Alan Langmaid, of Hilldown, Totnes, writes:

I read the catalogue of fear-based reasons for staying in the EU from Michael Sturdee, Chronicle, April 1, which lists all the standard excuses for remaining in for fear of losing everything.

It even includes the disintegration of the EU itself, as if the UK has any real influence in steering this supranational continental state. David Cameron demonstrated eloquently how ineffectual Britain is in influencing anything in the EU when he came home trumpeting his self-proclaimed success at the EU-UK negotiations prior to the referendum announcement. It amounts the square root of nothing. It was a ­humiliating black eye from a disinterested body of nations.

Michael stated that the world is a dangerous place and we would suffer if we left the EU. Really? Wasn’t it Belgium and France, both staunch members of this safe haven, that recently suffered dreadfully at the hands of the very threat he thinks we will be safe from if we remain in? Is membership of the EU really an issue when it comes to security from terrorism? Surely these things are not connected.

We can cooperate just as easily with the security forces of the EU, US, Russia or anywhere else in the world without being tied politically to them. For everything else, we have Nato.

He is correct in saying that EU laws are initiated by the Council of Ministers and fleshed out by the bureaucratic directorates. So here in Britain we are subject to laws made by foreigners, nearly all of whom have never been elected by Britons, gold-plated by a self-serving bureaucracy.

An interesting fact is that if the EU applied to join itself it would fail its own democracy criteria. We get to elect the ­parliament, but what powers does it have? Roughly the same as a parish council. Parliament does not make laws, it only discusses them. It is a huge distraction trick to sooth European citizens into thinking we have a democracy. Look, here’s your parliament, full of people you have elected. But it’s all a feint to divert our attention away from where the real law-­making power is.

Britain returned Eurosceptic Ukip as the largest elected party in the Euro elections, and what difference has it made? None. Power in the form of policy and law making is held by a small handful of people who have never been genuinely elected by us for that purpose.

Outside the EU we would be at liberty to choose any laws or policies, including the occasional sensible ones that come from the EU. The essential word is choice. Remaining a member hobbles our flexibility to react to home-grown crises, such as the current steel industry issue. Steel making is a crucially strategic industry to this ­country, yet there are so many solutions we are forbidden from using that may help thanks to restrictive EU rules. State subsidies and action to offset the burden of energy use, to name a couple. We are trapped in this abusive marriage to an inflexible dinosaur. Being just one country of 28 dilutes our influence to almost nothing, and it gets worse with every country that joins the EU. Turkey next?

It is becoming clear that undecided voters want facts, not dogma. So here are some facts. Britain has the fifth-largest economy in the world and is the eighth-largest ­manufacturer, with a massive home market. The EU states its intentions for ever-closer union, while the UK states exactly the opposite. We are unlikely ever to join the euro, so what is the point of clinging on to the shirt tails of a body going one way when our instincts are for going the other. We will never be ­spiritually at ease in the EU. Nor the EU with us.

What on earth makes people fret that being in the EU is the only reason that Britain is so well placed? Why would other countries not wish to trade with us and invest with an energetic nation? What’s not to like? By contrast, the EU is a dreadful mess, as even Michael admits, with its currency crisis, stagnation and lack of democracy.

Time to stop being frightened of our perceived frailties and begin to have the confidence to break free and make our own way in the world as a flexible and independent nation again.