Have you ever heard of the EEA, the European Economic Area? This may be the best kept secret in the UK today. There are two ways to be in the European Common Market. The EU is one, but there is another, the EEA. The EEA exists to provide for Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein who are not in the EU. If the UK withdrew from the EU it could simply slide sideways into the EEA as we were previously members of EFTA with them. We would still have free trade with the EU and maintain many links on environmental and other issues, but we would not be subject to rule from Brussels, we would not have to contribute to the CAP, our fishermen would get their waters back and our shopkeepers could sell bananas by the pound if their customers wanted them to without risking being sent to prison. There would be no job losses (except for politicians and bureaucrats) and the UK would still be the most attractive location for inward investment in Europe.Ignore the scare stories. The two million jobs that depend on our trade with the EU are not at risk. Nobody is suggesting that we would do any less trade with them, least of all the EU who sell to us £20,000,000,000 more than we sell to them each year! They would fall over themselves to offer us a trade deal and we would have the upper hand in negotiating it because of the trade deficit. Norway and Liechtenstein are two of the richest countries in Europe, getting all the benefits of the EU (free trade etc) without all of the costs or bureaucracy entailed in EU membership.
The billions of pounds we would save could make a dramatic difference to the NHS, Education and the Police without any increase in taxation. The other parties will promise more spending on popular causes but remember that spending always equals taxation. Only the UKIP can offer increased spending on public services with no increase in taxation due to the "Independence Dividend".
If you get a chance to put a question to any of the other parties, ask them why they never mention the option of the EEA to the British people.
The EU was invented by politicians for politicians. It is a politician's paradise. The salary and expenses are enormous and there is little or no risk of being ejected by the electorate. The really powerful ones (in the Commission) are not elected at all, and even the MEPs are elected by proportional representation on party lists, so the ones higher up the list are assured of election and what matters is being "in" with the unelected people who decide the lists, rather than being respected by the voters. The whole system is a recipe for cronyism, corruption and inefficiency. The EU itself estimates that several thousand million pounds are lost each year to this but the true figure is even higher.
Although it is very popular with politicians the EU is not universally loved by the ordinary people of Europe. Polls in Germany showed the euro to be massively unpopular but their government did not consult the people in a referendum. In France a majority voted against Maastrich and the euro in a referendum, but their government engineered a minute majority in favour by including votes from Guadeloupe and Martinique. The Irish rejected the Nice treaty in a referendum. Denmark rejected the Maastrich treaty and those sensible Norwegians and Swiss rejected the EU itself despite the very strong urging of their governments and dire warnings as to the awful consequences of rejection (which have proved to be the very opposite!) Then in 2005 the French and the Dutch rejected the proposed constitution.
It should be mentioned that in the case of Denmark and Ireland the undemocratic EU refused to accept the result and forced the national governments to hold another referendum rigged to get the answer they wanted. And following the rejection of the constitution by the French and Dutch the EU bureaucrats simply shrugged and continued implementing all the elements anyway. The referenda are, like the European Parliament, just to provide an illusion of democracy. The EU bureaucrats are always talking about "the democratic deficit" by which they implicitly confirm the undemocratic nature of the EU, but what they actually want to achieve is a better illusion, they do not want or possibly even understand real democracy. There is no way that the people can remove them from power if they are dissatisfied, and the EUcrats would be horrified at any such suggestion. They have set up the European Parliament so that dissatisfied voters can vent their spleen on someone who does not matter, but we can only get rid of MEPs at the bottom of their party lists. In any case the Parliament is just a talking shop, it has no power to produce legislation which is the prerogative of the unelected Commission. However the salaries and perks of the MEPs are eye-watering. UKIP knows - we have our own MEPs to tell us all about it.
