The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself

Following the AOL editor's call for views on the EU referendum, here are my thoughts:

As a businessman that has spent time working in European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Finland) speaking some French and German, and having had close personal foreign friends (Sikh Indian, Italian and Polish), I am someone who is very comfortable with people from other countries.

That however, is NOT what the referendum is about. It's not about 'staying' or 'leaving' Europe itself, or stopping travelling to European countries for holidays, it's certainly not about 'divorcing' or abandoning our European friends, trading partners or neighbours, (as the 'Remain' camp would have you believe) it's about how our European relationship moves forwards.

It's about whether we want to be governed by an institution of ever increasing magnitude, cost and power, that increasingly interferes in all our lives, rarely for the better and is now causing us many problems.

The remain camp has massive vested interests (huge international corporations, banks, etc) and both the apparatus of UK government and huge EU institutions have been financing their campaign. The Prime minister has even arranged Queen's 'Birthday honours' for many business leaders supporting the cause, and Alan Sugar changed his mind to become a 'remainer' recently after his company received hugely lucrative government contracts. I wonder if this is merely a coincidence? I suspect not.

We even had president Obama sticking his nose into our affairs (I think I caught a glimpse of Dave's Dollars sticking out of his back pocket at the time!) even though his absurd intervention sounded like threats (though quite why we would want to be 'in the queue' at all, never mind 'the back of it' for the very US-favouring TTIP trading 'deal' given the commercial influence, control & contractual rights it would potentially give huge US corporations over our institutions like the NHS, – is beyond me!) -and the EU is NOT the sort of bloc the USA would ever even consider joining – it's sheer hypocrisy!

We are warned by the remain camp that everyone will lose their jobs, companies will leave the country, there will be an economic meltdown and maybe even WW3!

It's odd because I read, for example, that nearly all the major foreign car manufacturers in the UK have said they would stay in Britain whatever the referendum outcome. The reason is simple, – it would cost millions to relocate for little or no benefit.

These companies get higher levels of productivity here and as we are not in the Euro anyway the impact would not be that significant, and they clearly realise that at the end of the day, the EU will find an agreement with Britain swiftly because THEY need to trade with the UK even more than we do with them: We are a nett importer and they need our custom for the health of their own economies.

Amongst the other many absurd claims from David Cameron and the Remain campaign was the assertion that in the EU Britain 'has greater influence' than as an independent nation.

HOW CAN THIS POSSIBLY BE TRUE? Especially when each year the EU grows by adding yet more members (currently 28 states with three more planned very soon) all who often ignore our interests and out-vote the UK on a regular basis...(in fact the truth seems to mirror the fiction of the Eurovision song contest as smaller countries 'gang-up' together to push through 'bloc votes' that suit their own agendas), leaving our PM as a figure of ever-diminishing power and significance at the back of the room, this, despite us being one of the EU's very biggest nett contributors at around £250m per week.

Mr Cameron should have negotiated a proper 'New deal' for Britain that gave us proportional voting commensurate with our EU financial contributions instead of the pathetic, embarrasing & over-exaggerated crumbs he came away from the 'negotiating' table with.

This in itself only serves to further demonstrate more evidence of the real lack of influence we have in the EU. German interests always tends to dominate EU policy.

Some of the extraordinary daily 'Brexit' scare-stories, as claimed by David Cameron really have been shocking and most un-statesman-like from a UK Prime Minister in my view. His credibility has been badly damaged.

Perhaps the most outrageous claim from the Prime Minister was the statement that Britain leaving the EU put our security from terrorism and peace and stability within Europe in doubt (maybe even resulting in WW3?).

Was there ever a more ridiculous claim that the EU has 'Kept the peace' in Europe': Supporters of this myth often point to the rather bizarre 2012 Nobel peace prize award.

