The only industry to thrive in Brexit Britain will be bureaucracy

Brexit secretary Dominic Raab. Photo: PA / Peter Nicholls - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images

I recently wrote to the Department for Exiting The European Union.

On November 7 I received an email from them, reading, ‘Thank you for contacting the Department for Exiting the European Union with your query. Please find a response to your correspondence attached. Sincerely, DExEU Correspondence Team’.

Attached was a message: ‘Thank you for contacting the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. We are responding on his behalf and apologise for the delay in replying to you. This message is to confirm receipt of your correspondence, and to inform you that your point has been both noted, and passed to the relevant sub-team for consideration. Yours sincerely, DExEU Correspondence Team.’

So the response to my query is the same as the response to my query in the email response to my query that the attached response to my query responded to. Kafka lives!

The only growth industry in Brexit Britain will be bureaucracy.

Stephen Bennett

London SW4

Our MP is in the whips’ office so we stand no chance of changing his mind. However, we keep writing anyway. I expect his latest reply comes straight out of the government song-book, but I thought I should repeat a relevant paragraph here because it seems to be a shameless denial of democracy:

‘There will not be another vote and the UK is leaving the EU next year. I believe that when a decision of constitutional significance is made, it is important that democratic processes are followed. That is why parliament gave the British people the final say on the UK’s membership of the EU and why the result must be respected, even if it was unexpected by some.’

I have written back to point out that it is the common tool of dictators to contrive a popular mandate, however corrupt the process, and then deny their people the chance to change their minds in further elections. Fortunately we are still a democracy and the government cannot claim a mandate for a policy that lasts for all time, however much the small dictators might wish it to be so.

After so much new information, further democratic endorsement is surely needed. But alas I fear we are screaming into the void.

Sarah Pennie

Todmorden

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