Resolving the Northern Ireland protocol will not ‘get Brexit done’

The Independent’s editorial on Rishi Sunak’s approach to Brexit perhaps overstates the impact of a welcome achievement – should it ever materialise. Resolution of the Northern Ireland protocol would settle one important Brexit issue among many, but it will not "get Brexit done".

Signing up for Boris Johnson’s slogan is, by association, signing up for Johnson’s Brexit proposition – the oven-ready deal. We have already completed those negotiations and signed a legally binding treaty. That seemed conclusive did it not? The protocol is one of many areas of continuing friction – albeit an important one – and the reconsideration of others is likely to continue well into the future.

Brexit was badly motivated by opportunism and a David Cameron-sponsored folly that should not have happened. It has become a widely recognised act of self-harm founded on a referendum discredited by lies. It has diminished us and continues to do so. Opinion polls suggest that the public has seen enough and wants back in the EU. That would resolve the matter of the protocol at a stroke, as well as many other things as well.

The issue is not how we get Brexit done, but how we get it undone.

We have important matters to deal with both in the UK and the wider world and can do without the stifling encumbrance of Brexit. If a referendum informed by fiction was democratic then a referendum informed by harmful realities is equally so. We should be given the opportunity to “exit Brexit”.

David Nelmes

Newport

The news that Boris Johnson is trying to interfere in Sunak’s efforts to resolve the Northern Ireland protocol row should surprise no one. It was, after all, his approach to Brexit which created the need for it in the first place and highlights how little he understood of the issues at stake.

But what concerns me more is the attention given to the DUP. Let us not forget one important point: the DUP does not represent the majority of Northern Ireland, which voted in 2016 to remain in the EU. It bet on the wrong horse in 2019 by refusing to support Theresa May’s proposed Brexit deal, which would have been far less damaging for all of the UK and would not have created today’s situation. It is now holding democracy hostage in Stormont by refusing to join in the Executive – ironically in the only part of the UK which enjoys proportional representation for a real democratic mandate.

The protocol represents much of why leaving the EU – especially on the terms devised by Johnson and his allies – is so damaging on so many levels to this country. Sunak must be allowed to try and put right the mess he has inherited. If he makes his own mistakes he will be judged accordingly, but it is not right for people whose only contribution to the topic so far is failure to try to undermine someone else trying to put it right.

Charles Wood

Birmingham

The current SNP leadership contest has led to widespread media coverage of the religious faith of the two main candidates. There seems to be a general consensus that faith and politics are incompatible, or at least shouldn’t mix.

This is hugely inconsistent for many reasons.

Firstly, we are told that identity and being true to oneself is everything, and yet seek to deny that to people of faith, for whom belief is their core identity. Secondly, society seems to want to cherry-pick the bits of religious faith it likes, while denying its adherents the parts that are unacceptable to the secular mindset. It’s OK for Christians to run food banks, but not to talk about human sexuality. Thirdly, secularists call out the religious for being intolerant, while displaying their own intolerance.

Andy Brown

Derby

One aspect of the Conservative energy policy was to provide tax exemption from profits on oil and gas, if these profits were then invested into renewable energy sources.

How could so little taxation on so much profit incentivise energy companies not to continue in oil and gas? How much of the vast profit did energy companies feel compelled, through fear of such small taxation, to redirect into renewables?

Margie Elagr-Bond

Inverness

I’m genuinely impressed by the judge’s candor and integrity in the recent verdict against the Just Stop Oil protesters.

The attitude of the general public should follow suit. We need to stop comforting profitable fossil-fuel-producing corporations with taxpayer-funded subsidies. Lobbying firms with close ties to fossil fuel companies should be banned from promoting the industry’s interests in widespread media, we should expose the largest financiers of the nation’s fossil fuel extraction.

It is the only way to achieve the social and environmental justice we need today. It shouldn’t be a partisan position for any media giant to take, especially considering fossil fuel’s role in man-created global warming and thus climate change.

Frank Sterle Jr

Address Supplied

Both employers and employees are being very selective in their choice of statistics during this winter of discontent to exaggerate their respective claims. But no matter how you cut the numbers, it is unavoidable to conclude that during the last 10 years, pay settlements in the public sector have lagged behind inflation. Such action was pure stupidity during a time of low inflation when moderately improved progressive settlements could have avoided the understandable current strikes crisis.

You reap what you sow, and the Tories’ short-sighted parsimony is totally to blame for the current famine. Now is not the best time to make good their mistakes, but it needs to be done and Rishi Sunak knows it.

So get on with it, PM! Dither and delay only pull your party and the country down further.

Tim Sidaway

Hertfordshire