Leaving the EU will make Britain great once again

THE British showed the world what we are made of in 1940. I believe that fi re still burns in our hearts and I pray that June 23 will be the day when Britain once again becomes Great Britain.

I’m passionately excited about this huge opportunity we have to take back control of our country, take our place on the world stage and build a bright future for British businesses to fl ourish outside the EU.

But it is not just my business head that wants to leave the EU – my heart does too. I’m extremely proud of my late father, who fought at Tobruk, Libya, in 1941. He wasn’t a hero, just a lad from Chatham who knew what had to be done and got on with it in that stolid way his generation did.

As a 20- year- old Tommy I doubt he ever even considered it but he was fi ghting for our sovereignty and freedom.

He suffered a lifetime of illness for that cause – many more paid the ultimate price. I will never forget that and I see it as a dishonour to the Greatest Generation that everything they fought for is being eroded by our EU membership.

My business is a small manufacturing company, operating from a rented factory on a wartime industrial estate in Kent. Our draughty unit is not a glamorous looking building but it is big and it is cheap and interesting things get built inside it.

Eighty per cent of our production is exported but almost none of it goes to EU countries, partly because nobody seems to have any money but also because our products fall foul of an EU directive.

WHILE it is not actually banned it makes selling and using our products within the EU diffi cult so customers opt to spend their money elsewhere. What do we make that so offends the EU rule- makers? The clue is that my business is called The British Hovercraft Company.

Yes, I’m a 36- year- old mother of an eight- year- old daughter and I build hovercraft. Not the cross- Channel type that once plied their trade to Calais but more modest craft used for purposes such as survey work in tidal estuaries, tenders for luxury yachts and ice- rescue on

PRIDE: Emma Pullen on a hovercraft. Right, with her father