35 Reasons to Vote #Leave

Some people think it's completely irrational to want to leave the EU. So, to avoid looking like you're ignorant or incapable of understanding the issues, here's a handy list of 30 excuses you can give for your position.

You don't have to believe them all, just use whichever you feel comfortable with.

1. Contrary to the expert conclusions of every economic authority of note (OECD, World Bank, Bank of England, IFS, etc, etc, etc), Brexit will not be damaging to the British economy.
2. Experts don't always get it right. In fact, because I can think of one example of an expert getting something wrong, I'm going to assume they're all wrong on the economic consequences of leaving the EU.
3. I think English literature graduate Michael Gove has a better insight into global economics than the above experts and, in fact, Brexit will magically solve any and all problems in the British economy.
4. I believe that there aren't enough jobs to go round for EU immigrants, despite the fact that more workers create a larger economy, creating more jobs as well as a higher tax take.
5. I believe foreign workers who fill jobs where there are skills shortages like nursing, construction and, erm, premiership football are adding nothing to society.
6. I believe leaving the EU will remove any moral obligation from the UK to support and welcome desperate people fleeing war and peril in the most troubled areas of the world as this country did before and during WWII.
7. I believe leaving the EU will make refugees who have already risked everything to get here decide not to bother after all.
8. I believe China (market size 1.2Bn) will offer just as good trading terms or better to the UK (market size 57Mn) as it does to the EU (market size 500Mn).
9. I believe the angle of curve of my bananas is something that the EU genuinely legislates on and that this is sufficiently important to me that I am willing to suffer economic hardship in order to protect the right to have access to the bent/straight bananas that I prefer.
10. I believe the Social Chapter is an affront to my right to oppress others and of those who would seek to oppress me.
11. I believe this country would wake up the day after leaving the EU and would suddenly find itself bathed in a glorious light of sovereignty, whatever that means. I don't believe that in practice sovereignty is actually a pretty vague idea that actually can only be negotiated in relation to the wider world as part of international community and that no country gets to do exactly what it likes. Except perhaps North Korea. Yeah. I want to live in North Korea. They got sovereignty.
12. I believe that, contrary to intelligence experts, the UK would be safer from terrorists without pooling intelligence with other European countries, even though most of the 7/7 bombers were born and raised in, erm, the UK.
13. I believe we could pool intelligence with other European countries from outside the EU and they would be just as happy to share with us as they are now, but somehow, even though I believe the situation would be the same, that's still a reason to leave the EU.
14. I believe I am better represented by the first-past-the-post elected parliamentarians in Westminster than the proportionally representative elected parliamentarians in Brussels and it's got to be one or the other, rather than both.
15. I believe the supremacy of European Court of Human Rights (even though it isn't actually an EU body) diminishes sovereignty in the UK and therefore somehow is less just even though, erm, I can't think of any occasions when it has overruled British legislation except, oh yes, that thing about prisoners getting the vote, but, well, I suppose actually that might be quite just anyway, but still...
16. I believe the EU is all a Franco-German conspiracy and the best way of defeating it is to, erm, allow the Germans and French to get on with it.
17. I believe the EU is run by a bunch of faceless pen-pushing bureaucrats, completely unlike our own fine British civil service which has just exactly as much red tape as is necessary to ensure accountability and to counter corruption, and not a scrap more.
18. I don't actually know whether Brussels government is any worse than UK government, but no one's asking me about leaving the UK, but they have given me a chance to whinge that not everything is perfect in the world, so I'm taking it.
19. I don't find Leave's figure of £350Mn in payments to the EU a week remotely ridiculous, even though it takes no account of either the rebate or payments to the UK.
20. I believe that instead of spending £350Mn a week to the EU, if we left, we really would be able to spend it on the NHS 'cause that's really how economics does work. No, it is.
21. I believe Britain's exit from the EU will bring the whole edifice tumbling down and I don't like anyone else forming an international collaboration if we're not part of it, even though, erm, I don't want to be part of it.
22. I believe holidaying in Europe will be just as easy and no more expensive because they should be happy to have our fine British pounds, even though after Brexit they might be worth a lot less.
23. I believe that the imports from Europe that of course I will still be able to buy just as easily and just as cheaply will be just as safe and my consumer rights will be protected just as well, even though these are safeguards that are protected by EU legislation.
24. I'd like to be able to rip off music and videos, like they do in China and Russia, because they don't have those pesky EU intellectual property controls which stop me stealing from artists whose work I like.
25. I believe people traffickers who operate outside the law anyway will be just as easy to track without transnational agreements and information sharing.
26. I believe an isolated UK will have more influence on a global stage because, well, we used to have an Empire you know. Just like, erm, Egypt, Mongolia and the Aztecs.
27. I'm a Scottish nationalist who wants to stay in Europe, but I hate those Sassenach Tories and this is probably my best way to get another chance to break up the United Kingdom.
28. I'm an Irish republican who wants Northern Ireland to be reunited with Eire and, erm, I'm not quite sure how that's going to happen by leaving the EU, but if that Scottish guy thinks it'll stuff the English, then I'm for it too.
29. I don't mind my taxes supporting scroungers hundreds of miles away and with whom I have no connection so long as they're this side of any sea, but I don't want them supporting no foreign scroungers whose need might be even greater. After all, I do my bit by giving a fiver to Pudsy most years.
30. I just want to shove it to Cameron and Osborne.
31. Michael Gove is my anti-Establishment icon.
32. I don't really want to leave the EU, but I want Boris as our next prime minister because he's got silly hair and says wacky things - a bit like that awfully funny chap they've got in the US at the moment, who's also ever-so keen on Brexit.
33. I liked it back in the olden days when frogs were frogs and Krauts were krauts.
34. I believe whatever the Daily Mail and Daily Express tell me to.
35. I genuinely feel no cultural connection to Abba, Archimedes, Aristotle, Bach, Beethoven, Brie, Cervantes, Chanel, Cicero, Croissant, Da Vinci, Einstein, Euclid, Goethe, the Grimms, Homer, Ibsen, Joyce, Leibniz, Michelangelo, Mozart, Pasta, Plato, Pythagoras, Rousseau, Schiller, Socrates, Tapas, Truffaut, Virgil, Zola or whatever, but on the other hand, I've got Morris dancing, Robert Burns, bara lafwr and the Orangemen in my veins."