EUROPE: We'll be better off if we leave

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is due for reform in 2020. Will newly joined states like Romania be willing to continue to receive less money than the longer standing members? I doubt it.

The EU has already announced that from 2018 its Animal Health budget will be diverted to help pay for the ‘migrant crisis’. The UK presently receives 30m Euros pa. This could be a warning of things to come.

Boris Johnson and Vote Leave are not a political organisation that intends to compete as a party at the next election. It would, therefore, be quite wrong of them to say what the next Government will spend on the rural economy as they will not be that Government.

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If we leave the EU, political parties will have to lay out their rural policy in their manifesto, and we will have to influence that manifesto and then vote for the one we want. At least our votes will count.

Agriculture and the rural economy will require Government help and this can come in many guises and without 200 pages of guidelines.

Most of us would prefer to make our living from the market place and be free to compete whilst maintaining the environment as we have for years.

The introduction of trade barriers against the UK by the EU would damage the EU more than the UK, and there are many other prosperous markets in the world.

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I wonder how long the EU will remain prosperous with its slow bureaucratic governance driving up unemployment?

The Press has made ‘trade deals’ into a mountain. The USA has no trade deals. Most commodities are traded globally and trade deals mostly work on supply and demand and ability to pay.

Britain, her farmers and rural community will be very much better off outside the EU.

Duff Burrell,

Broome Park,

Alnwick