Letters: EU import controls must be replaced

On November 26, 2017 the Irish government threatened to veto trade talks unless the UK government agreed to keep the UK in both the single market and the customs union.

My immediate reaction was that we should refuse to give in to this threat and just leave the EU without any special trade treaty, simply defaulting to the existing WTO treaties.

That would have done us some economic harm, although far less than EU supporters claimed, and in fact the country which suffered most would have been the Irish Republic.

Instead the Prime Minister of the day, my own MP Theresa May, who had campaigned to keep us in the EU and who never fully supported Brexit, chose to cave in to the threat.

Five years on, and while Rishi Sunak says that he will not accept UK alignment with EU laws Northern Ireland is permanently locked into dynamic alignment with EU laws.

Perhaps he meant "Under my leadership, Great Britain will not pursue any relationship with Europe that relies on alignment with EU laws", rather than "United Kingdom"?

Only when EU import controls on goods coming in are replaced by UK export controls on goods heading for the open land border will it be possible to escape from this trap.

Dr D R Cooper, Maidenhead, Berkshire