SIR - The bankruptcy of the Jeremiad-like warnings Glyn Edwards (Our Country’s elite should feel ashamed, Craven Herald letters, February 7) and Vince Smith (Is this what Britain wants for our future?) issue regarding the danger the EU poses to the UK is epitomised by both raising the spectre of Hitler. This is Dad’s Army gone mad.

Rather than target the economic elites of Europe, who have seen their wealth grow astronomically during “austerity” and, like multinational corporations, will profit whether Brexit happens or not since they long ago dispensed with archaic systems like nation-states and taxation, Mr Edwards and Mr Smith resort to Cold War/Second/First World War rhetoric. This sort of myopia lets the real crooks of the hook. Mr Smith seems to be unaware that the UK’s been part of the EU for 46 years. For all the power it has, it certainly wasn’t the EU who destroyed the miners, swapped manufacturing jobs for finance and real estate, undermined the NHS, charged university tuition, or closed libraries. Nor did the EU farm out contracts and our taxes to sham companies like Carillion and Interserve. Presiding over the fifth largest economy in the world, successive UK governments have enabled a general looting, mostly through privatization, of our common wealth. Let’s face up to some home truths.

Mr Edwards exhorts us not to sell our birthright (by remaining in the EU presumably) as Esau did. If hungry Esau gave it all up for a bowl of Jacob’s red lentils then I personally think he deserved it. But seriously: this reference goes to the heart of Brexitology where we’re the victims and our oppressors are the EU and migrants. This is nonsense. Our inheritance is a democratic, tolerant and open-minded society, an inheritance which having grown immeasurably since 1945 is now under threat by Brexiteers.

Bruce McLeod

Otterburn