DOUGLAS Mills asks (Letters, August 15) “Why, if the EU is so bad, why did we join?”

In the referendum of 1975 we voted to join the Common Market.

We had been taken in by the previous prime minister, Edward Heath, who had decided not to tell the people of this country that it would be the first step to loss of sovereignty over our own affairs.

Had it been made clear at the time that it would lead to a situation where, our parliament would be virtually emasculated and, to all intents and purposes we would be governed by diktats from an unelected coterie of overpaid, self-serving bureaucrats in Brussels, I doubt very much if we would have been stupid enough to put our heads into the noose that has been getting tighter and tighter for the last 44 years.

Mr Mills’ assertion that by leaving the EU we will be “going it alone” is a nonsense.

Once free of Brussels, the world is our oyster and a number of other countries are already waiting in the wings (America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia and Japan, to name but a few) to strike trade deals with us as soon as we are free of the Eurocrats.

We did not join the EU – we were frog-marched into it by political figures only too willing to pocket their 30 pieces of silver for betraying their own people.

ROBERT READMAN

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