Bob Eaglesfield, of Warfleet Creek Road, Dartmouth, writes:

In 1975 I voted to join the European Common Market. I subsequently spent virtually all of the 1990s working and living outside the UK in India and then Africa.

I returned to the UK in 2001 to become aware that ­important things had changed. The UK was now a member of the EU – something entirely ­different from the Common Market I had been in favour of.

An enormous portion of new laws applicable to UK citizens evolved in a multilingual talking shop in Strasburg and were enforced by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. And many of these new laws and regulations were self-evidently daft and/or introduced ­needless bureaucratic demands on British companies.

Since 2001, a series of governments of all flavours, with unflinching support from the BBC, have tried to convince the public that this is a perfectly ­reasonable state of affairs. A side issue has been that one of these enforced laws enables citizens of any EU nation to move freely between EU countries.

Fifteen years after my 2001 return to the UK, its citizens had the opportunity to bring this extraordinary state of affairs to an end. The Government then wheeled in ‘authorities’ from the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England and even the US president to ­support its claim that disaster would inevitably result were we to leave the EU. And despite this pressure, the British public had its say. Since then there has been much pussyfooting about how we should ‘negotiate’ our exit, with two big issues dominant: trade relations and immigration.

We are a significant net importer of goods and services from the EU and there is no ­reason to believe that will change. The current strategy of talking about how we might negotiate a trade deal seems to me to be fundamentally unsound. It gives the EU bureaucrats reason to believe that they have the upper hand and can demand concessions at will. If we simply terminate our membership of the EU we will present a fait accompli. Trade will then continue between EU countries and the UK based

on quality and value, just as it does now. It would not be in ­anyone’s interest to raise tariffs in either direction.

Preventing the free flow of Europeans to the UK would enable the UK Government to determine which immigrants should be welcomed. If the number of European immigrants is reduced greatly those from Commonwealth countries would increase. Another bizarre accusation that has gained currency is that a vote to leave the EU is ‘racist’.

A new year has dawned. I live in hope that before 2017 is over we will have unambiguously terminated our membership of the EU.