Letters in the Daily Telegraph

Today's Daily Telegraph has its usual crop of variable letters on the subject of the Conservative Party and that referendum that is disappearing into the far horizon. Most of them are variations on the same old themes; the one that gets to the core of the matter is by Lord Willoughby de Broke, the other UKIP peer (who is not standing for the leadership).

SIR – Charles Moore (Comment, October 3) says that he does not support Ukip because "only the big, old parties contain the DNA to govern".

Whichever party forms the next government here will not "govern". Most of our national law is now made in Brussels, where Britain has 8 per cent of the vote.

Do we want to go on being governed by the unelected and unsackable Brussels bureaucracy with its endless flood of suffocating law? Do we want to go on seeing a largely discredited Parliament acting simply as a rubber stamp for EU legislation?

Our parliamentary democracy worked when our elected representatives made our laws. The only way now to restore that democracy is to give the people of Britain the power of binding local and national referendums, as in Switzerland.

I have introduced a Bill in the Lords to give them that power. I look forward to the howls of protest from "the big, old parties".

Lord Willoughby de Broke

We are all looking forward to those entirely predictable howls of protest from "the big, old parties" and from all soi-disant experts on the British Constitution.

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