Simon Rake, of Blackawton, writes:

Many recent correspondents have claimed that if we vote to leave the EU we will ‘get back’ our current contribution to the EU budget.

All other things being equal, as my old economics teacher used to say, this might be so. But other things are likely to be anything but equal.

Our gross contribution to the EU is around one per cent of GDP and the net contribution is around half a per cent. One does not need to be a doom-monger to appreciate just how quickly this could be swallowed up by an increase in government ­interest payments, a decline in exports, a fall in foreign investment, weakness in the pound and, most worryingly of all given our record current account deficit, a balance-of-payments crisis.

Small adverse movements in any or all of these factors could conspire to eat up all of this supposed windfall.

It is all very well for ­proponents of a leave vote to say they do not ‘believe’ that any of these things will come to pass. However, the international ­capital markets and boardrooms of foreign companies, which are where the scale and severity of these effects will be determined, look at facts rather than beliefs.

At the very least, before ­‘project delusion’ gambles away our economic future, they owe us some explanation of how these negative effects can be avoided.