GEORDIE Greig, the incoming editor of the Daily Mail, has proclaimed that he wants “the least damaging Brexit”. Now that is some statement from a paper that, according to the outgoing editor, Paul Dacre, has Brexit in its DNA.

The sound bites over Brexit have gone from iconoclastic “Brexit means Brexit”, out of the single market and customs union, with an added “red white and blue Brexit”, to Greig’s squeaky apologetic murmur for the “least damaging Brexit”! Where is the white flag?

Is he not aware of the irony in his use of the term “least damaging”? The Daily Mail saw Brexit in its DNA, was strident for the new Global Britannia untrammelled by the EU forging free trade treaties with the globe, reinventing itself as the 21st Century Empire2 ruling the waves.

Now it is admitted that Brexit per se is most damaging. He does not add for whom or what sectors of the economy in society. But now it must be the “least damaging”.

What a come down! Never before has one heard such defeatist talk from the heart of Middle England!

No doubt it will be the fault of the European Union if the final Brexit is worse than least damaging. Is the Chequers document the least damaging form of Brexit? So far Geordie Greig has not said.

Perhaps it is now becoming apparent that the EU is not going to give preferential treatment to a former member.

The Daily Mail has blinked first, thrown in the towel and is reduced to a whimper by its incoming editor.

John Edgar

Kilmaurs

AS usual, the weekend provided no respite from the question of Brexit and “the will of the people”. It appears from recent polling that more than one hundred Leave-voting constituencies would now vote to remain (Majority of voters now back Remain, August 13), meaning that this “will” may have substantially changed as the disastrous consequences become ever clearer, but a chance to demonstrate this in a vote of the people is still no nearer.

I have in the past expressed my belief that the referendum was manipulated by the exclusion of many who have committed their future to the UK – EU citizens living here permanently – and the inclusion of many who have abandoned this country, gone abroad and will be unaffected by the consequences. I might add the anomaly that of the four nations of the UK and one overseas territory – Gibraltar – three voted to remain but were overruled simply on the basis of raw population numbers.

I expect to hear the usual cries of “we are one country” and “Scots voted to stay in the UK”, but it was by a small margin. I suggest that the argument that a “No” vote was the only way to stay in the EU was extremely influential and of prime importance to many. For “Remain” then to have won by such a huge margin must surely prove that a) Scots think it more important to remain in the EU than in the UK and b) that many “No” voters, influenced by that Unionist promise, when it was broken, found their reason for staying in the UK was gone. They therefore changed their vote to uphold their original views. Some “Yes” voters voted to leave, and so, for the substantial margin for “Remain”, a very large number must have had EU membership as their objective in both referenda.

I believe that Scots have twice made clear their view that EU membership is of prime importance to our future, even over the maintenance of the Union. Yet our views have been totally ignored and all past promises broken. The will of the people?

P Davidson

Falkirk