I’m writing concerning the article titled “Donald Trump’s pardoning of Sheriff Joe Arpaio is an impeachable offence, say law professors”.

I wanted to start by applauding the investigative journalism that your publication is putting forward in order to keep the current President in check. I found the use of constitutional law to be a refreshing form of criticism. Many will go on and on about how our President may be racist, incompetent, or simply unfit to govern, but using legal reasoning provides a more substantial case against him. What I do wonder about articles such as these is if they are giving the public a false hope for impeachment.

Whenever there is an article or news story that mentions impeachment, it excites up critics of our executive leader. But is all this excitement a distraction from the problem at hand. If Trump will most likely not be impeached, then what is the reasoning for promoting that narrative? For the opposition, it would be more sustainable to push a narrative about how locally people can combat Trump’s overarching executive power. If people become rooted in the ideal that Trump will be impeached, then all the momentum of the opposition will be lost.

Rachelle Martin

Collegedale, Tennessee

Brexiteers really are deluded about our tiny island’s influence

Stephen Lambourne’s call for a new EU negotiator shows the delusional view the average Brexit supporter has of UK power. We have very limited leverage in the EU negotiations. We tell them what we want, they tell us what we can have. We only have influence and power as part of a larger grouping.

The idea that Europe needs us more than we need them was cruelly exposed when De Gaulle rejected our first application for EEC membership. If we think the EU negotiations are tough, wait until we try to negotiate trade agreements with the US, China Japan and India from a position of weakness.

On our own we are just a small island off the coast of NW Europe with little or no influence. It’s time we recognised this and started behaving accordingly.

Jack Liebeskind

Cheltenham

In his letter today about the ongoing EU negotiations Stephen Lambourne appears to forget a few points.

The EU position has been agreed by all remaining EU countries, it’s not something that M Barnier has made up himself. The progress against that plan will be reported to the 27 and next steps agreed among them. If the UK negotiating position had been agreed by all the governments and assemblies of the UK, we might know more about the UK strategy and the negotiations might have progressed a bit more.

It is also important to remember that it’s the UK which has chosen to leave the EU. In that situation, when we need so much from the EU, we should not be surprised that the EU has the upper hand in the talks.

Finally, Lambourne suggests that we “jump ship” without any deal with the EU. He suggests that a “free trade agreement already in place on so many issues” but does not tell us when or how that was agreed; I suspect that may be in his wishful thinking!

Whether you jump from a ship or over a cliff the effect is similar: a very long fall followed by a hard landing.

Nick Haward

Havant

The anniversary of Diana’s death reminds us of a nation’s self-indulgence

The title of the television programme Diana: The Day Britain Cried could not be more in keeping. It is in line with the observation of the late Gerald Kaufman in early 1998 when he said in his measured tones: “In the first week of last September this nation took leave of its senses.”

In all the reflection on the 20th anniversary of the tragic event, we seem not to have re-appraised the high octane syrup produced at the time. It was an exhibition of mass self-indulgence I hope never to see again, a time when people – who never knew Diana – believed that the Queen should have been in London stroking them rather than dealing with the true and real grief of two boys who had just lost their young mother. They had the nerve and lack of intelligence to proclaim that the Queen “did not care”. The hysterical mood was typified by the woman who wailed on The Jimmy Young Programme: “What am I going to do now for a role model?” The woman admitted to being 26 years old.

The mass behaviour was disproportionate in the extreme and the participants concerned would do well to look back with embarrassment.

Edward Thomas

Eastbourne

The Tories’ treatment of the disabled needed to be addressed

I applaud Matthew Norman’s piece (The Tories’ vindictive and expensive fight to deprive disabled people of benefits is a national disgrace) on the Tories’ treatment of the disabled. Such eloquence in the face of the horrors these people endure is to be commended.

David Murphy

Address supplied

The nuclear threat

If only Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un could be persuaded that grown-ups don’t think it’s sensible to play games with loaded guns.

It’s probably too much to hope that social media could do it.