SIR - Reader R Hill (T&A letters, June 28) is quite right in saying that the growing alarm among the voices of big business in response to the Government’s inept handling of the Brexit negotiations ought to be listened to with all due gravity.

Naturally, our bumbling Foreign Secretary showed great maturity and chose to characteristically react to the very real prospect of thousands of job losses with a deep and carefully-considered response - an Anglo-Saxon expletive. Still, it won’t affect him, will it?

Brexiters continue to peddle the myth that these are merely siren voices, but their wearisome, threadbare talk of “Project Fear” is becoming noticeably shriller. When are they going to realise that business needs to make hard-headed decisions and that industry giants such as Airbus and BMW and others, sooner rather than later, will have to bite the bullet and swathes of jobs both directly and in allied component businesses are at very real risk?

If, God forbid, they do relocate to mainland Europe, doubtless the Brexiters will nimbly side-step having any blame quite rightly heaped on them and predictably point their fingers once again towards the "punishing" EU as the source of all our woes.

Richard Lee-Van den Daele, Gaisby Lane, Shipley