Is a second referendum on the EU really what Britain needs?

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

If a referendum were to be held at all it should have required at least a two thirds majority (EPA)

Referendums have always been alien to Britain’s representative parliamentary democracy. It may be a flawed system, but we choose MPs to make decisions for us, and we use each election to throw out the party in power if things have not gone well.

Any criticism of this system may be justified, but referendums are a gift for demagogues and prey to passing populist whims.

We’ve already seen it happening. David Cameron should never have had a referendum in the first place, not least just as a device to gag the Eurosceptics within the Tory Party. After the Scottish independence referendum, I’m sure he thought he would walk an EU membership vote, and he made little effort to persuade the electorate of the enormous economic, social and cultural benefits that the UK had enjoyed within the EU.

If a referendum were to be held at all it should have required at least a two-thirds majority, which most other democracies insist on before major constitutional change. Finally, having lost, Cameron should have had the guts to confirm that it was only a consultative vote and that the winning margin was far too slim for making such an historic and momentous change to the UK’s constitutional arrangements.

Of course, even many Remainers will now have their reservations about attempting to return to the EU fold, with yet more upheaval and inevitably on less advantageous terms than we previously enjoyed. It makes you wonder if a second referendum is really what Britain needs. If it does happen it will be when more of the elderly (I am 82), who voted with a blinkered nostalgia for Britain’s “glorious” past as a great world power, have left the scene.

Gavin Turner

Norfolk

We are long overdue a government that cares

We have learned from the latest YouGov poll that the UK has had enough of “Brexit“.

Brexit was a project launched by a Tory prime minister who gambled country for party. The country staked him and continues to fund the loss.

There are no “leavers or remainers” – we are all, willingly or not, leavers. There are now a dwindling minority who wish to stay out and a growing majority who wish to rejoin. Remoaners as a descriptor is as dead as Brexit.

The angst over the “democratic” cannon stand in the way of rejoining. The traditional route is for a project to be included in a manifesto. Rejoining the EU could be achieved in less time than we have been isolated from it by a general election giving a clear mandate authorising it unequivocally. A mandate given to a government committed to the welfare of the country. Something long overdue.

That requirement rules the Tory party out.

David Nelmes

Newport

There is no easy answer for the migrant crisis

I have noticed in the latest attacks on the government’s immigration policies by contributors to The Independent’s letters page, a distinct increase in the vitriol directed towards the likes of Suella Braverman.

Described as having “blood on her hands” and being unfit for ministerial office, she’s clearly seen as being entirely responsible for the current debacle... the inference being a suitable replacement would change everything. Clearly, many people see the problem in simple terms and from various lofty perches are free to pronounce upon the government’s actions with impunity and without a trace of responsibility for these uncontrollable life or death situations. Surely, if there were easy answers and simple solutions the various nations involved (and the EU as a whole) would have sorted it by now?

Braverman may be hopeless and Rishi Sunak too weak to many, but what they’re trying to do is cope with the large number of people who are desperate to reach the UK, a country which cannot cope with such a demand.

None of us knows (thank God) what it’s really like on the South Coast working with this problem and maybe if we did we wouldn’t be so judgemental.

Steve Mackinder

Denver

It’s all about incompetence

That every opportunity is taken to vilify and discredit the Tories is no surprise.

What does surprise me is the ignorance over the presence of legionella bacteria and how you deal with it.

Legionella cannot be eliminated in practice – all you can do is keep it at a low enough level to not be a real problem. Mostly you do that by using sanitary water systems – hot and cold water. Legionella likes to be warm – not too cold and not too hot. Stagnant is good.

Properties that are regularly left unoccupied are a potential problem and tying up a barge unused for months is a good way of ensuring a nice big colony of bacteria. You can flush and shock dose the system with chlorine to get the levels down and perhaps eliminate it but it will grow back once normal use returns.

Hotels are used to this issue and the only real answer is to either design and install self-draining systems without deadlegs or flush the outlets regularly. On a boat with 250 bathrooms and probably a 1,000 taps and showers that is probably a full-time job for someone.

This problem was probably caused by the Home Office not being in control of its plans and the operator not knowing when the guests would turn up. They should have instigated the flushing after a week at most and continued the testing regime. Even with 50 occupied rooms the problem would still arise if the empty rooms are not regularly flushed.

Even landlords renting flats and houses must do legionella tests – the question is whether they do as they should.

Anyone leaving their house or flat for a couple of weeks in summer runs the same risks.

Yes, it is all about incompetence, but also the British reluctance to spend enough to do things properly and the tendency nowadays to always blame someone else for their problems.

Michael Mann

Shrewsbury

Taxpayer money well spent?

The Independent’s story about the Manea Car Park is hilarious on one level, disgusting if you are a local council taxpayer, and wonderfully illustrates the stupidity of council planning departments who implement “Great Big New Ideas” without first consulting the natives about their actual needs.

However, this car park, however badly thought out, should now be looked at as an opportunity. There is a large area of flat land immediately adjacent to the new car park, that land could now be bought by a property developer, who could build hundreds of new houses.

Ian McNicholas

Ebbw Vale