IT HAS been a regular refrain of your letter pages over the last three-and-a-half years that those who voted to remain in the EU should accept the result of the vote and come together or make peace with those who voted to leave.

It is a commonplace of negotiation/reconciliation that the starting point is to understand where the other side is coming from: their narrative. While I do not agree with them, I think I can articulate the motivations of those who voted to leave: impatience with a remote, unelected, expensive and possibly corrupt bureaucracy and the regulations it imposes; frustration at the large sums of money paid out for so little visible benefit; anger at uncontrolled immigration taking jobs and putting a burden on services that are creaking after years of austerity; and a desire that Britain should be in control of its own destiny even if that means being worse off.

If I have this right, perhaps some Leave voters, in the spirit of reciprocation, could show that they understand why, while they are celebrating, I shall be feeling bereft, heartbroken and ashamed? And no, I am neither young, nor foreign, nor metropolitan and I have never lived abroad.

Hilary Scannell

Broughton-in-Furness