….and I am unimpressed. Leading on with a style of campaigning that really came to the fore in the Scottish referendum it is full of misinformation, half truths and outright lies. I had a discussion on soundbite politics with a friend on facebook recently and so I’d like to be clear. There is a massive difference between marketing slogans as soundbites, political slogans as soundbites and soundbites dressed up as facts that are plainly half the story or just wrong.

“Beanz Meanz Heinz” is a marketing slogan, clearly not factual but to my mind perfectly acceptable

“Vorsprung durch Technik” is a marketing slogan, perfectly reasonable although you may disagree with whether or not they achieve the slogan

“A Britain living within its means”is a political slogan, again perfectly acceptable.

“The Tories haven’t reduced the deficit in their last term at all”, bad soundbite designed to fool people who don’t know the difference between debt and deficit to not vote tory.

“£4300 cost to UK families if Britain leaves the UK”, bad soundbite as it is misleading and wrong

However, “leaving the EU will reduce GDP by £4300 per household” would be fair enough, it may not be accurate but there was a body of research that suggested as much to back it up.

So I understand the need for soundbites to break things down to understandable chunks, to provide catchy memorable phrases to let people know what you stand for and to imbed the details of your campaign in the general publics psyche. Out right deception and half truths however is not the way to go and politicians should not be deliberately misleading us in this fashion to get the vote they want. That way lies poor decision making and longer term resentment.

So onto the wonderful shiny leaflet through my door, 8 points and the only one I agree with in full without comment is “There are risks in voting either way”, mainly because there is always risk, nobody can predict the future only comment on the balance of probability given the information available at any given time.

Point 1.

So this is true, kind of, and that’s the issue. It’s half the story. According to migration watch 270,000 (Migration watch, 2016) EU citizens came to the UK so the piece above is technically correct. What it doesn’t tell you is 85,000 went home, so that leaves the EU net immigration for EU citizens minus us Brits at 185,000. Taking us Brits into consideration it is very difficult to get precise figures for where our fellow countrymen emigrate too. It would be fair to assume that between 30% and 40% end up in the EU, so taking 2015 figures of 123,000 we can further reduce the net EU migration to the UK. This leaves us with around a net migration of 148,000. Some of you may say this is still to many and that’s fine, the point is it definitely isn’t more than quarter of a million coming here every year and in fact last year was the highest so far and we need more. What they bring to this country and what they cost it would take a whole other blog to look at.

Point 2.

Out of the existing 28 states, the UK agreed to 19 of them joining. They had to have agreed or any one of those states would not now be a member, because that’s how it works. The countries above have now reached what is called the “candidate” stage. They have just started negotiating the 35 points that they need to achieve and agree to before being allowed membership. This will take several years and even then, any one of the 28 countries can veto their membership. Just to clarify, if the UK does not want Turkey to join the EU it can stop it happening (European commission, 2016).

Point 3.

The EU does not control our borders, we did not sign up to the Schengen agreement and still have passport controls at our borders. What this statement tries to do is confuse the free movement of EU citizens agreed to as part of the European Single Market agreement with a lack of border controls. If we left the EU but then like Norway and other countries joined the single market we would have to sign up to Schengen thus reducing our border controls. As for VAT, the minimum rate for VAT in the EU is 15% (European commission, 2016), unfortunately there is no maximum so we are saddled with 20% by our own government. Of course this does not cover the lower tariff which applies to some goods and services where it is set at 5%. This is where the bulk of the noise comes from. There has been some discussion by the EU to push VAT control back towards the individual countries. Just remember what our government give us with one hand they will be taking away with another.

Point 4.

This is classic misleading information, the figure above is the total figure the UK paid the EU or was due the EU. It is not the amount of money the UK even sent to the EU. It is the total before applying the rebate that the UK gets and ignoring any money that comes our way for farmers or poorer regions (fullfact.org, 2016). It essentially tells you nothing, its like me giving you £100 taking £90 back but still telling all our friends how generous I am. The UK contributed net in 2015 £8.5 billion, this is the equivalent of £163 million a week, still a fantastic amount of money so why even pretend its £350 million? What you have to weigh up is if the access to the single market and being able to leverage our skills in developing EU countries outweighs that contribution.

Point 5.

In 2014 the UK exported circa. £229 billion(fullfact.org, 2016) to the EU, Switzerland exported £140 billion (trade.ec.europa.eu, 2016) so I’m not sure how that is more than the UK. At face value this appears to just be a lie. It should also be noted that Switzerland does not have access to the the full single market and that there are restrictions on its banks for example trading in the EU. You don’t need to be a member of the EU to trade with it but it sure helps. We could of course join the single market again, but to do so means we’d be paying into the EU as Norway does and signed up to Schengen reducing controls on our borders.

Point 6.

More than half of the UK’s exports go to countries outside of the EU. We trade with many countries outside the EU and the EU does not stop us doing so (UK trade info, 2016). We can access many trade deals already in place through the EU that we would have to renegotiate once we leave with more on the way as part of a much bigger group we won’t get pushed about in the way Switzerland has for example where services and motor vehicles are excluded with up to 15 years before tariffs on Swiss exports are lifted but Chinese exports have had tariffs instantly removed.

I think the best comment on the leaflet has to be from Jim Sillars, the former SNP deputy leader who urges us to vote leave because the EU told us to get stuffed over independence. This is from the man and party who assured us they had got advice on joining the EU and spent £30,000 of tax payers money hiding the fact they didn’t actually have anything of the sort.

Not my best written blog and excuse my referencing but time is running out and this is a very important vote. Vote what way you like but don’t believe the nonsense we are being told without at least looking into it yourself. If I ever get a pro EU leaflet through the door I’ll do the same but they probably know I’m a sure thing.

Cheers!