No matter what I think of the EU, I just cannot turn a blind eye to the gaping hole in the case for leaving: We have not seen the economic vision for life after Brexit. We know we won’t want a deal like Norway’s nor Switzerland’s. Instead, we’ll just start with a blank piece of paper and make something up as we go along.
That’s possible, but this is a decision that needs to be made in the real world. On June 24th, we don’t get to press pause whilst we design our trade deal and negotiate it with the EU. The world will go on around us, the markets will react, international businesses will make decisions about where they’ll invest and none of it will react well to our self-inflicted economic uncertainty.
If we remain, we might be better off but the worst case is surely that things are about the same. If we leave, who knows? At some point around two years after the referendum, we’d have to hand back our membership card and UK businesses would be trading under our newly negotiated settlement. Two years and two weeks beforehand, we have not the faintest clue what that deal looks like.
Our decision on 23rd June is going to be taken in the real world. If we vote to leave, everything around us will react to our decision and we just don’t know what the cost of that reaction will be. Then we’ll start negotiating for our future but nobody seems to have any idea what it is we’ll be asking for.
To avoid that whopping great leap into the unknown, I’ll be holding my nose and voting to remain. It is surely too big a risk to do anything else.