YET again, our Prime Minister is not being honest; leaving the European Union will take a lot of negotiations, that much is true, however she will not be negotiating terms and neither will any other politician.

In reality it is the civil servants and our ambassadors who will be involved in leading the negotiations, politicians will sign the agreement afterwards.

It doesn't matter who is the Prime Minister because it is the same civil servants who will be involved in the negotiations. What really matters is what agreement they are prepared to sign.

Quite simply thousands of pages have to be scrutinised line by line, rules, regulations, contracts and treaties will have to be renegotiated. This will take thousands of hours of work. All this posturing is exactly what it is – just posturing.

People are under the illusion that politicians are the people who write the legislation but in reality they are not; what they do is sign off agreements.

Yes, they have the choice of whether to sign or not but they do not write the legislation and most of them would not know how to write legislation. So please do not believe Theresa May when she says that eleven days after the election she will be negotiating on behalf of Britain. The civil servants are negotiating now and will continue to negotiate after the election.

The Prime Minister quite simply is trying to look cleverer than she really is. She is only as good as the advice she gets which is pretty poor.

Ian Greenhalgh

Smithills