An EU vote is democratic

Northfield Court, S10

Cyril Olsen, (letters, November 2), attacks Shaffaq Mohammed for writing about going on the march calling for a 'People's Vote' on the terms of our leaving the EU, assuming an agreement is actually reached more than two years after the 2016 referendum, something proving far more complicated than the Leave campaigners promised.

Like Shaffaq, I too was on that march, because people of all parties now realise just how damaging to our country's economy and well-being of our people Brexit is likely to be. 700,000 people from all over the country, of all ages, political parties and backgrounds came together to say to government that if Parliament cannot reach a conclusion that will not be hugely harmful to our country, then the people, who were given untruthful information in 2016 as to what would happen on our leaving the EU, should be able to vote again when they are in full awareness of the facts.

Cyril and S Collins, (October 27), again complain of 'uncontrolled immigration', when our government has complete control over non EU immigration where numbers of incomers are higher than from the EU. The overwhelming majority of EU migrants come to do jobs, paying taxes and national insurance, and making a net contribution to the economy rather than 'overloading the system'. Already the Health Service, care services, the Universities, and farmers are seeing fewer people coming from the EU to fill vital vacancies, and are very worried about the future should we crash out with no deal.

When faced with food shortages as lorries queue up for inspection at Dover and Calais, shortages of vital medicines and cancer treatments, all our existing EU trade agreements throughout the world annulled and no new ones in place, aircraft possibly no longer having the right to overfly the rest of Europe, tariffs imposed on our exports to the EU, jobs relocating, and problems with the border in N. Ireland, surely the people who believed the promises there would be absolutely no problem with our leaving the EU have a right to say whether those promises have been kept? Is that not democracy?

Above all, there is a great irony that at a time when we are commemorating 100 years since the end of World War 1, which was followed by World War 2 only 21 years later, we are contemplating dislocating the best attempt at maintaining peace in our continent throughout its history, an unprecedented 70 years with no major war; this is when there is already so much instability on Europe's borders, and climate change, requiring massive international cooperation, is another huge challenge.