Why I'm voting leave

First, what was my starting point?

If you're considering reading this, it might help you put it into context if you know what my starting point was.

When the referendum was announced the only things I was sure about were that

• This is a big deal
• I didn't know enough to vote with any certainty

I decided early on that while specific campaigning points were undoubtedly something I needed to consider, they would not provide that much enlightenment. To make up my mind I would have to do my own research into our relationship with the EU, the facts in relation to the key areas that might be affected, and do some hard thinking.

There have been plenty of people calling for "the facts" and there's no excuse for misinformation and lies (nor for taking them on face value). But let's not forget that the facts only allow you to apply logic, judgement and your own ideology to come to a conclusion.

If extensive, reasoned and rational debate prevailed, we should be able to agree on the facts and the logic. We should be able to respect and recognise different judgements and appeal to rationality and empirical evidence to support or refute them.

If it comes down to differences in ideology then we've done well to agree on the rest and should be happy that the majority vote will reflect the prevailing ideologies and democracy has worked.

Summary / spoilers

Since this is rather long I thought it was only fair to give an indication of where this is going.

• The UK population has less influence over EU policy than UK policy
• Key powers of the European Parliament are blunt instruments: either ineffective or extreme
• It would be a mistake to take preferable rules now for a lot less influence on an ongoing basis
• The EU does not work effectively to the benefit of its members in most need
• The EU is hindering UK trade with Africa; making it harder to trade its way out of poverty
• Every single penny of EU funding coming to the UK was paid for by the UK tax payer
• Our rebate is not protected after 2020
• The right to control immigration is a practical necessity, and we can still allow as much immigration as we like
• EU and non-EU immigration are roughly the same, so immigration figures are not likely to leap down
• The EU is failing and unsustainable if the only answer to a member in difficulty is for its population to leave their homes and seek work elsewhere
• The UK trades successfully with countries where there is no trade agreement
• The UK has a larger trade surplus in services to the US - where there is no trade agreement - than with the EU

Democracy

Far more important than current policy is the way future policy is set, and the best way the world has come up with to do that is through democracy of one form or another. A working democracy means majority opinion prevails, even if that view is to my mind and yours wrong. That can be a difficult pill to swallow, and it's easy to assume to democracy isn't working when you see policies prevail that you deeply oppose. In a functioning democracy you can change those policies if and only if you can sway majority opinion.

We live in a (largely) functional democracy that represents (imperfectly) the views of the UK voting population. It's a representative democracy, first past the post is problematic, constituencies don't exactly cut up the country entirely fairly. However these are all practical concessions and overall it could be a lot worse. Until we have close to 100% voter turnout and people still complaining about a lack of change I think our efforts would be better spent productively engaging with opposing views and trying to influence where we can.

Whatever you think of the EU with respect to democracy, there is no doubt it decreases the influence of the UK voting population on the laws that govern the UK. That's actually the point. The EU is supposed to define rules for the EU based on what the population of the EU think. That doesn't make it less democratic, it just expands the scope of the democracy in which we participate from the UK to the EU. That opens up questions about what you think is ideologically and pragmatically the right boundary for governance. In other words, how nationalist are you? More on that later.

All that said, in my view democracy in EU governance is weaker than that in the UK. The additional layers alone support this.

In the UK:

• We vote for representatives who argue among themselves to agree on our laws.

In the EU:

• The voting public elect their head of state, who sits on the European Council
• The voting public also elect MEPs to represent them in the European Parliament
• The European Council (by majority vote) propose a candidate for President of the European Commission
  which the European Parliament accept or reject (at which point the European Council try again)
• The (other) heads of state propose a Commissioner each (in consultation with the president although he can't technically force their choice)
• The President of the European Commission alone assigns their portfolio
• The members of the European Commission argues among themselves to initiate laws
• The European Parliament can accept or reject these laws

Now I know this is an overly simplistic representation and I've taken some liberties (you really should look up the structure of UK and EU law making machines; I really can't begin to do it justice - budum-tish), but the point is we must lose some level of representation in this process.

There is a big difference in the power to initiate legislation and the power to vote on it. The commission is the only body that can initiate legislation. Consultation gives parliament the opportunity to influence, but it's somewhere between lip-service and the power of a strongly worded letter in terms of contributing to legislation. It leaves them with only a very blunt instrument on legislation - "yes" or "no". It might sound OK that ultimately they can vote legislation down, but you can imagine there's a pretty significant fear of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and pressure to compromise. How bad does it have to be before it's worth actually blocking? Cumulatively, that could let a lot of bad slip through.

