I try not to be too political on Facebook but the EU referendum is too important to sit back and watch without trying to make a difference. In fact, the British public agree on how important it is. In a recent YouGov poll, 76% of respondents said that the result of the EU referendum was more important to them personally than the result of the next general election.
In case you couldn't guess from the fact that I am young and educated (the two biggest indicators of voting intention), I will be voting Remain and will do so without a second of hesitation. It is no secret that the key to Remain winning the referendum is a high turnout. This is because when there is a low turnout, it is young people who are the first to not bother voting and polling data shows that 43 is the age when a majority of people begin to support "Brexit". It is because of this reason that UKIP's Arron Banks, the man bankrolling Leave.EU (an unofficial "out" campaign) has said he plans to "bore the electorate into submission" so that they don't vote.
Both Vote Leave (the official "out" campaign) and Leave.EU seem to be trying to confuse voters with nonsense arguments and deliberately misleading statements so I would like to dispel a few myths. To do this, I will take Vote Leave's "5 positive reasons to leave the EU" and point out, what I consider to be, massive holes in their arguments.
1. "Our money, our priorities"
Vote Leave claim that we send over £350m to the EU every week. The figure they are referring to is our "gross contribution to the EU", which is actually £361m a week.
However, before this is paid to the EU, we get a rebate. This rebate was negotiated under Thatcher because the calculation to work out each country's gross contribution worked out poorly for the UK - this wasn't by design; the calculation was invented before the UK joined. I won't go into the mechanics of the calculation but as a result of the rebate, the UK actually only pays £276m a week (less than 80% of the claimed figure).
Let's not stop there though. Out of the money we give to the EU, about 40% comes straight back to the UK to fund (amongst other things) agriculture, regional development and universities. This leaves the actual cost of our EU membership at £161m a week. This works out at about £300 per year per household. This might still sound like a lot of money (albeit a lot less than the £700 per yer per household figure claimed by Vote Leave) but, as with any membership, we get a whole host of benefits from being a member, some of which I will talk about later on (or more likely in a future post).
2. "Take back control of our laws"
This "positive reason" is quite self-explanatory; Vote Leave claim that by leaving the EU, we can take back control of our laws. There are so many things wrong with this argument that I don't know where to begin.
Firstly, UKIP has claimed that 75% of UK laws were made in Brussels. This is just factually inaccurate. I'll admit, no-one knows the exact figure and the amount depends greatly on what you consider to be laws and what you consider to have been "made in Brussels". However, if we are being as generous to UKIP as possible, the upper end of actual estimates carried out by the House of Commons library is 50%. In reality, the figure could be as low as 15%. If we meet in the middle, that's about one third of UK laws that have been made in Brussels.
Again, though, there is a fundamental flaw in this argument. Contrary to claims by Boris Johnson, these are not laws such as "we can't recycle teabags" or "children under 8 can't blow up balloons" or "we can't sell bananas in bunches of more than three", all of which have been thought up by Boris and have no element of truth. Many of the laws are there to improve safety, save the environment and improve competitiveness in the single market.
Finally, these laws, for the most part, have not been imposed on us by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. The laws, I accept, will have been proposed by the European Commission - a body made up of "unelected bureaucrats" in the eyes of Vote Leave, or professionals who assess the economic, social and environmental impact of different policies in the eyes of Stronger In. By the way, this is no different to UK laws being proposed by the Civil Service.
The laws are then amended by the European Parliament, an elected body, the members of which every EU citizen (of voting age) can vote for. The laws may also be amended by the European Council, the 28 elected heads of state or government for each Member State. Both the Parliament and the Council have to agree on new EU laws.
If a qualified majority (at least 55% of Member States representing at least 65% of the EU population) votes to implement a law, then all Member States must accept it. This means that laws can occasionally be imposed on a Member State against their will. So how many EU laws has the UK voted against? Just 13%. That's right, of the however many laws Vote Leave claim the EU has "imposed" on us, elected British representatives have voted in favour of 87% of them.
At this point, I am going to stop typing. I feel like you have probably read enough for one day and I have probably written enough for one day. I hope that you feel like you better understand some of the facts and figures being bandied about in this ridiculous referendum campaign. I will be back to talk about Vote Leave's other three "positive reasons":
3. Build a fairer, safer immigration system
4. Free to trade with the whole world
5. Vote Leave is the safer choice
I will also try and give some examples of things the EU has done for us, which you might take for granted! In the meantime, I appreciate I haven't quoted any sources in my article. I figured it would get too messy if I inserted a load of links to other articles that no-one has time to read. If you do want me to send you a link to any evidence I have quoted, please comment below.
I also recommend the following book: Europe: In or Out. It's written by a self-confessed eurosceptic trying to give just the facts.
If you haven't registered to vote, you can do so here: Register To Vote! If you're not sure if/where you're registered, you can update all your details in the same place. It's really easy and there's no excuse!
