YP Letters: Don't give in to Project Fear and vote to leave failing EU

Prime Minister David Cameron holds a Q&A session with staff at the Caterpillar factory in Peterborough while on the EU referendum campaign trail.

MIKE Dods (The Yorkshire Post, May 3) has allowed himself to be influenced by Project Fear. The Treasury figures he quotes were based on the unreasonable assumption that all goes well if we remain in the EU and that all goes badly if we leave. They also assume immigration of three million by 2030, which many will regard as untenable.

Many of your correspondents say they don’t have enough facts to make an informed decision on which way to vote in the referendum, but some facts are quite stark.

Over the last 20 years, the EU’s rate of growth has been lower than ours and America’s and their rate of unemployment is almost double ours, resulting in an extra eight million people being without work. This poor performance is despite the supposed benefits of the single market; the single currency; the free movement of people and trade agreements. If the EU as a whole has not benefitted from its own policies, it begs the question how can we have? Maybe our better performance was due to our own efforts and better policies.

The EU’s share of world trade is, and will continue to be, in serious decline. This is because of the EU’s poor growth at a time when the emerging markets have achieved good growth. If your main customer is struggling, you would be foolish not to explore other possibilities.

One of the reasons for the EU’s poor performance is the ill-advised single currency, which could again flare up. Greece’s bailout, which caused so much trouble a year ago, still has not been finalised because Germany and the IMF cannot agree terms and Greece will soon have urgent need of more funds.

The “democratic deficit” in the EU has resulted in an unacceptable shift of power from the people to those who regard themselves as beyond the control of voters.

The facts are surely clear enough.

Regarding, your recent Country Week article ‘Red tape victory will ease movement form filling’, I read with scepticism that the Farming Minister regards the simpler rules on livestock movements as a ‘massive result’ for farmers.

These rules are to be introduced in England in July, so do we believe they will apply if we vote to come out of the EU? Red tape from Brussels has wrecked our fishing and steel industries, along with others, and is doing the same to our farming.

Farmers should not have to be concerned about payments from the EU; our Government should be bringing back stability.