I AGREE with Peter Alcock's comments (You Say, March 24), that voting for New Labour or their Lib-Dem lackeys in the forthcoming General Election is as good as handing over complete control of the UK to unelected Eurocrats in Brussels.

However, I must take issue with Mr Alcock if he is advocating that we should vote Conservative. It was the Conservatives who originally conned us into joining a "Common Market", and then signed many more of our rights away at Maastricht.

Admittedly, they have now realised just how unpopular this "European Project" is with the majority of the British people and what it is costing us, both financially and in terms of our democratic freedom.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives are hopelessly divided over the European Union. A large proportion of their MPs would like to leave the EU, but they also have a number of prominent Europhiles. Any attempt to take a stronger anti-EU line would split, and probably destroy, their party.

They are so concerned about this, and the growing support for the UK Independence Party (which is the only mainstream party offering withdrawal from the EU) that, in their usual populist fashion, they are now attempting to steal the UKIP's clothes to try and win back this support.

Mr Hague has cobbled together the best Euro-sceptic policy he can manage, without causing a total rift. He is campaigning to keep the pound, but only "for the lifetime of the next parliament" and claiming that we can be "in Europe but not run by Europe", despite all the evidence to the contrary.

All this is quite bogus, as there is no way that a British government would be allowed to renegotiate treaties, which Conservative Ministers have previously signed.

The only legal way of regaining British sovereignty is to withdraw from the EU and then form trade agreements with our continental neighbours.

If Mr Alcock truly wants to save our country from total absorption into a EU superstate, he should join the millions of other disaffected Conservative, Liberal and traditional Labour voters and support the UK Independence Party.

R G SPENCER,