In reality, the American-led NATO has done this for us, during the cold war and beyond, even enforcing peace (with UN backing) in the horrific war in the former Yugoslavia, after the EU parliament showed it was completely unfit to manage peace and security in Europe by firstly voting to over-rule Britain and France who favoured maintaining the former Yugoslav Republic (FRY) states together and placing military forces in the country to stop war breaking out and instead the EU member states (following the German agenda) poured fuel on the fire by recognising Croatia as a nation state (causing Bosnia to then also declare itself an independent), resulting in both countries falling into conflict with the Serbian population, supported by Serbia itself. The brutality and violence we then witnessed in this conflict was like nothing seen in Europe since the Nazi era and involved vicious massacres of thousand of innocent men, women and children.

The EU response was simply arranging monthly 'peace conferences' and weekly 'ceasefires' but naively repeatedly refused to threaten any military intervention, which clearly emboldened & encouraged the Bosnian-Serb military to go on mission of sheer murder and conquest, taking or ruining the lives of millions in the Balkans.

It was a classic case of what Edmund Burke meant when he said:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing".

Thousands of Bosnian Muslims were massacred in places like Srebenica, in terrible acts of mass genocide.

Almost two years of dithering past and when the Serbs continued to defy UN resolutions and was also moving into Kosovo US President Clinton realised the EU hand-wringing and politics was never going to end and it was clear that Macedonia, Montenegro and even Greece was in danger of being dragged into an ever escalating conflict likely to engulf the whole Balkan region and possibly even a World War (the Russians were now offering support to Serbia and blocking some UN resolutions etc) so he requested NATO launch air strikes against Serbian FRY targets in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, followed by ground forces with UN backing to bring the terrible conflict to a halt.

The UK and US forces came face to face with Russian army units (masquerading as UN troops) trying to take control at Pristina airport in Kosovo in June 1999 and almost came into conflict as the British army captain in charge at the scene was told to fire on the Russians by a senior General. Luckily he chose to disobey this order and instead persuaded them to instead leave without any violence. He went on to become current pop icon James Blunt, but WW3 almost literally started right there: It was the result of a sequence of events that traces right back to the EU totally mishandling the situation from day 1; they showed weakness, appeasement, indecision and incompetence & wasted repeated earlier obvious opportunites to halt the escalating conflict, and yet again resulted in the Americans having to come in and sort out the mess. Its the 3rd time this happened in the 20th Century, you would think Europe would have already learned the lessons by then.

Does any of this rather sad tale ring a bell? Because the EU pursued the same irresponsible policies more recently by inviting Ukraine to commence talks about EU membership which kicked off the current war in Ukraine when Russian sympathisers in the country started a civil war (with Russian support) in 2014. This terrible war has already claimed thousands of lives and whilst the Russians should be roundly condemned for their part, the EU's political meddling was a major contributor to the cause of this conflict.

What all this clearly demonstrates is the EU's thirst for ever greater enlargement and power, and a complete inability to manage peace and security in the region. It also shows EU leaders have a very dangerous and naive habit of meddling in other states affairs without consideration or understanding of the consequences or how to then extricate themselves from the problems they have created. The very idea of this sort organisation having a 'European Army' ruled by this sort of politics and a 30- strong 'committee' of member states fills me with horror. This is just guaranteed to get us into all sorts of serious trouble.

The suggestion from David Cameron and the remain camp that 'we would also be at greater risk of terrorism if we left the EU' is simply ridiculous considering the sad run of recent serious terrorist attrocities in France and Belgium, (not to mention Tunisia) who's security forces all seem utterly clueless & inept and have little or no 'intelligence to share'. HOW DOES THIS MAKE US SAFER?

Our membership of the EU undoubtedly increases our vulnerability to these type of incidents as we cannot control people coming in from Europe with no proper internal EU border controls and we do not have the powers to either stop mass movements of people or even differentiate between the genuine war-fleeing refugee, the economic migrant or the islamic terrorist (pretending to be one of the former). These people are coming here... Unchecked , unless we act to stop them, – which we are powerless to do within the EU! And Mr Cameron has demonstrably failed to get any kind of grip on controlling immigration. He tries to avoid the subject...

To quote Aldous Huxley: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored".

