Diolch yn fawr iawn, Lywydd. I think, to begin with, it would be fair to acknowledge that this referendum would not be taking place at all but for my party, and my party would not exist but for the upswell of feeling against the European Union, which has existed for quite some time.

When we joined the European Community, as it then was, in 1973, anybody would think, from what we’ve heard in the course of this campaign, that Britain was an isolationist country. In fact, we were already a member of an international organisation—the European Free Trade Association. The way that the EEC was sold to the British people all those years ago was merely as a kind of extension of the free trade area. But, of course, as we now know, and as anybody who had done any research about what we now call the European Union at that time would have known, it was always a political project to create a kind of united states of Europe. The British people never wanted political union. Indeed, Edward Heath, as Prime Minister, in 1973 made the astonishing claim that it involved no surrender of essential sovereignty. Well, the EU is a 1940s answer to a 1930s problem. Of course, nobody wants war again in Europe, but nobody can credibly, I think, advance the proposition that a resurgent Germany would have territorial designs upon its neighbours. So, the problem that the EU was created to resolve is totally irrelevant in the twenty-first century.

When we joined all those years ago, nobody expected that, at this date, we would have 28 countries in the EU, 19 of them in a single currency. Nobody would have believed that 500 million people would now have the right, automatically, to come to this country to live and to work. And nobody would have believed also, I think, that the EU would be able to tell us what sort of vacuum cleaners we would be allowed to buy in this country, nor that the Prime Minister of this country would have to spend days and days locked up in darkened rooms, asking the EU’s permission to change the rules on who is entitled to British welfare benefits.

So, the European Union that we’re in now is very different from the one that the British people expected to belong to as a result of joining all those years ago. Of course, in the 1970s, the United Kingdom was an economic basket case, and Europe had done much better economically in the post-war period. Now, the truth is the opposite. It’s the EU that is the economic basket case and Britain is, at least relatively speaking, resurgent. Since the beginning of this century, there has been almost no economic growth in the European Union. In the 30-odd years since 1980, the proportion of world trade accounted for by the EU has plummeted. It stood at 30 per cent in 1980. It’s now 15 per cent and rapidly going down. Unemployment throughout Europe is a scandal: 49 per cent youth unemployment in Greece, 45 per cent in Spain, 39 per cent in Italy, 30 per cent in Portugal and 25 per cent in France because of the eurozone. This is part of the utopian political project that was embarked upon all those years ago, and despite the devastation that it has caused to countries that have basically become less and less competitive with Germany, they still push on regardless of the cost in human suffering. Germany now has an endemic trade surplus in the EU, and all those other countries have an endemic trade deficit. The problem can only get worse, not better.

Now, what this referendum is about is democracy, not nationalism. And the problem is that the EU is unresponsive to popular opinion. We have one European commissioner; I think that a very small number of people could actually name him if you asked people in the street. We have 8 per cent of the votes in the Council of Ministers, and we elect 73 out of 751 Members of the European Parliament. There is no European demos; therefore, Europe can never be a democracy.

We have seen, in the course of the last few weeks, project fear rampant in the country. The uncertainties of making the decision tomorrow to leave the EU have been up in headlines. Very few people have spoken about the possibility that there is no vote tomorrow for the status quo. Whatever happens tomorrow, there will be change, and we can’t predict what that change will be in the European Union. The five presidents’ report, published not so long ago—a few months ago—forecasts that for at least the 19 countries in the eurozone, they’re going to move to further integration and centralisation. We cannot be immune to the consequences of that because we will be one of the nine countries out of 28 who will be on the outside of that centralising force. And the idea that Britain is going to be exempt from those forces is, of course, moonshine.

We are told that there will be a leap in the dark if we vote for national independence tomorrow. It’s curious to reflect on the history of that remark, because, of course, it was what Lord Derby said of Disraeli’s 1867 reform Bill, which gave the vote to the industrial working classes. That was the leap in the dark then. And, of course, it would be a leap in the dark in one sense tomorrow if we restore democracy to this country for exactly the same reason. And for exactly the same reason as the 1867 reform Act was a success, leaving the EU will be a success for Britain tomorrow.

The worst case scenario is that by leaving the single market, we would have a hurdle of an average of 3 to 4 per cent tariffs to jump over. The consequence on the other hand would be that—.