The UK will be more secure outside the EU

The security of the UK rests primarily on the vigilance, hard work and success of its own people. Outside the EU the UK will be freer and more prosperous, freed of the EU taxes and rules that hold us back.

Our main defence will be strong, based on the UK military and our continuing membership of NATO.

We will be able to avoid being pulled into conflicts and insecurities which the wider EU shares.

The UK’s security has been weakened by EU energy policies designed to increase interdependence in a continent which is short of energy. The EU will have to be careful about its reliance on Russian gas.

The EU’s policy towards Ukraine, fostering a bigger divide between the two parts of the country, gave opportunity to Russia to exploit western weakness and seize Crimea. The UK has been dragged into this conflict whilst the EU has shown no ability to retrieve the damage done. All the UK in the EU can do is to protest loudly about the Russian action.

The EU border policy has failed to police the external border or provide a legal and orderly framework for deciding who can come and who cannot. Whilst the UK is protected from some of this by being outside the Schengen common frontier policy, the free movement of people means that anyone accepted anywhere else in the EU is free to come to the UK whether that meets with our wishes or not.

The free movement of terrorists over EU frontiers as we saw in recent French tragedies is worrying if we stay in.

THOSE WHO WANT US TO STAY WILL TRY TO CLAIM WE ARE MORE SECURE INSIDE

There is not a shred of evidence for this proposal.

They cannot name a single way in which the EU has made us more secure. Far from doing so it has made our borders less secure, and pulled us into dangerous foreign and energy policies.

They say the European Arrest Warrant makes us safer. Outside the EU we would have similar procedures through normal extradition relations. We would continue to share intelligence as we do with some non EU countries like the USA as well.