AS an ineffectual government struggles to effect the Brexit that 17 million of us voted for, I am struck by the relevance of Gulliver’s Travels, the political satire written 300 years ago.

The shipwrecked Gulliver awakes to find himself tightly bound with a myriad of fine threads by a race of midgets who only free him when he agrees to be their servant.

We find ourselves bound by thousands of orders, directives, regulations, alien legal interpretations judgements and other bureaucratic stratagems whose implications were not appreciated by our signatories.

They were ‘negotiating’ with dedicated full time EU teams accustomed to handling naive applicants from minor countries.

I fear that unless we make a clear break now every loophole in the divorce agreement will be used to our disadvantage sooner or later, leaving us eventually in an even weaker situation than now. We will be punished for our temerity in the referendum and subsequent

pusillanimity.

Our theme song should be The Who’s Won’t Be Fooled Again.

A V Martin,

Westfield Close, Wigginton, York