[Ed: This article has been published previously at the author’s website http://freenations.net]

There are over 160 self governing countries in the world. So long as we are in the European Union the United Kingdom, the world’s 5th largest economy, is not one of them.

How can we be stronger in a Europe which is the fastest declining economic region in the world? 1980: EU 31% of world trade; today: 17% and falling – with 24m unemployed (10%)

Over the last 5 years the EU has grown 67% less than the USA, 45% less than Canada, 64% less than Australia, 70% less than Singapore. If the UK left the EU the savings would be £9 billion a year in budget contributions and a further annual saving in regulations and import tariffs of at least £85 billion a year. Billions more would be saved in housing, education and health costs for EU citizens who at present have the right to come to the UK and send billions of their earnings back home.

Former Trade secretary Peter Lilley MP:

“If we left the EU with no trade deal – inconceivable given the tariff-free zone from Iceland to Turkey – our exports would face EU tariffs averaging just 2.4 per cent. But our net contribution to the EU budget is equivalent to a 7 per cent tariff. Paying 7 cent to avoid 2.4 per cent costs is mis-selling that dwarfs the PPI scandal!” 

How can we profit from an EU with which we have a massive £500 billion trade deficit since we joined in 1973! In the last 20 years there are 27 non-EU countries whose exports of goods to the EU grew faster than the UK’s. Switzerland (8) and Norway (6) (both not in the EU) have more trade agreements with other countries than the EU itself (only 5)!!

In the last 10 years the UK’s export growth to Ukraine/Russia/Turkey was 7.9%, to Asia 6.5% and to EFTA (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland) 7.2%. By contrast the increase to the European Union was a pathetic 2.5%. Only 6% of UK companies export to the EU and only 12% of our economy is traded with the EU – but 100% of our economy is burdened with EU regulations.

How can we sustain our own society when the EU opens our borders to the 17 million unemployed from their bankrupt Eurozone? The EU is threatening Switzerland, which is not in the EU, both politically and economically, because the Swiss (25% of the population now foreign born) voted to limit immigration in a national referendum.

How can we benefit our people in an EU where there has been over 10% unemployment for a decade, with youth unemployment up to 50%?

How can there be any future for British Youth in the EU? Youth unemployment in Greece is 48.9% (but 200,000 have left Greece so 60% would be nearer the truth); in Spain it’s 45.3%, Croatia 40.3%, Italy 39.1%, Cyprus 30.5%, Portugal 30%, and France 24% .

UK borders are open to 500m other EU citizens with another 120m now to be given access to our country from Ukraine, Turkey, Bosnia, Kosovo, Moldova and any other country the EU wants to invite – and about which the British people have never been consulted.

How can we tolerate a German Chancellor inviting millions of refugees including Islamic terrorists, to Germany and then demanding that we and other member states take them? Why should the EU – through the European Convention of Human Rights – prevent us from expelling terrorists whom our Home Secretary describes as a danger to national security?

In 2015 EUR-lex indicated that there were over 134,000 EU rules, international agreements and legal acts binding on and affecting citizens across the EU. The British people had no say in them because the EU imposed them.

Churchill on the EU:

“If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea. We are with Europe but not of it. We are associated but not absorbed.”

Why should the UK with a national debt of £1.5 trillion continue to pay £13billion a year (£60 billion in the last 10 years) just to trade with the EU when they would have to trade with us anyway, and when our membership of the British Commonwealth costs us less than £50m a year, which is growing far faster than the European Union and has a similar share in world trade?

EU member States, despite Cameron’s recent “renegotiations”, can make anyone in the world an EU “citizen” just by making them their own nationals. Those citizens can then enter and work in the UK. This can be done without any consultation or permission of the UK government and people.

The Euro-fanatics dismiss national sovereignty as a delusion of power (fascists can only think of power over others). But it means democratic self government – and is what 50m people died to restore to Europe in the Second World War 1939 -1945.

The EU is provoking war with Russia, which is the friend of Nation states, of Christianity, a defender of the family and the enemy of those supranational statists in Washington and Berlin who have destroyed the economy of Europe. NATO and the EU are now pushing troops and tanks towards the border with Russia.

Lord Owen:

“We have the opportunity to leave the EU before the temple comes crashing down.” 

Leaving the EU is not just about saving ourselves – it is the first step to saving democracy in Europe and preventing a war.