One final reply to Mr Hudson (Letters, August 20) on the growing backlash against the European Union.

UK Independence Party candidates won 28 seats nationally in the May elections and we expect our troublemaking MEPs to rise in number from three to ten in next year's Euros.

Because more people now want independence from the multi-nationalist con called the EU, the new treaty will permit independence parties such as UKIP to be banned and will stop member states from ever leaving.

Article 8 of the treaty's charter will allow the unelected Commission to suspend any human rights which go against the union's "objectives", regardless of the international convention on such rights.

Downing Street doesn't mind despotism, where the enforced destruction of small business is called a "social chapter", and where the establishment of permanent cheap labour zones is termed "regional pay policy".

But the public do mind. We should leave this corrupt dictatorship and deal freely with the world instead - including Mr Hudson's hated US, which helped us out 60 years ago against earlier corporate states based in Berlin, Rome and Vichy.

Indeed, the one positive thing that Brussels has ever achieved has been the preservation of the post-Second World War peace - but only because NATO is based there.

-Ian Hills, Brighton