RECENTLY I came across a reason to vote ‘leave’ that I think is rarely heard.

It makes an enlightening change from the ping pong of contested financial claims most voters have become hardened to: EU trade tariffs make African farmers poor and use our money to do it.

Tariffs mean that in 2014 the whole of Africa made just under $2.4 billion from coffee exports, while Germany made $3.8 billion.

Pardon?

Yes, Germany made more money from coffee without growing a single bean than a whole continent which grows vast amounts.

Germany’s coffee producers need cheap, raw beans to make money, so there is no import tariff on green, unprocessed coffee.

That’s why the vast bulk of African coffee exports are unprocessed.

But there are import tariffs on processed coffee because it is in the processing, branding, packaging and marketing that Germany makes its money.

These tariffs protect it from African competition.

This isn’t meant to point the finger at Germany; it’s the same story with cocoa.

It’s protectionism, pure and simple.

International aid can be well and good, but we know that some of it is lost in bureaucracy, some goes with strings attached, and some ends up in the wrong hands.

Besides, removing the dignified ladder to wealth of fair trading, and replacing it with handouts hardly seems social justice.

An independent UK could keep the existing arrangements temporarily, until it negotiates new trade deals that would balance fair trading with supporting both African and UK interests.

Wouldn’t that be a progressive trade policy?

As many people as possible need to know that a vote to leave isn’t just a vote to free the UK.

It’s a vote for social justice that could help free some of the world’s poorest people from the poverty the EU has trapped them in.

W Elphinston Northwich