I AGREE with John Cumberland’s jaundiced view of Vince Cable (HAS, Aug 14).

Cable has over the years deplored the level of personal debt in Britain while at the same time advocated lax bank regulation. He doesn’t seem to have spotted the self-contradiction there: lax bank regulation encourages banks to lend, which means more debt.

Re Brexit, I’d like to see him deal with the New Zealand argument which goes thus.

NZ has a similar land mass to the UK and very similar culture, but it is not in the EU (shock horror). Plus it’s better off than the UK (more shock horror). Plus, as regards the idea that the UK needs to trade with nearby countries, NZ doesn’t because there just aren’t any nearby countries (yet more shock horror). There’s Australia, but that’s a small economy, 1,500 miles away.

So if we stopped all immigration and had just emigration for the next thirty years we’d end up as a New Zealand: in paradise - (catastrophic and utterly disastrous levels of shock horror).

Ralph Musgrave, Durham