Chris Grayling is right that blocking Brexit will lead to more far-right extremism – but that doesn’t mean it shouldn't happen

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Chris Grayling is right. But before you wonder if I’ve taken leave of my senses, I should add that it’s only in connection with his view that there will be a disturbing right-wing reaction if Britain makes a move towards a people’s vote.

Having spent three hours on the streets of Devizes, Wiltshire, on Saturday helping to run a stall for our local People’s Vote campaign and finding plenty of support, it was also clear that many Leave supporters are hardening their views.

And Ukip hasn’t gone away. A couple of them were running their own stall nearby, given away shopping bags to their own support when I went round to have a friendly chat.

I was told, in the clearest of terms, that MPs like Anna Soubry were “traitors” because they weren’t carrying out the wishes of their electorate. We all know the fate of traitors, so we’re back in “enemies of the people” territory, with its encouragement to violence.

Nigel Farage and the Leave campaign, far from going away, are gearing up for what is going to be a deeply unpleasant fight.

If Theresa May’s deal fails, Article 50 is extended and a people’s vote is finally seen as a way out of our current political morass, the gloves will be off.

So Grayling is right. But he’s wrong in trying to frighten his colleagues and the rest of us into supporting May’s deal. Not only is he Failing Grayling, he’s also Gutless Grayling.

Instead of giving way to these people in a 2019 version of Project Fear, Farage and his ilk need to be challenged robustly.

To paraphrase Edmund Burke, the only thing necessary for the triumph of such people is that the rest of us do nothing.

Mike White
Chippenham

Chaos in the Trump administration

Mired in lawsuits, President Trump is desperately seeking a diversion which prompted him to launch a fake national security crisis to build his beloved concrete-steel wall. All the major networks have concluded there is no danger at the border and the “wall” is merely a political stunt to fulfil his campaign promise, much like his bogus claim that Mexico will pay for the wall.

Haunted by the ghosts of “huge crowd sizes” to celebrate his presidency and bogus claims of fake news, the delusional president is exhibiting his “superb negotiating skills” by pounding on the table to abruptly terminate his meeting with US house speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.

His behaviour is reminiscent of former Russian president Nikita Khrushchev, who disrupted a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with several angry outbursts, pounding the table with both fists followed by removing his shoe and smashing it on the table.

Meanwhile, an enormous humanitarian crisis is unfolding with more than 800,000 furloughed federal workers whose lives have been thrown into turmoil. Lifesaving critical-care services have vanished. Food inspections no longer exist. Other government agencies are bereft of critical funding.

The house has passed a bill that would end the shutdown without funding the wall, but Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader, is asleep at the wheel, terrified he might offend the messianic Trump. Our adversaries, China and Russia, are gleefully observing this chaos. It is time to end the shutdown NOW.

Jagjit Singh
Los Altos

President Trump chaired a crisis meeting that commenced with prayer. I wonder whether he recognises that the god to whom he prays is understood (Deuteronomy 24:14, 15) to advocate we “do not withhold the wages of the poor and needy”, but instead take care to “pay them their wages daily before sunset”.

Rev Peter Sharp
Chapel-en-le-Frith

Nothing has changed

In 1973 when we went into Europe, Brits presumed, as the longest-running democratic country, we were going to “lead the continent” and show Europe how to trade better with the rest of the world post-empire.

It was a chauvinistic, anti-expert, anti-statist approach. Forty-six years on, with waning influence in a huge EU, we are reverting to an anti-EU cartels, anti-experts and “independence for the nation-state” style.

As Theresa May stated in another context, “nothing has changed”, except the rapidity of our deliquescence.

Mike Bor
London W2

A Brexit analogy

The grownups gave the kids a choice: “Would you like chocolate cake or something else?”

Fifty-two per cent of the kids voted for “something else”.

The grown-ups then discovered that what else was available was slightly more limited than might have been hoped.

They also had a range of different views, sometimes violently opposed, about just what that “something else” should be – what, as they put it, the kids really meant.

One thing, however, was absolutely clear to the grownups: it must be something other than chocolate cake. (They settled on liver; and, while some of the 52 per cent really would have preferred chocolate cake, their faith in the grownups and the democratic system was secured.)

David Cockburn
Lampeter