YP Letters: Second Brexit referendum is out of question

IT would be nice to think that your excellent leader “No turning back after key vote” (The Yorkshire Post, September 13) could see the end of the futile attempts to keep us in the EU, but I offer these thoughts to demonstrate the impracticality of having a further referendum on the matter.

A referendum on the negotiated Brexit deal would have to offer the option of remaining in the EU, but on what terms?

Even assuming the other 27 countries consented, the status quo could not apply as too much water has gone under the bridge. Could David Cameron’s reforms be resuscitated and would the EU seek to ensure our future good conduct by insisting on what many might regard as onerous terms?

All these matters would have to be reduced to known quantities to enable the electorate to make an informed decision, yet none of them could be resolved before a referendum as their consideration could start only after we had rejected the negotiated deal. Chicken and egg!

The purpose of a referendum is not to allow the electorate to micro-manage every detail, but to make decisions of a constitutional nature that cannot be dealt with in a general election.

That is what happened last year and it is now up to the Government and Parliament to implement that decision to the best of their ability.

Are the Remainers saying that if the EU was vindictive enough to refuse us a sensible settlement that they would be happy to commit this country’s future to its yoke?

From: Michael Meadowcroft, Former Liberal MP, Waterloo Lane, Leeds.

YOUR leading article (The Yorkshire Post, September 13), is dangerously simplistic.

The Second Reading of any Bill is rarely the occasion for maximising its opposition.

As on this occasion, a number of MPs will vote to send the Bill for detailed scrutiny in committee, where there will be a succession of votes on separate items, followed by the same process in the House of Lords, and they will withhold their judgement on the issue of principle until the Bill comes back to the Commons for its final vote.

There are many of us who from day one have seen the Brexit vehicle hurtling towards the cliff edge and are determined to carry on warning the public and the politicians of the great dangers there are if it is not halted.

Those who were mis-sold PPI by the banks were vindicated in some cases many years later. They received an apology and damages. No-one suggested that they had been foolish but rather that those selling PPI had falsified the complicated evidence in order to make the sale.

The same is true of those who mis-sold the case for Leave in the referendum.

From: David Craggs, Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire.

LET’S get one thing straight...MP Caroline Flint did not defy her party (The Yorkshire Post, September 13). By abstaining, she only half defied it, or putting it another way she half supported it. In the event of the vote having been tied, which in this vote had been a distinct possibility, her vote, had she cast it, would have ensured that the motion would have been carried, which surely was what she would have wanted.

There is surely a case for “abstaining” being banished in both Houses of Parliament. You should either be for a particular motion or against it, and vote accordingly.

“Sitting on the fence” is to me a bit of a cop-out, and is almost always done for the weakest of reasons, such as half defying/supporting your party.

From: David Downs, Sandal, Wakefield.

HAVING just listened to Sir James Dyson, founder of one of the most successful international British manufacturing companies and one which educates its own engineers, at its own cost, to university degree level, commenting on the intransigence of the negotiators representing the EU, I now have no doubts that it was the correct decision to leave the EU.

He made it quite clear that UK manufacturing companies will be far better off trading around the world, including Europe, under the established world trading rules. Could I suggest therefore, that he be invited to speak at the forthcoming Labour party conference? Some chance so I put the same question to the Conservative Party as they, too, seem unable to convince some of their MPs, and supporters, about the benefits and practicalities of leaving Europe.

From: Shaun Kavanagh, Leeds.

BREXIT was voted for as the way forward for the UK by its people, not politicians, so their vote should – and must – be respected, irrespective of the desires of the Remainers.

They should stop whinging and get behind what the vote decided, more so when the EU have clown-like individuals trying to dictate to GB what should, or should not, happen to our country.

From: Amjad Bashir, Conservative MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber.

I SAT in the European Parliament chamber when Jean-Claude Juncker delivered his so-called State of the Union speech.

It left me shocked and relieved in equal measure.

Shocked by the scale and speed at which they plan to plough ahead towards a European Superstate. Relieved that Britain is leaving and will not have to be part of a future EU that pulls ever-more power into the centre and away from national governments and parliaments.

From: Barry Tighe, Matson Court, Woodford Green.

HOW does one become President of the United States of Europe? I fancy applying. Anyone can run for President in the USA – as you may have noticed – so doubtless the USE will be equally democratic.