Those who want to rejoin the EU need to ask these four questions

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

What can the UK contribute to the EU? (DR)

There are a number of people who want the UK back in the European Union, yet never explain how this can be achieved. In demanding a referendum, they are like a dog chasing a car: they wouldn’t know what to do with one if they caught it. Anyone advocating rejoining the EU has to answer these four questions: WHY, HOW, WHAT, WHO.

WHY? Why should the UK be in the EU? There are 206 countries in the world; 179 of them are not in the EU or any geographical equivalent.

HOW? How do you persuade the electorate to abandon the pound and join the euro? Accept passportless freedom of movement. Joining on worse terms than when the UK left (no rebate, for example). And what terms of entry would be acceptable to the EU, the British government, the opposition and the electorate? How do you convince the 27 member states to accept UK membership? It took the UK eleven and half years and three attempts to join the EEC between 1961 and 1973, the first two applications being vetoed by France. Then, there were just six member states who needed to approve UK entry. Today, it would require the unanimous approval of all 27 existing member states. Just one would need to veto to prevent the UK from joining.

WHAT? What can the UK contribute to the EU? I’ve not in six-and-a-half years heard a single answer to this from any Remainer.

WHO? Who will lead this new pro-EU movement? The UK left the EU after 47 years without a single pro-European MP of note left in the Commons. The last was Nick Clegg. But he was straight off to California as soon as he lost his seat.

Now, bear in mind the people’s vote couldn’t even agree on the wording of a question for a second referendum. There’s more to rejoining the European Union than just sycophantically waving the EU flag.

Des Brown

Newcastle upon Tyne

Brexit is worsening by the day

Several years on from Boris Johnson’s “sign anything to get Brexit done deal” the reality of Brexit is now a part of our lives and a bad one, worsening by the day. Johnson’s willingness to say anything in support of the project irrespective of its proberty, a “talent” that eventually his own party could no longer stomach, promoted the deceit of the cause. The true intent of Brexit was the further enrichment of the rich at the expense of the majority. He was an ideal tool used to satisfy the ambitions of his privileged constituency – more lapdog than big dog.

As for the EU itself, we were much its creators led forward by the vision of prosperity and peace nurtured by arguably our greatest statesman Sir Winston Churchill. From a postwar Broken Britain, we became one of a leading group of three powerful and wealthy states with our citizens freely moving in the richest trading block in the world, and our income growing year on year. Remember those halcyon days?

Project Fear is proved almost entirely correct. Who will wait at the behest of Rees-Mogg a full half a century for Brexit’s benefits, none of which he feels able to name? Whatever they are they do not exist for the benefit of the majority of the population. The milestone referendum cannot be allowed to be an eternal millstone. Polls suggest that the public realise that Brexit is an unnecessary, painful and seemingly endless work in progress – and an ongoing impovershipment. There is strong support for another referendum.

Every day we see or directly experience the consequences of Brexit. We are aware of their harmful reality and if we allow them to continue the fault is ours. More at fault however are the passive political leaders who hold the solution to our diminishing prosperity and lost freedoms. If a first referendum is democratic so is a second.

Where are our Churchills now?

David Nelmes

Caerleon, Newport

Lord Heseltine is right

I read Lord Heseltine’s elegy to what we in this country have lost (Fifty years ago we joined the European Union – today I mourn the deceit of Brexit, 2 January) in that short-sighted, kamikaze decision, largely brought on by David Cameron to shut up his strident leavers. I agree with his comments totally. Because many of us knew and this is not an, “I told you so” stance, but a legitimate feeling that this had all the hallmarks of a disaster writ large.

He is correct too that many people, hoodwinked into a dream scenario have woken up disillusioned by the trajectory of this government and our country and the “promised land” seems further away than ever. He is also right to state that the pandemic and the war in Ukraine has muddied the waters of our actual economic growth. But there is a distinct sense and economic figures corroborate this, that Britain is not the buccaneering titan, it thought it was and disingenuously bigged up to be.

It really is one humongous damp squib and it still polarises the nation. The actual word “Brexit” now feels more like profanity than a blessing. So I feel for Lord Heseltine as being one of the architects of this far-reaching agreement and if the government called a referendum tomorrow, the result would be rightly and vastly different and he would be completely vindicated and there would be many of us cheering from the rafters.

Judith A Daniels

Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

Ministers are making our hospitals worse

We hear from the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine that 300 to 500 people are dying per week as a result of delays in emergency care, whether waiting for ambulances or beds.

So why does the government stick so obstinately to the Home Office shortage occupations list, limiting it to skilled workers? Any prohibition of recruitment of staff to care homes from the EU and beyond constitutes a blockage to the pipeline and contributes to the many needless deaths. If ministers don’t start to look outside the narrow confines of their boxes, this can only get worse.

And there’s something we can learn from South Korea. Four past presidents there have been successfully prosecuted for their misdemeanours, admittedly mostly for corruption, but is not letting people die needlessly just as bad, if not worse? We could well do the same here, rather than kicking them upstairs to the House of Lords or conferring knighthoods on them. That might induce ministers to limit the harm they do.

(Dr) Stewart Britten

Exeter

An ode to “O Magnum Mysterium”

One of the most requested pieces over Christmas and New Year has to be “O Magnum Mysterium” by Morten Johannes Lauridsen. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not a medieval carol but rather the work of an inspired composer Morten Lauridsen.

His recordings are now in excess of some 200 albums, five of which have received Grammy Award nominations. “O Magnum Mysterium” is among The Tiffany Consort’s Grammy Awards. A two-disc entirely Lauridsen programme: “Lux Aeterna” by The Los Angeles Master Chorale; and “Nocturnes” with the Polyphony Choir and Britten Sinfonia Norwich under the direction of Stephen Layton.

Lauridsen headed the composition department at USC Thornton Music School and founded its advanced studies programme in film scoring; one recognised as a choice programme for visual media composition students. In London, he is published by Faber Music. “O Magnum Mysterium” European CD by the Nordic Chamber Choir, under direction of Nicol Matt, includes Madrigali Lux Aeterna. There is also an orchestral version and piano reduction by RCM Publishing, an imprint of The Frederick Harris Music Co.,Canada.

Hyperion Records concluded, “Layton and company have here produced the finest I’ve heard among several excellent collections of Lauridsen’s work. None are quite as exquisitely nuanced or sung with such glowing vocal sheen as this.”

“Stephen Layton’s feel for the inner line and structure melts the heart, as does the impeccable, unforced singing of Polyphony,” said a Classic FM Magazine reviewer. Indeed, they wrench the heartstrings and more besides.

Emeritus Professor Kit Thompson KC, FRSE, OBE is an Associate of Clare Hall Cambridge, and Academician of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Clare Hall Cambridge

Swanland, North Ferriby East Riding