Articles From the Team
Brexit - Where are the facts?
Is it just me or is it near on impossible to get a straight answer on what actually will happen if we vote to leave Europe? The count down to the referendum is getting very close and I really don’t know which way to go! It’s a massive decision. Pretty much everything I read on Brexit gives no real facts of what leaving the EU will mean for the economy and law firms particularly. Every claim is met with a counter claim. In The Times today I read two articles; one was talking about how a vote to leave would be effectively cutting gibraltar adrift and then an article below this talked about a current EU law that forces the UK to import criminals!
It’s a huge decision. Emotionally people seem quite anti-Europe due the spike in terrorist attacks, they hope we can close our borders and shut up shop as it were to all the criminals that enter the UK. Will that be possible I ask? “I don’t know but I hope so” seems the common reply. Well that’s not good enough for me. Will leaving the EU give us tighter control? I wish somebody who is campaigning for the leave party would write a manifesto and document what they will do and how it will happen and what that will mean for the economy and immigration right through to how it will affect travelling across Europe and whether the shelves in our super market will look rather different if we have to purchase food from outside the EU. The fact that there isn’t any literature like this worries me because does that mean they don’t know either?
From a legal recruitment point of view, from what I can gather leaving the EU could mean a lot of aftershock because people are holding on big commercial deals until they know whether we are staying or leaving, I also read that there will be the unravelling of 1000s of laws and the rewriting of them. So maybe that would create more jobs? But what if leaving means European lawyers can’t come over here as freely? Lots of Spanish, Italian and eastern European lawyers live and work in the City of London and help plug a legal skills gap, will these opportunities disappear to them if we leave the EU? There certainly aren’t enough UK qualified lawyers to cope with current demand. For me the economy and national security are the two key issues. The vote leave people say both will be much better if we leave. But how? Convince me with some hard evidence!
Perhaps as D day approaches there will be some facts published upon which to form an opinion. I fear a vote motivated by emotion alone could be a case of being the worst mistake we make not only in our lifetime but our children's too.
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