Undecided need to do homework

I clearly define gross EU Budget liability (nominal £18bn); nett payment to the EU (£14bn including £4bn spent as the EU dictates) and the misleading nett of nett (£10bn). All EU funding comes from EU tax-payers (research funds are part-funded by non-EU Norway and Switzerland).

I worked in export manufacturing (studying between 1971-1974 economics, statistics and industrial engineering). Before 1973, British enterprise prospered through subsidiary factories inside the USA and EEC-Six, avoiding punitive tariffs/barriers to trade: we can do that post-Brexit, selling tariff-free to the EU without ‘acquis communautaire’.

The self-protectionist EEC Customs Union (Common Market) was beneficial as Heath promised ‘nothing would happen against Britain’s interests’ while Wilson’s 1975 referendum promised ‘re-negotiation’ - both promises evaporated.

Maastrict transformed the EEC into today’s political EU-28 through states surrendering Parliamentary sovereignty and evermore law-making ‘competences’ to an unelected EU Commission’s political project. In threatening to leave the EU, Cameron renegotiated certain UK-EU relationships which don’t address crucial EU reforms.

Remain or Leave? There is no status quo option.

Remain? Cameron’s ‘reforms’ give Britain a back-seat alongside EEA-Norway, struggling against QMV and ‘enhanced cooperation’, unable to reform the EU.

Leave? As an independent member of the UN, WTO, Commonwealth, Council of Europe and NATO we rejoin 160+ sovereign nations in peaceful cohabitation, co-operation and mutually beneficial trade (still selling to the EU). Brexit should be amicable as the Lisbon Treaty promotes global free trade and respect for other nations, but if divorce is briefly painful, we will still prosper through our enterprise for trade is conducted between businessmen, not politicians.

Undecided? Please, do some homework. Be wary of ill-informed propaganda and institutionalised bias - every prophecy of economic doom and scaremongery from ‘experts’ over Britain outside the ERM/Euro proved false.

All economies wobble, but undergo corrective action by elected, national governments - yet the Eurozone stagnates in recession.

Compare sovereign Free Trade Areas to the self-protectionist EU Customs Union; EEC/UN/NATO histories and treaties (‘Whitaker’s Almanacs’ 1943-2016).

I’m a realist. I’m voting out.

Barry M Jones

Bixley Lane

Beckley

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