PETER Clarke repeats a commonly-used reason for voting to leave the EU – Why vote to remain? (Keighley News, November 24) – namely that the austerity policy introduced by the coalition government was the fault of the EU.

Austerity was introduced in 2010, in an attempt to pay off the deficit inherited by the incoming coalition.

Cameron and Osborne, very successfully, managed to place the blame for this massive deficit on the overspending of the Blair/Brown years.

In fact, the need to bail out the banks and building societies, rightly or wrongly, was the cause. The HBOS bail out alone cost £20 billion.

Why the need? Our banks plus German as well as Icelandic ones and many others purchased industrial quantities of US sub-prime credit derivatives as investments.

By 2008, these worthless investments imploded, leaving them all with massive debts and facing collapse. Hence queues outside Northern Rock branches – two thirds of their collateral was made up of these worthless credit derivatives.

Secondly, the recent High Court decision was purely a judgement on whether our sovereign Parliament should have a say in the Brexit process, which I would have thought all democrats should support?

What was largely an internal Conservative party split, not to forget UKIP, has now ended up in putting our collective futures in doubt.

Finally, we are a representative democracy, with an unwritten constitution. After the original vote to join the EC, the likes of Enoch Powell – a vociferous opponent of joining – had no qualms in attempting to reverse the referendum outcome. What will be, will be, but no Brexiteer, however Gung Ho! can be certain of the final outcome.

JOHN VAN DER GUCHT Cross Hills