AS the Brexit negotiations get started, to trundle on through the second half of this year, I believe it will become abundantly clear that the UK is not going to win “a good deal” from the European negotiators. Why on earth should the EU make concessions and special arrangements for us when we are the ones who have said we no longer want to be members and trading partners?
When the negotiations are completed and the full long-term consequences are clear – not just in keeping EU workers out of Britain, but in trading, economic and political terms, passports and visas needed for annual holiday trips the Costa del Sol, and the higher costs of both exports and imports because of trade tariffs, I believe the pressure will mount for a second – and decisive – referendum before the divorce is finally effected. Those in Yorkshire and elsewhere in the north and midlands of England will come to realise that they are personally doing much better than they would outside Europe.
But for some obscure reason Theresa May seems to have already decided that no second vote will be allowed when the final deal is known – presumably to keep a sizeable group of her own backbenchers happy and thus her party still in power at Westminster.
But even she must surely realise that the interests of the majority of the British people must take precedence over the short-term interests of one political party, even when it seems the people may have changed their minds? It is called democracy, and even politicians must accept that.
Iain AD Mann,
7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.
THE Liberal Democrats' Scottish conference has heard its Scottish and UK leaders pleading with the SNP to put differences aside and unit in a second Brexit referendum. It is almost two years since the Brexit referendum, and I have been deafened by the silence of the Lib/Dems regarding Scotland being given a place at the negotiation table. The LibDems have had nothing to say about the injustice for Scotland regarding the Brexit vote, in that all 32 local authority areas in Scotland voted to remain. So it is a bit rich for them to be calling on the SNP to unite with them in calling for a second Brexit vote. Perhaps the LibDems should be putting their efforts into getting justice and respect for the Brexit result in Scotland.
Catriona C Clark,
52 Hawthorn Drive, Banknock, Falkirk.
NICOLA Sturgeon's failure to be open about the Scottish National Party's contacts with Cambridge Analytica is continuing to present problems and Ms Sturgeon's husband, Peter Murrell, is now involved too ("SNP’S chief executive to meet party’s MPS to discuss Cambridge Analytica ‘failings’", The Herald, April 23). The secrecy surrounding this issue suggests the person present and the topic covered by the meeting is not one that the SNP would rather be revealed. As it was around the time of the Brexit vote this could be significant.
Cambridge Analytica was being employed by the Vote Leave campaign and the suspicion that the SNP would have contact with a pro-Brexit organisation must lead to the thought that a Leave vote, but only in England, would suit the SNP's wider agenda and indeed Ms Sturgeon lost no time in announcing another independence referendum attempt once the final result was known.
There is another strand to this, as reported in The Herald at the time. The SNP noticeably spent very little on the entire Remain campaign – less than £91,000 when its budget allocation was £700,000. This suggests it was confident about the Scottish element of the EU referendum and did not want to encourage anyone else in the UK to vote to stay, therefore accentuating the divide between the Scottish and English votes. The SNP needs to be far more transparent about this whole affair which really looks like it was very pleased with the final nationwide EU vote outcome.
Dr Gerald Edwards,
Broom Road, Glasgow.
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