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Businesses employ due diligence when making major decisions – why can’t we do the same with Brexit?

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Monday 14 January 2019 14:29 GMT
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Theresa May compares the vote to the Welsh Assembley: 'We've never had a referendum in the United Kingdom that we've not honoured the result of'

When a company is considering making a major acquisition, it goes through a process of due diligence. This is to get more clarity about what it is buying and ensuring there are no hidden bombshells.

It will reserve the right to modify its offer or withdraw from the transaction based on what it finds during the due diligence process.

Likewise when a well run company is undertaking a major capital investment it will go through a staged review process to ensure the project is on track and will deliver the expected benefits.

At any point it can kill the project if, based on better knowledge, it looks like the project will fail to deliver the expected returns.

If private enterprise can incorporate review processes into their decision making, why can’t we do so with Brexit?

We now have far more clarity on what Brexit means than at the time of the 2016 referendum.

We need an opportunity to go back and ask does Brexit still make sense given what we now know about the real outcomes.

Jack Liebeskind
Cheltenham

Do our voices really carry significance?

Today in Stoke-on-Trent, speaking in defence of the 2016 referendum result (The Independent 14 January), Theresa May said: “On the rare occasions when parliament puts a question to the British people directly we have always understood that their response carries profound significance.”

Well, yes, but not in the way she meant.

The significance was that people were utterly fed up with austerity, and a government that seems hell bent on creating a society that works for the few rather than the many.

Patrick Cosgrove
Bucknell

We don’t need a general election, Corbyn

So Jeremy Corbyn reckons we’re all going to rally round a country brought together by investment and a customs union, does he? Hmmm... sounds pretty nebulous to me, Corbyn, I’m afraid.

Not very inspirational either. It didn’t do anything for me when I read it.

What does this mean for the future of our country if we vote for it in the general election he is trying to engineer? And why does he think it’s a good idea to engineer a general election at this point just so he can grab power?

Let me put him straight, the words he should be saying now are “we need a second referendum”. There you go, Corbyn. You’ll get a good round of applause for that, I can assure you.

Chris Bonfield
Address supplied

It is incomprehensible to me that those who are desperate to leave the EU are so resistant to the idea of a second referendum. After all, if Brexit is still “the will of the people”, they will be in the majority and their position will be reinforced.

Surely if the opinion of the majority has shifted in favour of Remain that should be respected now people have an inkling about the reality of Brexit.

Hilary Percival
Gosport, Hampshire

To Leave is to lead

My grandfather, at the age of 14 on Britain’s last sailing warship, died in the age of nuclear aircraft carriers.

I, born when much of the world was governed by British law, am to die when Britain, like our former colonies, is itself a colony, subject to rules made by others. Leave? No, lead!

Simon Normanton
Cartagena

Are vegetarians more depressed?

If it is true that vegetarians are depressed (as has been stated in various articles), perhaps it is because as we become enlightened about the horrors that animals suffer in animal agriculture industries, we cannot help but feel their pain and fear vicariously.

And as a vegan maybe I am even more depressed by knowing the trauma and grief of mother cows deprived of their newborn babies, and the confined and shortened lives of chickens tortured for the egg industry. Apart from that I, and all my vegan friends are wholesomely healthy.

Janine Clipstone
Alberton

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