THE reason so many people were undecided about who to vote for in the General Election right up to polling day is simple.

The main parties had not dared to tell the truth about public spending cuts and our enormous multi-billion yearly trade deficit. I suspect that if we were in the eurozone we would be regarded in the same light as Greece, Portugal and Spain.

We are in this state because successive governments have ignored the fact that we import far more than we export, and at the time of writing – on Tuesday – not one of the contenders had promised to tackle this. We can’t export more very quickly as much of British industry has gone, but we can ban all non-essential imports.

Most of our textiles, furniture, metal products and food are imported. Much of it could be produced in Britain, thus creating many thousands of jobs.

The EU would have much to say about this and would probably try to kick us out or apply sanctions to our exports.

This would not worry us as we would continue to trade with the 88 per cent of the world who are not EU members.

In any case, sanctions rarely work and not being in the EU currently sounds like a good idea.

Dave Hodgson, Richmond, North Yorkshire.