I wish Jonathan Freedland wouldn’t assume that those who voted to leave the EU now regret their decision (With even leavers regretting Brexit, there’s one path back to rejoining the EU, 23 June). I voted leave and would do so today. In fact, had I been able to vote in the referendum to join what was then the common market in the 1970s, I would have voted no.
My reasoning is that you cannot have 27 countries – all with different histories, cultures, industries, societies – agreeing on everything. Therefore no country actually gets what it wants, or what is best for it. I believe I have been proved right time and time again with all the disagreements that go on in the EU, and the decisions that always disadvantage some members.
The reason we have not seen the benefits of Brexit is the lack of decisiveness, determination and vision shown by our politicians.
Marcia MacLeod
London
• Jonathan Freedland notes that “the long march [of the Eurosceptics] from 1975 to 2016 required a dogged, even obsessive, persistence and, as important, a strategic patience.” It did, but it also required the creation of a single-issue political party, first Ukip and then the Brexit party; perhaps the time has now come for those who see the return of the UK to the EU as a priority to do a Ukip in reverse – and create their own single-issue Europarty.
The Europarty would never gain many seats in parliament (just as Ukip never did), but it would help to keep the case for rejoining in the public eye, and with careful campaigning, the BBC might feel compelled to include a rejoiner in its panels for political debates, just as it did with Ukip. New political parties, and especially single-issue parties, find it difficult to prosper in the UK, but in this case there is the prospect of working with existing parties, such as the Greens and Volt, as well as various parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So why not give it a try?
John Dunn
Bologna, Italy
• Your editorial (The Guardian view on Labour and Brexit: slowly getting it right, 22 June) and the article by Timothy Garton Ash (Seven years on, the UK and the EU are still drifting apart. The public wants a change, 22 June) are commendable, but as an ardent European who voted against Brexit, I see three large elephants in the room.
First, in a democratic referendum, a majority voted to leave the EU. Democracy requires a referendum to reverse that, but to command authority it would need something like a 2-1 majority, not a wafer-thin one. Second, an incoming Labour government will have many pressing priorities (the NHS, housing, the climate crisis etc) to address before it can divert resources to negotiating a full reintegration with the EU.
Finally, while Britain may have friends in Europe, we do need them to vote for our return. Is it clear they would do so, or is there a lingering distrust of “perfidious Albion”?
Johnston Anderson
Nottingham
• We are on holiday in Paris and were amazed to come across a Charles Wells pub, The Bombardier. Sadly, it does not sell the beer it is named after. The reason? Brexit, of course. This live beer cannot tolerate the time it now takes to transport it to France. But apparently a French brewery is now attempting to perfect a lookalike. Britain has another victim of Brexit.
Catherine Roome
Staplehurst, Kent
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