AFTER reading a letter by the chairman of the local Lib Dems suggesting that if we leave the EU, we would be surrendering our internationalist credentials, I want to set out why they would be enhanced.

Firstly, he talks about the danger of ‘raising trade barriers’.

I’m a free trader. Amen to removing barriers. Unfortunately, the EU is not a traditional free trade area, it’s a customs union, which surrounds itself with a common external tariff charging duties on imports from outside the EU. We used to be members of the European Free Trade Association but we left EFTA in 1973 to join the EEC.

We could be part of a genuine free trade area once again if we vote to leave on June 23.

Why is this so important?

It is because almost every continent on the planet is now experiencing economic growth except Europe. Large parts of the EU are plagued by a broken currency which gives Germany a huge trade surplus at the expense of mass unemployment elsewhere, especially for young people, in most of its southern member states. Despite not having adopted the Euro, Britain is frequently asked to stump up billions more and more (borrowed) taxpayers’ money to support this EU policy disaster. As a bonus, if we left, we could also get rid of the immensely bureaucratic and burdensome ‘VAT’ system and return to the much simpler system of ‘purchase tax’ (sales tax) that we were forced to abandon before joining.

Secondly, he claims that ‘leaving Europe would dent our influence on the world stage’. Personally, I would rather Britain have her own seat at the World Trade Organisationthanhaving1/28th (3.6 per cent) of the influence being represented by the EU.

Individual EU states can’t sign free-trade agreements with non-EU countries; they have to wait for Brussels to do so on their behalf. For a country as naturally inclined to open commerce as Britain, this is a real disadvantage, especially when compared to many continental nations, many of which are traditionally much more protective in their outlook.

Thirdly, he suggests that in order to have more ‘international cooperation’ the most obvious way is to remain in Europe. Well no. The EU is inward looking. It is a rather strange argument to suggest that without the EU, there’d be limited co-operation between states. You can work together without the need to cede your sovereignty. Of course we would continue to work with our European partners just like we would work with the USA, China or Brazil.

Furthermore, Britain’s common law legal system works on opposite principles to those of most EU member states, in that we allow that which is not expressly forbidden, whereas the opposite is generally the case for those EU countries under the Napoleonic system.

In short it means we tend to end up ‘gold plating’ EU legislation when we put it into British law, in case we allow some activity that was against the original intention of that legislation. The two legal systems are like oil and water and given the ratio of countries with one system as opposed to the other, continuing work to approximate the two systems can only end up with one winner in the end, and it won’t be ours. Leaving the EU will remove this danger to our legal system and allow us to resume our proper place as one of the world’s pre-eminent trading nations.

Moreover, we will be able to treat all countries of the world fairly again, especially those of the Commonwealth, which we so shamefully abandoned in the 1970s, and perhaps most importantly, get back a feeling of national ‘self belief’, the loss of which was perhaps one of the reasons the EEC seemed so attractive as a ‘cure all’ panacea all those years ago.

It is the ‘Leavers’ who are the internationalists; ‘Remainers’ are the little Europeans.

Tim Rolt, Goodworth Clatford