Through Brexit, we have abandoned our neighbours when they need us most

We are walking away from our European neighbours and demanding our favourable “Brexit terms” when they are facing danger and real crisis.

France, Germany and Belgium are suffering from terrible atrocities and threats. Greece has been struggling with debt and is now buried in refugees. Italy and Spain also being overrun by desperate people fleeing North Africa through a crippled Libya.

And all we can think of is ourselves and the beneficial Brexit terms we can demand from our neighbours as they struggle with these terrible problems. We even insist that refugees with documented requests to seek refuge in the UK are held in camps in Calais and all over France.

We should be ashamed of our country and our countrymen – we are without doubt the most self-centred and selfish nation in Europe.

Moreover, the tidal wave of refugees pouring into Europe was created in large part by the UK’s invasions and incursions that destabilised the region.

And we simply walk away!

The people of England and Wales do not understand what we have done, undone and begun by voting to leave Europe.

Martin Deighton
Woodbridge

The attendees at the special meeting of the British-Irish Council wanted to secure the best possible outcome for their respective countries from Brexit.

All except for Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of course. She has made plain on every occasion she has spoken of the implications of a Brexit deal that another independence referendum will be the likely result.

For the SNP the opportunity to stir further division between Scotland and the UK is too tempting an opportunity to miss, even if the best interests of Scotland are in all likelihood to be through a UK-wide relationship with the EU.

Keith Howell
West Linton

As a Remain-voting baby boomer reading about the PMI data, can I enquire who I should approach for compensation as the value of the pound falls and a reduction in interest rates is threatened?

David Cameron assured us we were all in it together and now, courtesy of Boris Johnson and his chums, we surely are all in the mess they have created.

Unfortunately though, we do not all have massive salaries to compensate for the adverse impact our living costs created by the combined effect of ever shrinking savings income and price increases, driven by the weakness of the pound against the dollar.

Robin White
Oakley

I found Prime Minister May’s closing of the Climate Change department deeply worrying and sad. I recently saw a video of methane bubbling from the ground in Siberia and thought: “This is climate change in action.”

But climate change is much more. It is the scorching heat that is blanketing my entire country as I type this, and the rising seas that are covering and washing away coastal lands in the US, the UK, and everywhere.

We can hope that the Prime Minister’s shocking move doesn’t mean what it seems to mean, and that the statement she published on her website after passage of the Climate Change Act in 2008 still reflects her views: “I am thrilled to see that after years of Conservative pressure, we have finally passed a necessary and ambitious piece of legislation on Climate Change.”

But perhaps I shouldn’t talk because the United States will be headed in the same backward direction if Donald Trump is elected president.

Carol Steinhart
Madison, US

I am sure I won’t be the first to correct John Wilkin (Letters, 22 July) by pointing out that Britain has a parliamentary party system rather than a Presidential one. This means that constituents are voting for a party’s representative for MP (even an independent has a democratic obligation to his/her manifesto). Therefore, it is of very great significance whether or not the candidate is a genuine servant and representative of that party – and not something to get flippant about.

Currently in the case of Labour, we have MPs who practice McCarthyite attacks and are so snobbish and distant from Labour’s trade union and working-class roots that they wilfully smear traditional “talking back to authority politics” of protest and picketing as “abuse”.

We now even have a leadership candidate who is a former corporate lobbyist. Almost all these people don’t even believe that they should have to face regular democratic electoral scrutiny. Hardly democracy or real Labour.

Gavin Lewis
Manchester

Members of the PLP have been elected by their constituents. If they don't follow the views of the people who elected them, they should be replaced: MPs, that is, not the electorate. Otherwise, MPs are alienated from their base and they do not represent their voters.

The whole idea of British parliamentary democracy is representation.

Petar Tot
Address supplied