The only certainty of staying in the EU is of subservience to empire building

So all the batting around of figures and statistics between both sides is, for the most part, pure guesswork and hunch built around the personal bias of the speaker. If they support the Remain camp they warn that leaving would “deter investment, threaten jobs and put the economy at risk”. If they support the Leave camp they argue that the UK can “forge new economic relations, continue to trade with Europe and boost our economy with a buoyant sterling”.

But they don’t know any of this to be true. How could they? Membership of the EU didn’t prevent the economic collapse that forced some EU governments to pursue anti-austerity policies, while others had to be bailed out. Membership of the EU hasn’t stopped the rise of extremist parties of both the left and right, and nor has it prevented the spread of a virulent new racism across Europe. Almost 60 years since the Treaty of Rome and the happy clappy true believers are still struggling to convince millions of people of the supposed benefits of the EU project.

In response to this the Remainers warn us about leaping into the dark, jumping into the abyss or journeying into the unknown. Some of them even trot out the mantra about how the EU project has ‘kept the peace since 1945’.

Have they forgotten about Nato? Forgotten about the US troops and nuclear deterrents that were/are on EU soil for so long? And if it’s all about peace then how come France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and Turkey (waiting patiently for membership) were all in the top 15 of the world’s largest arms exporters in 2014? We don’t fight each other, yet some EU members seem quite happy to export death to places where democracy is crushed ruthlessly and regularly.

What worries me most about our continuing membership of the EU (although I do acknowledge that NI has done pretty well, albeit because we were viewed as a sort of peace project for Brussels) is the ‘vision thing’.

If this had all just been about making it less complicated for business, trade, tourism and making relationships a little bit easier then I wouldn’t have worried too much. In a world were technology, communications and transport are ever changing it makes sense for near neighbours to cooperate for mutual benefit – particularly with so many borders/nations in a relatively small area.

But it soon became clear that the EU project was about much more than that. For a group of people it became about building constitutional structures through which a very specific EU ‘view’ of things would emerge: in other words, something best described as a United States of Europe. An entity that would have its own parliament (able to override ‘national’ parliaments); its own president and executive, its own economic policy (courtesy of a single currency), its own international trading agreements (binding on EU members), and its own foreign and military policy (which is clearly being worked towards).

This is empire building. This is about a new super power for the 21st century. This is about very significant powers being concentrated in the hands of people for whom not one single person in the United Kingdom has cast a vote. At some point in the next 20 years or so this new super power will come nose to nose, toe to toe with other emerging powers in India, China, Africa, South America and the Middle East. It will develop ‘interests’ and ‘concerns’ and, as all empires do, it will flex its muscles and, where and when necessary, do what is required to protect those interests and concerns.

If the United Kingdom remains a member it will be sucked into this empire: and if it refuses to be sucked in it will be punished. Does anyone really think that the UK will be allowed to sit on the sidelines, managing its own currency and defying the demands of the euro? Does anyone really think that the rest of the ever-expanding EU project will turn a blind eye to the UK’s absurd “we’re in, but not of you” stance? Does anyone really think that, if we stay, Cameron or his successors won’t be going back for further negotiations to complain about some new development which we had been told wasn’t going to happen?

Melanie Phillips nailed it: “The EU does mean certainty. The certainty that the British will never be able to govern themselves because EU regulations and directives trump domestic law. Uncertainty is the necessary price of freedom. The EU offers merely the certainty of servitude. David Cameron is behaving not so much like a democratic statesman as a mafia godfather making us an offer we cannot refuse.”

Well, we can and should refuse that offer. Membership of the EU is about more, much more, than farming subsidies, trade agreements and currency et al. It is about who we are as a country and what we want to be. It is about where the EU is taking us, and the consequences of that journey. I’m voting to leave. Voting for the ‘uncertainty’ of our own feet and voice, rather than the ‘certainty’ of an empire controlled and directed by others.