Winston Churchill once said: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” The Brexit campaign was run by multimillionaires who loathed regulation, and they persuaded people who appeared to have not been educated about politics or economics at school, or received alternative views or information from trade unions, to vote leave (‘There’s no jobs’: struggle and regret in a Welsh town that backed Brexit, 21 June).
There was, and is, a lot wrong with the EU, but the lies told about what membership really meant were the biggest assault on facts and truth in British political history. That is continuing today under the Reform UK and Restore Britain banners, which have “normalised” the type of language that got Enoch Powell sacked by Ted Heath.
Philip Clayton
London
Brexit may not be a proximate cause of Keir Starmer’s demise, but it is an underlying one. The vote to quit the EU ripped through party lines, leaving both the Tories and Labour internally fractious and unwilling to face the basic truth that the huge and permanent loss of tax receipts to the exchequer that is straining the provision of public goods cannot be remedied by Labour’s warmly worded side deals with Europe any more than it could by the Tories’ fatuous appeals to global Britain.
Perhaps, on the 10th anniversary of that dismal referendum, Starmer’s replacement will acknowledge that we must at least start making the case for a return to the single market and eventually for membership of the EU, where we belong.
Dominic Brett
Fritchley, Derbyshire
Given the forced resignation of such a thoroughly decent man on 22 June, and 23 June being the anniversary of the Brexit vote, should we not commemorate those dates as Days of National Regret – balmy days of summer when we shot ourselves collectively in the feet? We could acknowledge those days by getting our heads examined.
Alan Payling
Babbacombe, Torquay
On this Brexit anniversary, the question I would most like to hear leavers honestly and precisely answer is: why did we have a referendum in 2016?
David Robson
London