The Reasons Why I Voted for Brexit

In the UK we had a referendum to decide if the UK should remain part of the EU (European Union).  I like the majority of the people who cast their vote, voted to leave.  The people who voted to leave are known as Leavers, and the ones who wanted to remain are known as Remainers.  The vote leave won and the government of the UK promised to honour the vote and leave the EU, this is known as Brexit.

The UK has been pretty split since the result of the referendum, with the remainers doing their upmost to stop Brexit, thus the turmoil.

Brexit is Personal

The Brexit issue is a very personal issue, everybody has their own justified reasons. I have found many liberals justifiably relish the thought of unity with our European neighbours, others their jobs are directly affected by the EU, others don't like the lack of democracy in the EU or how it's run, some like the open borders, etc.

I have a few friends who voted remain, and I freely admit that if I was them, I would to.  They haven't resorted to the narrative of project fear (trying to frighten people with doomsday predictions due to Brexit), they have been honest, saying how leaving will negatively effect their livelihoods or lives.

These friends are not stupid, and have not resorted to preaching about subjects they have absolutely no experience in, saying they know better than people that do.  To be honest, the tact of project fear is actually counter productive, but you can't expect someone immature enough to insist they know better than an experienced and successful business CEO on how to run their business to be smart, or to know more about economics than Mervyn King (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/29/uk-should-leave-eu-with-no-deal-says-former-bank-of-england-governor).  If many in the remain camp would just tell the truth, stop insulting leavers intellect and drop project fear, they might actually get some converts.

Accusations Against The Leave Campaign

"The Leave Campaign Lied"

The Remainers have been accusing the campaign to leave the EU before the referendum of lies that they say influenced the vote, the main one being a slogan on the campaign bus saying "We send the EU £350 million a week, lets fund our NHS instead".

Boris Johnson, was leading the campaign to leave (he was not the prime minister at that time) and attempts have been made to sue him in court for lying, all of which have understandably failed.  The reason being is that if you actually read the slogan, there is nothing wrong with it. It correctly states that the UK send the EU £350 million a week, it also states that instead of sending money to the EU, lets spend money (not a disclosed amount) on the NHS.  It's worded in a way that could be seen as saying that the £350 million should be given to the NHS, but it's not worded that way.  The slogan doesn't take into account the money the UK gets back from the EU in the form of grants, etc., however the slogan addresses how much is "sent", not "spent".

Lets be honest, a slogan on a single bus did not substantially influence voters as alleged, I don't know anybody who believed it.  The largest influence by far was actually an act by the remain campaign who got President Obama to lie to the British electorate and say that if we left the EU the UK, "would be at the back of the queue" regarding trade negotiations.  After the UK voted to leave, Obama admitted that what he said was not true and he was ready to start trade negotiations.  This by far was the worse act of deceit in any UK campaign, as it got the leader of the free world and largest economy in the world to lie to the British people and justifiably scare them.  The new US president is ready to make deals with the UK, and now any such deals are going to be bad according to many of the tabloid remain press, but they weren't before the referendum, they were vital, so go figure!

"The People Didn't Vote For No Deal"

It is alleged by the Remainers that the Leavers didn't vote for a no deal.  This refers to trade deals and policy alignment being agreed with the EU prior to leaving to make the transition easier while both side negotiate trade deals over a 2 year period.  To be honest it's been over 2 years since the UK gave notice to leave, and the fact that so much time was wasted negotiating terms to negotiate terms is pathetic, however the EU insisted on this.  Remember, we can always negotiate as many deals as we want to after we leave, with no restrictions. Yes the transition will probably be bumpy, but it's a small price to pay to untie your hands when negotiating.

Back to the point that people didn't vote for no deal.  Firstly, its pretty daft to insist you know what other people were thinking, so I'm not even going to bother addressing that.  It's also beyond arrogant and foolish to insult people and their intellect if they voted the opposite of what you did, so again I'm not going to bother to respond to that.

It's also alleged that the people weren't told of the results of a no deal scenario, being WTO rules, however this is also not true (https://mobile.twitter.com/change_britain/status/1161553730996711424).

Many of the electorate thought that the UK would actually leave immediately on WTO terms, however they were mistaken, but again this disproves the accusation as they wanted no deal at the offset.

Me personally, I hoped that a transition deal would be agreed along with other deals before we left, as this is the sensible approach (it transpires that both sides were not that sensible), if not, we would leave on WTO terms, being no deal.  So I was not fooled in anyway.

Do I want to leave with a deal is a dumb question.  I want to leave with a deal that is beneficial to the UK (not any deal), otherwise I want no deal.

