Will Jeremy Corbyn take the Brexit tide at the flood?

David Brough (Letters, 25 March) makes the mistake of conflating “an open and inclusive Britain” with membership of the EU. It is quite plausible that a forthcoming Labour government could enact measures that make this country more open and inclusive than the EU. The EU’s response to the migrant crisis has by no means been beyond harsh criticism, and governments of some member states are notably hostile to immigration; the ensuing European parliament elections are predicted to deepen such hostility among MEPs.

We might also consider the extent to which the EU represents openness and inclusivity in the realm of policy ideas: Labour proposals for a state investment bank, and for state-funded energy supply, may well be forbidden by the EU’s strict imposition of “free”-market ideology.

The EU thus, in key respects, arguably fails to actually outwork the attributes it seems to symbolise for many. It should be remembered that the EU is not those nations, peoples and cultures that comprise Europe, but merely a particular set of institutional arrangements between states. Attempting to identify the Labour leadership’s realistic and nuanced approach to the EU question with the Iraq war, an illegal military intervention that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, is ludicrously disproportionate.

Meanwhile, I note that, at the time the crowd at Saturday’s demonstration were singing “where’s Jeremy Corbyn?”, the Labour leader was at an anti-fracking protest site in Lancashire. In this regard, I think Mr Corbyn had his priorities absolutely spot-on.
Luke Hendrix
Glasgow

• Jeremy Corbyn’s idea for Brexit is to have a permanent customs union, single-market deal and dynamic alignment on rights and protections. But as we will no longer be a member of the EU we will have no say if they decide to change any of these things. Taking back control? Far better to stay as we are – in the EU.
Deborah Fuller
Holloway, London

• I know that quoting Shakespeare is often a sign of political desperation, but I can’t help thinking of the lines from Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

In 2015 the tide was the rejection of austerity, and because Jeremy Corbyn took it at the flood he is now leader of the Labour party.

The tide at present is the rejection of Brexit and the flood time is now. Whether Corbyn will again take the tide at the flood we do not yet know. But we have only to read Shakespeare to know what will happen to him, and to Labour, if he does not.
Rory O’Kelly
Beckenham, Kent

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