Madam,

If you will indulge me, I should like to comment on Mr Naylor’s letter (Cambrian News, 12 September) regarding the supposed “catastrophe” of a no-deal Brexit.

My letter to which Mr Naylor is responding dealt with the deadlock in negotiations due to the EU’s refusal to renegotiate Theresa May’s deal and parliament’s refusal to accept the only alternative, namely to leave without a deal. I did not address the supposed drawbacks of leaving without a deal because, until the EU changes its position, and assuming we are eventually going to leave, there is no other alternative.

Mr Naylor refers to sovereignty and suggests the efforts of Remainers to undermine the ability of the government to get legislation through, somehow amounts to the exercise of sovereignty.

The sovereignty which was discussed during the referendum referred to the ability of the UK government to run the country without interference from abroad and has nothing to do with the difficulties the government now faces from Remainer MPs. That is an issue of domestic politics arising because those MPs choose to take advantage of the fact that the government does not have an overall majority to further their own political interests. It has nothing to do with sovereignty and most certainly has nothing to do with the national interest.

Mr Naylor criticises Boris Johnson for trying to implement the will of the electorate as determined by the referendum, but he apparently doesn’t think there is anything wrong with Remainer politicians refusing to accept the result of the referendum because they don’t like it. The purpose of the referendum was to determine whether we should leave or remain in the EU and Boris is entirely right in trying to defeat the wishes of arrogant and selfserving politicians who think they know better than 17.4 million voters.

Mr Naylor also (perhaps inadvertently) falls into the trap of believing that all the supposedly “catastrophic” effects of leaving without a deal are facts. They are not. They are opinions which may or may not materialise. They are completely untested and none of them need happen at all if there was goodwill and a desire to co-operate on the part of the EU, which there is not and never will be.

Leaving the EU is an exciting and challenging event. I am dismayed at how unwilling politicians and some sectors of industry are to accept it as such and to adjust their ways of working to the new circumstances.

Finally, Mr Louvet (Cambrian News, 12 September) is worried about “dishonour and corruption” and seems to think there would be less of that if we remained members of an organisation whose accounts were not given a clean bill of health by auditors for 20 years! Come on.

Yours etc, Alan MacMaster, Barmouth.

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