Ex-county MP backs UKIP

LETTER: Christopher Gill was Conservative MP for Ludlow from 1987 to 2001. In this letter he explains why he will vote for the UK Independence Party at the next election.

Jillian Seymour, Letters, March 30, is correct. As a former Conservative MP I can vouch for the fact that the Tory Party is pro-European Union – although, as she says, at election time members pretend not to be.

I have long been an implacable opponent of this country's political union with 26 other countries whose culture, democratic institutions and, crucially, their legal systems, are totally different to our own.

Notwithstanding my well- known opposition to party policy on this issue, at European Parliament election time I was always asked to endorse the local Tory candidates, presumably because the party recognised that my views were more popular than theirs.

More illustrative of the Tory Party's real stance on the EU is the fact that they have recently brought back into the Shadow Cabinet the arch-Europhile, Ken Clarke.

In future I shall most assuredly be voting for the UK Independence Party because it is the only moderate, non-sectarian party that is committed to getting us out of Europe while at the same time encouraging free trade and friendship with our continental neighbours.

Christopher Gill

Ludlow MP 1987 to 2001

Bridgnorth