It's not just theoretical; there's a clear example of how ineffective blunt instruments of power can be. The Santer commission (95-99) had serious problems with corruption (worth looking this up). Edith Cresson, the French commissioner was called upon to resign but refused. The solution? The parliament can dismiss the entire commission if it has a two thirds majority. Once it became clear it had this majority, the whole commission resigned to somewhat save face. Not what I'd consider a well oiled democracy - because all they had was an extreme option. Compare this with the UK expense scandal (with which there is some resonance), and despite many more MPs being involved it was handled without the dissolution of parliament. The problem is that the European Parliament does not have a range of effective sanctions in its toolkit; more like a quill pen and a nuclear warhead.

Overall I think it's clear to everybody that both the UK and the EU are on the democratic spectrum, and for me it's clear that the UK is to some meaningful extent "more democratic".

Trust in government

I can see why people are frustrated at our government (past, present, likely future). What might not be obvious is the less you feel represented by them the more it makes sense to leave.

If you do trust the UK government to represent us and make the right choices on our behalf, then we don't need the EU to impose the right choices. This isn't in itself a reason to leave, but it's no particular reason to stay.

If the UK government don't do a good job of representing our views nationally, then they certainly won't represent our views well to the EU, and influence the EU in turn to represent them. It takes skill and willing to wield effective influence at a distance, and it's much harder for the voting public to see and understand what's going on.

Where there is tension between the UK government and EU stance, some (many it seems) will prefer the EU stance. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't an argument to remain.

If you prefer the EU view to the UK view on a particular issue, it follows that either you hold a minority view in the UK or the government is failing to represent the majority view.

If you're in the minority then EU membership will override the majority view in the UK. Depending on what you think of EU democracy that's either less democratic or a broader democratic base at work. In either case it reduces the influence of the population of the UK on the laws that govern it.

If the majority is not represented, then lessening our influence is no way to solve that. On the next issue, the shoe may be on the other foot and our influence over the EU is undoubtedly less than our influence over the UK government.

I think it would be a mistake to take better rules now for a lot less influence on an ongoing basis.

Nationalism

Now comes a truly divisive point. Do we want to be ruled as the UK or as a part of the EU? Should our laws reflect the values of those in this country or the union? That's what the broadening of the scope of the EU means. It's not a trade agreement or a narrow set of treaties; it's a broad range of areas where national law is superseded, and it has the capability to enact law that binds directly on the UK.

For the record, where someone is born in no way affects their value as a human being.

For better or worse the world is currently arranged into sovereign states. These come with different cultures, economies and standards of living. That diversity makes common rule impractical, but it doesn't prevent successful trade, migration and cultural exchange. The EU is not "one size fits all", and the attempt to make it so has had some dire effects for example on economies like Greece.

The cost of membership and control over spending

Whichever figures you pick, we are significant net-contributors to the EU. That's only a good deal if the intangible benefits of membership outweigh the net financial contribution.

It may be that we are net contributors to the benefit of countries in the EU with a greater need, but there are problems with accepting this altruistic argument.

If we were truly altruistic we'd want our efforts to be as effective as possible and for the beneficiaries to be those in most need globally. The EU is a barrier to that since it imposes tariffs on agricultural imports from Africa which makes it much harder for them to trade themselves out of poverty.

Even for beneficiaries within the EU, the EU isn't good at managing that financial altruism either. From a German study into the Greek bailouts (http://static.esmt.org/publications/whitepapers/WP-16-02.pdf):

"...less than 5% of the overall programme went to the Greek fiscal budget. In contrast, the vast majority of the money went to existing creditors in the form of debt repayments and interest payments. The resulting risk transfer from the private to the public sector and the subsequent risk transfer within the public sector from international organizations such as the ECB and the IMF to European rescue mechanisms such as the ESM still constitute the most important challenge for the goal to achieve a sustainable fiscal situation in Greece."

Those private banks were largely in Germany and France. Some argue the two most influential countries in the EU used EU funds to bail out their own banks to the tune of well over 100 billion Euro. I couldn't possibly comment.

With respect to the cases where the UK public or private sector does receive payments from the EU, consider that every single penny of EU funding coming to the UK was paid for by the UK tax payer.

It is also worth noting that the rebate is not protected permanently by a treaty, but it is negotiated every 7 years as part of EU financial planning (MFF). The next time will be in 2020. The MFF must be unanimously approved, so in theory we have a veto of sorts. Again this is fairly blunt sanction.

