THE farce of Europhile David Cameron’s “negotiations” with the EU, and the responses he has had from it, should remove all doubt from those who still cling to the equally farcical idea that “only by being in the EU can we have any influence on what it does”.

We are NET contributors to the EU. And yet, our perfectly reasonable proposals made over many years by our elected representatives for sensible and constructive changes are ridiculed and dismissed out of hand by the unelected - and therefore unacceptable - EU Commission.

Another one of the advantages of membership regularly trotted out by Europhiles is that we will be “better off” and “more secure” if we stay in.

A similar claim was also considered some 240 years ago by one Thomas Jefferson who answered it then rather well when he said: “A nation that cedes sovereignty for prosperity deserves neither and loses both.”

Another version has it: “He who trades his liberty for safety deserves neither and loses both.”

Either version is equally valid.

The known benefits of leaving far outweigh the known dangers of staying.

If, in June, this nation votes to remain bound to and controlled by the EU, and with ever-increasing severity and disadvantage to us, it will only be a few short years before we’ll be asking ourselves, “How did an allegedly free people yield, without so much as whimper, to a vast, rampant octopus of domination and power with its tentacles in every nook and cranny and moment of every person’s life?”

We have the opportunity of a lifetime, we must not waste it.

Vote for Out of the EU on June 23.

Alan Green

Western Road

Crediton