Britain’s importance to the EU is a vital negotiating lever for Cameron
SIR – There has been too much focus on how leaving the EU would affect us. Some say we will be isolated; others insist that the freedom will benefit us.
Little has been made of how our departure would affect the EU – and the fact that it cannot afford to let us go. I wish David Cameron would assert more loudly that Britain will leave if his conditions are not met in full.
It is a strong negotiating lever. Give the EU a scare, and place more emphasis on the damage our departure could wreak.
The EU bent over backwards to keep Greece in. What would it do to stop us from leaving?
Janice R S Sinclare
London N12 SIR – Mr Cameron is barking up the wrong tree on migrant benefits. It is likely that most of the people wanting to come here from countries that have entered the EU have already done so.
Britain already has the power to restrict the entry of people from new accession countries for a number of years and, in extremis, can veto the accession entirely.
Richard Duncan
Guildford, Surrey SIR – The reason why there is no option on the EU referendum ballot paper to “Stay in the EU, but dump all the Eurocrat pipe dreams” (Letters, January 28), is that no such option is possible. To that extent, at least, the Government is being honest, if only by omission. We have a choice between regaining our sovereignty or being dragged towards ever-closer union.
John Waine
Nuneaton, Warwickshire SIR – Your headline, “Send soldiers to EU borders, Britain is told” (report, January 25), shows why Brexit is the answer. Britain should not be told what to do by the leaders of other countries, and especially not by unelected EU commissioners.
Many of our problems, from migration to work hours, stem from the EU’s undemocratic nature. Let us take back our independence and allow our elected politicians to find solutions.
Peter Leon
London N6 SIR – European countries have not covered themselves in glory when it comes to addressing the migrant crisis. But it is wrong to suggest that the proposal to suspend Greece from the Schengen area is characteristic of a dictatorship (“EU imperialism bodes ill for our sovereignty”, Leading article, January 26). These proposals will be put to elected national governments, which must then debate them and decide how to act. They may disagree. But this is a disagreement among neighbouring democracies, not some kind of centralised coup.
Indeed, this is why the EU exists: to give us a democratic way to resolve differences. None of the challenges we face would go away if the EU ceased to exist. We would simply lose one of our best tools for dealing with them.
Richard Corbett MEP (Lab)
Brussels, Belgium