Letter to Daily Telegraph published on 10th August 2019 under the title “Recent history shows that royal powers could stop an anti-Brexit bill”.

Beside advising the Queen to withhold assent to a bill which has passed all stages in the Houses of Commons and Lords, as mentioned by Andrew Roberts (Comment, August 8), the Prime Minister can advise the Queen to withhold her consent to a bill proceeding beyond second reading where it touches on any of the 14 royal prerogative powers, which include the making of international treaties and declarations of war.

Such consent has been withheld three times in the United Kingdom during the present Queen’s reign, the most recent being in 1999, on the advice of Tony Blair.

This was in respect of a bill introduced by the late Sir Tam Dalyell, intended to make military action against Iraq contingent on approval by a majority vote in the House of Commons. Second reading was postponed and the bill fell because the Queen’s consent for it to be debated was withheld.

There are, therefore, recent precedents for stopping an anti-Brexit bill in its tracks between September 3 and October 31, so long as the Prime Minister tenders the relevant advice to the Queen.

Letter to the Times from Stephen Bush, published on 25^th October 2018

As someone who canvassed in the streets, knocked on doors, fielded questions at public meetings and in the media, I can testify that those who supported leaving the EU were perfectly clear what they did NOT want from their vote (letters October 20^th to 24^th) , namely any continuation of the following: the right of 450 million EU citizens to move at will to settle in this country;  payments into the EU’s budget; the right of EU boats to fish in the UK’s internationally recognised waters; any role for EU courts in Britain’s internal affairs.

Mrs May’s failure to communicate these four simple conditions for the negotiations in a formal UK paper soon after sending her Article 50 notification on March 29^th 2017, while the EU Council quite properly declared its own guidelines in its paper of 29^th April 2017, is the root cause of the morass of muddle and uncertainty we are currently in.  Nobody of course foresaw that the EU’s negotiators would manufacture a problem over the Irish border, or that they and Mrs May’s advisors would propose carving up our country.

Letter to The Sunday Times, published 15th October 2017.

You are absolutely right about the need for Britain to have a Brexit strategy independent of the EU negotiations.

Nothing is more likely to induce the EU to negotiate properly with Britain about trade and money than the prospect of losing unfettered access to what will be,  when Britain leaves the EU, its largest export market.   At the same time it would lose any prospect of our continuing to make an on-going contribution to their budgets.

Unfortunately Mrs May has given scant attention to the “walk-away” strategy if Monday’s latest White Papers (on trade and customs ) are anything to go by. These are largely repetitive confections of wish-lists to which the “stakeholders” are invited to make suggestions,  not  tightly thought out plans which would be the hallmarks of true leadership.

It took looming catastrophe before Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill in 1940. Mrs May needs to go now before another disaster overtakes us.

Letter to The Times, published Monday, 24^th July 2017

Your correspondent in Brussels did well to ask Michel Barnier at his joint press conference with David Davis on the 20^th July to name any country that accepted foreign jurisdiction on its territory. Not surprisingly Barnier couldn’t answer because there are none, not even from among the smallest countries in the United Nations, apart from those in the EU.

For the record, there are about 2 million EU nationals  resident in Canada (excluding British citizens) and 1.6 million EU nationals resident in Australia, together actually more than are resident in the UK.  There is no provision in the recent EU-Canada Trade agreement for the European Court of Justice to have jurisdiction over the rights of its citizens resident in Canada, nor did the EU negotiators ask for any.  Nor would Australia countenance such an infraction of its sovereignty.

It is high time that Mr. Davis said in public that the ECJ will not have any jurisdictional role in the United Kingdom after we have formally left in March 2019, so that negotiations can move on to more productive matters.

Letter to The Times, published on 11^th February 2017

Your extract (10^th February)  from a  government paper about negotiating priorities, reveals what can only be described as a supplicant approach to our fishing position post Brexit,  which may also apply to other industries.

After leaving the EU,  Britain as a sovereign power and signatory of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea 1994 (UNCLOS) will automatically take over sole responsibility for all commercial rights, including fishing access and control of stocks, in its own Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)  of the Continental Shelf (the North Sea and English Channel principally). In this matter, there is nothing whatever  to negotiate about.

There is the matter of historic fishing by foreign countries such as Spain (since 1995 in their case) but we are not suppplicants.  The Civil Service negotiators should understand this. While there may well be some horse–trading  over fish stock management, the conditions to be applied to the continuation of foreign fishing in its EEZ are for Britain to decide, just as the EU and Norway will continue to do in theirs.