WITH the referendum on our membership of the EU next Thursday (June 23), I’d like to give you four reasons why I have been campaigning to leave (despite voting “yes” in 1975) for more than 20 years.

1. This is NOT a benign or honest organisation.  It has a rule book, but is prepared to break it at will to further its ultimate aim - a single state.

On a number of occasions in the recent past, referendums in various countries (France, Ireland twice, Denmark) have said “NO”.  The rules say that that should be the end of the matter.  

Not in the EU though; they just sprinkle a bit of (your) money around, rephrase the question, and keep asking it until they get the answer they want.  Then they go on to grab the next bit of power.

Sorry, but I want nothing to do with an organisation like that.

2. The EU is NOT an economic success.  Youth unemployment in Greece and Spain is approaching 50 per cent, and some major EU economies (France, Italy) are skating on very thin ice.  

Furthermore the EU’s share of world GDP/trade has, and continues to, declined rapidly.  We are tied to this “basket-case”, instead of turning our eyes, as we have traditionally done, to the big, wide world.

The Eurozone will continue to fail unless all of its members merge into a single country, led and financed by Germany - then watch the fur fly!

3.  There is no meaningful democracy, all the better for keeping real power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, chief of whom are the members of the 28-person Commission.  

Do you know the names of any of them?  Did you vote for them?  Can you vote to get rid of them?

The MEPs, who we DO vote for, are mere window-dressing, and virtually powerless.  They don’t come cheap either!

4.  Ah, you might say - let’s stay in and reform it.  Don’t take it from me, but listen to Gisela Stuart, the German-born and well respected Labour MP.  

She spent three years as Tony Blair’s representative at the EU Constitution talks; she says that “The EU is not interested in reform”, but only in pursuing the final goal, a single state.

She went there as an enthusiast.  

She now chairs Vote Leave.  Nuff said!

Bob Edwards

Chairman

UKIP Central Devon

Salmonhutch

Crediton