Facts are important to Brexit debate

His letter infers the referendum result must be implemented. That is not true. The UK High Court ruled at the turn of the year that the referendum result was fraudulent but not illegal because the result was only advisory.

Had it been mandatory, the court ruled, the result would be declared null and void.

Secondly, Mr Wheatley infers that there will be no negative economic impact to Brexit and states that foreign countries are still investing in the UK.

Financial website City AM estimates foreign investment in the UK has fallen £100billion since the referendum.

Before the vote, a large majority of MPs said leaving the EU would be damaging economically to the UK and a majority still have said so, even if they want to implement Brexit. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg MP has estimated it will take the UK two to five decades to see any economic benefits.

Ian Hugo, Drôme

Had an advertising campaign been run in the manner of Brexit, it would have prompted a reaction from the Advertising Standards Authority.

The electorate was not provided with a reasoned and reliable analysis of the situation and consequences of implementing either decision. It was unfair to expect voters to produce an informed decision.

It was inevitable that the two opinion camps would enter into a certain amount of hyperbole and indeed they did.

In the case of Remain, this comprised mostly of a series of worst-case scenarios of the dire consequences of leaving.

The Leave campaign, however, expanded on the horrors of continued EU membership that had been dribbled out over decades and it blossomed into a fabric of fables that anyone should have seen through.

Richard Chandless, Saône-et-Loire

Malcolm Duncan (Letters, April) uses spurious statistics to prove a majority of the population didn’t vote to leave the EU, ignoring the fact that using similar arguments, the majority of the population did not vote to remain either.

He says property will lose value. House prices in the UK have risen since 2016 – mine has and so has my property in France, though less so.

He then says companies and affluent people are considering a move out of the UK.

He fails to say that high-value individuals are moving funds out of the UK, not because of Brexit but because of the possibility of a Labour government.

Finally, Mr Duncan says most economies need to be part of a union.

Japan’s prime minister has stated that the UK would be welcomed with open arms into a TransPacific Partnership, so we don’t have to be tied to a fractured union where disparate countries with widely different economies are being forced to unite into a “united states”, a political enterprise that makes no economic sense.

John Roberts, Hérault

AS I unsuccessfully tried to blot out media discussion of the European elections and Eurovision, I realised how similar in the eyes of the British public these institutions are.

The attitude to both has been scepticism and amusement, taking neither very seriously.

Both the songs chosen and the MEPs voted for have been second-rate and forgettable.

If Britain had taken them more seriously, she would not be so keen to sever links with one and could win the other.

James patterson, By email