SIR – Francis Lankester (Reasonable and rational, October 31), writing from the standpoint of the usual arrogant and insular exceptionalism of the Brexit-zealot, demonstrates, once again, his urgent need for a lesson in how to find the correct end of the telescope.

Think of the EU as a club, which has rules to which all of its members have signed up, including those concerning resignation from the club. All that the EU is doing during this inevitably fraught, self-inflicted, Brexit process is faithfully to apply those rules.

In fact, the EU has more things to worry about than to obsess over the UK’s unilateral pressing of the self-destruct button. It has problems in the Eurozone and with the outbreak of white nationalist populism in such countries as Poland, Hungary and Italy.

M. Lankester’s use of the word “blockade” in respect of what the EU might or might not do to UK trade can only be the result of a febrile imagination. Nobody else is using such words; and that’s really saying something.

What this is basically all about, as is being widely noted throughout the country, is the technique known as getting one’s excuses in first. In other words, when the UK economy and living standards significantly worsen, and rather unpleasant things hit the fan, Mr Lankester et al will be able to say that it’s not because we left the EU, but because all those nasty Europeans had it in for us (“Infamy, infamy,” etc.).

The rotters would not let us break the rules which we had agreed; and, worse, had the nerve to view cherry-picking, and having a cake and eating it, as totally unrealistic.

And all that is before we come anywhere near the very serious problem of Northern Ireland’s trade and peace. However, we English may cheerfully dismiss these concerns, may we not?

David Barlow  

Worcester