Due to family circumstances, I have been very intermittent on the board lately however I was staggered to see the number of posts on this thread and haven't had the time to catch up so apologies if some of this has (probably) already been said.
My view is unchanged from my post in the early days of the thread. The EU is far from a desirable animal in some respects however Osborne's warning is entirely legitimate for me. The myth that we will be £170m (NET) a week better off is exactly that, pure fantasy.
The reality is that if we decide to divorce ourselves and leave the big boys club to become the sad loner in the corner with no mates, the major players will not take us seriously any more and foreign investment (which makes a lot of this country work), will pull out 100's of billions pounds. £70 billion+ has already gone in the last 2 months but this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg compared to what would follow.
This will, at best, slow the economy if not send it backwards and drop the tax receipts considerably more than the £170m we would save a week when we have 2/3m people on the dole again so there WON'T be all this extra money to spend on the NHS. In fact, the cuts will probably be even more savage to compensate for the lower overall tax income.
Interest rates WILL have to increase due to the drop in the £ and it is a fact that if we ever got back to even 6 or 7% rates, a lot of under 30's will probably have to hand back the keys to their houses and that will pour a large bucket of ice cold water over the housing market. Just for the benefit of our younger members, a reminder that when I bought my house, my first buyers DISCOUNTED interest rate was 10.99%, this would be a return to the bad old days which some on here will be old enough to remember. These were pretty grim times which many on here will not have experienced and I hope they never have to.
As for the economy, the only reason that Britain is the 5th largest economy in the world is "the city" so, when the rest of the world eventually becomes disenchanted and creates their own version (as they inevitably will), this country will become a third rate back water and anyone who thinks that we will be fine on our own is seriously deluded.
In summary, be careful what you wish for as whilst there is a lot that I do not agree about in the EU, adopting the "little England" approach will finish this country as any kind of serious player in the world.
People really need to sit down and think about ALL of the consequences of leaving rather than just focus on the highly emotive issue of immigration which is just ONE aspect of the bigger picture. Rather than leave the country up the creek without a paddle just so that we can say we put one over on the EU, it is better to stay in and fight for change as there are MANY member countries exhibiting signs of having had enough of being dictated to and sooner rather than later, Merkel and her French cronies will have no choice but to change.