Brexit: Epic Fail or Big Success?

However one dresses it up (or undresses it), Brexit is not and will not be a failure, as some would have us believe.

I would suggest that it is, and will be, a great success, and will be because for it to happen, meant that the British people took part in a democratic vote, the result being, as we know, a clear decision to leave the European Union (EU). Whatever supporters of one view or the other say, there were no lies told. When it came to the vote itself, there was no collusion with any non-UK organisation or other body and the referendum asked one simple question: remain in or leave the EU?

One can have any opinion one likes about where the campaign money came from but the referendum itself was carried out according to Law and the electoral rules governing such events, including that of funding. Yet over the past few days we have seen news reports on Aaron Banks, the Leave.EU group founder and one of, if not the, biggest donor to UKIP, suggesting that he lied and cheated over his donations. So who exactly has accused him of lying?

Some Remainers certainly have but he appears to openly welcome investigations into his affairs, yet there are numerous users of social media platforms saying that he has much to hide. Should anybody be jumping to conclusions? No, not at all. Until or unless Banks is actually found to have committed some offence of some kind, he is not guilty and should, and must, be treated that way.

Brexit will be a success as the UK will regain complete control of its borders instead of the part-control it now has, in that although we can deny entry to anybody without an EU country passport, we cannot deny entry to any EU country’s citizens. The UK will also regain compete control over our laws and how we interpret them, instead again of having to bow to EU law, which is not voted upon democratically, but imposed by an unelected group of people nobody has ever heard of. Brexit will also be a success because we will no longer have to pay billions to Brussels without getting anything back.

‘Hang on a moment’, I hear you say. ‘What about all those things that are directly funded by the EU in the UK?’ Fair question - except for the fact that the amount of money that comes into the UK from the EU in such funding is a very small fraction of what we pay to be a member – that money could be given directly to those same recipients without the extra cost of EU membership to begin with. Not having to pay the high cost of membership also means extra money being available to the NHS. We have a crippled education system that needs fixing (I’m still in it – I should know), so extra funding as a result of no EU costs could mean additional teachers and other resources for schools. There are a number of things that the money spent on EU membership can be used for once we are free of that cost.

The real big question over Brexit is not whether or not the UK can stand on its own two feet; of course it can. The UK stood on its own for centuries before the EU was even thought of. The question is whether or not the UK really will leave under Theresa May. 17.4 million people voted to leave and their voices are not being heard, their voices are not being listened to. Although the result of the referendum was a clear majority in favour of leaving, the numbers who voted to remain were still significant so their concerns must be addressed and they are being heard – which is one of the problems. Far too much is made of the remain campaign and too little given to leave. Some newspapers and other mainstream media give a huge amount of coverage to remain and that includes coverage of the young – like me. Most news reports quote teenagers saying they want to remain yet none, apparently, wanting to stay. I’m a teenager, and I want my country to leave. Why has nobody asked me, especially since I was also too young to vote as well?

Returning to the question of Aaron Banks and the investigation into where his donation came from, one of the other aspects to the skewed coverage of this is that under David Cameron and George Osborne, the government spent a huge amount of taxpayers money sending leaflets to every household in the country saying why we must vote to remain. Hardly impartial, was it? Not only that, but former US President Barack Obama duly obliged Cameron by telling the British people that the UK would be ‘at the back of the queue’ when it came to a trade deal with the US.

Obama’s use of words was briefly questioned at one point but Americans do not use the word ‘queue’. They simply say ‘line’ instead, as in ‘the back of the line’. Had Obama said it that way and not used the British term, his words might have been less open to question but why is it that Cameron and Osborne’s open bias has not been questioned in the same way that Banks has?

Barack Obama is of course, not US President any more and his comments are even more strange if one considers that at the time of his visit to the UK, he, along with everybody else, knew fine well that his term as President was coming to an end. Which meant that he had no right to tell the UK where we would be when in came to doing a trade deal – and his successor, Donald Trump, seems to want to put the UK first, not last.

So will Theresa May lead Great Britain out of the EU? She is known for being a remainer but she has consistently said that the UK will indeed, leave. Even so, the doubts are still there. Will any deal she makes really give the UK back its independence? We don’t know – yet. Would Jeremy Corbyn be any different? I don’t believe he would. He has, until recently, always been a Euro-sceptic but seems now to want to sit on the fence and say whatever he thinks he needs to say in order to stay on as Labour leader and become Prime Minister. What about Boris Johnson? Johnson again says all the right things for brexiteers and is very voter-friendly. His resignation from the government however seemed a little staged but at the moment, for most leavers he seems to tick the right boxes.

What of students? Despite the negative coverage, there are more students supporting Brexit that one might think, including me, and I believe that leaving the EU will benefit our future.

I support Brexit simply because I have grown up and am growing up, in a country where the important decisions that will affect me are not made in my country, by people that I will be able to vote for (or vote against), but are made by people I know nothing about and have no influence over.