AFTER reading Tom Cooper’s letter about the lies made by the Brexit campaign (HAS, Sept 11), I felt I had to reply in spite of my promise to myself that I had exhausted all my Leave arguments in my letters.

I don’t know if Mr Cooper voted in the original Common Market election in 1974. I did, and I voted to join.

But I would never have voted that way if I had known about the lies that were being told at that time by Ted Heath and company with his hidden agenda for a federal Europe, common currency, Communistic style of unelected government and court.

When we joined we didn’t need to trade with Europe as we had the Commonwealth. At the time the major reason for joining was that being in European Economic Community would greatly lessen the chance of a war between European countries if we were trading partners – remember, it was only 28 years after the war which most people at that time had lived through.

If there hadn’t been a disastrous General Election campaign by Teresa May, where she should have concentrated solely on Brexit, we wouldn’t be having this uncertainty about Brexit. With a different, positive leader, I am sure we can return to the optimism which encouraged the electorate to vote for Brexit in the first place.

Tom Ball, Barnard Castle