Are you a complete ignoramus? I know you’re an economist, but have you absolutely no knowledge of history?

Britain has had nothing but conflict with and harm from Europe since Gaius Julius Caesar arrived in 55 BCE. In 1066 our indigenous monarchs were usurped and we’ve been ruled since by a succession of French and German monarchs. That’s why we had to develop our democracy and separate the Crown from the monarch, or we’d just have been a province of a French or German continental Empire. We fought off the Spanish in the 16th Century, the Dutch in the 17th, the French in the 18th and 19th, and the Germans in the 20th.

We were only allowed into the EEC in the 1970s because West Germany had become too much for the French to handle on their own. As soon as Germany was reunified, it began expanding Eastward again by sponsoring Eastern European states to join the EU long before they were stable enough. These are now German client states. They have used us as a piggy-bank and flooded us with migrants as well as themselves. Now the various other nations are becoming restive and seeking individual paths out of the mess, but Germany always stands in the way, imposing its will with financial leverage. The Fourth Reich is becoming a reality and even the Germans- -right up to Merkel herself — don’t realise it!

It is going to be a mess, and maybe another war. But the English people at least have decided we want no part of it any more. We’re getting out before it all falls apart, and we intend to stay out of it this time. Being poor is better than another bloody war, fighting for people who despise us against people who have no interest in us except that we’re fighting them.