LAST September, the Bournemouth Echo printed a letter I had written about the damage the ardent Brexiteers were causing. My letter was along the lines of dragging us backwards into the bad old days of a bygone era and that the British Empire, great as it was, is a thing of the past now.

One letter in response that you kindly printed in the days following opened with “How dare Mr Napier write about 'Brexiteers' in such condescending terms”. Another, from someone who seems to fire off letters to the Echo with monotonous regularity, said my letter was “astonishing and totally wide of the mark” and the words preposterous and deluded also appeared!

Britain's chief Brexit negotiator and the Foreign Secretary both resigned on Monday. They had lobbied for a hard Brexit outside the European Customs Union (despite US trade tariffs). Major UK businesses are still enormously worried about future international trading with no clarity at all about what will and will not be allowed after March 29, 2019, when the UK will officially exit the EU.

These respondents to my letter did not seem to consider that if a bunch of clowns were spearheading the negotiations on behalf of a PM who was presented with a poisoned chalice, it was always going to end in tears.

CHRISTOPHER NAPIER, Portarlington Road, Westbourne