Brexit

Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are entirely the opinion of the author and are in no way be interpreted as a statements of fact nor as professional or personal advice of any kind. If in doubt, research it yourself.

TLDR: Einstein defined insanity as performing the same actions but expecting a different outcome. If you like everything about the EU and where it's headed then vote stay. If you don't then vote leave.

First off, anybody that says they know what will happen if Britain leaves the EU is talking arse. The situation is completely unprecedented. Any time anybody says that something will happen, without qualifying it with "might", in relation to the potentially leaving the EU they are lying.

Secondly, both sides are pretty terrible at making their argument. You've got one side making a laughable job of fearmongering by saying that Europe will end up at war if we leave, that Northern Ireland will go back to how it was 30 years ago, that the UK will split up and that that the country will go bankrupt. Then there's the other side with Boris Johnson talking about bendy bananas. It's Upper Class Twit of the Year Vs a guy nobody likes, a guy who is arguably a war criminal, and the guy in charge on Black Wednesday.  You couldn't even make a parody of how crap they are.

Here's a few examples of the things I've seen from people on both sides.

If we leave our economy will collapse

The treasury says GDP could decrease by 6% in 2 years if we leave, which it equates to £4,300 per household. It is however a government report and the government is backing the Remain campaign, so it's fair to say that it's in their interest to paint a picture that is a little bleak. They also says that house prices will fall if we leave. This is a bad thing if you're looking to sell in the near future, but if you're looking to buy then it's quite the opposite. Cass Business School actually performed an academic review of the claims and states that the treasury "grossly exaggerated" the impact of leaving the EU. The full review is available here.

The CBI, who also back the Remain campaign, estimate a 25-28% GDP growth by 2030 if we leave and a 29% growth if we stay(that's an overall difference of 0.78-3.88%). They also estimate that unemployment would fall in the longterm if the UK leaves. http://news.cbi.org.uk/news/leaving-eu-would-cause-a-serious-shock-to-uk-economy-new-pwc-analysis/leaving-the-eu-implications-for-the-uk-economy/

Professor of Applied Economics at Cardiff University Business School Patrick Minford seems to be of the opinion that our cost of living will actually immediately decrease by 8% if we leave the EU and adopt free trade.

OpenEurope thinks that if we leave the EU our GDP could be as low as 2.2% lower or as much as 1.6% higher, but expects the more likely figure to be between -0.8% and +0.6%, by 2030.

However, just because the GDP is better or worse does not mean you as an individual will be better or worse off. Trickle down economics is bollocks.

Most people seem to agree though that there will be uncertainty and the stock market and the pound will likely dip immediately following the referendum whatever the result. It might be worth waiting a week or two before you buy those shares.

We send £55million a day to the EU

No. That's the gross figure(~£18billion per year) not taking into account our rebate(~£5billion) or the amount that the EU spends on us (~£4.5billion). This works out at just over £23million per day. https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/

The EU is undemocratic

While Remainers will argue that the public can vote to elect MEPs every 5 years just like general elections, they fail to see how the EU is different. In a national election you're ideally voting for people that will make the laws you want, but in the EU MEPs don't get to make laws, only the European Commission can do that. We do not get to elect the commissioners either, the MEPs do that, but their choice is limited. The European Council (Heads of states, the council president, and the commission president) chooses a candidate for president which the MEPs get to accept or reject. If rejected another candidate is chosen within a month and the process continues. Once accepted the new commission president, along with the European Council, chooses his/her 7 (yes SEVEN) vice presidents and 20 commissioners, one from each member state. The MEPs can ask the commission to propose legislation, but they cannot do it themselves. Likewise the public might be able to take part in a public consultation from time to time, but they themselves do not get to make any suggestions either. Just to make this point clear: Nobody who you elect gets to actually propose anything, they just get the choice of agreeing or disagreeing with someone else's proposition. It's like you're in Birmingham and want to get to London(~120 miles), and you're asked "Do you want to walk to London?". You might want to suggest catching the train or bus or driving yourself as they would be more efficient, but you can't. You can either walk, or stay where you are.

The current head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, is not exactly a fan of democracy either.

We wouldn't get a trade deal with the EU if we left

The aforementioned professor Minford states that the EU would want a trade deal with us quite desperately. We have a trade deficit with the EU, they sell us a lot of goods at inflated prices, and they'd probably like that to continue. Even if they don't I'm sure a few of the other 85% of the worlds population would like to do business.

The Express also reported that Britain would not lose any existing trade deals by leaving.

Barack Obama said we'd be at the back of a queue for a trade deal if we left

Firstly, he was almost certainly asked by David Cameron to say something along those lines.

Secondly, he's on his way out so who cares what he thinks? His replacement is probably going to be either Donald Trump or Satan Hillary Clinton. Trump's a businessman so he'll likely be looking to do business, and I'm sure a relatively small donation to The Clinton Foundation would secure Hillary's support. Just ask Saudi Arabia. Thirdly, the EU doesn't have a trade deal with the US anyway. We won't lose anything, we just won't gain something. Realistically we'll be no better or worse off than we are now. TTIP is not necessarily going to be in the publics best interests anyway.

