WHAT has happened to this once great country that the EU suddenly has us all quaking in our boots at the thought we may leave without a deal and have to make our own decisions?

You would think we had never been outside the EU!

What would have happened if all these wimps had been around in 1939? Europe tried to push us around then, but we stood firm against aggression. Without us the swastika would have been flying over all the European Reichstags.

It seems over the last 40 dark years most of our so-called elite have developed the Stockholm syndrome. Just before and after the war we led the world in innovation, entrepreneurship and technology that was the envy of the western world. This country now seems filled with quislings and defeatists. Where is our backbone and pride? Did we lose it when our industries, that kept this country great, were handed over piecemeal to foreign interests in capitulation without a shot being fired?

Any deal will give way to continuing EU influence. Our self determination as a sovereign country again will be weakened by the leaders in Brussels.

We will not get what the leavers voted for. It will be watered down from our original aspirations in June last year.

This will be the worst of both worlds. We will have half left, Brexit will not mean Brexit and we will not be the country we were before we were shackled to the EU under the guise of the common market referendum as was.

Had we been told at the time we were voting to be subservient to foreign unelected leaders there was not a chance we would have agreed to that, and they knew it.

Those liberals who are anti Brexit claim it’s all about money and trade. No it isn’t, it’s all about freedom.

The war bankrupted us for years but we didn’t care about the money then, it was for a greater cause far more important, it was all about freedom and democracy. Throughout history people have given their lives for freedom but I have yet to hear of someone giving their lives for trade.

I also believe it is totally naive to think if we left without a deal they would not trade with us. It is in their interest to do so. They sell us £70bn more than we sell them.

We need to reconnect with the trade we had across the world with our commonwealth friends. We should never have turned our back on them when we joined the other club. When in New Zealand before the common market referendum the farmers there were very worried over losing their lamb and butter exports to the UK.

I am confident things will work out for us.

R. Quirk

Ulverston