As so often with politicians’ utterances, the things left unsaid are more important than the things said.

Mr Drax (Dorset Echo, Friday 17 June) criticises the EU for not departing from the Northern Ireland Protocol.

What he omits disingenuously to say is that the Prime Minister was fully aware of every aspect and every repercussion of the Protocol when he signed it.

Mr Drax wants the UK to break international law by overriding the freely and openly negotiated terms of the Protocol and seeks craftily to blame the EU for not helping our government to heal its self-inflicted wound.

Mr Drax should cast his mind back to what he learned in his Latin classes at school and reflect on the Latin maxim: Patere legem quam ipse fecisti – Accept the consequences of the law which you yourself made.

All the EU wants is for the United Kingdom to abide by the document which the United Kingdom freely negotiated and signed.

By reversing the burden and purporting to shift responsibility for problems to the EU, Mr Drax is shamelessly engaging in victim blaming.

As Bob Dylan sang in 1966, when Mr Drax was doubtless still in short shorts, “To live outside the law you must be honest”. It is about time this government took that aphorism to heart.

The problems with the freely negotiated Protocol (among other things) have made it blindingly obvious that Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster: more limited choice of products, endless paperwork to move goods about and a very long schadenfreude list of all the disadvantages which Brexit has brought us.

Brexit is an egregious example of the first trade agreement in human history to create, rather than remove, barriers to trade.

Ukraine is now wisely seeking to join the EU. We should emulate that noble country and negotiate to rejoin the EU right away in order to guarantee our future peace and prosperity.

After all, we only voted (by the slenderest of majorities) to leave the EU because some people naively believed the lies on the sides of a bus and untruths on the lips of leading Brexiters.

If the bus promises had been fulfilled (Brexit bonus of untold millions for the NHS) there would now be no queues of ambulances outside hospitals unable to hand over the seriously ill patients so diligently brought in by dedicated paramedics.

Mr Drax should get serious, stop rabbiting on about the Protocol and do the decent thing: take steps to rejoin the EU.

Ian Frame

Linden Avenue, Dorchester