SIR – Much alarmist nonsense is talked about the UK trade position when we leave the EU. Let me just flag up a few facts, always woefully sparse when emotions run high.

Our top 16 fastest-growing export markets with the exception of Poland (No. 9) are all outside of the EU. Our trade balance is massively in favour of the EU to the UK, more than £300 billion since we joined (The Pink Book, July 31, 2013), so any talk of trade barriers is absurd.

The rate of growth for UK exports is 9.3 per cent Asia and America 5.2 per cent and the EU 2.4 per cent. The very same big business executives and politicians wanting us to stay in are the same people who told us staying out of the Euro would be a disaster.

To suggest political union is necessary to trade is the mark of the economically illiterate. The political and bureaucratic elite and the CIA want us to stay in. What better reason can there be for getting out?

Godfrey Bloom, MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire