LETTER: The headings for debate and voting

Roger Arthur is right in saying last week (‘Last chance to control our destiny’, County Times July 11) that before offering people a choice we will need an objective analysis of benefits.
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The choice he refers to is on what is to be offered to the British people in the proposed referendum on the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union currently suggested for 2017.

He dismisses our Government’s expectation that our current working relationship with the 28 other nations of the Union can be improved and says that the referendum should be a decision by the British people to leave the Union.

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Leaving the Union, he says, means that the United Kingdom will no longer be subjugated to the will of the others and no longer will it have to contribute to the purposes of the Union.

He sees it as a stronger position for the United Kingdom to be a free agent in the negotiation of world trade and world politics in the future.

In his analysis the key facts are that membership is an enormous cost; our ‘Mother of Parliaments’ is in danger of becoming no more than a local council [Mr Arthur is a local district councillor]; the European Union as an economic power is declining fast and that free of European regulation the entrepreneurs of the United Kingdom will do wonders.

All of these assertions are attractive but reckless in their simple mindedness but it is quite right that as headings for what needs to be clearly debated and voted upon in our next elections they should be attended to.

MARTIN TOOMEY

Jarvis Lane, Steyning