Letters | 22 November 2018

There is no ‘good’ Brexit

Sir: David Harper claims to know ‘what the population of the UK voted for’ in the EU referendum (Letters, 17 November), yet no definitive Brexit plan was ever offered by the Leavers. That is one reason why the government, having prematurely triggered Article 50 and recklessly established its ‘red lines’, has been floundering in an attempt at damage limitation. Harper’s disparagement of the single market ignores the fact that any gains from new trade agreements with non-EU countries would be greatly outweighed by the costs of leaving it and would require exports to these countries to grow at a rate that is unfeasible.

He refers to building ‘additional trade agreements’ on the WTO solution — apparently unaware of our post-Brexit loss of EU-negotiated trade agreements with 82 countries (including Japan and Canada), plus pending agreements with 22 countries and negotiations with a further 21 (such as China and India). There is no such thing as a good Brexit: even the government is not claiming that its ‘deal’ is better than our current membership.
David Woodhead

Leatherhead, Surrey

On Britten’s War Requiem

Sir: I cannot help but feel outraged by Richard Bratby’s glib opinion that Britten’s War Requiem is the musical equivalent of Blackadder Goes Forth (Arts, 17 November). By spouting such crass nonsense Bratby insults the memory of a toweringly great composer. He insults the supreme baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who by his own account was ‘totally undone’ when rehearsing for the work’s premiere, as it brought to mind his fallen German comrades in the second world war. And he insults the countless listeners who have been moved beyond words by this masterpiece. His remarks, presumably meant to be edgy and sophisticated, reveal his cloth ears and stony heart. To cite just one example, the ineffable, poignantly beautiful setting of ‘One ever hangs where shelled roads part’ at the start of the Agnus Dei is not ‘simplistic’, Mr Bratby; not at all.