Letters: Theresa May knew that this deal did not embody the Brexit that the referendum demanded

SIR – Theresa May has been trying to steamroller through a “deal” that would be the worst of all possible worlds. 

The leader of the Conservative Party continually lied by saying that the “deal” delivered the Brexit I voted for in 2016 when it blatantly doesn’t. She was well aware of this fact, having laid down the fundamentals of the Brexit that I did vote for in her speeches at Lancaster House and Mansion House.

The deliberate lack of any serious planning for a no-deal situation has been a dereliction of duty by the Government – the results of which Mrs May has been cynically using as a lever to get MPs to support her “deal”. This is blackmail.

Mrs May’s behaviour at the Cabinet meeting was disgraceful and I applaud the subsequent resignations of Dominic Raab and Esther McVey. It is time for democracy to re-emerge in government after the bullying tactics and secrecy used by Mrs May.

If, as a result of all this, we endure five years of Corbyn, at least this has an end date – unlike the backstop.

Geoff Neden
Diddlebury, Shropshire

SIR – Your leading article (November 15) confirms my view that to regard the draft agreement as a “temporary” concession would be to delude ourselves. There is no get-out clause that we might exploit. 

The second option of accepting the draft, so as to put it to bed, is the ostrich approach and would be a complete abdication of MPs’ responsibilities; it is unthinkable.

The third – to ditch the draft and walk away from the EU negotiations – is probably the most difficult, but that is no reason for not taking it.

We do desperately need a true leader who is prepared to listen to the electorate, keep their promises and stand up for our democratic rights. The draft appears to spell out a way forward that is not only repugnant to many Britons but would also condemn us indefinitely to subservience. We have proudly resisted that for almost a millennium and this is no time for craven surrender.

I shall be urging my MP to reject the draft and to elect a new leader on whom we can rely to see us through this constitutional crisis.

Air Commodore M J Allisstone 
Sidlesham, West Sussex

SIR – It seems that Theresa May and her coterie of misguided advisers were the only people in the country who believed that the EU was acting in good faith.

If they could not see that the EU in the two years from March 29 2019 would start making “regulations” to favour EU firms and severely disadvantage UK firms, then they were beyond naive. 

The UK has broken no laws nor breached any EU treaty. It has simply exercised its right to invoke Article 50. 

So, for what, exactly, are we being “punished”?

Andrew Perrins
Measham, Leicestershire

SIR – Yesterday surely had to be the most shameful day in politics.

The Prime Minister showed she was prepared to sell this country down the river, just to try to keep her job.

John Porter 
Poole, Dorset

SIR – Mrs May’s deal reminded me of Dunkirk. Without the boats.

Mick Ferrie
Mawnan Smith, Cornwall

SIR – To lose one Brexit Secretary may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Helen Wynne-Griffith
London W8

SIR – We really don’t need to read a 500-plus page document to see whether we have a good deal or not. The resignation of the Brexit Secretary says it all.

Peter Higgins
West Wickham, Kent

SIR – The awful truth is that this deal probably is the best deal that the UK could have negotiated with the EU. That is an institution only interested in furthering its power and hidebound by rules. It offered David Cameron a deal so bad that the country rejected it. It has offered Theresa May an even worse one.

Richard Tweed
Croydon, Surrey

SIR – You can be confident that, when Guy Verhofstadt describes Theresa May’s Brexit deal as “fair’’, we have been well and truly turned over.

Carol Rispin
Hessle, East Yorkshire

SIR – What a pity the Chancellor decided not to spend money preparing for a no-deal Brexit. What a lot of bother he could have saved his Prime Minister.

Earl of Ronaldshay
Richmond, North Yorkshire

SIR – As a longstanding Conservative and member of the local Conservative Association I am a very unhappy bunny. 

As from next March, the agreement locks the United Kingdom into a customs union for the foreseeable future; we can only leave when the EU agrees. We continue to pay in but have lost our MEPs and all seats at the table. The EU decides who will get EU money (not us) and how much we pay. We have agreed to do as we are told and not to compete in any way. On top of all this, we have agreed to split the Union in respect of Northern Ireland.

