The UK is acting like a selfish child over Brexit
Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Listening to the UK side of the Brexit negotiations is painful. A parallel situation might be where a 10-year-old child screams at his parents to be allowed to drive their car. When the parents, desperate for a moment of peace, jokingly acquiesce to his tantrum, he discovers he has no idea how to drive, or even see over the steering wheel. Being too proud or stupid to realise, he continues trying, eventually starting the engine. Before his parents realise that the child has locked himself inside the car and they are powerless to stop him, the child drives off and ends the short, selfish journey in a disastrous crash.
Matt Minshall
Norfolk
Shifting power back to the people
We always learn more from our defeats than we do from victory and after the decades in which the fiscal orthodoxy and top-down managerialism which guided New Labour ended, Chuka Umunna has now found the insight to celebrate the broad nature of the Labour family.
We don’t have to dig back much further than the immediate post-war years to see evidence that comrade Umunna is in tune with Labour’s better instincts. Labour’s 1943 conference came within a hair’s breadth of agreeing a motion that would have restored the rights of communists to speak, vote and stand for Labour Party office, which were lost in the carnival of reaction following the betrayal of the 1926 general strike.
Where he is wrong is in the suggestion that “dependency” on the state denies individual agency. The main lesson from the reforming Attlee government is that even limited command of state power and ownership of the means of production, exchange and distribution shifted a measure of power and agency to the people. Labour didn’t complete the socialist project but now, under new leadership, we can envisage a state which enables us rather than the wealthy.
Nick Wright, Communist Party
Address supplied
The irony of politicians
I was heartened by Rabbil Sikdar’s positive spin on Tony Blair and the legacy of New Labour. No, Blair was by no means perfect. But would the other Tony (Benn), whose saintly reputation Sikdar rightly questions, have done any better?
Personally, I always found it monumentally ironic that Benn would show up at the Glastonbury Festival year after year to address crowds of adoring young music fans, given that as postmaster general in the Wilson government of the 1960s he personally orchestrated a relentless crusade against pirate radio.
This same pirate radio – operating perfectly legally from outside British territorial waters until Benn rewrote the rule book – played a massively important role in kick-starting the music revolution of the 1960s and with it doing much to boost Britain’s international post-war profile, likewise its tottering balance of payments. None of this mattered to Benn, whose only concern was that these “cheeky” pirates were interfering with the status quo and (shock, horror) enacting a dastardly wheeze to avoid paying tax.
For all his immense personal charm (which I can vouch for, having met him a couple of times), politically Benn was an ideologue at heart with a worrying intolerance for dissent and non-conformity. The living embodiment of the Glasto’ spirit he most certainly was not, no matter how pally he was with the likes of Michael Eavis and Billy Bragg.
Rob Prince
Address supplied
We knew about the horrors of concentration camps as they were happening
It is not true, as Joe Sommerlad wrote, that the extermination of millions of people was only known after Auschwitz was liberated in 1945.
To give only one piece of evidence, Victor Gollancz wrote a pamphlet “Let My People Go” which sold more than 100,000 copies in Britain in January 1943. In the pamphlet he explained that between one and two million Jews had already been killed, and that the remainder of the six million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe would soon meet the same fate. The camps at Treblinka, Belzoc and Sobibor were described as extermination camps.
It is not that easy to understand how someone might have not grasped this by 1945, but more difficult to see how 72 years later it is still missed.
Victor Leser
London
A complete joke
The Tories have shown just how divided they are. The level of bickering and backstabbing leads one to think they deserve each other. Sad that it is also damaging the nation and making us a laughing stock.
Arthur Streatfield
Bath
Lament for Enfield
Poor Enfield High Road so forlorn,
Now vacant shops its length adorn.
Where once were vibrant shops a’plenty
Now stand shells, all grim and empty.
With shattered glass and taped up panes,
The frontage shabby – so , who gains?
No-one gains – all are losers,
Council coffers, shoppers, choosers.
With rents and business rates so high,
How can any venture fly?
Why won’t the council try to nourish
Fledgling business keen to flourish?
They forced the cycle lane scheme through
When most opposed it – this they knew.
They’re stubborn, blinkered, those in power,
But very soon will come the hour
Of reckoning... elections soon;
For Labour, will it be high noon?
This council told the public porkers
So they could at least remove the orcas.
To compensate in some small way
For ignoring what us voters say.
Christine Williams
Enfield
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments