The referendum to be held on Thursday 23rd June 2016 will ask
“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”
This is such an important question, for ourselves and our families, especially our children. The MBF meeting on Tuesday 3rd May will be devoted to discussing the topic. We will consider the impact on business but also on other aspects. Anyone is welcome to attend but if you are not a regular attendee of the MBF, could you please inform Roger Stone beforehand so we have an idea of numbers.
The question is also very complicated with seemingly contradictory statements by the two sides. To help clarify the arguments, we are pulling together information on this website
- Facts behind the arguments. These are sometimes few and far between or else just estimates. However we will try to list the ones we can
- Who says what e.g. what are the leading business organisations (CBI, BCC, IOD, etc.) saying
- Links to other useful sites
Information will be added over the coming weeks in the lead up to the meeting on 3rd May and right up to the referendum itself.
Your thoughts and opinions are very important so look out for surveys and areas for comments and for the questions you would like answered.
If you are willing to help check and publish the facts behind the debate you might like to support FullFact – have a look at their video
06/06/16 – How both sides interpret the facts
Here is a link to an interesting Guardian article that shows how the Leave and Remain camps interpret different statistics in different ways.
Note that the Guardian is for remaining in the EU. So you might draw different conclusions from them or choose different facts to compare. But the facts they do compare are very interesting reading.
Draw your own conclusions!
02/05/16 – Who is entitled to vote ?
- British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens over the age of 18 who are resident in the UK (note that this includes some EU citizens – those of Ireland, Malta and Cyprus who are resident in the UK). Based on the 2011 census,it is estimated that there are more than 800,000 Commonwealth citizens eligible to vote (click here to read about their widely differing views)
- UK citizens living abroad if they have been on the UK electoral register in the last 15 years
- Members of the House of Lords
- Commonwealth citizens in Gibraltar
04/04/16
Richard Nabavi has kindly let us publish the discussion paper he has produced for a meeting of the Mayfield Conservative Association. It sets out very well the timetable up to and beyond the referendum and suggests 3 possible alternatives if the UK decides to leave the EU. The last three pages table many important issues and the expected outcome if we remain versus each of the 3 “out” alternatives. Click here to download this very interesting and thought-provoking read.
