A letter to the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph which was published on 7th January 2007.

Your correspondent (Letters, 31 December) asks pertinently why Gordon Brown sold the British-owned Westinghouse electric company to Toshiba (for a paltry £2.9 billion) just as Westinghouse was on the brink of obtaining a £60 billion contract with the Chinese to build 32 nuclear power stations.

The Chancellor sold this irreplaceable asset to help plug the gap in Britain’s finances opened up by the reckless hiring of well over half a million additional public employees to promote Labour’s equality and diversity hobbyhorses.

To compound this folly, Mr Brown has let markets know that he would like to dispose of Britain’s one third share in Urenco, the British-Dutch-German consortium that operates the gas centrifuge process for making enriched uranium fuel for nuclear power stations.

The French would dearly love to acquire Britain’s share to replace their own outdated thermal diffusion process, leaving us of course eventually to pay foreigners for what we currently own.

As with Westinghouse, Urenco is an absolutely vital part of our future energy supplies.  Are there enough Labour MPs willing to prevent the Chancellor visiting another disaster on the British people?

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 15th April 1996.

Recognizing at last the economic folly of their single currency project, the French and German governments are now, according to Robert Shrimsley (report, April 10), threatening sanctions against British goods if we don’t follow them in their folly.

Leaving aside the utter illegality of such actions under the GATT agreements to which the French and Germans are signatories, who can now pretend that these countries are in any sense of the word our partners?  The fact is they are our fiercest rivals and it is absurd of us to hand over £10 billion a year to belong to a club organized for their benefit.

Disentangling ourselves from the EU would be easy, not difficult, bringing joy here and relief on the continent.  Preparing for and carrying out our divorce from the EU would be the best possible project for the new Millennium.