Richard Denton-White’s two sensible things to address the current parliamentary impasse (Have Your Say, December 29) are based on a misapprehension: there is no parliamentary impasse.

An impasse would imply that there is no majority, but Mrs May deferred the “meaningful vote” because she feared that the majority would be, for her, humiliatingly large.

I suspect that Mr Denton-White is making things up because he wishes to support a poor argument.

In suggesting a second referendum, he is, of course, showing true EU colours: when a referendum yields an inconvenient result, the foolish voters must vote again till they get it right.

The EU has got away with it several times so far, but then the EU is not a democratic institution.

If more referendums are a good thing, why stop at two? Anyway, I think that the result of a second referendum would not be to Mr Denton-White’s liking.

And why should parliament rescind Article 50 after so overwhelmingly voting to trigger it two years ago or so?

Only so that Mr Denton-White and his fellow travellers can get their way and overturn a referendum result that they don’t like.

Finally, Mr Denton-White must himself tell us the answer to the question he asks rhetorically as to what Cromwell said about politics and civil war: I can find no appropriate quotation.

TONY FISHER

Weymouth