Why I Am Voting for Brexit

[Based on remarks to the Hewitts-Northern Echo Brexit debate held in Darlington, County Durham, England, 15 June 2016.]

If we British vote to stay in the European Union (EU), we should consider exactly what it is that we would be voting to remain in.

The EU is a democratically-deficient failed state.

Its ‘constitution’ is a sham inconsistent with our own.

Its five presidents are contemptuous of the peoples they misgovern.

It is governed by a corrupt and unaccountable kleptocracy.

It fleeces us for many billions a year, most of which it wastes on pork-barrel projects.

Its much-vaunted hand-outs destroy more jobs than they create by diverting manufacturing to the continent and asset-stripping the UK economy.

Its banking system is broken, its monetary policy a mess, and its currency close to collapse.

Its economic policies have caused economic depression and mass unemployment across much of Europe, and this depression has no end in sight.

Its agriculture and fisheries policies produce environmental catastrophe and economic devastation in Africa.

Its migrant policies are a disgrace to humanity.

It is forever meddling in our affairs and it demands ever-greater control.

It openly aspires to a common European fiscal policy, a common foreign policy, and a common European army, all to be imposed from Brussels.

Yet it allows us no real say in how it is run and actually holds us back.

It weighs us down under a mountain of misguided regulations.

It restricts our freedom to set our own immigration policy.

It prevents us from making our own trade deals with other countries.

It cannot get anything right and it cannot change itself.

It is crumbling before our eyes and will inevitably break up.

Yet the “elites”—the Government, Bank of England, Treasury, IMF, EU itself, and Goldman Sachs—are telling us that we have no choice but to stay.

On the contrary.

We can choose to remain inside a make-believe country called Europe and sink with the EU ship.

Or we can re-join the rest of the world and succeed as an independent nation.