IN response to Christine Peters’ letter “Theresa May’s slip of the tongue”. I would like to point out that there has been no slip.

The fact that there has been little progress towards Brexit is largely because Parliament has been in recess over the summer.

It is also because our new, unelected government has no idea what to do. Theresa May’s rejection of an Australian-style immigration system is entirely within her prerogative if we are to accept her role as unelected prime minister.

Nobody voted for her, nobody put forward a new government policy, nobody gave her or her party a mandate and, here’s the key part, NOBODY voted for a points-based immigration system. Whatever happens next is entirely down to our unelected leader (one of the very things the Leavers thought they were opposing).

I can hear the howls of protest from Brexiteers even as I write but I challenge any of them to show me where, on the ballot paper, there was any mention of immigration. The vote was on one simple issue: Whether or not to remain members of the European Union.

The sad fact of this referendum is that more than 17 million people bought the lie that we were voting for a new immigration system. They bought the lie that £350 million per week was to be redirected to the NHS. They bought a whole range of lies on housing, education and trade (among other things).

Despite the warnings of those of us in the Remain campaign who tried to point out that NONE of these things were on the ballot paper, we were ignored, told we were lying, or told we were indulging in “project fear”.

“Brexit means Brexit” is possibly one of the most meaningless phrases in British political history. It was never defined and it was here that people like Nigel Farage played their trump card. “Brexit” could mean whatever people wanted it to mean.

Farage won his vote. He then disowned the promises of funding to the NHS within hours of the result coming out. He ran away from his party and his country and scuttled off to America to support another purveyor of falsehoods, Donald Trump.

People who voted Leave are starting to feel angry and, sadly, that feeling of anger will only spread as it starts to dawn on them how much they were lied to.

Rather than “taking back control”, they have put the country in the hands of a deeply divided cabinet that has no idea where to go or what to do next.

There is no plan, no mandate and, without a general election or second referendum, no accountability.

Perhaps that’s what “Brexit” meant.

PHIL DUNN

Spurgeon Road, Bournemouth

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