I NOTE with interest the letter (July 22) from the Radical Options for Scotland and Europe (ROSE) collective. It hits upon the "disregard for the democratic process"; these five words are really important. We have to consider how democracy works, when many people on both sides of the referendum debate were basing their vote on spin and untruths, such as the big red bus with £350 million for the NHS and the predicted immigration crisis.

How many of the electorate really got the hard facts: the importance of the EU monetary transfer system, the healthcare system for people living outside their own country, the loss of research funding to universities, farmers losing their subsidies, human rights and the right to appeal to the European courts? These are all very important and topical issues.

Only now are the cost of losing these things and the previously unheard of divorce settlement coming to light. It is only now that the full story, facts and figures, warts and all, are coming to light.

What the electorate is witnessing is the difficulty of negotiating fairness and equality, the exposure of untruths and myths, the difference that lies between the EU and the British negotiation teams.

Would it be more beneficial to have another debate leading to a more informed referendum? I suspect it would be, as we as a country are now more informed and able to make more informed choices.

The one thing that the electorate did not vote for was a disastrous failure.

Robert McCaw,

6 Hamilton Crescent, Renfrew.

I NOTE the letter from the Radical Options for Scotland and Europe collective. Can we not uphold the result of the EU referendum, but have a second vote about the terms of the negotiated settlement?

What is it that the Brexiters are so afraid of? Might it be that the first time around the electorate only heard two things: a) £350 million per day for the NHS, and, b) control over immigration? Or are they scared that this time the electorate will listen to ALL the arguments about leaving or remaining?

There are many people, who with the benefit of hindsight, now no longer support the Brexit process. Only those running scared would (even for a heartbeat) suggest that we shouldn't re-consider our position. We have too much invested in time, and money, with the European Union to let it go on a whim. If it was not a whim, then the second referendum would prove the point emphatically.

Francis Deigman,

12 Broomlands Way, Erskine.

JOHN Foster and others claim (Letters, July 22) that resistance to the result of the EU referendum represents “a disregard for the democratic process”.

They appear to assume that democracy is embodied in the outcome a one-off vote with a threshold of 50 per cent plus one. That is very questionable. If democracy is to be understood in terms of the will of the people, then it needs to be asked what establishes the will—the settled will, in Donald Dewar’s phrase—of the people.

In the case of an individual person, we certainly don’t identify a person’s will with what they may say they want on a single occasion, especially on major and more or less irreversible matters. We look for evidence of long-term preference grounded in knowledge and understanding. That is why, in the matter of assisted death, any sensible proponent insists that a one-off expression of preference isn’t enough to be sure that this is what the patient genuinely judges to be best for himself or herself, since it could be the result of a mere passing mood or misunderstood information: there must be repeated affirmations over a substantial period of time.

Applying this to the case of a people, a one-off referendum in which 50 per cent plus one is taken as decisive is not a reliable indicator of the settled will of the people. It is at best the expression of the mood of the moment, perhaps influenced by all sorts of accidental factors. That is why many organisations (including, I understand, the SNP) require a two-thirds majority for major constitutional change, for if two-thirds of a population vote for something, it is reasonable to conclude that another referendum would still yield a majority for that particular course and that that is the people’s settled will.

Paul Brownsey,

19 Larchfield Road, Bearsden.

ALTHOUGH the British mandate for Brexit was the centrepiece for the Left case for Brexit outlined on Saturday (Letters, July 22) I will instead focus on two issues, that of nationalisation, also raised by the authors, and another they avoided, a post-Brexit trade deal with the United States.

Their claim that EU membership precludes a nationalised rail service is as credible as a Donald Trump White House press release. Unless of course I was imagining it, earlier this month I travelled on the French nationally-owned SNCF from Nimes to Marseilles and back again.

My second point also concerns President Trump, this time as deal maker – with a trade deal brokered, not just by the US Government, underpinned by a huge and in part already deregulated economy, but led by an “America First” presidency.

The outcome of this deal as with most Trump deals will not be pretty, whether negotiated by Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn.

On the other hand the Corbyn Labour Party has pledged to ensure that conventional military expenditure will ensure Britain’s expeditionary orientated armed forces are “properly” equipped. They had better be ,because there will be no deal with Mr Trump unless and until Britain pledges that there will be British boots on the ground in whatever turns out to be America’s next foreign adventure.

Bill Ramsay,

Albert Avenue, Glasgow.

READING the letters from the secretary of Radical Options for Scotland and other correspondents concerning nullification of the Brexit referendum, I am struck by two points.

In the first place the referendum was created by disputes in the Bullingdon set in the Tory Party, and the campaign fuelled by lies and distortions. Remember the big red bus – £350 million per week for the NHS, for example?

In the second place despite Jeremy Corbyn’s support for Leave, Scotland voted 62 per cent for Remain, but the English majority took us out willy nilly.

There is a saying “the past is another country” – Scotland in Labour eyes, is another one too.

Jim Lynch,

42 Corstorphine Hill Crescent, Edinburgh.