Letter: Don't expect UK government to ever apply the misleadingly named ‘Stormont Brake'

It not only defies what we have learned about the EU over the past half century but also what the Norwegians and the Swiss have learned through their uncomfortable experiences dealing with the EU.

I feel sure that the leaders of both the Tory party and the DUP must be fully aware of this; they must know, for example, that when Norway disapplied the third Postal Services Directive in 2011, exercising what appeared on paper to be its continuing sovereign right as a member of the European Economic Area, the reaction from Brussels was not to let it go but to bully them into submission.

So nobody should expect that the UK Parliament and government will ever apply the misleadingly named ‘Stormont brake’, thereby risking a trade war with the EU which would extend in scope to all UK trade with the EU, not just the goods trade between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, and they should not waste their time and energy fretting about the theoretical risk of "trivergence".

Dr D R Cooper, Maidenhead