Ultimately I think the UK would be better off in the long run taking responsibility for this money itself, for both selfish and altruistic purposes.

Immigration

Given that our EU and non-EU immigration figures are roughly the same, it's hardly credible to suggest our immigration figures would suddenly leap downwards. In fact it suggests that we're unlikely to act radically with the new-found power. The argument is really about whether we have the right to control our EU immigration at all, in the same way as we could currently control non-EU immigration.

The UK is a sovereign state. That means it has a population and that population is governed by laws and supported by measures funded by taxes and national debt. The government must manage that budget. I can't imagine how you can do that effectively without the ability to control immigration. Could you run a company where you had to hire anyone who wanted to work for you? We cannot reasonably expect the government to plan effectively if there is no ability to control immigration.

That isn't to say we shouldn't have immigration, or that immigrants don't contribute, but there is a figure - and nobody knows what it is - beyond which net immigration becomes unsustainable.

If you don't believe this, please humour my somewhat tongue-in-cheek illustration, I can tell you with confidence that the population we can support in the UK is less than 508.2 million people (443.1 million net immigrants). That's the entire population of the EU. The surface area of the UK (let's not get carried away worrying about details like lakes, rivers, walls, roads or other things not good to stand in) is 243,610 square kilometres. Everyone could have an 550 square metre plot. Sadly, you need about 4,856 square metres to sustain an average American lifestyle (or at least it did in 1994 - http://dieoff.org/page40.htm), and North Europeans aren't much different. Now technically as soon as this happened we could just colonise the rest of the EU since there would be nobody there (assuming the Russians didn't get there first). Maybe we leave just enough people behind to maintain their governments. Obviously this is a ludicrous scenario. Can we agree that at some point before that, the country will be worse off with a greater number of people in it? To be clear I'm not offering an opinion on what that number is or whether the country would be better or worse off with more than we have now. Perhaps the ideal is 1 more or 600 million more. Assuming we accept there is some number that would make things worse, we can either suggest it naturally won't happen, or accept it's OK to impose some control. Perhaps there's a natural equilibrium so as we get closer to that number the country gets less appealing, but that doesn't sound great to me.

Instead of worrying about the morality of imposing practical controls, we should think about why people want to come to the UK. For many it will be a choice - much like brits moving to Spain - that is a welcome luxury, but would be no world-ending hardship if they couldn't. For others - where they feel they cannot thrive in their country of origin - wouldn't it be better to address the issues that after all are prevailing in another EU member state? The EU is failing and unsustainable if the only answer to a member in difficulty is for its population to leave their homes and seek work elsewhere.

The right to control immigration into the UK is an opportunity to keep a check on this, and it doesn't oblige us to turn anyone around.

Trade

We already trade successfully in the absence of free trade agreements. The EU does not have trade agreements with US, China, India or Russia, yet these are very significant economies and we trade successfully with them. Our strengths lie in services and we have trade surpluses in services with both the US and the EU, but the surplus is bigger with the US despite the lack of a trade agreement.

The EU have in effect erected a trade barrier on our behalf with every country outside the EU without a trade agreement, in that it prevents us negotiating our own.

Further, the EU imposes tariffs on agricultural imports from Africa which makes it much harder for them to trade themselves out of poverty. The UK's hands are tied by the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which prevents us trading with Africa more equitably.

In short, I'm not concerned with our ability to trade with non-EU countries provided we leave the EU.

In terms of trade with the EU, why would they make trade more difficult? Spite? The EU is trying to improve its trading with non-EU countries, and unlike those countries the UK is already perfectly aligned with EU regulation:

"The EU has successfully concluded a number of important trade agreements with trading partners and is in the process of negotiating agreements with many more."

(http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/agreements/index_en.htm) - see also the handy map linked from that page.

I've no doubt we'll have a lot of hard work ahead negotiating new agreements to get the best deals we can, and I'm sure we'll start to do more trade outside the EU.

Closing thoughts

So my decision is to vote for leaving the EU and I think that doing so will empower us to engage with the whole world according to our own priorities. Most of what the EU does for us we can do for ourselves. We will be free of imposed limitations so we can engage better with the rest of the world. We will still be able to engage with the EU and judge the pros and cons of those engagements on merit.

No doubt either victory or defeat can be clutched from the jaws of either result, so once it's done I hope the losing side moves on constructively.