Inventor Sir James Dyson has called for Britain to leave the EU as he dismissed warnings over the impact of Brexit on British trade.
The billionaire businessman claimed Brussels “protects vested interests” and said David Cameron and George Osborne were “fundamentally wrong” to want to remain in the bloc.
He told the Daily Telegraph: “I don't just mean from the business point of view, I mean from the point of view of sovereignty.
“We will create more wealth and more jobs by being outside the EU. We will be in control of our destiny. And control, I think, is the most important thing in life and business.
"The last thing I would ever want to do is to put myself in somebody else's hands. Not just the other countries, but the Brussels bureaucrats."
His comments came as a new poll gave a massive swing towards leaving the EU as 55 per cent of UK voters looked set to back Brexit.
Sir James said that EU attempts to impose tariffs on British businesses trading from outside would be countered by the same measures on European businesses hoping to sell on the UK market.
"The EU would be committing commercial suicide to impose a tariff because we import £100 billion [of goods] and we only send £10 billion there," he commented.
The entrepreneur is best known his radical redesign of the humble vacuum cleaner which, alongside a series of other innovations, has made him one of Britain's wealthiest people with a reported £3.2 billion fortune.
He warned that such blue-sky thinking nurtured in British institutions was being lost due to EU-controlled visa rules favouring workers, including unskilled migrants, from within the bloc.
"Why on earth would you chuck out researchers with that valuable technology which they then take back to China or Singapore and use it against us?"
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