Dear Mr Johnson,
As members of the public, living in and around your Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, we recognise that you have spent huge amounts of time and effort campaigning for and implementing our departure from the European Union.
But in a sense, whether we agreed with Brexit or not, we also recognise that realising your ambition to quit our continent was the easy part.
Ensuring that the departure, that you orchestrated, does not damage our country and our continent will be infinitely more difficult.
Whether we like it or not, Brexit has happened.
So now the big geopolitical challenge is for you, as our Prime Minister, to plan and implement a series of urgent actions to prevent our departure seriously damaging (a) our relationship with the rest of our continent, (b) our country's territorial integrity and survival, and (c) our country's economy and standard of living.
As you well know, Brexit has the capacity to destabilise the situation in Northern Ireland – and could lead to an increase in the sectarian divide, potentially with disastrous consequences for England (and the rest of the UK), for the Republic of Ireland and of course for Northern Ireland itself. We therefore implore you to abide by the agreements you signed with the EU regarding Northern Ireland. Any unilateral violation of those agreements by the UK would be extremely dangerous - and would massively harm our country's international credibility as a trading and geopolitical partner.
Brexit is already also destabilising the relationship between England and Scotland – and we therefore implore you not to take other actions that could further increase support for Scottish independence and thus break up our United Kingdom.
Likewise, we implore you to take the necessary actions to ensure that disputes (similar to the recent Channel Islands fishing situation) do not destroy our relationship with our closest continental neighbour, France – and do not provoke a nationalist backlash there which could ultimately help bring extreme right-wing Eurosceptics to power in that country and thus destabilise the Franco-German relationship and the stability of our continent.
We also implore you to take all necessary actions to avoid potential future tensions between the UK and Spain over Gibraltar. Brexit has substantial implications for that strategically important territory – and you have the unenviable job of ensuring that your Brexit project, which brought you to power, does not end in a major deterioration in the relationship between Spain and the UK (and indeed between any other EU countries and ourselves).
If, partly as a result of future UK/French friction, ultra-nationalist politicians come to power in France, and if Britain's massively reduced influence in Europe, and UK/EU friction over Northern Ireland, contribute to a weakening of our continent, the main beneficiary would sadly be Vladimir Putin and Russia.
It would be totally against our national interests for our continent to be weakened and for Russian attempts to divide and subvert it to succeed. As you know, Russia has already carried out or attempted to carry out cyber attacks, poisonings, fake news warfare, naval harassment and political subversion against several European countries – including the UK.
We therefore implore you to avoid further divisive rifts with our continental European neighbours – so that the consequences of your Brexit project don't threaten our and our continent's long-term stability, security and independence of action.
You and others have different views as to the likely economic risks and/or benefits of Brexit – but one of the largest 'elephants in the room' is our departure's potential geopolitical impacts.
Good and close relationships and cooperation between ourselves and much of the rest of our continent has helped keep the peace in most of Europe since the end of World War II. We ask you to ensure that the consequences of your Brexit project do not destroy that priceless gift secured by the sacrifices made by so many in that terrible conflict.
We therefore implore you to change direction so as to avoid the more harmful geopolitical consequences of our departure from the EU.
Yours sincerely,
Signed by David Keys (Secretary of Harrow and Hillingdon European Movement) and 75 other local residents, living in and around the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
Σχόλια