The Spectator

Letters | 10 January 2019

issue 12 January 2019

The changing EU

Sir: If, as Frederik Erixon writes, ‘there is a strange pre-revolutionary atmosphere in Brussels’ and ‘power will be handed back from Brussels to the nation states’ (‘The Last Heave’, 5 January), isn’t this what we have wanted and shouldn’t we delay our Brexit negotiations in order to see what happens?

The Brexiteers have always said that the EU, its immigration policies and the euro are not sustainable. After the elections across Europe in 2019 the forces for change will be greater than David Cameron found. Surely we need to combine with other like-minded nations, as we have done in the past, to strengthen the forces demanding change rather than walking away, leaving us unable to influence what happens in Europe?

Any subsequent UK referendum would relate to a different EU to the one we voted against in 2016.
Peter Bartram

Tadworth, Surrey

Populists are not extremists

Sir: I’m slightly sick of the word ‘populist’ being used to suggest some sort of extremist (‘The Last Heave’, 5 January).

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