We should have a general election and a second referendum on the same day – trust me, it could work

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

The opposition parties were right to avoid Boris Johnson’s trap of an early general election. Brexit is an issue so far above party politics that it cannot be decided through our broken two-party election system, and that is why we need a Final Say separate to any other issues. For three years now, the government has been unable to find acceptable terms for a deal. Unless its red lines are withdrawn, there will be no change.

Therefore it is time for the country to decide if it still really wants to continue down this dead-end road to self-inflicted harm. Ideally, a Final Say should be before any general election, but if we must have an early election then why not have a Final Say on the same day but on a different ballot paper? No one could then argue that it would be too difficult to stage.

And let’s not forget Johnson’s disgraceful plan, as reported this week, to try to disenfranchise as many of our young student voters as possible by proposing a timing when many of them would be between electoral rolls. Such behaviour cannot be tolerated and must be called out.

Charles Wood
Birmingham

A Cummings referendum

Dominic Cummings knows that Boris Johnson is powerless in parliament but popular with the people. As a game-theory player, Cummings acknowledges that he has lost control of events.

The solution? Cummings rates himself as a master of referendums. He could call a referendum on Johnson’s terms and win. His master will then be unassailable; in control of Brexit and ultimately sitting on a five-year term with bulletproof majority.

That’s how he will sell it to the prime minister: he’ll call referendum on his own terms.

Barry Tighe
Woodford Green

Antisemitism tsar

I am sure we all welcome Boris Johnson’s appointment of an antisemitism tsar. In the cause of equality, can we now look forward to the prime minister’s appointment of an anti-Islamophobia tsar?

If so, perhaps they could start by investigating references in the press to Muslim women wearing the burqa as “letter boxes” or “bank-robbers”?

Colin Burke
Cartmel, Cumbria

A bull in a china shop

The image of Boris Johnson leading a bull tells us all we need to know about his behaviour. He is like a “bull in a china shop”. How much of the nation’s treasure will he destroy before we find a way of removing him?

Richard Greenwood
Bewdley

Blaming the patriarchy

In her article (Will the debate around women’s body hair ever end?), Franki Cookney highlights that 30 per cent of men consider female pubic hair a deal-breaker in a relationship, and blames patriarchal beauty standards for forcing women to remove body hair.

Could that also mean that 70 per cent of men really don’t give a toss, and that it may be women’s magazines that pressurise women to use beauty products to promote the products of their advertisers, and also promote low self-esteem in women to keep them buying their magazines?

No, I didn’t think so. It’s much easier and lazier to blame the patriarchy for everything, and I noted no real verbal attack on Gwyneth Paltrow for her role in the latest genital grooming fads.

Ken Twiss
Cleveland

Finding roots

I very much liked Will Gore’s piece about maps (Forget routes – maps are all about finding roots). I live in the Berkhamsted area (about halfway between the town and Cholesbury) and related to all you had to say about maps and the potential they can offer.

I’m so keen on walking that I’m on the Rights of Way Group Committee of the Chiltern Society and help to look after the northern half of the Chiltern Way.

But please chastise your editorial team for illustrating your piece with an OS map that didn’t include Cholesbury!

Paul Coleman
Berkhamsted