By criticising the Brexit deal and then backing it, Labour is neglecting the duty of the opposition

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

Labour leader Keir Starmer (PA)

I write in reference to the article by Labour MP Rachel Reeves (“Labour will back this underwhelming Brexit deal but that does not mean we welcome it,” 28 December).

As a member of the party, I see this line, which is being parroted by Labour MPs in advance of another important vote, as an abrogation of the opposition’s duty. Is the public’s response supposed to be: "Oh, well that makes all the difference then”?

I observed the same tactic employed at a planning meeting by a series of our district councillors, each listing the defects they had noted in building development application, before each “reluctantly” voting in favour. For the benefit of their constituents, their “reservations” were recorded, but the powerful developers got their way, unopposed.

Eddie Dougall

Bury St Edmunds

Holiday headache

The House of Commons is to be recalled this week to choose between accepting a poor quality “take it or leave it” deal, negotiated at the last minute, or a disastrous no deal.

There is a small but significant forgotten group whose rights have been sacrificed in the name of achieving the false dream of Singapore on Thames: the tens of thousands of British citizens, who have dependent spouses or children who are legally fully resident in the UK but are neither UK or EU citizens.

On 1 January 2021, my EU citizenship will be forcefully removed from me and with it the right of my family to travel freely with me on vacation to Europe under EU Directive 2004/38/EC.

This is not an issue of migration, residency and abuse of social security claims: it is pure and simply the loss of what many British people would regard as a natural right to enjoy a holiday with family on a beach somewhere in the European Union.

Brexiteers, blinkered by their ambitions, would state that British citizens will continue to enjoy the right to holiday in Europe for up to 90 days and that “all” one needs to do is a little extra paperwork, applying for a visa for my family. These same people, however, have likely never had to experience the process of applying for a visa as a third party national, with the loss of EU citizenship rights resulting in no certainty at all of a visa being granted.  

Thank you very much Boris Johnson for your special 2020 Christmas present of a bad deal that has completely ignored the many British citizens who have non-EU/UK dependent spouses and children, stripping us of our right to holiday with our family together in Europe.

Dr Rob Alcock

Salisbury

To the back of the queue

Michael Gove has warned that re-opening schools will involve “trade-offs”, but I want to suggest that a different sort of “trade-off” should be considered, since I believe that the unqualified “high priority” assigned to older people like myself for the Covid vaccine is misguided.

Of course, residents in care homes and those in multi-generational households should be protected as a matter of urgency, as should those for whom enforced isolation is proving extremely burdensome. However, there must be hundreds of thousands of others, such as my wife and myself, who can cope with the situation without significant danger or distress, and who would willingly “trade” their places in the queue in favour of 50- and 60-year-old school and university teachers in order to minimise the threat to their health and the disruption of our children's and young people's education.

Dr David Golding CBE

Associate, faculty of science, agriculture and engineering, and honorary chaplain, Newcastle University

Government reflects the people

Bethany Dawson considers why voters are still supporting the Conservative party, in spite of all its failings, and concludes that individualists believe that doing little or nothing is right (Voices, 27 December).

Earlier this year, we applauded NHS and care workers for risking their own welfare to fulfil their duty. There were also many examples of the selflessness of community volunteers. We are now told of the 200 or so British tourists who sneaked away from a resort in Switzerland, after having been told they should quarantine.

Nevertheless, the sad fact is that far too many of us Brits are a nasty self-centred lot who voted for a nasty self-centred government led by a man whose prime objective is to hold on to popularity and power, regardless of how much damage is done to others by his lies and incompetence.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

I agree with Bethany Dawson that continued support for this woeful government is completely predictable since the party’s underlying values are predicated on the survival of the fittest. 

“Levelling up” has no foundations in a Tory wish to build a more equal society but as a way of maintaining power, so that the rich continue to get richer.

A neighbour, to whom I was talking in the street on Christmas Eve, was unimpressed by those comparative figures that I presented from other countries where the Covid mortality rates are lower. He suggested that such figures cannot be trusted and that levels of social control “wouldn’t work here”. And yet he seemed happy to “trust” a government that, I reminded him, had wasted billions on a test and trace system that has never worked. A government, moreover, that has not sought to learn from other cultures where such a system has worked but has thrown money at untried providers who just happen to be close associates.

Not a problem: we look after our own.

Graham Powell

Cirencester

Every right to whinge

Perhaps Dr Arthur Smith (“Rightfully Returned”, Letters, 27 December), has become so intoxicated with the so-called return of the “right” to govern ourselves, he has forsaken the concept of due diligence. It was only the prospect of no deal that caused Johnson to accede to what many wise commentators already perceive as being neither in nor out. We have only days to peruse a deal that will fix our economic future for decades. It seems to me the whole thing has been engineered to meet Johnson’s needs rather than those of the rest of us.

As someone who would have preferred the country to remain in the EU, I have willingly had to accept the “tyranny of the majority”. However, having had so many rights taken from me by that decision I will continue to whinge. To quote a notice often displayed in shops that sell pottery, I say to those who advocated Brexit: “If you break it, you own it”.

G Barlow

Wirral

In his letter on Monday, Michael Clarke points out that Europe goes beyond the EU, and mentions eight countries to which his “attachment extends” (“Europe goes beyond the EU”, Letters, 27 December).

It is worth noting that four of these have links to the EU, which we have rejected, and three are seeking membership. That leaves just Russia with which we can identify. It does indeed go a long way beyond the EU… in many ways.

Robert Gould

Edinburgh

Several of your letters urge the rest of us to congratulate the PM on his “deal” and to “stop whingeing” about leaving the EU (Letters, 27 December). I’m not clear why I should be impressed that someone has negotiated me a poorer economy, and a more insular life.

But on the latter point I have endured more than 30 years of whingeing from Brexiteers blaming the EU for everything in life they didn’t like. I plan to spend the next 30 years saying “I told you so”, and blaming Brexit for everything. It seems a fair payback.

Eric Wolff

Royston, Herts