SIR,

Anyone who watches programs like Question Time or listens to the noises emanating from Westminster will notice politicians from the main three parties tying themselves in knots trying to deal with new reality of UKIP and mostly ending by contradicting themselves.

On the one hand they say that UKIP voters can no longer be dismissed as clowns (by sheer weight of numbers one assumes) yet on the other hand they proceed to do exactly that.

UKIP is a protest vote, a dangerous vote, a kind of spasm designed to encourage Tories to be more Tory, a step backwards into the past, a secret vote for Labour, and on and on.

What the British public should take heed of in all of this is that the main parties have resolutely avoided examining their own failings while straining every sinew to seek out UKIP's.

For them it's not about what the people want or what is good for Britain, but about how to manoeuvre against an opponent in order stay in power.

Unfortunately for them it won't work. UKIP's message is too simple and too rooted in common sense to be spun out of the debate.

It is that any democratic country worth the name should make its own laws and be in charge of its own destiny. This is a dreadfully obvious and immovable point for anyone who truly cares about freedom.

To suggest that it is OK to sacrifice sovereignty for trade deals or that it is somehow pragmatic to lie down and let unelected technocrats in a foreign capital have the rule over us is simply the opinion of people who in their hearts think their own country is a failed construct.

This was epitomised on the previous episode of Question Time when, in defiance of all economic evidence, Labour's Tristram Hunt and others spun the tired old rhetoric of a defeatist political class that if we left the EU, Britain would somehow disintegrate as a trading nation.

The fact that he was applauded at all suggests to me that too few people in this country are taking notice of the political and economic disasters happening across the channel.

When my mother was born, this country governed a quarter of the world's population. Since then we have incubated a generation of politicians whose main aim, it seems to me, is to scaremonger the British people into believing they can no longer govern themselves.

That our freedom and democracy has been attacked and sold off by the very people who should have been defending it is not in question.

What is in question is how the British people will react to these events. Benjamin Franklin said that the price of liberty is vigilance.

He was not talking to politicians. He was  talking to the people. We must defend our democracy. We must hold our politicians to account.

These are momentous times and the fork in the road is coming on fast. Do we believe the doomsayers, bow our heads and trudge towards an undemocratic federal Europe?

Or do we walk tall with UKIP and, like previous generations, find the courage to fight for our freedom, even if it is against our own political class? It's a choice we will all have to make and soon.

Gareth Dunn

(Monmouth)