David Davis’s resignation is the best thing that could have happened for Brexit negotiations

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

One Brexiteer after another is saying we have sold out the 17.4 million who voted to leave the EU. Am I to conclude that these people care nothing about the 48 per cent that voted to stay or the views of the 28 per cent that didn’t vote?

Frankly, I’m glad David Davis has resigned. At best I thought he was a buffoon, at worst a complete idiot. He has been consistently outclassed by Michel Barnier and, closer to home, by Keir Starmer.

I’m not sure if Friday’s cabinet agreement is the best, but at least it represents a solid start to the issues we face as a nation. What matters most now is that we negotiate with vigour and with a realistic view of what we can achieve. I don’t think Davis could have done either so his leaving is a blessing.

Steve Mumby
Bournemouth

So David Davis has finally resigned which, if nothing else, has the benefit of increasing the average IQ of the cabinet, and of the backbench Brexit ideologues, at a single stroke.

It is now time for the government to publish the advice ministers were given at Chequers as to why the model was adopted, so that the public can see the reasons for the decision. Refusing to publish it on the grounds that it would impact the negotiations would be a fabrication and if the government really thinks the EU doesn’t already know, then the government is clearly deluded.

It is also time for all political commentators to ask Brexit ideologues like Jacob Rees-Mogg to explain exactly what their plan is for leaving, how it would work and what the economic impact would be. Their empty rhetoric would be exposed for exactly what it is – empty rhetoric.

John Harvey
Bristol

Last week Theresa May managed to get her colleagues to agree to a pragmatic basis for the negotiation of our future relationship with the EU, making the best of a bad job. Clearly, over the weekend, ministers have consulted their chums in the Tory party and decided what to do next themselves.

David Davis decided that it is worth making the grand gesture and resigned. After threatening to do so on so many previous occasions, surely nobody is going to take much notice this time. Junior colleagues also resigned – but who cares?

It is now critical that May holds her nerve and slaps down any further dissent. What the Brexiteers need to understand is that the prime minister’s proposal is a lot closer to what the people of this country want than their party political dogma.

Meanwhile, perhaps we can expect a tweet from Davis saying “only kidding!”

Bernard Cudd
Morpeth

Why football will not, in fact, be coming home

I have always found amusing the claim by English fans and commentators that a World Cup win would see football “coming home”.

If it were truly “coming home” it would be to Scotland and not to England it would be returning, for it was the Scots who truly devised the modern version of the game as we know it. Without our civilising intervention, what England might have given the world was just another version of rugby.

When the so-called Football Association was formed at the instigation of a young solicitor from Hull, Ebenezer Morley, what he proposed would be seen now as a basis for rugby with extra violence.

Morley’s draft laws provided that a player could not only run with the ball in his hands but that opponents could stop him by charging, holding, tripping or hacking. A more civilised code did emerge but the English game was still mainly a question of head-down dribbling.

It was the Scots who had the notion of artfully distributing the ball among the players. It started with young men, from Perthshire and the Highlands mainly, who gathered at Queen’s Park in Glasgow in 1867. They obtained a copy of the FA laws and amended them to conform with an almost scientific blend of dribbling and passing.

When they invented passing, these men had invented football. Far from being an English game, it was one that was conceived to confound the English because the Scots, being generally smaller than their opponents in football’s oldest international rivalry, could hardly afford to take them on physically.

As Scots we can truly feel some pride this week as England take on Croatia in the World Cup semi-final. To have the English borrowing our history is quite a compliment, the only downside being that we are not in Russia to share in the glory of our invention of the “beautiful game”.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh

You might imagine that England’s win against Sweden was achieved by an all-white team if you looked at the front pages of the media. Almost all the tabloids and “quality” press in print and online chose to plaster Gareth Southgate, Harry Kane, Harry Maguire and Jordan Pickford in a disturbing display of white male blokeyness – “one of us, one of us, one of us”, said a commentator about Kane.

Dele Alli, who scored the winning goal, was almost completely absent, seen in the distance, the back of his head shown when hugging Southgate. It really must stick in the throat of die-hard racists to stomach the presence of black players in the England squad – witness the vile attacks on Raheem Sterling.

Dele Alli scored the winning goal – not Maguire. Yet, he was almost invisible – even Alan Shearer got more front page coverage.

The racist narrative that has swept Britain, Europe and North America is made up (like water torture) of moments like these. A neverending drip-feed of diminishing, derogatory comments, articles and images which create a nasty chain of disinformation aimed at presenting English as white only.

Airbrushing out black players isn’t going to stop this generation of black British footballing talent but it is a major foul.

Fay Rodrigues
Address Supplied

Technically, people don’t go to prison for not paying a TV licence fee

Your piece entitled “Hundreds of women on ‘incomprehensible’ short sentences for shoplifting, campaigners warn” (9 July) carries a quote from Kate Paradine, chief executive of Women in Prison. She says: “Women can be sent to prison for minor offences such as failing to pay a TV license fee (…)”

This suggests non-payment of the TV licence fee can result in imprisonment. In fact, the maximum penalty for watching TV illegally is a fine of up to £1,000 (plus court costs and a victim surcharge).

A custodial sentence may only be imposed by the courts for non-payment of fines as a last resort, where there is a wilful refusal to pay or culpable neglect on the part of the offender, and where all other enforcement methods have been tried or considered.

Jason Hill
TV Licensing

We must make our disrespect for Trump apparent when he visits the UK this week

I’m looking forward to seeing the balloon depicting Donald Trump as an angry baby flying in the skies over London during Trump’s visit here at the end of the week.

Some say it’s “disrespectful”. Good. It’s meant to be. Trump doesn’t merit respect.

Trump’s campaign for the presidency was characterised by his bigotry and misogyny. He slandered Mexican immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers and rapists”. At one of his rallies Trump openly mocked a disabled journalist in a fashion which would have shamed a five-year-old.

As president, Trump has lost no opportunity to vilify Muslims, Mexicans, the disabled and black people, but he described the neo-Nazis who rallied at Charlottesville – a rally which led to the murder of the anti-racist activist Heather Heyer – as “fine people”.

Less than a month ago Trump initiated a policy which forcibly separated immigrant children as young as four from their parents and locked them up.

Trump is not a victim. He is a racist bully whose tiny fingers are never off Twitter which he uses to spread foul insults against anyone he thinks has crossed him.

Trump deserves neither respect, courtesy nor deference when he shows his filthy carcass in the UK.

Up, up and away with that beautiful balloon and out, out, out with the odious Trump.

Sasha Simic
London N16

A better way to describe David Davis

If “Mother-of-three dies days after being exposed to novichok” is an appropriate headline, why did we not have “Father-of-three resigns days after cabinet meeting”?

Michael Clarke
Somerset