Frank Jackson (A minority voted to leave, Letters, January 2) tries to deny that the election was about Brexit. The party that most clearly backed the popular and democratic demand to get Brexit done won by far the most seats, a landslide victory, an overall majority of 80. Some14 million people voted for the Conservative and Unionist Party, 43.6 per cent of those voting, the highest percentage for any party since 1979.

This was rather more than voted for the pro-EU Labour Party, 10.265 million, 32.2 per cent. It lost 60 seats, its worst result for nearly a century. It lost 7.8 per cent of its votes since the 2017 election, largely because it had adopted a more openly pro-EU posture than it had in 2017. In strong Leave seats, the Conservatives’ vote share went up by 6.1 per cent and Labour’s fell by 10.4 per cent.

The point of democracy is not just that our rulers kindly allow us to vote but that they then enact our vote, not try to overthrow it. In 1975 we voted to stay in the EEC and the government of the day enacted that vote. A generation later, in the light of our 40-year experience of the democracy-denying, austerity-enforcing, Greece-destroying EU, we decided to leave the EU.

Theresa May pretended to enact our vote but failed miserably. Corbyn and Labour also pretended to respect our vote, while doing all they could to overturn it. So the election was also about respecting a democratic vote.

Let’s move on. We took our majority democratic decision in 2016 and reaffirmed it in December. Now, we must not leave it to the Government to make of independence whatever it wants. We have our demands and we must insist that the Government takes notice that we reject austerity policies, we reject laissez-faire policies, we want to protect our industries and invest in our public services.

Will Podmore

Clavering Road, Wanstead