I really am going now. Thank you for letting me keep you In The Loop.
Ed
In case you couldn't guess from the fact that I am young and educated (the two biggest indicators of voting intention), I will be voting Remain and will do so without a second of hesitation. It is no secret that the key to Remain winning the referendum is a high turnout. This is because when there is a low turnout, it is young people who are the first to not bother voting and polling data shows that 43 is the age when a majority of people begin to support "Brexit". It is because of this reason that UKIP's Arron Banks, the man bankrolling Leave.EU (an unofficial "out" campaign) has said he plans to "bore the electorate into submission" so that they don't vote.
Both Vote Leave (the official "out" campaign) and Leave.EU seem to be trying to confuse voters with nonsense arguments and deliberately misleading statements so I would like to dispel a few myths. To do this, I will take Vote Leave's "5 positive reasons to leave the EU" and point out, what I consider to be, massive holes in their arguments.
1. "Our money, our priorities"
Vote Leave claim that we send over £350m to the EU every week. The figure they are referring to is our "gross contribution to the EU", which is actually £361m a week.
However, before this is paid to the EU, we get a rebate. This rebate was negotiated under Thatcher because the calculation to work out each country's gross contribution worked out poorly for the UK - this wasn't by design; the calculation was invented before the UK joined. I won't go into the mechanics of the calculation but as a result of the rebate, the UK actually only pays £276m a week (less than 80% of the claimed figure).
Let's not stop there though. Out of the money we give to the EU, about 40% comes straight back to the UK to fund (amongst other things) agriculture, regional development and universities. This leaves the actual cost of our EU membership at £161m a week. This works out at about £300 per year per household. This might still sound like a lot of money (albeit a lot less than the £700 per yer per household figure claimed by Vote Leave) but, as with any membership, we get a whole host of benefits from being a member, some of which I will talk about later on (or more likely in a future post).
2. "Take back control of our laws"
This "positive reason" is quite self-explanatory; Vote Leave claim that by leaving the EU, we can take back control of our laws. There are so many things wrong with this argument that I don't know where to begin.
Firstly, UKIP has claimed that 75% of UK laws were made in Brussels. This is just factually inaccurate. I'll admit, no-one knows the exact figure and the amount depends greatly on what you consider to be laws and what you consider to have been "made in Brussels". However, if we are being as generous to UKIP as possible, the upper end of actual estimates carried out by the House of Commons library is 50%. In reality, the figure could be as low as 15%. If we meet in the middle, that's about one third of UK laws that have been made in Brussels.
Again, though, there is a fundamental flaw in this argument. Contrary to claims by Boris Johnson, these are not laws such as "we can't recycle teabags" or "children under 8 can't blow up balloons" or "we can't sell bananas in bunches of more than three", all of which have been thought up by Boris and have no element of truth. Many of the laws are there to improve safety, save the environment and improve competitiveness in the single market.
Finally, these laws, for the most part, have not been imposed on us by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. The laws, I accept, will have been proposed by the European Commission - a body made up of "unelected bureaucrats" in the eyes of Vote Leave, or professionals who assess the economic, social and environmental impact of different policies in the eyes of Stronger In. By the way, this is no different to UK laws being proposed by the Civil Service.
The laws are then amended by the European Parliament, an elected body, the members of which every EU citizen (of voting age) can vote for. The laws may also be amended by the European Council, the 28 elected heads of state or government for each Member State. Both the Parliament and the Council have to agree on new EU laws.
If a qualified majority (at least 55% of Member States representing at least 65% of the EU population) votes to implement a law, then all Member States must accept it. This means that laws can occasionally be imposed on a Member State against their will. So how many EU laws has the UK voted against? Just 13%. That's right, of the however many laws Vote Leave claim the EU has "imposed" on us, elected British representatives have voted in favour of 87% of them.
At this point, I am going to stop typing. I feel like you have probably read enough for one day and I have probably written enough for one day. I hope that you feel like you better understand some of the facts and figures being bandied about in this ridiculous referendum campaign. I will be back to talk about Vote Leave's other three "positive reasons":
3. Build a fairer, safer immigration system
4. Free to trade with the whole world
5. Vote Leave is the safer choice
I will also try and give some examples of things the EU has done for us, which you might take for granted! In the meantime, I appreciate I haven't quoted any sources in my article. I figured it would get too messy if I inserted a load of links to other articles that no-one has time to read. If you do want me to send you a link to any evidence I have quoted, please comment below.
I also recommend the following book: Europe: In or Out. It's written by a self-confessed eurosceptic trying to give just the facts.
If you haven't registered to vote, you can do so here: Register To Vote! If you're not sure if/where you're registered, you can update all your details in the same place. It's really easy and there's no excuse!
I really am going now. Thank you for letting me keep you In The Loop.
Ed
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