The EU is not a 'gateway to the world', it's a 'go slow' area for UK trade

Just as commentators and politicians conflate our leaving the EU - 'Brexit' - as it is termed, with our leaving 'Europe' which is simply not at issue or even geographically possible, they also say that being independent of the world's largest trading bloc would be a disaster for UK trade.

China is not part of the EU. Nor is India, the USA, Canada, Australia. One wonders how they can possibly survive economically, this being the case?

Maybe it's because they can trade on their own terms with growing countries and trading blocs instead of being tied in to the world's only shrinking trading area.

Maybe it's because they can make their own decisions and establish their own trading agreements on a global scale instead of being run by the creaking, corrupt, self-interested machinery of the EU.

You see the thing is that the UK is the Eurozone's biggest customer. In the world. We take more of what the Eurozone produces than any other country on earth. We have a trade deficit with the Eurozone of £46 billion a year (2013). In their favour.

The above (HMRC) graph shows that this trade deficit has continued since 2013 and is, if anything much more than £46billion now. They used to say that when America sneezed the UK caught a cold. As far as the EU is concerned, when the UK catches a cold, Europe gets pneumonia. Without its trade with the UK, the Eurozone would be in economic free fall and not just in the terrible state it is currently in; everywhere in Europe that is, except relatively efficient Germany. (There's a surprise).

The question, and the major headache that our potential 'Brexit' raises, is not what potential damage it might do to the UK economy, but what damage it might do the the already floundering economy of the Eurozone. Or to put it another way, the UK creates £46 billion worth of more jobs in Europe that our being 'in' creates in the UK. So to say that they would even contemplate imposing trade sanctions on us is just ridiculous in economic terms. It simply will not happen.

Staying 'in' will just tie us to a failing economic project; to the basket-case economies of southern Europe, of the new former eastern-bloc entrants and of France which, lovely place though it might be, is a coming economic disaster area.

Leaving will not have any meaningful negative impact on our ability to trade with Europe - they quite simply cannot afford not to trade with us - but it would free us up to trade with the rest of the world on our own behalf. And if you think we need the 'clout' offered by our EU membership in order to strike global trade deals, look at Switzerland and Norway who have recently signed significant trade deals with China and India.

And ask yourself how many potential global trading partners would not want a reciprocal trading agreement with the EU's biggest customer? With the world's 6th largest economy. Would they prefer to be able to agree a trade deal with the UK or Greece, for example? And without being tied in to the Eurozone - able to make our own deals but also having continued, unfettered access to European markets, the UK can offer partners like the US, India and China the best of both worlds - a trusted and financially reliable trading partner with a strong market for their products as well as giving them instant access to Eurozone markets without having to enact their own deals with the EU. Car manufacturers come immediately to mind - efficient and highly skilled UK car plants are amongst the most efficient in the world and are successfully exporting into the EU already.

The UK is the worlds 6th largest economy and the 4th biggest military power. It has the world's biggest economic engine in terms of finance and business in the City of London. Do you think this status is enhanced because we're tied in to the economies of Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal? Albania perhaps? Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania?

The EU is not a gateway to global trade for the UK. It is not quite a dead end but it is certainly a brake on our ability to prosper and a millstone around our necks as we have to pay to be part of this inefficient 'club'. It's time we stopped paying to subsidise this failed project, stood on our own two feet and allowed our entrepreneurial, effort-based population to regain its proper place in the world's economy instead of being tied in to the economic and political failure that is the EU.

Thanks for reading.