Opportunity for high-quality export sales if we leave the EU

there is a majority in our country in favour of leaving the EU, but the main excuse for staying in has been that half our exports are to EU countries. But most of them are now hard hit financially.

Can anyone state by how 
much the “half” has gone 
down, and is likely to go down further?

Whether or not this export market is failing, should we not have an incentive for companies to export more to countries outside the EU?

A tempting reason for 
leaving the EU is that our manufacturers would no longer be restricted as they are now, leaving a clearer field for exports of products of high quality and value, such as vehicles, aircraft, kitchen equipment, all parts made here.

The time has come for action, not for trying to negotiate. Germany, despite the recessions, is increasing exports. Why can’t Britain do the same?

From: David W Wright, Uppleby, Easingwold.

THE opinion page (Yorkshire Post, December 31) concerning the “Question of Europe” by Edward McMillan-Scott and Simon Revell shows the two contrasting sides of the argument about the EU and our continued membership.

Mr McMillan-Scott offers absolutely no answers to the ongoing and mounting problems facing the UK, and the rest of the members of the United States of Europe dream, while Simon Revell gives a precise case for leaving the failed project.

It is hoped that your readers will see through the empty rhetoric of McMillan-Scott and his flimsy support for the failed EU project.

From: Timothy Kirkhope, MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, Main Street, Scotton.

AS 2013 begins, I’m looking forward to the challenges ahead. I will continue to fight for Yorkshire in the EU: for businesses which want to thrive, for families which want to get on and for the individual aspirations of all those who want to improve their lot.

As always, I will continue to make sure the EU does less, but does it better. I’ll strive to make sure that Yorkshire’s voice is heard on issues such as fishing and farming, rural broadband, regional funding, and animal welfare.

Yorkshire offers so much to its residents and visitors. We must continue to create the conditions for the high quality of life we all deserve.

From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.

one prediction that is easy to make: in 2013 we will see multiple establishment bigwigs wheeled out to try and keep us trapped in the EU.

The threats will be blood-curdling: the UK will be isolated; we will be governed from Brussels by fax; the EU will stop our exports; the UK will be weakened internationally; the train will leave the station without us; the moon will crash into the Atlantic. All right, so I made the last one up, but that is because our smug pro-EU politicians and institutions deserve to be parodied.

We have certainly been here before. All the same Europhile threats were trotted out over a decade ago to try to make us join EMU (the euro).

What happened? The UK did not give way; and subsequently none of the threats have come true. However, all this rather misses the point.

There is now a much more important dimension to consider.

As a result of the failure of two years of EU “can kicking” to remedy the ongoing euro crises, the eurozone (EZ) is pushing ahead separately with major treaty changes. This is intended to financially, fiscally and politically bind only the 17 members of the eurozone inextricably into a single EZ state.

Effectively the EU is being by-passed by the EZ itself. Britain, outside the euro, cannot be part of this. The main UK political parties are too dim to see that, as it stands, the EZ 17 group are on track to leave the EU, not the UK. Yet again the euro-elites are about to outmanoeuvre the UK, leaving our politicians bewildered and blustering in their wake.

The EU is destined to be merely a moribund relic, with the UK carefully trapped inside it.

From: Rodney Atkinson, Meadowfield Road, Stocksfield, Northumberland.

WHEN asked whether he could foresee a British withdrawal from the EU, David Cameron said: “All futures for Britain are imaginable”, but then said that a British exit is “not my preference.” George Osborne has made similar comments.

But both these Conservatives have specifically been urging the eurozone to form a fiscal and more integrated political union.

Such a move would overturn 
all existing treaties and so it would be those countries that would in effect be leaving the EU, not the UK.

I can’t understand why Mr Cameron can urge others to
leave while saying he wants Britain to stay.