Pros and cons of a second EU referendum

Sir, The call for a second referendum on EU membership is mystifying. Surely the use of this mechanism (a complex issue reduced to a simple yes/no vote) to determine public policy has been discredited?

A second EU vote would be against any deal. It would be made up of former Remainers, newly converted Remainers, hard Brexiteers for whom the deal is too soft and soft Brexiteers for whom it is too hard. And what would these “no” voters be voting for? Renegotiation? Continued EU membership on status quo ante terms? Or crashing out with no deal?
Chris Handley
Kew, Surrey

Sir, The fundamental defect with the Brexit referendum was that one of the two options was uncertain, in that it covered the range of hard and soft terms for leaving. Some Brexiteers argued that we could maintain favourable terms for trade and services without EU rules. If those who voted in that belief had not done so, the small majority for “out” would most likely have been a minority.

Any further referendum would face similar problems. It would ask voters if they wanted the deal that had been negotiated. If “yes”, no difficulty. But if “no”? The obvious alternative is staying in — but on what terms? And that would give no voice to those who did not want to remain but wanted a harder or a softer deal. Where the voice of the people comprises many voices, it is not easy to determine what it should be taken to be.
Sir Raymond Jack
Ridge, Wilts

Sir, Rachel Sylvester is probably correct in detecting a shift towards a second EU referendum, if only to settle the issue once and for all. But in order for it to be indisputable we would need compulsory voting — the 28 per cent of the population who abstained last time must be compelled to vote; and, since the result will affect the future of the young, perhaps 16- and 17-year-olds should be enfranchised. Only then could our politicians claim to be implementing the will of the British people.
John E Jones
St Albans

Sir, When I tell a bank machine I want to make a transaction, after I have keyed in all the details I will, as a matter of course, be asked in conclusion whether I still wish to go ahead with it.
Andrew Connell
Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria

CHAMBER CHANGE
Sir, In the long-standing debate about where, when and how the Palace of Westminster should be rebuilt or relocated, there seems to be no debate about what kind of chamber there should be for the House of Commons (letters, Jan 29 and 30). Now that we no longer seem to have a two-party democracy, given the recent coalition and various minor parties — is it not time the adversarial nature of the chamber was abandoned? A model could be the Scottish parliament.

And will electronic voting be introduced? Think of the time saved if MPs voted from a desk rather than trooping out to the lobbies.
Belinda Price
Beckenham, Kent

Sir, In 1968, London Bridge was sold to the US when a new bridge was needed. Instead of costly repairs, why not sell the Palace? Democracy resides in parliament, not stone and brick. Perhaps selling it to the Chinese might inspire them to emulate British democracy.
Andy Scott
Richmond, London

POLES AND THE JEWS

Sir, The desire of the lower house of the Polish parliament to dissociate Poland from any responsibility or complicity in the crimes against that country’s wartime Jewish population (“Go to jail if you say Poles had part in Holocaust”, Jan 29) is entirely understandable. Unfortunately for them, there are recorded cases of postwar pogroms committed by Poles, such as that at Kielce in 1946, in which a mob, including police and soldiers, murdered more than 40 Jewish citizens.

This isn’t the first time and, sadly, it won’t be the last in which such efforts are made by individuals and governments to disregard inconvenient truths or to rewrite history. Such efforts must always be resisted.
Tony Adams
Deal, Kent

THE RUSSIAN BEAR
Sir, Roger Boyes’s admirable survey of the Russian threat (“Russian bear is on the move”, Jan 27) quotes General Sir Nick Carter, chief of the general staff, who in his speech last week compared the present situation with the Russian imperial cabinet mulling over an attack on Germany in 1912: “Leave it for a decade, the hawks had warned in that year, and the balance of advantage would have shifted in Germany’s favour.”

The “Great Programme”, brought formally before the Duma in 1913, was designed to bear its full fruits by 1918 — an unassailable peacetime strength of 800,000 men, with comparable numbers of artillery and machineguns. It was in part a reaction to Russia’s humiliation by the Japanese in the war of 1905.

