Letters | 20 July 2017

Yes to Boris

Sir: Get Boris (15 July)! Get Boris to be prime minister, in fact. He is the only possible candidate for the Conservatives who has the flair, the experience, the ideas and the sense of humour to rescue the party and the country from its current malaise. That he has opposition there is no doubt — but then so did Winston Churchill when he was recalled by Lloyd George in 1917 to be minister of munitions, and again in 1940 when he became prime minister. To sideline him at this time would be foolish in the extreme and a further example of the party’s ineptitude.
George Burne

Woldingham, Surrey

Three-sided negotiation

Sir: Dr Krall’s ‘The view from Germany’ (15 July), records the sadness of Germans and other Europeans at the response of the European Union to the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU. The article highlights two important and related truths, which are seldom, if ever, appreciated.

The departure negotiations are, in reality, three-sided. On the one hand there is the future relationship between the UK and 27 other countries. The essential point for that relationship is that free trade in goods and services is mutually beneficial. If anyone doubts this proposition, it can be proved mathematically through the law of comparative advantage. On the other hand, there is a discussion about the EU as an organisation and what it secures from the departure negotiations. In this regard the interests of the EU are divergent from or in opposition to the interests of both the 27 other countries and the UK. In order to secure for itself benefits beyond any value that it gives to its member countries, the EU has to assign to itself a future importance and omnipotence in order to justify its demands.