JOHN ROADKNIGHT, of Buckwell Road, Kingsbridge, writes:

The problem with Steve Dooley’s EU-Titanic analogy, Gazette, May 13, is that post-Brexit we will only be able to afford third-class passage, and the UK, minus Scotland, will be languishing and isolated in the bowels of the vessel below the waterline with little chance of survival.

For years Brexit supporters have been pinning their hopes on a cosy, close relationship with the US as an alternative that has now been dismissed.

Negotiating new treaties with more than 50 nations with which the EU already has treaties from a much weaker negotiating position is going to take ages and cause incredible uncertainty and instability to our economy. I am afraid that the only way I want to forge trade relations with countries such as Russia and China, with its appalling human rights record and control over the movements of the Dalai Lama, is from a position of strength, behind the protection of the world’s largest single market and 500 million consumers.

I wish Ian Phillips was correct in his assumption that another conflict within the EU was ­‘completely ridiculous’. Tell that to the citizens of Gibraltar, who I know are extremely concerned at the prospect of Brexit, as they have depended on the UK’s membership of the EU to stop their land border with Spain from being sealed.

It will lead to one Nato country within Europe confronting another. I’m afraid we will be unable to send gunboats, as many of them are suffering from engine breakdowns.

Unlike Chris Grayling, I do not believe that the day after Brexit French farmers will be queuing outside the head offices of UK supermarkets pleading with them to continue trading with them. That is not how business operates and many, I am sure, will already be searching for alternative ­markets, with the EU’s remaining 445 million customers, on which three million of our jobs depend, as well as 44 per cent of our exports.

Indeed, according to Gillian Tett, who appeared on a recent Andrew Marr Show, US ­financial institutions and ­companies are already drawing up contingency plans to ­transfer their EU head offices to ‘Dublin, Amsterdam and Frankfurt’ in the event of Brexit. She is the US managing editor of the Financial Times.

With English being the world’s international language, few people consider what a magnet the UK is for inward investment from companies outside the EU to set up their subsidiaries in order to access the world’s largest single market. It must be so much easier for the CEOs of companies such as Nissan, Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover and Ford to contact their employees here without the need for an interpreter every time they pick up the phone. Do we really want to jeopardise this investment?

Economically, strategically and environmentally it will be far better and safer for us to retain close relations with our neighbours, with whom we share the same freedom and ­culture and where so many of us choose to spend our ­holidays and time studying and working. After all, their ­markets are only a few hours away, or at the most a couple of days, as opposed to weeks or months or an ­expensive and environmentally damaging flight away.

Most analysts believe that the best scenario we can expect post-Brexit and without Scotland is one similar to Norway’s, whose prime ­minister Ema Solberg has ­publicly declared that if she had the mandate she personally would like to join the EU as she would then be able to influence events from within!

Like John Major, I too am old enough to remember when the UK was the ‘sick man of Europe’, when so many of our plasterers, plumbers and electricians were forced to search for work in Germany, a situation on which the TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet was based.

I certainly do not want to subject the next generation to a similar fate by voting to leave the EU, which will only result in the breakup of the UK.