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| The UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973 Picture: openeurope.org.uk |
A 14-page pro-European Union booklet
is about to be sent to every house in Britain.
The heading reads Why the Government believes that voting to
remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK.
The move has not been welcomed by anti-EU
Conservative and Leave supporters who believe it is crazy to spend more than £ 9m of taxpayers’ money on campaign to
stay in the EU. They also argued the leaflet should at least allow people to read
about the other side of the case.
Most party leaders think Britain’s
future belongs in the EU: not only PM David Cameron is pro-EU, also Labour
leader Jeremy Corbin-who opposed UK membership in 1975- and Tim Farron, the Lib
Dem leader, are underlying the benefits of staying in the European Union’s single market.
During a recent talk in London Mr
Farron asked the public: “Is it in our
interest for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the world’s biggest, most
important market? (….) to remain in a union where currently 100 of the world’s
top 250 companies have their base in this city?”.
In fact, around 3 million jobs in
Britain depend on EU membership and even more jobs in the EU are up to exports
to Britain.
It sounds overall detrimental for Britain not to do business with EU and vice versa. And
for those who argue about the cost of staying in the EU, the answer is quite
reassuring: just 1p for every £1 we spend goes to the European Union.
The highly criticised document each
household in Britain is going to receive soon, also contains information on another
key argument: immigration. Opting out the EU would not reduce the phenomenon,
as the UK has to commit to some free movement anyway.
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| Staying in the EU or leaving the EU? Picture: leaderchat.org |
On the other side, the Mayor of
London Boris Johnson is strongly supporting the Leave campaign and during a talk that took place in Dartford a
month ago, he energetically highlighted why Britain would be better off out the
EU, whose economy is burdened with too
much bureaucracy .
The whole speech could be summarised
in one sentence:
“This
country is big enough, great enough and strong enough to stand on our own”.
Will voters up and down the UK
decide to remain in the EU or not?
Looking at the Polling movement since 2015 as reported by the Financial Times, following results from online and telephones
polls, there is not significant gap between those who want to
stay and voters who would like to leave the EU.
Not by chance, results from this
week’s poll show that a 43 per cent of the population is on the Leave zone,
while a 42 per cent of voters are Pro-EU.
With less than 10 weeks to go until the referendum, it is
still hard to say whether or not Britain will stay in the European Union.
