light? And all the other stupid diktats that the EU has foisted on us. This is all loss of sovereignty.

From: John Turley, Dronfield Woodhouse.

IN his letter (The Yorkshire Post, September 1), Don Wood talks about the flawed logic of the Remainers, but then goes on to spout a great deal of his own.

Firstly he states that the result of the 1975 referendum in which the electorate voted to remain in the then Common Market by a two to one majority should be dismissed, because the then Remain camp ran an unfair campaign.

But he then goes on to deny that there were any false promises regarding extra spending on the NHS by his side in the 2016 referendum.

Has he forgotten what was written on the side of Boris Johnson’s red bus?

Although I admit it was not a pledge to spend an extra £350 a week on the NHS, it was clearly designed to lure and mislead unsuspecting voters.

Like all Brexiteers, he states that Project Fear was a lie.

This is despite the fact that the pound is at a 30-year low, and that we haven’t actually left the EU yet.

Kim v Trump isn’t UK’s fight

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

THE situation in North Korea is very worrying and the matter is almost insolvable due to the nature of both Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. Kim well knows that if he is attacked by the US, China will enter the fray on his side, so he is behaving like a naughty schoolboy who knows he cannot be punished.

Like any child, he is pushing the envelope to see just how far he can without any regard to the consequences for his people. The blustering Trump has been snookered by China’s attitude.

The only thing that concerns me personally is that Theresa May will allow us to be drawn into any conflict between the US and North Korea.

Cold comfort from Ingham

From: AH Roberts, Harrogate.

BERNARD Ingham is cherry picking again ( The Yorkshire Post, August 30). The way he argues his case, the warming of a city’s micro-climate is equated to that of a vast isolated Arctic region.

Local human activity is the cause of one, but he can’t bring himself to admit that human activity on a global scale is the most likely cause of the other. And milder winters? Oh they can be set aside, probably just part of a natural cycle even though that temperature cycle is “now set on a downward path”.

The pollution, mild earthquakes and the attendant escape of methane gas is of little consideration. If fracking is so benign, why not frack the large reserves of gas in the South and leave the North to its “desolation”?