THE rebel MPs comprising the new Independent Group have yet to agree on what to call their new party.

If they are true to the real reason for their breakaway, they will call themselves the European Union Party (EUP).

The public will then say ‘Eh up, it’s them again banging on about Europe’.

Geoff Robb,

Hunters Close,

Dunnington, York

Independents refuse to stage by-elections

CERTAIN MPs have deserted their parties, mainly over Brexit, to join the newly formed Independent group.

Yet all refuse to resign and take part in local by-elections, while championing a further People’s Vote over Brexit.

Hypocrites I say.

Paul Tutill,

Usher Lane,

Haxby, York

Busting myths over our place in Europe

Mrs Teasdale (Letters, February 19) thinks that we shouldn’t have joined Europe, meaning the European Union. That is her opinion to which she is entitled.

However, her opinion might be more convincing if it were not based on myths.

Myth 1: We aren’t European. She must have used a very different school atlas from the ones with which most of us are familiar.

Myth 2: ‘After the Second World War, Britain gave Europe money. They were financially better off than us and we put them back on their feet.’

No, they were not financially better off than we were (Germany in particular) and as for the UK, we were so strapped for cash that one of the first acts of the new Labour government was to borrow $4.34 billion from the USA and Canada to avoid national insolvency.

We were certainly in no position in 1946 to give Europe money.

If other European countries managed over time to get back on their feet it was largely due to the generosity of the USA’s European Recovery Program, better known as Marshall Aid.

While the UK was its greatest beneficiary at £2.7 billion, we chose not to devote it to desperately needed industrial modernisation but rather to bolstering our pretensions to being a major world power.

Therein lie the seeds of many of our current economic and political problems.

Tony Lawton,

Skelton, York