I COULDN’T suppress a snort of derision when, while watching the late news, on Wednesday (Dec 9), I heard Angela Merkel state that whatever happens as the deadline for our final freedom from Brussels approaches “the integrity of the EU must be preserved”.

Integrity? That is a word that should never be used in the same breath as EU.

For the last 19 years the EU’s auditors have refused to give the bloc’s finances a clean bill of health.

The EU persistently refuses to accept the results of elections or referenda, if the outcomes are not what the unelected federalist fanatics in Brussels want.

The EU has broken its own rule which requires it to negotiate fairly and in good faith if any member state decided to leave the bloc. When the anglophobic Belgian politician, Guy Verhofstedt, was appointed to lead the EU’s Brexit negotiating team, he declared that he saw his role as being to make things so difficult for the United Kingdom that we would give up on Brexit and remain under the control of Brussels.

From the very first day that the Brexit process began, Brussels has dictated rather than negotiated and, if as seems increasingly likely a deal, acceptable to both parties, is not agreed – then the EU, will only have itself to blame.

They just do not understand that while they may be happy to be dictated to by a bunch of unelected, blinkered, Euro-federalists, the people of these islands are most certainly not.

BOB (ROBERT) READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth