LABOUR councillor Nigel Knowles claims he supports staying in the failing European Union because “Labour is an International Party” (Shuttle, Thurs 25). If he were truly an internationalist, why does Cllr Knowles think we should remain shackled to the EU when the wider world, full of growing economies, is withheld from us by the EU’s Common External Tariff ?

Contrary to Councillors Knowles’ implications, many in Labour want to leave, from MPs like Gisela Stuart, Khalid Mahmood, Frank Field and Kate Hoey and donors like John Mills, to everyday Labour members, voters and trade unionists.

Why do they feel this way? Perhaps because the EU is a corporatist scam for crony capitalist companies to lobby for laws that stamp out smaller businesses without the oversight of our British elected parliament.

Brussels has more lobbyists than Washington DC, with far less democratic and media accountability.

Perhaps they feel insulted by the fact that our elected prime minister had to go around the continent with a begging bowl, spending three days and nights pleading for concessions, only to come back with a supposed “new settlement” that changes nothing at all, capped off with a promise that we will never have to join the euro – a guarantee we have had for decades!

And what’s more, a renegotiation that can be amended by the continental and integrationist politicians of the European Parliament, after we vote on it! A renegotiation that can be overridden by the European Courts!

A renegotiation that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn promises to revoke as soon as his MEPs are able!

And what do we get in return?

Poverty in Africa being enabled by the EU’s protectionist trade policies, euro austerity being forced upon Ireland and the nations of Southern Europe, Angela Merkel’s open door immigration policy inviting ISIS infiltrators into Europe, and a fraction of our own membership fees being handed back to us.

The Labour Party of Nigel Knowles sounds Little European to me, not international in the least.

This vote is a chance to finally right the wrongs carried out by those that duped the public in 1975 into believing we were voting to stay in a trading block. Successive governments then signed treaty after treaty shackling us to what is now a debt ridden political union.

Without any doubt it has to be a vote to LEAVE. When you have unelected people that are not accountable to anyone (who we cannot vote out nor have a say when they are appointed) then it becomes a dictatorship. The EU has removed governments, raided people’s bank accounts and put countries in big debt with loans they can never pay off and will be forever more under the control of unelected bureaucrats of the EU who have control of over 500million people.

Michael Wrench Wyre Forest UKIP Spokesman