Britain's security and defence would be much safer outside this organisation in my view.
One reason that many of our politicians are so keen to stay in the EU is because so many laws, trade agreements, international arrangements on border control, taxes, foreign policy decisions, law & order judgements, etc are currently controlled by the EU that their workload is much lighter than it would be in an independent Britain. If we leave then these politicians will suddenly have a lot of work to do!

Should we vote for Brexit, we would create plenty of jobs in border control and customs, another possible benefit of Brexit could be the scrapping of VAT, (brought in as part of the original 'Common Market' agreement) all sorts of trade organisations would flourish as a result of Britain needing to begin working as a normal sovereign state once more, and trading with European partner countries, rather than a province of a European superstate, ruled over by un-elected EU commissioners.

And for those that dislike David Cameron, Nigel Farage, etc, then consider this: Farage's party would become effectively extinct if we voted to leave, and his EU MEP job would no longer exist. Cameron will not be able to continue as PM and George Osborne's own credibility would also be wiped out. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party is split on Europe and may well have a leadership election afterwards too, and Boris,- well he doesn't really seem like PM material, – does he? (Do any of them?)

The whole political landscape would change quite quickly I suspect, and probably for the better: After all, whatever your political persuasions – can you ever recall a worse bunch of politicians than we have today?

They are all on the gravy train, be it in Westminster or Strasbourg (a duplication of costs) and we can expect far more of this if we remain: That will continue to enable politicians to say: Ah well, we can't do anything about that because they EU have the power over that, not Westminster".

It seems particularly ironic that the Prime Minister (who has run an incredibly negative campaign) made so many outrageous claims since his abortive recent negotiations with the EU in Brussels, because in his Bloomberg speech on 23/1/13 he's said "Why can't we just have the common market that we all voted for?"

That is a question a lot of us are asking now, and more to the point why did he not demand this? Sadly, however, that is not what we are being offered in this referendum, so:

LET'S TAKE BACK CONTROL – LET'S HAVE A NEW DAWN.

That way politicians will have to work much harder for a living, and be responsible to our own local electorate without the excuse of Europe being thrown up time and again. They will have to knuckle down!

Unlike the claims of 'project fear' that 'Britain would be taking a leap in the dark', I firmly believe the opposite, that a vote to LEAVE is a step out into the light of the world, with our EU 'prisoner's shackles' removed. Free to trade how we want with who we want, including the EU (we're one of the biggest consumers (& importers) in Europe, so all this rubbish about punitive tariffs is just more 'Project Fear' nonsense, as it's critical for EU countries to continue to sell their products here ).

We would be able to fish responsibly in our own territorial waters, support our own farmers, manage our own economy, set our own laws without interference from the European 'Court of Human rights' (an abuse of its own title and all common sense in many of its irresponsible rulings, allowing terrorists to walk free, etc), we could create more secure workers rights, not subject to competition from lower standards of good practice in Europe.

We could scrap the European arrest warrant (that actually reduces freedom and liberty by allowing people to be arrested on the word of a European magistrate without any evidence required).

A vote to leave would also make us free to set our own laws and able to control immigration in a sustainable long-term way. Free to be an independent nation without the need to consult a committee of nearly thirty other countries whom we have to subsidise, yet who can over rule us on most issues. Free to defend our borders & interests in a just, ethical manor, instead of being told what has been decided for us. I feel that the 'darkness' lies ahead for us only if we continue down this very un-British EU Federalist path.

Britain outside the EU would be like a child finally coming of age again, able to make our own choices and decisions.

I do not expect Brexit will 'lead us to paradise' or 'the land of milk & honey', there are bound to be many short-term challenges and problems to overcome, but that is always true of change & I for one feel that in the medium – long term interest of Britain's future, we should choose a fresh new start and march forward with hope and determination to forge a new independent place for ourself in an increasingly inter-trading globalised world of nations, and create a much stronger Great Britain.

I urge everyone to be positive, show courage, & VOTE LEAVE on 23rd June.

And as for all this negativity & fear that the remain camp have tried to brainwash us with, I would like to quote US President Franklin D Roosevelt:

"The only thing we have to fear, is FEAR itself."

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