• STRANGE that Richard Rosser relies on Vote Leave’s Dominic Cummings’ assessment of MPs to make his point: odd bedfellows, (Brexit warning: ‘No deal’ will open a floodgate of chaos, August 10).

He seems not to have grasped my point that MPs voted for a referendum on whether the UK should remain in or leave the EU. This opened up the possibility that the result might be to leave.

If a vote to leave were to have dire consequences for the UK the only responsible thing would have been to vote not to have a referendum. However, MPs voted by a large majority to do that very thing.

That majority included MPs Diane Abbott, Barry Gardiner, Stephen Kinnock, Nicky Morgan and Chuka Umunna, none of whom would act to expose the country to existential threat. None of them or their colleagues would abandon us to what the Guardian calls “disaster capitalism”. None that is unless they are, to use Mr Rosser’s word, “ignorant”.

Having voted to leave, the initial starting point is withdrawal from the institutions of the EU and adoption of World Trade Organisation rules for trade. This position can then be modified by process of negotiation, with both sides acting in good faith during the two-year period provided for in the Lisbon Treaty. Who could argue with that?

On the matter of economic performance, Mr Rosser states that between 1995 and 2018 eurozone growth averaged 1.7 per cent. This is drivel. Probably none of the countries using the euro recorded that precise figure, and Italy and Greece would have given anything for that level of growth.

In fact, there is no eurozone and to claim such is a lazy fiction, a collective noun for something that does not exist. There are 19 countries which gave up their domestic currencies for the euro; in return they gave up economic policy to the European Central Bank.

Its record of economic failure is staggering. It claims it will end quantitative easing this year. We will see. Economic misery begets right-wing politics and it is happening.

STEPHEN SOUTHAM
Mildmay Grove North, N1