Vote Leave UKC on why students must build a Brexit momentum and set our sights onto international horizons
We believe the future of the United Kingdom will be brighter, freer, and more prosperous outside of the European Union. For this generation especially, the time has come to reclaim the freedoms that were fought for by those before us.
The rights of the people to decide when to be taxed, what laws to pass, to whom we entrust with national responsibility have all been eroded by our membership of the EU. No longer can we alone decide with whom we trade, and what legislation regulates our lives: these powers have been seized by the distant, unelected, and unaccountable Brussels elite who relish in corporatism, tax exemption, and endless expense claims. We say trust in the electorate, trust in the British people to be in control of our fate.
The University of Kent especially knows the immeasurable benefits immigration and international students bring to our institutions, our economy, and our society as a whole. Yet why do we insist upon the passport discrimination, and the protectionism that is mandated to us through the EU?
It is a crying shame that in the most important political debate of our time the University has chosen to conflate being European with being a member of the European Union, neglecting the relevance of the twenty-two other proud nation states absent from this political marriage.
We’d see upon exit a fairer immigration system where no longer is it the country of your birth that determines your ability to live, work and study in this country with ease, but the merits of the individual, and all the skills and potential they bring to strengthen our nation. Never before have we been so interconnected with the rest of the globe; never has trade been easier, communication moe efficient, progress so forthcoming.
EU laws mean we have to charge non-EU students much more, which deters them from investing in our institutions. We formed this campaign as students not as a means of rejecting our institution’s internationalist ambitions, but in strengthening them; to amplify this university’s voice in world academia, not to diminish it. But in the EU we must shut ourselves off from the rest of the world, erect tariff walls, and think of Europe before all else, no matter the consequences. Voting to leave is the only truly global, internationalist step we can take – and it is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Forget the scaremongering, don’t let the Remain side put Britain down.
We are the world’s 5th largest economy, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and a founding member of NATO; a nation sitting at the top tables of the G7, G20, and OECD; our commerce and services desired in every continent, our schools and universities admired, with students flocking every year to our shores not because we are in the EU, but because Britain leads the world in so many ways.
Case in point, there are no EU member states in the World University Rankings top 25, but there are 6 UK institutions.
Britain stands tall on the merits of our own capabilities, proud of our ability to be world leader. Far more likely than the Remain side’s scaremongering on how we lose our stance in the world, we’d gain more momentum, re-emerging from the Brussels quagmire ready to compete with the giants of America, China, Japan, Korea, and India.
Let’s regain our sovereignty, our control over our laws and our destiny as a nation. Let’s vote to come back to the international community, trading with Europe and the rest of the world, but with the British people deciding for themselves the rules and the representatives who pass them.
It is our generation that will suffer from the stagnation and the ineptitude of the European Union; so it is our generation who must seize this chance and live up to the promise of Great Britain, the traditions that have guided us from Magna Carta onwards. Vote Leave UKC fights for this bright future; we implore you to register to vote, turn up on the day, and make the right decision.
Consider what Britain would look like the day after we vote to leave. Do you honestly buy into Project Fear’s claim of lasting recession, the cessation of international business dealing in London, the demise of British influence in the world, the exportation of millions of migrants? Are you seriously willing to buy into their pessimism, without really considering the idea that Britain has always been, in Europe or not, a strong, globally trading, prosperous, and generous nation or world standing.
Little England is a fallacy, Little Europe is the reality; it’s time to Vote Leave.