Jay Beecher, UKIP Peterborough: It's about you, your children and theirs

Brexit Vs Remain. So far it's been a bit like watching a fight between Mike Tyson and Roy from Coronation Street.

Living in the second most eurosceptic city in England, the intelligent people of Peterborough have been making it very clear which side they’re backing. Outside the Town Hall, our Vote Leave stalls have been flooded with support. Volunteers from all over Peterborough have been out there in all weathers, knocking on doors, leafletting, dispelling myths and engaging with the real people who matter - not your Richard Bransons or David Camerons of the world - but the everyday working man and woman.

The passion displayed by the general public - so desperate to end our futile relationship with the EU - has been overwhelming.

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But it’s no real surprise that our campaign, both in Peterborough and across the UK has been so successful. Promoting the case for Brexit is like selling water in the desert. No hard sale is required.

The big and complex debate has now boiled down to a simmering question of not why you SHOULD vote to leave the EU, but to ‘why the bloody hell wouldn’t you?’

I’ve said it before; voting to remain isn’t a vote to remain as we are. Things are going to get far worse. But then again, even if that weren’t the case, why on earth would you want things to simply carry on as they are, anyway?

We are currently living in a time of fierce austerity. A time where national identity is being eroded. A time where poverty is on the rise. A time where so may of us live from one payday to the next, and where the great divide between the rich and the poor grows greater still. Aren’t us Brits supposed to be head-strong? Proud? Ambitious?

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We must remind ourselves that we, the taxpayers, should have control over this country, not the elitist few, and certainly not an undemocratic, unelected self-interested consortium in Brussels. You’re worth a lot more than how you’re currently being treated. You weren’t born to simply pay endless taxes and to be subservient to the greedy who we all probably can’t even name, let alone have the power to elect or to vote out. This is your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change things, to challenge the establishment and to make Britain great again.

On June 23rd we have a chance to pave the way to a stronger economy, to controlled immigration, to a democratic and fair system of self-governance, and more importantly, to a brighter future.

This isn’t about party politics. This is about you. This is about your children. Their children, even.

So, when voting in this referendum, I encourage you not to just listen to people such as Boris Johnson, who said that “if we vote to remain, we will continue to sit trapped like passengers in the back seat of some errant minicab with a driver who doesn’t speak English and who is taking us remorselessly and expensively in the wrong direction”. I don’t even suggest that you simply listen to the likes of Margaret Thatcher, who once said that the EU project is “contrary to British interests and damaging to our parliamentary democracy”. Instead, I implore you to listen to the person most important in all of this. Someone who all the career politicians and David Cameron’s of the world forget to consider. Yourself. Listen to yourself. Listen to what your heart is telling you to do. Listen to that noise; that gentle rumbling of relentless instinct which reverberates inside your gut. Listen to the passionate yet suppressed feeling of hope and invincibility fizzing excitedly in your mind. You know it as well as I do, because, throughout this whole palava, throughout the endless confusing debates and heated arguments, my gut and head and heart have all been telling me the same message as yours have. In this referendum, it’s time to take back control of the country we all love. It’s time to Vote Leave.