Why it became necessary for the UK to vote to leave the EU

An article in this week's Spectator magazine has crystalised many of my reasons for voting as I did in our referendum on EU membership held on 23rd June last.

Dan Hannan (still an MEP), for a former committed "Europhile" such as me, brilliantly nails the lies and deceptions at the heart of the so-called "EU project". I voted Leave on 23rd June and have become more certain since then that it was the correct choice. For me this has got NOTHING to do with 'immigration', despite those who voted Remain presumptuously telling everyone who voted Leave that this was the reason we voted the way we did. Frankly I think this illustrates perfectly the sad beggar-thy-neighbour mindset of many (if I hope not most) Remain voters.

Sovereignty is not some esoteric concept, it is the basic choice as to how we make our laws and who is competent to adjudicate on them.

What really changed my mind about the "virtues" of the EU (which are many) is the callous way it has treated Greece, in the name of "EU solidarity"; Greece is not entirely innocent of course, it is not as straightforward as that, but what its treatment does illustrate is that a supranational body, the EU, is prepared to ride roughshod over the democratically elected government of a small and relatively "unimportant" member state, not for any noble reason, but simply to protect the financial institutions of its most powerful member state, Germany. To be frank, it is a moral outrage. I am equally disgusted by the petty arguments of some of my former "friends" who think the GBP exchange rate is sufficient reason to sell the soul of our country, the UK. I loathe almost everything Gordon Brown ever did as Chancellor and Prime Minister, but the one good thing he ever did was to make it impossible for the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to take the UK into the cesspit of the poorly-designed Euro, a continuing shambles, which tries to align the economies of vastly different countries, without the real and necessary mechanisms which make a 'currency union' successful, for example those which allow the US to have a common currency across 50 diverse economies, or the UK to have a similar common currency across its four component parts (and the separate regions of those four component parts).

Those mechanisms involve not just "benefits", but "obligations", which means sticking to certain basic rules - which means that countries within the Eurozone which flout the laid-down budgetary deficit rules regularly, rather than exceptionally, need to understand they cannot continue along this path if the currency union is to have any meaning and achieve longevity. This is however merely a symptom of the malaise at the heart of the EU. It seems that certain larger member states think they can flout fiscal and other rules, simply because they are large and economically significant, or powerful politically, whereas smaller states must be punished severely if they step out of line. This is not "democracy". The UK is undoubtedly a "more significant" country economically and politically, along with 3-5 other EU member states, but above all we are a democracy, and have been for quite a long time, and we think we believe in that old-fashioned concept called "fair play", not just "might is right". If I believed that true "reform" of the EU was possible I would have been amongst the first to have argued that the UK should remain a member, but empirical evidence over many years has demonstrated that this is not possible. We can and must leave the EU, and that is what we voted for on 23rd June, to ensure our democratic future as a free and successful economy, not as a vassal member state of the increasingly undemocratic entity that the EU has developed into. Other EU member states, including some if not all of the more powerful ones, have stated repeatedly that they wanted the UK to remain a member of the EU, but have consistently shown that they are unwilling to, or incapable of, making the "reforms" necessary for a true democracy such as the UK to remain. 23rd June 2016 was "crunch time" and the bluffs with which the EU has endeavoured to fob us off for many years have lost their power that day. Personally I very much regret that this decision has been made necessary. I believe that a brighter future for the UK is possible outside what has become the straightjacket of the EU. I wish the EU a bright and successful future too, of course, but am much less sanguine about that.