Hello, Britain.

This EU referendum has been made to look really rather confusing,

but it’s actually all quite simple.

Britain, as a part of the EU, is in a free trade area that spreads from Iceland to Turkey.

Free trade is great as it makes trade easier.

However, not all countries in this free trade area are EU members,

and no one is proposing we would ever leave the trade bloc if we exit the EU -

least of all Germany, who earns billions selling us their cars.

Britain voted to join the EEC back in 1973

when it looked like regional trade blocs were the future.

This was long before the internet or mass container shipping,

and the Soviet empire was in full swing.

Technologies have since made the idea of local trading unions

completely obsolete, as it is now as cheap and easy to do business anywhere in the world.

Britain’s future is way beyond the EU.

Remaining an EU member means we can’t negotiate favourable trade or business deals,

we’re stuck with whatever the unelected EU commissioners think is best.

In the past decade, our trade with the EU has fallen from 55 percent to 45,

and this idea that we must merge our political institutions for the sake of this shrinking minority of our commerce

is just frankly stupid.

But is Britain too small to compete?

Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world, has the fourth largest military budget,

is a founding member of NATO,

a permanent seat holder on the United Nations Security Council, the G8 and the G20,

has the world’s most widely spoken language,

the world’s best universities,

and has a cracking history of maritime trade and independence.

If Britain isn’t big enough to compete on the world stage, who the bloody hell is?

Those wanting Britain to remain in the EU are using uncertainty and doubt to spread fear.

They claim that each British household could lose as much as £3000 every year by leaving.

But even if we pretend this idiotic claim were true,

would £750 really be all it takes to purchase your democratic rights?

Is the ability to hire and fire our lawmakers, democratic freedoms fought for over hundreds of years,

now only worth two month’s rent for a studio apartment in Glasgow and a packet of Wotsits?

If 28 unelected British plutocrats tried to pull this crap,

I’m sure we’d tell them to bugger off, too.

However you vote, everything is going to change.

The EU Commission has made it quite clear that they are on the path

to closer financial, legal and border integration.

Staying on that bus will lead to us having to ditch the pound sterling, our entire common law judicial system and our borders

for the euro, bench trials and Schengen in due course.

The Union is of course desperate to maintain its control,

but I don’t think that a few measly threats mean we need to commit our future to this authoritarian regime.

Besides, we have been getting on wonderfully well trading, emigrating to and allying with other countries

without needing to give their government control over our laws.

So let’s use this one chance to wish the EU the very best,

be their trading partners, business colleagues, military allies and friends,

but let them know we’ll govern ourselves from here on out,

thanks all the same.

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