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Your support makes all the difference.Boris Johnson’s plan to hold back the £39bn owed to the EU is pathetic coming from one of those most personally responsible for wasting nearly three times that amount on Brexit without a plan.
Isn’t the whole point (if there is one) that a handful of self-serving individuals like Boris Johnson just don’t like being held to account by a greater authority than themselves?
The EU usually holds the foolish and badly-intentioned in check, but thanks to a series of poor Tory choices, it’s all been momentarily destabilised by a bunch of right-wing fanatics. And just look at the results! It’s like Goon meets Goodie on a Monty Python set.
MPs seem quite happy to squander the money we’ve re-created through years of hard work and austerity – just to bolster their own status.
It must be better than having a statue erected in Trafalgar Square, only many, many times more costly. What an ego-wash.
We already trade on WTO terms from within the EU, with lots of non-EU countries, very successfully. There never was a good reason for any kind of Brexit.
Even if a needless Brexit did happen, that doesn’t mean that we won’t still need to trade with the EU.
What do you think the EU will do to to our future tariffs and trade arrangements if we don’t honour our obligations?
Outside the blinkered world of Tory La La Land, it’s the real world that’s thriving – as were we – in the EU.
I suspect that a further reason for this nonsense is that our EU rebate is coming up for renegotiation and they’d rather put us through years of this, and waste all of our money, than admit that they, as a collective, cannot hope to live up to Thatcher’s legacy for negotiation.
Michael Cunliffe
Ilkley
We, the taxpaying public, have no say in who will be our next prime minister.
Personally, I do not believe anyone from the Conservative Party is suitable, especially considering they don’t represent the majority of voters.
Meanwhile, Labour is headed up by a pensioner, from whom we receive mixed messages.
We the public must have a general election, after which if there is no clear direction in respect of our membership of the European Union, should be followed by a people’s vote. In the interim, to provide time, we should revoke Article 50.
The Liberal Democrats will shortly have a new leader, either Jo Swinson or Ed Davey. Both seem to be really down to earth, genuine people.
Richard Grant
Hampshire
Time for a pro-EU leader
I sympathise with Patrick Cosgrove from Shropshire (Letters, 8 June) who would like to be able to vote for a centre-left pro-EU politician.
I am 74 now and lived in the northern part of Lincolnshire until my job necessitated a move to Aberdeen in 1984.
Fortunately, the political landscape here in Scotland is different, without the extremes of left and right England has to endure.
Even the Scottish Tories have a centrist leader in Ruth Davidson and we have a centre-left party in the SNP. The Labour vote has collapsed, and no wonder with the far left in control. We also have a majority of people who want to remain.
I now live 25 miles from the border with England and any pride I may have had in being English is long gone. I look at the quality of candidates for prime minister and despair. Ruth Davidson has been suggested as a future Tory leader but what a poisoned chalice that would be. Scottish independence looks more likely as each day goes by. Bring it on!
Alan Lammin
Terregles
Carers Week
In Carers Week, more needs to be done to improve carers’ rights, starting with the pitiful level of carer’s allowance (currently £66.15p a week).
There are millions of unpaid carers, and roughly 600 people a day give up work to look after someone, often care workers themselves.
Private care homes rip off the taxpayer, indeed the chancellor owns shares in one of the biggest. Yet care home beds have shrunk by 10,000.
Many care workers suffer assaults from clients due to the conditions they suffer. The care white paper is constantly delayed, why?
Increase carers’ benefits, to at least the living wage, otherwise the NHS will drown.
Gary Martin
London E17
‘Currently recycling’
I know the UK is socially and politically constipated by Brexit as the US is by Trump, but if I read one more supermarket’s plastic-wrapped package label that says not “currently” recyclable, or under the recycling symbol “we’re working on it” when something hasn’t been recyclable for years, you may find me “currently recycling” my lunch in a supermarket aisle.
The verbal packaging of packaging needs to be made illegal – if it is not already under trading misrepresentation legislation.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
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