Shropshire boss quits industry body over EU stance

Brian Seymour, who runs SMI Manufacturing at Sutton Maddock, near Telford, has quit the Institute of Directors and written a 900-word letter to its director general Simon Walker condemning the organisation's stance.

In it, he claims that the EU is "massively watering down the nature of the indigenous population" of the UK.

Mr Seymour has made public his opposition to EU membership, helped fund Ukip's conference in Telford in 2013, and stood for election for the anti-EU party in the Shifnal South and Cosford ward at Shropshire Council's elections of 2009. His wife Jill Seymour was Ukip's candidate in The Wrekin at the General Election.

Mr Seymour was also among the small business-owning signatories of a letter to a national newspaper before the election backing EU withdrawal, and his company is reportedly Ukip's biggest backer in the Midlands, donating almost £30,000 since 2010.

"As my small company is of good standing and ethical, I find it difficult to trade easily with companies or organisations that have failed in their legal duty to have their accounts fully audited for many years, run their company as a dictatorship and ignored their shareholders' wishes," Mr Seymour wrote in his latest letter.

"All of these practices can be found actively alive in the European Union. It is the commissioners who organise and run the EU and the powerless MEPs are there simply as a token of democracy."

It adds: "The EU from its very foundation is openly based on lies and deception with the hope that its peoples will eventually forget their identity and be overtaken by a false hope and promise and – in the case of the UK – massively watering down the nature, history and spirit of its indigenous population."

The letter also points to the UK's trading relationship with the EU, which he says has declined by £900 million in February and March, while trade with the rest of the world increased by £700 million.