Sir,

If any of your readers still harbour the opinion that UKIP is a party of gadflies and fruitcakes then perhaps the recent European Court ruling that islamist extremist Abu Qatada must remain in Britain will finally begin to change their minds.

For those who don't know, Qatada arrived in the UK with a false passport in 1993 and claimed asylum.

He is a Jordanian citizen who has proclaimed that Jews should be killed along with their children and that US citizens (not just soldiers) can be killed anywhere they are to be found.

He is a supporter of Al Qaeda and of suicide bombings and is currently wanted in eight countries for terrorist offences.

Our own security services have labelled him a real and present danger to national security.

In 1970 Qatada would have been turned around at Heathrow but today he is still here and our government remains impotent.

This spectacle of a supposedly sovereign, democratically elected government being ordered to undertake actions contrary to its own national interest by an unelected foreign court should be warning enough to all of us about where this federal EU project is headed.

Add to this the collapse of the euro and the recent threat of an EU tax on the City and it begins to look more and more as if the pro-EU arguments are rooted more in emotion than reason.

It's time we got out. It's time we got our country back.

Gareth Dunn

(Monmouth)