KIT Malthouse has come out in favour of Boris Johnson’s anti-European campaign but has no coherent argument for doing so.

An out vote threatens three million jobs and whole industries dependent on European Union (EU) membership. More than half of our trade is with Europe. This cannot be replaced overnight. New deals could take five-10 years to agree. Meanwhile the British economy, and the pound, would go into freefall.

‘Out’ campaigners want to walk away from Europe one day but expect associate membership the next. Any such deal means accepting European laws without any say in drafting. This is not taking back sovereignty, it’s surrendering it.

Our country is richer and stronger because of EU membership. 2.2 million Britons benefit by living and working in Europe. A similar number of EU citizens live and work in the UK contributing to this country.

A vote to remain would take us forward – in peace, security and prosperity as a major player in the world’s largest trading block. It would ensure we continue to benefit from the thousands of new jobs and billions of pounds of investment that membership brings. A vote to leave would lose all of this and sacrifice our country’s friends and future to satisfy the short-term ambitions of a few self-centred politicians.

Len Gates, Chairman, NW Hants Liberal Democrats

 

RECENTLY, on the news, I witnessed British prime minister David Cameron sharing a platform with the French president Francois Hollande, who did not want to scare us but threatened us with consequences if we carried out our democratic right to leave the EU.

I was fuming, and I am sure there were many others who felt the same.

Thousands of our countrymen, in two world wars, gave their lives and are buried in France so that the French could have their liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) and now they want to stab us in the back.

The UK was signed up to the European Economic Community in 1973 by a Tory prime minister, Ted Heath. Notice the word ‘economic’.

Since then it has been a steady drip of legislation from the unelected, unaccountable bastion of the EU, supported by all governments, to tie us closer into, what is their avowed aim, a ‘United States of Europe’.

With ‘friends’ like Hollande in Europe, who needs enemies? I will be standing proud when I vote ‘leave’.

Derek Skinner, Bishops Way, Andover