Dear Editor

I have been monitoring the Parliamentary votes of our two MPs during this awful Brexit mess. Jesse Norman has been intent on there being no compromise whatsoever by voting against all options other than Mrs May’s Deal whereas Bill Wiggin has been flip-flopping, depending on which way the wind is blowing, between voting to crash out of the EU without a deal or voting for Mrs May’s Deal, something which he himself admits is a bad deal. Regardless of one’s Leave or Remain bias, Mrs May’s Deal is a bad deal for the UK and yet our two MPs both support it.

This would indicate that neither of our MPs has read the book by Sir Ivan Rogers titled “9 Lessons In Brexit”. Rogers was a senior British civil servant with a long career of serving governments of various colours. From 2013 to 2017, he was the UK’s Permanent Representative to the EU, a position which made him the UK’s most senior negotiator with other EU Member States. He resigned in January 2017 since when he has written this book which diplomatically spills the beans on our shambolic Conservative Government. I have read the book and our two MPs would also do well to read it.

In his book Rogers demonstrates why invoking Article 50 without a credible plan was such a bad move and he shows the naivety of our Government’s negotiations up against much more savvy EU negotiators. He also criticises Mrs May’s Deal in a number of ways, most notably that it focuses on EU immigration and trade in Goods (we have an export deficit in Goods with the EU) at the expense of our significant Services Sector (we have an export surplus in Services with the EU).

One is forced to conclude that it would indeed be a prudent move by the UK to revoke Article 50 at this juncture to avoid further significant damage to our economy. Thereafter the UK could then reconsider Brexit beginning, if so deemed, with another referendum where any ballot paper should contain an achievable Brexit as one option and Remaining in the EU under our existing terms as the other option. Even if the UK voted to Leave again, this would at least allow time to finesse a credible plan to Leave while at the same time making sensible and bonafide contingency plans for a No Deal outcome thus placing us in a far stronger position when negotiating with the EU.

In economic terms, the EU is our largest and closest trading partner. The Union isn’t perfect, no trading bloc is, but even if it doesn’t reform quickly enough for some members’ likings and it eventually breaks apart in 20 years or so, it is still a better economic option to be inside it benefitting from it and reforming it for the better, and then choose to leave once it has outlived its benefits.

Whatever the case, this whole political mess has demonstrated beyond doubt that we need to adopt a Proportional Voting System for Westminster – such a system would have avoided this mess. Also, that we need to have much greater scrutiny when selecting our representatives at Westminster. Our current selection method, combined with our outdated voting system, produces far too many poor quality MPs and allows too much extreme right and left wing influence which ultimately damages our country. That fact alone requires the electorate to be given the final say on Brexit.

Tony Hull

Herefordshire