Whatever you write on the Internet will annoy somebody somewhere, so if any parts annoy you in this blog post then do me a favour and stop reading; if I was writing a newspaper article then I would listen to your queries but this is a blog post with MY opinions so I do not care what you think. I have also tried my best to be impartial.

The EU referendum has pissed me off.

Now unless you have been living in a cave for the last few years you will be aware that finally the British people have been given a choice. The choice here is whether we should as a country stay in the EU with the few benefits that Cameron managed to extract from the stone cold Germans essentially. Lets be honest, the Cameron v EU fight was always going to be hard; he asked for too much. Things like the free movement of people are basic foundations that the EU as we know it, is built on, your ability to get a job as an office worker in Hungary is something that is non-negotiable, its like asking Adele to give you her voice box.

Okay, so before I go any further I want you to know that it is acceptable if you’re confused about how to vote. Some of you will have had the opinion that we should leave since you were born, fine whatever. I’ve just finished my second year into a Politics & IR degree and even with my keen interest in political affairs I STILL have no idea how to vote. You are not alone if you haven’t made your mind up yet, which leads me onto my key point.

The EU referendum should not have been held at this current time.

 Ambiguity:

 When growing up you’ve always been told to make rational decisions when you are calm and not in the heat of the moment, so why are we being asked the most important question in modern British history when Europe itself is a mess. There is a crisis going on that is multi-faceted in nature; you have the refugee influx from conflicts in Syria and Iraq amongst other problems like question marks over whether Turkey should join or not. As a side note, I don’t think Turkey should join yet not because I have some EDL hatred towards kebabs, but simply because they are the one calling the shots and not the other way round. The migrant crisis has given Turkish President Erdogan (who I hate) such huge leverage over the EU through the deal they agreed whereby Turkey takes back all refugees and then only the genuine ones from Syria/Iraq are allowed into Europe. The EU now has to put a red carpet in front of him every time he walks for fear that he will turn around and just open the floodgates again. Our decision is being made now with no clarity, we don’t know if Turkey will be let in or not, how can you possibly make such a huge choice if you don’t know all the facts?

Another thing is that we haven’t been told what will happen in terms of economic deals with the EU after we leave. If you think that the EU will come running to the UK to do a trade deal then you are stupid. Ever since the British Empire the feeling of British grandness has blinded many to the point that we still think we are a superpower when in reality we’re not. Our perceived strength and actual strength are a little skewed from each other. We’re still powerful but not as much as we think.

Okay, so we’ve left the EU. I make the assumption that we are not going to turn into the hermit kingdom of North Korea and isolate ourselves from the world, which means then that we have to make deals with people including the EU. We could follow what is known as the “Norway Model” which is what you will hear a lot of leave campaigners telling you about and how great it is supposed to be. I’ll be honest, a few years back I myself thought it was the best way forward and that you are gaining so much and losing so little through it- but then I researched and learnt something. To be able to adopt the Norway model you are in turn forced by agreement to implement EU laws and also allow the free movement of goods, money and people. Norway is part of the free market but not part of the EU, if you understand what I’m saying then I congratulate you. If we did this, you would still have people coming over at will, you would still have the EU imposing fishing quotas and red tape on British law- the bad thing though is that you wouldn’t have a vote on shaping the EU or a voice since you are not a full member.

Campaign leave will tell you “oh we will make trade deals with Australia and China”. This again is not a lie; yes you will make trade deals with these countries but not to the extent that is being claimed. How on earth we going to replace something like 40% of British export buyers overnight. China is not out there eagerly holding its breathe until Britain leaves the EU so it can come and invest trillions into our schools and NHS, in fact in some sectors its doing the opposite. A lot of steel used to be bought from the UK and just a few years ago you could scrap your car for £200 or even more. Go online today and see what sort of quotes you’re given, you will be pushed hard to find a quote for more than £40, and this is due to China reducing its demand. The indicators are not there. There will be an economic shock, if we leave now or in 100 years. Leave are lying when they tell you that it will be smooth sailing in the short term, and Remain also lie when they claim the end of capitalism is on the horizon if we vote leave. The extent of this economic shock is not known obviously since no one can predict the future, some will say it is worth it in the long term though.

Finally there is a big figure being branded around that we pay £350million a week as a membership fee to the EU coffers. Yes that is true, we do pay that. But guess what they don’t tell you, all of the money we get back from the EU through things like bursaries paid to UK students when they study abroad and grants given to farmers etc. In the end once its weighed up, EU membership costs you as a person around £10 a month; you pay more than that to watch Netflix and that service even has the cheek to provide you a crap selection of films.

On the other hand

 Campaign Remain, which I think has a nice rhyme to its name, has been just as bad. The negative campaigning strategy they have employed is to be quite frank disgusting. They’ve resorted to new lows, scaring people about how the price of their houses will plummet, how pensions will be shit, and that we’ll end up being invaded by San Marino within years. I really was hoping when the whole debate started that we would have an intellectual and open discussion based on honesty and not the withholding of truth for gain. A lot of figures have made appearances for this campaign including Obama.

Come on, who hates Obama, you cant hate him; so Cameron brings him over for a personal favour to tell the British people to vote in or else they wont give us special treatment in future trade deals (like TTIP). You know what, he can stick his trade deal where the sun doesn’t shine, in times of need the Americans scream about the ‘special relationship’ and now he wants to say we will be treated the same as Australia. The UK government went to an illegal war in Iraq just to maintain this bond with them. I am disgusted by Remain for scaring people into voting rather than informing them properly.

Also the government makes it seem like they have managed to negotiate the best concession that human history has ever seen since the signing of the Versailles Treaty. David Cameron achieved absolutely nothing noteworthy, I could have taken a walk up Chatham Hill to Gillingham and that would be a bigger achievement than his deal. I am not blaming him for not getting more, because I genuinely don’t think he could have, but presenting it as a life preserver is morally wrong when its not. He got some vague promises that we wouldn’t be forced to integrate into the EU’s “ever closer union” core message and other things like having to wait a bit before migrants can claim benefits.

Finally the painting of leave voters as racists is not going to win them back over. In my experience yes a large number of them have talked with racist undertones and told me their reasons for voting this way are wholly due to the immigration aspect. The Remain campaign though paints the whole leave electorate as this evil monster who eats refugees for breakfast and hates all the love in the world. Thankfully they are not like that, most will be informed and have based their opinion on rational debate and considered things like economic, security and the immigration issue.

Final thoughts

My final thoughts are basically that I am tired now. Part of me doesn’t even want to vote to be quite frank. I don’t feel comfortable voting one way if I know within myself that I am not 100% sure about my decision. The truth is that no one knows what will happen if we leave, and if we stay there are ongoing problems too. The whole message that I’ve been putting through about how little we know about the things we NEED to know remain relevant, I wish this vote was held in a few years as opposed to now. But I understand why it was; Labour in my opinion lost the election because they didn’t offer choice, the Brits love choice and I thought it was political suicide not to at least offer a referendum. This nearly put me off the left wing; their self-righteous assumption that politicians know more than the people is wrong. You have a very important vote on the 23^rd of June, do you vote the same way as scumbags like Nigel Farage or let a dictator like Erdogan put a leash on the biggest free trade area in the world.

My take home message is to don’t vote just for the sake of voting. I don’t care if you vote to Leave or Remain, that’s not the point. Our democracy and the quality of this referendum will depend on people not listening to scare tactics and also ignoring populist xenophobia. Research, learn and enlighten yourself in facts before you tick that ballot paper.