SIR – Gary Webb (Letters, November 2) is wrong to suggest that referenda exist only in democracies.
Far from it, they are in fact the tools of dictators trying to give their regimes some semblance of respectability.
In democracies we are lucky enough to elect our own representatives to make decisions and therefore referenda tend not to be needed.
Furthermore, any suggestion of independence from the EU would be equivalent to political and economic suicide.
Unfortunately, we are no longer the world superpower we once were and any attempt to go it alone in the modern world could only end in political disaster and economic annihilation.
We tried to exist outside the EU before, with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1959.
It failed then and would certainly fail now.
Andrew Gardner
Malvern
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