Eleanor Service|
One of the biggest questions facing our nation today is whether or not to leave the EU. There is a huge amount of uncertainty surrounding this topic because no country has ever done this before. But what are the issues being discussed? How will they affect you? And the most crucial of all, on Thursday 23rd June, what way should you vote in the EU Referendum? In the following article I will look at two of the main issues, and how your vote will affect them.
Security
Stay:
No. 10 Downing Street released a letter in which former chiefs of defence staff Jock Stirrup and Lord Bramall, and a dozen senior military personnel, argued to stay in the EU. They said that the EU is an “increasingly important pillar of our security”, in particular because of the period of instability in the Middle East and in the face of “resurgent Russian nationalism and aggression”.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon agrees that it will benefit the UK to stay in the EU, as well as NATO and the United Nations. He said,
“It is through the EU that you exchange criminal records and passenger records and work together on counter-terrorism.” “We need the collective weight of the EU when you are dealing with Russian aggression or terrorism.”
Go:
Ian Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has said he supports leaving the EU. He has said that by staying in the EU we are leaving the “door open” to terrorist attacks. He says “This open border does not allow us to check and control people”.
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former head of the international terrorism team at the Cabinet Office, when writing in ‘The Times’, said that these “critical bilateral relationships” would survive with or without EU membership. He also said that it is “absurd”, to suggest that the EU would put its own citizens, and the UK’s, at greater risk by cooperating less in the event of the UK leaving the EU. Kemp says,
“By leaving, we will again be able to determine who does and does not enter the UK.” “Failure to do so significantly increases the terrorist threat here, endangers our people and is a betrayal of this country.”
Jobs and Trade:
Stay:
The UK’s biggest trading partner is the EU, with EU countries buying 44% of everything we sell abroad services such as insurance to goods such as cars.
EU membership grants the UK full access to the Single Market. Over 500 million customers make up this market and it represents an economy more than five times bigger than the UK’s. It makes it cheaper and easier for UK companies to sell their products to the other 27 countries in the EU, which creates jobs.
More jobs are also created because being inside the EU makes the UK more attractive to investors. Over the last ten years, foreign companies have invested £540 billion in the UK, which works out to £148 million a day.
Losing our full access to the Single Market would make it more difficult to export to Europe and will increase cost for UK businesses.
Go:
Only 5% of British businesses export to the EU, however, 100% of them have to deal with the EU red tape. EU regulations are said to be very damaging to our economy, costing our small businesses millions every week. EU energy regulations also do the same thing, as well as costing families too.
The building of schools and hospitals are delayed by EU regulations, which also add millions to the cost. In the EU we have no power to make free trade deals with China and India, and they both have fast growing economies. Non-EU countries such as Iceland and Switzerland are free to do this.