My Reasons For Voting Leave

I have two main reasons for wanting to leave, first the way the EU is run and what I feel is a lack of democracy that I think will get worse.  The second is the amount of useless bureaucratic, contradictory and useless regulation coming out of the EU, that is getting worse.

Firstly, the regulation.  As an example (this wasn't a decider at the time, other regulation was), currently I am having to deal with the disaster called SCA which comes into force on 14th September 2019, and as of yet (18th August 2019) all payment systems are still not ready, and won't be.  Companies that take subscription payments are having to change their payment software and guess how it will work out.  It's like a customer wanting software and you writing it before they have told you what they want.  This I have found is typical with EU regulation and law, its basically all over the place, and unlike UK law, can't easily go back to Parliament for amendments due to the will of the people.

There are many other examples like GDPR and how victims of hackers and criminals are getting punished, for example British Airways.  No database is infallible and it is impossible to make them 100% secure, so to punish someone to near bankruptcy (all money going to the EU and EU states by the way) by saying they were negligent because they didn't protect themselves against an advanced hack that over 99.999% of people on this planet don't understand, is just dumb and counterproductive, especially when British Airways followed GDPR procedure to the letter in regards compliance.  They got fined on a very vague clause about negligence that enables the EU to find you guilty if they want to because a mistake was made.  The fact that for any hack, mistakes must have been made and are impossible not to have been is my point.

There are many more examples of regulation that is contradictory, constrictive and just useless, however I don't need to go through them all.

The other reason is lack of democracy (https://medium.com/@gthoare/the-eu-and-democracy-the-eu-as-undemocratic-and-as-antidemocratic-9b4f45bea1f) and where I feel the EU is heading.  The EU is made up of several different institutions, with seven presidents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_institutions_of_the_European_Union), and only one institution we vote for the members (MEPS in the EU Parliament), and the people get no say regarding the presidents.  The EU Parliament basically only ratify laws and policy from other institutions, mainly the European Council (https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government_in_ireland/european_government/eu_institutions/european_parliament.html), whose members are not democratically elected, as with the 5 other EU institutions.

Over the years, more and more power has been relinquished from the sovereign states to the EU, with the EU getting more and more power.  This is not going to stop, and you are delusional if you think it will.  People like Verhofstadt (leader of the ALDE) who want a federal EU state, sovereignty abolished, only 12 unelected decision makers in the European Council, an EU army, etc. is dangerous rhetoric, especially from someone who leads such a commanding group within the EU.

This hotchpotch of regulation, interference in state matters, etc. has caused numerous problems all over the EU, like high unemployment, and less money in people's pockets.  An Italian friend told me, "Italian people used to have money and state had none, now the state and the people have no money".

The next point didn't influence my decision to leave, but has reinforced it;  The EU have actually been cutting off their noses to spite their faces regarding the UK leaving.  The UK are the largest importers of EU goods and us leaving will hurt the other states considerably.  Instead of looking after the interests of those states, the EU officials are more concerned about their EU ideology (basically their own interests) when it comes to UK. This is undeniably a poison we need to stay very clear of.  These EU officials have no accountability, thus the huge expenses they are taking and what would be deemed as corruption in office in the UK, but we the "electorate" can do nothing about it, besides vote to leave this group.

History repeats itself, and sooner or later, when things get bad enough (like the yellow vests in France), the people will start to rise up.  The EU officials have their interests and ideology at heart, as have practically every other leader in history, and will protect those interest at all costs and with all the power betrothed to them, and with direct no accountability to the people, protecting their own interests is not that hard.

I am not a historian, but a example of this was the Russian Revolution.  Russia was poorly run, and the Tzar had ultimate power regarding major policy decisions that he made biased towards his own interests.  This bad governance ultimately resulted the lack of jobs and suffering of the people, that resulted in protests and ultimately in the revolution.  Under Lenin and then Stalin, the new sole decision makers (as again their was no democracy or accountability of the rulers), there was even more suffering of the people and corruption of the political elite.

For centuries the UK Parliamentary system of First Past the Post has been the most democratic and successful in the world, with many other states using other systems suffering from continued corruption in government.  When we had the expenses scandal, many friends in other countries didn't know what the fuss was all about as this was normal for them. Our system is not perfect, but it has been historically proven to be the best, and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  To move away from a proven success to something new that is already showing huge flaws is beyond stupid. By staying part of the EU we won't be able to fix it, as we haven't been able to over the last 30 years as it got worse, so what magic Harry Potter potion could we use to change it this time? The answer is none, so my conclusion was to leave.