In the shopping centre you can buy a sandwich from M&S. Walk on and you pass McDonalds, KFC and Burger King. But this isn’t any ordinary British street - this is Malta. I’m 50 miles south of Sicily, and as close to Africa as Oxford is to Leeds.

Despite gaining independence from Britain in 1963, Malta retains home comforts. Walking around on Sunday I pass several red telephone boxes. I met cheery Northern Saga louts, treating the island as an exotic home from home. Despite our best efforts, the Maltese speak fondly of us Brits. But it’s a different story when it comes to the EU.

Turnout at their scaremongering 2003 EU Referendum exceeded 90 per cent. A mere 53 per cent of the population voted in favour of joining. The socialists called the referendum a “sham.” They rejected the results – yet Malta still joined. Make small talk in the bars of Valletta, and the subject soon comes up.

“The EU was painted as heaven on earth,” one lady exhales. “When we raised concerns about Maltese jobs our politicians sneered. Who would possibly want to come to Malta to work? But oh boy,” she laughs, “they flooded in.”

She admits that EU membership has resulted in technological advances for her country. But goes on to say that the numbers of skilled workers arriving from elsewhere in the EU has made it nearly impossible for Maltese born children to find work.

“As a mother I cried my eyes out when Malta voted to join the EU.”

“Our children used to get good summer jobs. That doesn’t happen now. Those jobs get taken by Hungarians, Bulgarians, and Spaniards.”

Malta has a population of around 450,000 people. 80,000 workers have arrived from elsewhere in the EU. This she says, is the equivalent of 15 million EU workers moving to the UK in around a decade: “We’re overrun. We’ve been invaded. “

Momentarily, I feel as though I have been trapped in a lift with Nigel Farage.

Yet here in Malta it’s not the right wingers, but the political left who have issues. Their figurehead is 82 year old Karmenu Misfud Bonnici. Formerly head of the Maltese General Workers Union, he became Prime Minister from 1984-1987, campaigned against EU membership in 2003, and now fronts Malta’s vitriolic campaign for National Independence.

“In 2011” a man tells me, “the EU demanded that Malta pay it over EUR 180,000 every day. Karmenu Misfud Bonnici says that what they failed to do to us with the sword, they are now doing with the pen. The EU is going to destroy Malta.”

It’s interesting to hear another country’s take on the EU. As a casual observer I’m not surprised that the country has been flooded with foreign workers - everyone speaks English and you get to live by the seaside. All the same I their honesty refreshing, even if their beer would taste imported from the Czech Republic or elsewhere in the Schengen zone.