We have come together across party lines to demand a vote on Brexit – why can’t MPs do the same?

Dear all parliamentarians,

We, the undersigned, are the representatives of young activists from across the political spectrum.

We don’t agree on many things, except that Brexit will be a disaster, both for our country and our respective parties.

The recent elections show a clear trend; parties promising a final say on any Brexit deal are doing well, as are the Brexit Party.

No one can “out-Brexit” Nigel Farage, and we believe it would be foolish to try.

The contradictory and undeliverable promises of Brexit have meant that politics has been in deadlock for three years. The many issues that young people and students want solving – housing, knife crime and our climate crisis – have not been addressed because of this.

The undeliverable promises of Brexit have hurt politics, but worst of all, they will hurt young people’s futures.

So we urge parliamentarians to follow young people’s example: work across party lines, and come together around an achievable compromise and then put it to the people in a referendum.

Whatever Brexit deal parliament agrees, it must go back to the people in a confirmatory referendum.

Rania Ramli, national chair of Labour Students

Rosie Rawle & Liam McClelland, co-chair of Young Greens

Dan Hutchison & Gillian Mackay, co-conveners Scottish Young greens

Dan Schmeising and Callum James, Young Liberal chair

Jordan Bryne, chair of Young Conservatives for a People’s Vote

Sioned Treharne and Fflur Arwel, co-chairs of Plaid Youth

John Rentoul is right to suggest that the Brexit Party’s European election vote does not provide a mandate for the UK leaving the EU. Nigel Farage’s party secured the votes of 822,882 fewer people than the number of signatories to the Revoke Article 50 petition.

Tom Hayhoe
London W6

Why are the Tories so obsessed with the idea of a Jeremy Corbyn-led government but seem not to be concerned at the rising influence of Nigel Farage? Some have even suggested some form of cooperation with this despicable man and his party. It speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy of the Conservative Party.

G Forward
Stirling

Both Remainers and Leavers are claiming the EU elections gave them a majority vote, and both sides are claiming a “clear message” from the public to... well, you know the rest.

In fairness, the Brexit Party seems to be the one that can claim the clearest message from the electorate (the 37 per cent that voted, anyway), because it stood on one single issue. Voters for the Remain-leaning parties may have had more complicated reasons for voting the way they did. For example, Green supporters may well have had the environmental credentials of their candidates foremost in their mind.

If we view the elections as a straightforward referendum on Brexit, the Brexiteers won. I say this as someone who voted Remain, by the way. I’m just tired of the blinkered one-track-mindedness of the passionate section of each side of the argument.

And what about the 63 per cent that didn’t vote at all? Are they the indifferent, the confused, the disillusioned, the terminally bored? If so, they’re the ones that won, by a country mile.

Penny Little
Great Haseley

Prime ministers are constrained by the politics of the day while the nature of the Brexit, Westminster’s adversarial character, and the desire of most MPs to find a way around the referendum result, made Theresa May’s task extremely difficult.

Yet she was a hopelessly incompetent premier. Instead of her moronic “Brexit means Brexit”, she should have accepted the result but added that we must establish the possible terms on which we depart, each of which would involve trade-offs.

Instead she brought her Home Office xenophobia to immigration, painted herself into a corner with her “red lines” and wouldn’t let negotiators do their jobs. The result is her successor inherits a much worse situation than she did three years ago.

Rev Dr John Cameron
St Andrews

Some of both Leave and Remainer MPs seem to be acting like the worst kind of football zealots, personally attacking anyone who doesn’t support their team, because they take a different view of how to manage the mess our country is in.

The 16 million who voted Remain and the 17 million who voted Leave are all British citizens, as are all those who didn’t vote.

I voted Labour because Mr Corbyn is the only party leader who spoke of representing all of us regardless of how we voted in 2016. If Mrs May had ever taken that line, perhaps she and our country would not be in the state we are in now.

Personally, I dread a second referendum. Have its proponents forgotten how the 2016 one brought out the very worst of our country’s characteristics? The rise of open racism, the violent attacks, the death of Jo Cox? Do they think it will be different a second time? Will those politicians be screaming for more police protection while ordinary British citizens, young, old, and from any background, continue to be attacked on our streets, as indeed they are now, at record levels?

Marjorie Taylor Hutchins
Christchurch