David Miliband's thoughts:

""My message is simple: Now is not the time for unilateral political disarmament.
"No nation in human peacetime history, never mind Britain, has voluntarily given up as much political power as we are being invited to throw away on 23 June."
"For what? A cold, hard lesson in the demon of hubris, born of delusion that the world owes us a break.
"A tragic miscalculation which weakens ourselves, our friends and the international order on which we depend."

Edited by Kermit8 (12 Apr 2016 8.22am)

David Miliband's thoughts:

"How can I manipulate myself back into the political scene in the UK after the embarrassing loss to my goofy brother a few years back and being in the wilderness since?"

Over the past decade the UK has paid over £150 billion to the EU budget. We send
about £350 million to Brussels every week. This is about half the English schools
budget, four times the Scottish schools budget, four times the science budget,
and about 60 times what we spend on the NHS cancer drugs fund.
If we vote to ‘remain’, it is a vote for the permanent payment to Brussels of
all this money. It will get worse. UK taxpayers will be paying for the huge bills
caused by the euro’s crisis. All this money could be better spent.

None of which you can prove or even put numbers to, but we are expected to believe it?

By contrast many small self employed traders say that the bureaucratic terms and regulation the EU impose cause them to have higher costs.

So... at best if I'm being generous ... my argument completely negates yours, so why are we paying a net £175 Million a week?

£18mill x 7 days = £126million not £175mil.

As for proof well, this and a bit of common sense and rationale go a long way.

"Access to a .6 trillion a year Single Market of 500m people is the key benefit

The EU is a springboard for trade with the rest of the world through its global clout: it accounted for 23% of the global economy in 2012 in dollar terms. Through 30 trade deals negotiated by the EU, including the Single Market itself, British firms have full access to a trillion market. The recent deal with Canada and on-going discussions with Japan and the US could double this to trillion - the UK would struggle to achieve the same quality of trade deals independently.
58% of CBI members think that extra-EU trade agreements have had a positive impact on their business, including 55% of SMEs, compared to 3% who thought the impact was negative."

CBI

It's staring us all in the face. Economically, the EU is pretty good for us.

If someone could disprove that and have a concrete and definite and implementable plan which will be better for us than being a member then go for it.

Edited by Kermit8 (12 Apr 2016 2.09pm)

The "In" campaign are continually banging on about how much worse off we would be if we left, how much weaker we would be, how more dangerous the world will be, blah blah blah...

It's all cobblers. Nobody knows what it will be like if we leave.

One thing I do know, and that is if we vote to leave, our government will be back in charge, making laws that benefit the UK.

If we stay, we will end up being more and more under the thumb of unelected and unaccountable foreigners.

Cameron's pathetic "renegotiation" isn't worth the paper it's written on. Vote to remain, and the EU parliament can, as they have threatened, block what minor concessions that were agreed. Making the whole pantomime a complete waste of time.

Our parliamentary system is not perfect, but at least we can vote out whoever is in power.