One more Brexit referendum? We should have two

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

The Brexit referendum did not give us the “will of the people”, no matter how much R Quirk and his supporters may like to think. It gave us the will of the English; the Scots, the Northern Irish and Londoners voted to Remain. We now have the Chequers plan to leave the EU, cobbled together by a minority government bolstered by the DUP (against the wishes of the citizens of Northern Ireland).

The irony now that Remain supporters such as Justine Greening and Gina Miller are asking for a second referendum is that this will ensure the passage of May’s Chequers plan. With the country so divided, and with the expectation that the referendum will divide three ways, the second vote process would be used by both diehard Leavers and Remainers to give the Chequers option as their second vote, so ensuring it is passed. A second referendum should be decided by a two stage process, with the final vote being between the top two choices from the first round.

C M R Pastakia
Chelmsford

To have a referendum or not? Surely the answer is simple – let’s have a referendum to decide.

John Allan
Address supplied

UK citizens are EU nationals

I hear it everywhere now. You have UK citizens and EU nationals. Do people in the UK not realise they are EU nationals as well?

It is sad, you can tell that the effect of 40 years of using the European Union as scapegoats will not be undone so easily. There seems to be an inherent lack of understanding about what the EU is. It’s not some detached organisation that rules us. It’s a democratic institution that we ALL get a say in. Your head of state sits on the council, your MEP whom you voted for sits in the parliament. Finally, the European president has to be nominated by the heads of all member states and then proposed to parliament.

As a “foreigner”, I do not feel welcome here anymore. Me and my family will be looking to leave and settle elsewhere. Not because I want to, but because I don’t want to wait until I am kicked out.

Rob Sorgedrager​
Address supplied

Remainers are not ‘quislings’

I write because I take exception to R Quirk’s letter (Stop your Final Say campaign immediately), characterising those supporting the campaign as “despised, defeatist quislings”.

My father fought for the allies on the North Atlantic convoys and married and settled here post-war. My uncle Jan endured Auschwitz (for helping Jews), and my uncle Albert was honoured by the Americans for helping allied forces when they pushed north into the Netherlands. My Dutch family endured full occupation by the Nazis.

My childhood had a rich tapestry of stories of real events, and quislings were part of some of them. R Quirk, you know not whereof you speak.

The bit about being subservient to “foreign vindictive dictators” is intriguing. They are certainly in the equation but, rather, as the commercial bolt hole that Liam Fox will seek out, doing post-Brexit trade deals with such democratic, ethical luminaries as Putin, Erdogan and Duterte. Characterising the EU Commission in the same way as these individuals is intemperate at best.

I note that actually David Cameron presented the referendum bill to MPs as advisory, confirmed in the chamber during the debate by the minister for Europe. This meant no threshold level was set and the voting franchise was since gerrymandered without demur. The Chatham House speech by Cameron was more about a prime minister seeking political safety.

As for the bus and the £350m. Really? I quote: “We send the EU £350m a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead. Vote leave.” Which “remain myth” is R Quirk talking about? Certainly the bus legend was a lie, and so I suppose it constitutes a myth given that a myth is not real. But I do not recall Remain ever using it.

Philip de Jonge
Haslemere​

Justine Greening’s referendum ideas

Justine Greening (Theresa May’s Chequers deal is already dead. Here’s my plan for a Final Say referendum – and why it’s better than the prime minister’s) proposes a Final Say referendum with three options: Chequers deal; no-deal; Remain. There is no point including the Chequers deal in the ballot as it is unacceptable to the EU. If there is a practicable third option it will probably be continued membership of the European Economic Area while still leaving the EU, as suggested by Andrew Grice recently in The Independent.

There may well be a cross-party parliamentary majority for this solution, in which case MPs should retain control and avoid the uncertainty of another referendum, which is alien to our style of representative democracy.

John Wilkin
Bury St Edmunds

Praise to Thomas Cook for animal rights

In a sign of the times, Thomas Cook announced this week that it will stop selling tickets to SeaWorld and all parks that confine highly intelligent orcas in the name of entertainment. Its decision follows months of determined campaigning by Peta that included more than 100 protests outside Thomas Cook branches and offices around the country, and tens of thousands of letters from compassionate members of the public.

At SeaWorld, orcas who would normally swim up to 140 miles a day in the wild are forced to spend their entire lives confined to tiny, concrete, chlorinated cells, in which they can only swim endlessly in circles. There’s no humane way to keep these complex animals in captivity, let alone force them to perform cruel circus-style tricks for food.

This momentous victory for animals means that Thomas Cook has now become the world-leading travel provider for animal welfare that it claims to be, and if other travel providers hope to maintain a shred of credibility with animal-loving British holidaymakers, they must follow its lead and immediately announce that they, too, will end the financial lifeline they are giving cruel marine parks.

Jennifer White, media and partnerships coordinator for Peta
London N1

The ‘right to die’ question shouldn’t have been decided by the courts

The Supreme Court has just ruled that families and medical teams can agree to end care for patients in a long-term vegetative state. This is in contrast to Noel Conway’s latest legal bid to die a peaceful and dignified death being rejected by the Court of Appeal. The fact that end-of-life decisions are being resolved by the judiciary rather than parliament is unacceptable. Such vital matters need democratic debate and legislation. A significant constitutional change is occurring, in that power is ebbing away from parliament and the executive and transferring to our courts.

James Keeley
London WC1R