DAVID Cameron, he who bowed to pressure within the Tory Party to hold the referendum, has left the building sharpish, exit stage right never again to be heard of. Nigel Farage is still an MEP collecting a very nice salary with expenses and in line for a lifetime pension once he’s kicked out with the rest of us but starting to rattle his cage again. Boris Johnson is keeping a low profile (for now) under the parapet having made an ass of himself (and us) worldwide. Michael Gove, Philip Hammond, Dominic Raab et al are making promises that they can’t keep.

All have told the electorate lies a) in the run-up to the referendum and b) since then. All the main players are conspicuous by their absence– destroy the country, take no blame and leave. The Government is issuing plans in the event of “no deal” – the best plan may be to leave the country. The pound has plummeted, the Europeans who have poured millions into UK infrastructure are being kicked in the teeth – granted we paid a lot into the EU but they have funded projects that would never otherwise have been countenanced by the UK government.

The Europeans are looking at us in bewilderment; mind you, we have always been that parochial island lying offshore. Goodness know what will happen when we leave, the Government certainly has no idea. The UK is no longer the UK, it is the DUK – Disunited kingdom and we are certainly not “Great” Britain.

And please don’t blame the oldies for voting Leave because I can assure you that I did not.

Steve Barnet,

Broom Park,

Gargunnock.

DAVID Clarke, Vice-Chairman of the European Movement in Scotland, and Bill Roger, Treasurer (Letters, August 23) claim that my letter of 20 August contained a factual inaccuracy in that it referred to the European Movement as EU-funded. “This is not the case,” they point out, going on, however, to associate the inaccuracy with the financing of its Scottish branch only and the “referendum campaign and its aftermath”, none of which featured in my response to a letter (August 15) from Alex Orr who was contributing as a private individual and made no mention of referendum funding.

My understanding over many years, publicly expressed and never previously questioned, has been that the British European Movement receives financial support from Brussels. If this is an error, I wish to apologise both to the European Movement in Britain and to your readers.

It may well be that the European Movement in Scotland, presumably a separate body, is unduly sensitive on the subject of EU referendums, since the first of Britain’s only two of these was preceded by an intensive propaganda campaign initially costing some £550,000, an enormous sum of money in the 1970s, and co-ordinated by the European Movement with support from the European Commission. This referendum, like its successor of 2016, was a straight remain or leave choice for a country already part of the then EEC, now renamed EU.

Neither provided the electorate with details and the big lie in 1975, exposed by the release of a Whitehall memorandum under the 30-year rule, was that membership of the EEC would involve no loss of sovereignty. The big lie today, apparently not yet laid to rest, despite the incontrovertible truth that no EU treaty has ever been signed by Scotland, is that this EU Region is and has always been a member of the EU.

The assurance by Messrs Clarke and Roger that “the European Movement in Scotland will support the best interests of Scotland and the wider UK by encouraging us to remain full members … without resorting to misinformation”, employs a plural rather than singular of member and therefore assumes a separate status for Scotland. It is worth recalling the stated function of the European Movement when it was originally set up in The Hague in 1948 “to break down national sovereignty by concrete practical action in the political and economic spheres” – scarcely compatible with supporting the best interests of either Scotland or the UK.

Mary Rolls (Mrs),

58 Castlegate,

Jedburgh.

DAVID Clarke, vice-chairman, European Movement in Scotland, and Bill Rodger, treasurer, amongst many others, are under the misapprehension that there should be a second referendum on whether the UK should leave the European Union. This will never happen, because those who voted to leave in the first referendum will not take part.

Richard MacKinnon,

131 Shuna Street,

Ruchill, Glasgow.

I AM most concerned at the current position of Brexit negotiations, or more accurately, the non-negotiations of the UK. Our representatives have the mistaken belief that we can leave the club and then manipulate the rules to suit themselves. These time-warped politicians at Westminster should realise that Britain in eight months’ time will be a little island to the north of the European mainland.

Michael Morris,

41 Brackenrig Crescent,

Waterfoot, Glasgow.

GOING by your Letters Pages Brexit is taking up much of your readers’ attention and rightly so, disastrous as the outcome of any degree of departure from the EU will be. However I suggest that should the unthinkable happen and the fanatical Brexiters get their way even that catastrophe will be an unnoticeable blip on the timeline of the earth’s 4.5 billion-year history compared with that which would be left by the consequences of a failure to tackle head-on anthropogenic climate change. It is nevertheless important to recognise that there is a link. The unregulated free-market fundamentalism espoused by the extremist Brexiters can only lead to further environmental devastation.

Brexit is much more than a plan to regain sovereignty it is one designed to sweep away environmental and employment regulations in order to further enrich and thereby satisfy the bewildering greed of the already rich.

I do not know who, in the 2014 Yes Campaign, dreamt up the slogan “Project Fear” when referring to what has proven to be “Project totally justified reservations”. With the concept having been hijacked by the “Brexit no matter the cost” Campaign he (or could it possibly have been a very prominent “she?) has a lot to answer for.

John Milne,

9 Ardgowan Drive, Uddingston.

ACCORDING to Martin Redfern (Letters, January 25), the latest GERS figures place Scotland somewhere behind Zimbabwe. Well, what a great advertisement for the Union that is. It’s just as well that Ireland, which is now vastly outperforming the UK, left when it did.

Paddy Farrington,

46 Marchmont Road, Edinburgh.