Matt Damon/Michael Moore said Brexit was bad

That's called an appeal to false authority. WTF does Matt Damon know about it? All he did was say that Brexit was bad. If he can't cite any valid reasons with evidence to back that up then he's talking cock.

Big businesses say we'd be better off staying

That's because they like the protectionism of the EU. They don't know for sure what's going to happen if that disappears so they're erring on the side of caution.

The CBI for example talks about staying in a reformed EU. The problem with that is there is no guarantee that what we'll ever get is a reformed EU. In fact, recent evidence suggest that we absolutely would not.

If we leave we lose all the good things, like workers rights and consumer standards

Not necessarily. We already have better regulations in some regards. There'd also be a good deal of negotiation and some of the things that aren't part of our law could get written in.

Leaving the EU puts 3-4 million jobs at risk

That's a gross exaggeration at best and at worst an outright lie. According to FullFact, A 2000 research paper by South Bank University found that an estimated 3,445,000 jobs depend on trade with the EU, not membership of the EU. A 2000 paper by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research stated "there is no a priori reason to suppose that many of these [jobs], if any, would be lost permanently if Britain were to leave the EU."

The Institute of Economic affairs wrote a briefing on the subject too.

If we leave we'll still have to stick to EU standards and regulations anyway so we might as well stay

No. We'd have to maintain EU standards when trading with the EU, which is an ever shrinking percentage of our exports, currently around 9% of GDP. For the other 91% of GDP we'd be free to do whatever we wanted. We do have some EU regulations written into our own law, but we would also be free to repeal those.

90% of economists back remain

It's impossible to tell. The Ipsos Mori poll this figure was taken from was sent to 3,818 economists where 88% of the 639 that responded thought the UK would be negatively affected over the next 5 years if we left the EU. To put it more accurately, 14.72% thought Brexit would have a negative affect over the next 5 years, 2.02% thought the effect would be positive, and 83.26% did not reply.

People can come and go to Britain as they please

Not quite. We do still have border operations as we're not part of the Schengen area. EU citizens however are free to move here and frequently do. Net EU migration was 184,000 last year alone (compared to 188,000 non-EU imigrants http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-net-migration-statistics), which does put a strain on hospitals and schools and results in increased house prices. That said, EU migrants have an employment rate of 78%, which is higher than that of UK nationals. Leaving the EU is expected to result in a net immigration drop of 84,000 per year. The actual immigration figures will be higher however as these cited official statistics do not include short term immigration, which is people staying for between a month and a year.

In any case, both EU and non-EU immigration need to fall for the government to reach it's targets.

Some people might argue that immigration is beneficial, but that is debatable to say the least. What is known is that immigration tends to negatively impact low paid workers and positively impact high paid workers

Some might argue that a drop in net immigration of 84,000 would still leave a net immigration of 288,000 per year, and as such would not solve the problems of the population growing faster than can be adequately handled so can be ignored. Using that logic why bother to eat anything? You're only going to be hungry again a few hours later. This is referred to as a Nirvana Fallacy.

You're racist if you want to leave the EU/something about immigration

That's referred to as an ad hominem fallacy. It's generally interpreted that the person making use of it is doing so because either they don't have a valid argument to present or they can't counter yours.

I think the European Convention on Human Rights is being abused and I want to leave

It is being abused. It's outdated and no longer fit for purpose, however leaving the EU will not affect it as it's an entirely separate matter. It's also written into British law in it's outdated form. You can thank Tony Blair for that. His wife's a barrister who co-founded Matrix Chambers, specialising in human rights, at the time but I'm sure there was no conflict of interest.

If Britain leaves the EU it's not like the rest of Europe is going to sever all ties and watch as the country floats off into the Atlantic and sinks. There are indications that the French, Dutch and Czechs all want a referendum on their EU membership as well.

Personally I've never really trusted the EU. It was sold to us as a single market but now it feels like it's evolved into a way of bringing all of Europe under the control of a select few without going to war. The single European currency was the first step. Typically if a country gets into economic trouble they can devalue their currency to increase foreign trade. If you have a shared currency you can't do that. If however you can merge all the nations into just one centrally controlled superstate then you get to treat the whole thing as a single economy with a single economic policy. No more Greece getting into trouble and Germany, France, Britain et al bailing them out. No more Greece, Germany, France or Britain at all.

Then there's the proposed formation of the EU army that Juncker has been wanting for a long time. As far as I'm aware every member state already has it's own army so there's really no need to create an EU army. Unless of course the EU would be looking to use it as a tool to enforce its will on its constituent nations. FullFact points out that the UK would need both a referendum and a vote in parliament before it could hand common defence powers to the EU.

Sargon of Akkad made a video discussing the EU.