This is what life after Brexit will look like: a Europe of democratic, free-trading states

Britons are proving immune to the pressure from doomsayers to vote Remain in the referendum, writes Alan Sked. A vote to Leave is highly possible – and with it, the restoration of self-government, the arrival of cheaper goods from the rest of the world and an end to uncontrolled immigration from the EU. It would also mean the end of German-imposed austerity in southern Europe

Alan Sked on the EU, part four: the myth that we rely upon the EU

In the last of a series of pieces for LSE BrexitVote, Alan Sked asks why many Britons are convinced of the need to stay in the EU. He argues that Britain extricated itself from economic decline in the 1970s thanks to domestic policies and not the efforts of the EU, and describes a technocratic elite of lobbyists and civil servants who thrive on the business of regulation

Why Britain really joined the EEC (and why it had nothing to do with helping our economy)

Conventional historiography has put forward some dubious reasons for Britain’s membership of the EEC, writes Alan Sked. Most students seem to think that Britain was some sort of economic basket case and that the EEC provided an engine which could revitalise her economy. Others seem to believe that, after the second world war, Britain needed to recast her geopolitical position away from empire towards a more realistic one at the heart of Europe. Neither of these arguments, however, makes sense

L’état c’est nous: sovereignty is no illusion, and we should retain it

Some argue that sovereignty is an increasingly meaningless concept in a globalised world. On the contrary, says Alan Sked – legal authority is vested in the UK parliament, unless it chooses to delegate parts of it to the EU. That sovereignty means that were Britain to vote to leave, the will of the people would necessarily prevail

Alan Sked on the EU, part two: propaganda and pacifism from a toothless entity

Since its citizens feel no allegiance to the EU, argues Alan Sked in the second of two posts for LSE BrexitVote, it promotes an artificial European nationalism through its propaganda arm, DG Communications. This costly exercise – and the EU’s pacifist stance – mask a fundamental impotence, which is revealed in the piteous state of the German and Dutch armies

Alan Sked on the EU, part three: how Germany came to dominate the EU

Germany has come to dominate the EU, says Alan Sked in the third of a series of pieces for LSE BrexitVote. And despite the renegotiation secured by David Cameron, the aim of ever-closer union has not receded. Furthermore, for all its success, Germany faces demographic and economic changes that will weaken its power – and that of the eurozone

University leaders who lobby against Brexit are a disgrace. Research would thrive outside the EU

Senior university staff have been scaremongering about the damage leaving the EU would do to British research, writes Alan Sked. They have a vested interest in doing so. In fact, UK universities would continue to enjoy the same rights in EU Research Framework programmes if we left the Union. Switzerland has access to parts of Horizon 2020. In any case, the way Brussels functions is antithetical to the kind of innovation researchers should want to pursue

Alan Sked on the EU: part one – a superstate in the making

In the first of a series for LSE BrexitVote, Alan Sked – who founded Ukip in 1993 (but has since distanced himself from the party) – examines the EU’s structures and purpose, and looks for clues in a pamphlet published by the Union. He argues that its aim is political and not merely economic union, and recalls the experience of Yanis Varoufakis during the Greek bailout negotiations and what it reveals about the ‘democratic deficit’ that afflicts the relationship between the ‘troika’ and the rest of the EU