In turn, the Germans, alarmed by the expansion, upped their own military spending again and began thinking of pre-emptive war. At a meeting of the war council on Dec 8, 1912, Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the Grosser Generalstab, said: “I consider a war inevitable – the sooner, the better.”

Why exactly Germany and Russia believed they were mortal enemies is still a mystery. But it did not help that the Kaiser and the Tsar were two of the stupidest heads of state in history.
Allan Mallinson
The Cavalry and Guards Club
London W1

DONORS’ INFLUENCE
Sir, The influence of party donors was laid bare yesterday (“May faces growing calls to quit”, Jan 30). The actions of a number of Conservative donors — who were said to have demanded Theresa May’s resignation at a fundraising event last week — has mounted huge pressure on the prime minister and those around her.

That a handful of rich individuals can exert such influence, compared with the 12.4 million people who voted for the Conservatives at last year’s election, shows that our system of party funding is broken and skews politics away from ordinary citizens.

The Tories are not alone: the big-donor culture gives those with money a disproportionately large say over all parties, their policies and even their leadership. The ability to purchase political influence is damaging to trust and confidence in our democratic institutions. It is time we had a fairer model for funding politics — one that puts voters at the centre.
Darren Hughes, Rob Cox
Electoral Reform Society

‘HAMILTON’ HYSTERIA
Sir, What am I missing? Perhaps no show could live up to such hysterical praise. At a recent performance of Hamilton, we were infected by the excitement as the play started, but the wild applause and screams of delight after every scene were ridiculous, unwarranted and annoying.
Lucie Salaun Carney
London W5

PENSION DEFICITS
Sir, The questions about deficits on final-salary pension schemes have been highlighted by the failure of Carillion and the bid that has been made for GKN (“Watchdog to be unleashed on Carillion and KPMG”, and “GKN ‘makes clear’ scale of pension deficit”, Business, Jan 30).

An answer is for companies that have pension-scheme deficits to be limited by regulation as to the dividends they can pay to shareholders and the size of performance bonuses for their senior teams. This would quickly focus attention on restoring the finances of these schemes to proper levels.
Peter Maskell
Solihull, West Midlands

FLAT-PACK PUGIN
Sir, While Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, was the chief modern manufacturer of flat-pack furniture, his idea wasn’t as original as some may believe (obituary, Jan 29, and Times 2, Jan 30). The Victorian architect AWN Pugin — who was responsible for much of the internal decoration of the Palace of Westminster — used the technique in some of his projects.
Paul Skinner
Inkberrow, Worcs

Sir, Visiting the UK once, with meetings held at a local Ikea store, Mr Kamprad complained that he had been booked into a five-star hotel when the local Travelodge would have sufficed. The following year, staff booked him into lower-budget accommodation. He complained again — as this time his hotel was not on a major bus route, so he had been forced to take a taxi to his meeting.
James Fielding
Daventry, Northants

CLASSICALLY DULL
Sir, It certainly seems that Wagner attracted much opprobrium from his fellow composers (“Deadly dull music”, letter, Jan 30). After hearing Lohengrin, Rossini wrote: “One can’t judge Wagner’s opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.” Bizet said: “Wagner is endowed with such insolent conceit that criticism cannot touch his heart — admitting that he has a heart, which I doubt.”
Kay Bagon
Radlett, Herts

Sir, No collection of pithy musical dismissals would be complete without mentioning Ronnie Scott on Mozart’s Requiem. On being told that Mozart had written it for his own funeral, he commented: “Well, he must have lived a bloody long way from the cemetery.”
Paul Jones
Nottingham

GREAT WALL HUMOUR
Sir, Eden Phillips seeks to reinforce the popular image of the footballer as a philistine (letter, Jan 30). I remember the West Bromwich Albion tour to China in 1978 and the infamous comment by player John Trewick relating to the Great Wall of China (“Once you’ve seen one wall, you’ve seen them all”).

As Trewick maintained, this was a joke. Another, attributed to Mick Martin, was that he had bent free-kicks round bigger walls.
Peter Sugden
Reading