WE ARE all immersed in the current arguments for staying in or leaving the EU but we actually hear little from those who work or worked within it or with it.

Gerald Kaufman left the following comment after his period with it: “From all the meetings you attend in Union business you are likely to take away with you the impression of a massive, well-oiled machine going nowhere.

“Those who oppose British membership will nod their heads sagely and say they expected nothing else.

“Those, however, who have reposed great hopes in the EU will be sad to witness their noble idea smothered in paper and bureaucracy, with the bigger powers plunging through the maze in search of national self-interest while the smaller countries desperately try to persuade them of the importance of being communautaire.”

His ‘How to be a Communautaire’ chapter in ‘How To Be a Minister’ is a kindly and hilarious account of his experience of it, very different from the rage and vindictiveness that have somehow taken over the subject today, when what actually goes on in the EU is increasingly no longer mentioned.

How many of us talk to or read those whose experiences of its inner workings are first hand?

Margaret Reichlin, MacCallum Road, Upper Enham.