His Honour Lord Parmoor
Lane End, Buckinghamshire

SIR – For three years I represented the military on the Joint Liaison Group negotiating the return of Hong Kong to China. With no cards to play whatsoever, since the return had already been agreed for June 30 1997, we nevertheless achieved a very great deal. Notably, Hong Kong remained under the Common Law, with its own supreme court answerable to no one and its own legislature. A form of democracy was guaranteed as was freedom of expression.

By contrast, our own negotiators, with the will of the British people behind them and a winning hand of cards, have given away everything, and the UK may be less able to exercise sovereignty in the future, as a so-called independent country, than Hong Kong can as a part of China.

Peter Melson
Droxford, Hampshire

SIR – The dictionary definition of subjugation is “the act of defeating people or a country and ruling them in a way that allows them no freedom”. How ironic that in the week following Armistice day we are seeing that where the Kaiser and Hitler failed, the EU is succeeding.

The one glimmer of hope is that the Government’s proposal will be defeated in Parliament. As a lifelong Conservative voter, I never thought I’d have the need to write that about my own party.

Barry Gibbs
Wimborne, Dorset

SIR – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Business, November 15) says that no large solvent nation would sign the vassalage treaty that Mrs May proposed with the EU unless defeated in war. 

But we have been defeated in war, after allowing ourselves to be led by generals who didn’t want to win. The terms imposed on us by the EU are reminiscent of the 1919 terms imposed on Germany – including the reparations – by victors blinded to everything but revenge.

No deal would transparently be better than that.

Michael Tyce
Waterstock, Oxfordshire

SIR – A travesty of a negotiation has resulted in a travesty of a draft agreement, all managed by a travesty of a prime minister. 

Graham Best
Oundle, Northamptonshire

SIR – When I was a teenager the philosophy of the day was Existentialism, the basis of which is to live life without compromise. However, life has taught me a different lesson. Trust is the commodity that allows civilised communities to exist and thrive. For trust to survive, there must be compromise. I’m afraid Mrs May took trust and compromise to a level unsurpassed since Chamberlain. 

Our only hope is that the democratic nature of our Parliament will put right this most dishonourable of agreements.

Peter Gilmartin
Gloucester, Gloucestershire

SIR – What an absolute shambles! This is what you get when you have a group of people negotiating something of which they are not convinced in the first place. At the top of the pile, Theresa May, who has put obstacles in the way from the word go, and the Civil Service, led by Oliver Robbins, which has opposed Brexit from day one. Two years wasted, while Europe has laughed in our face.

Anthony Power
Oldham, Lancashire

SIR – It is now clear that we have wasted valuable time developing a plan based on Chequers, which was never acceptable to most Leavers in the first place.

Chequers should have started the alarm bells ringing that this Prime Minister was never going to deliver. That was the time to change leadership and direction.

We are left with an invidious choice – a bad deal, leaving without a deal or, the unthinkable, no Brexit.

Who knows where next?

Wesley Hallam
Ubley, Somerset

SIR – The next Brexit Secretary should be someone with a background in quantum physics. Such a person would have the skills to deliver the necessary Irish border which is both there and not there at the same time.

Ian Cummins
Hartley, Kent

SIR – Far from his reported desire to return to politics, possibly as foreign secretary, David Cameron should be hanging his head in shame, and apologising to the country for the “legacy” of chaos he has left.

Penelope Escombe
Brigstock, Northamptonshire

SIR – If and when Italy defaults will we be expected to contribute to the bail-out?

Alistair Bishop
Northwood, Middlesex

SIR – In 1972, Parliament debated the European Communities Bill, which was officially opposed by the Labour Party. “However, faced with the possible collapse of their Government, most of the Conservative ‘Anti-Marketers’ gritted their teeth and walked through the Aye lobby” (The Great Deception, by Christopher Booker and Richard North). The Second Reading of the Bill passed by the narrowest of margins – 309 to 301.

The major difference this time is that while the Heath administration had no public mandate to take us into the EEC, the May administration has had a clear direction from the people of this country in a popular vote to take us out of the EU. Whatever Mrs May has been up to, it certainly is not democracy.

Peter Crawford
Sheffield, South Yorkshire

SIR – Alexa, is this a good deal?

Vic Storey
Dereham, Norfolk

SIR – No deal and a return to monarchy, with a new royal yacht, is the answer.

Michael Groom
Teffont Evias, Wiltshire