If you are thinking of voting to leave, I ask you to think again. I have not heard either side talk about the biggest problem with leaving:

Almost all of our trade agreements and a large part of our current laws are based on our EU membership. The leave campaign talk as though we can just negotiate new agreements, and they don’t even mention the need to revise a massive proportion of our legislation. But how practical is this really?

Well, an optimistic estimate is that this is going to take well over 10 years. We just don’t have the diplomats and parliamentary time or resources to do it any faster – and even to do it in 10 years will mean doing a bodged job and abandoning the idea of democracy in the form of proper parliamentary oversight and debate as we revise so much of our law.

You may think this is an exaggeration, but other countries, trying to negotiate just one agreement comparable to a small part of the numerous trade agreements we are doing to have to try and form, have taken far longer. The Swiss started negotiations with the EU n 1972 and are, and are still working on them. As for the Norwegians, their own P.M. tells us we would not like their deal, they have to pay to be part of the common market and agree to abide by many EU regulations.

So could we go with out the EU as the Leave Campaign claim? There are real problems with that. Most of our current trade agreements are based on our EU membership and an number of countries, including the US have already announced, not only that the existing agreements will terminate as soon as we leave, but that they will not negotiate a new agreement with us until we have first reached an agreement with the EU. The fact is that we have a much stronger negotiating position within the EU than we would have without it, and if we leave we really will have to start from square one renegotiating with everyone. So, even if the deal we might eventually get 10-20 years down the line is better than the one we have now, it will have to be blindingly good to make up for the many years of economic problems and ruined lives it is inevitably going to cost us.

Moreover, at the end of the day we are still going to have to conform to EU regulations if we are going to trade with them, so all this disruption, that will definitely harm our economy, is going to nothing to free us from those regulations it will just take away our current privileged seat at the negotiating table at which they are set.

In the end it is not unelected bureaucrats in the EU who rule Europe, it is the elected governments of the member nations who come together to determine EU policy. Don’t take your Democratic representatives away from the table, or you will loose your democratic say in the institution that is going to have a massive influence on your life how ever you vote and whatever the outcome.

But don’t take my word for it, check out this guy, he does know what he is talking about:

https://www.facebook.com/LiverpoolSchoolofLawandSocialJustice/videos/1043216935715117/