ONLY days after we were told by German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she would be keeping out of the EU debate she changed her mind and has issued a ‘warning’ to us that leaving would be bad for Anglo–German trade.

The Statistisches Bundesamt, which is the German national statistics office, tells us that after the USA and France we are the third largest export market for the German economy and that they sell us many more times the amount of goods that we sell them.

Mrs Merkel’s popularity in Germany has hit rock bottom over her disastrous mishandling of the migrant crisis.

Will she really risk the wrath of Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen and the other major companies in Germany by telling them that they will no longer be able to sell their products in the UK? The statistics show that such a move would be highly damaging to the German economy, but scarcely scratch ours. The fact is that Germany needs the UK far more than the UK needs Germany.

Like all politicians, her main interest is her share of the vote which, already heavily diminished, would vanish overnight if she carried out this threat, and she has a General Election next year.

When we leave the EU we will be free to trade around the globe again, something we have not been able to do since 1975 because we have been restricted by the Treaty of Rome which forces any trade deal outside the EU to be done for us by the EU Trade Commissioner.

We know that a potential multi-billion-pound worldwide market is blocked to us by the EU (£2.5 billion with South America alone according to leaked reports from Whitehall) and that potentially this market would be worth several times that of our EU trade.

We also know that by retaking our seat at the World Trade Organisation, something we have been unable to do since 1975 (the Treaty of Rome again) we can complete deals in weeks or months, not the years it takes as part of the EU.

Those ‘little Englander insiders’ who say we are too small to survive outside the EU keep ignoring history and the facts; Norway and Switzerland have, again, been voted as the ‘best’ and ‘most successful’ countries on the planet by a UN report. Neither have ever been, or wanted to be, in the EU and show that there can be a far better life outside if we are willing to vote for it on June 23.

TONY MOLLAND, Former chairman, Devizes Constituency UKIP , Association