The Brexit vote is almost here! Brits vote on June 23 on the decidedly less sexy-sounding issue of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, aka #Brexit (it needs a hashtag). Over the past half year, we at Bombs and Dollars have written a lot about Brexit, EU politics, and Euroscepticism in general. Here are six must-read articles to understand the issues at hand in the vote.

“The EU is a vile organisation, and I loathe a superstate, which throws its weight around, has blatant disregard for nation and borders and national interests, and is a Byzantine unelected technocracy, and I despise it as a Realist, a democrat and as a free market proponent. But the question that plagued me for so long is what after? I will be stable in my position, as an educated urban metropolitan elite. But do I want to live in a country ruled by the likes of Nigel Farage and Jayda Fransen? Where “expert” is a reviled word? Do I want break up of a union which has guaranteed the longest peace of our times?

The answer is No.”
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Brexit campaigners make a strong case for why Britain would be better off on its own. The problem is their claims are not accurate.

As Daniela Zordova writes, EU countries and their citizens still have a big say in what the EU does. Major treaties need to be approved by countries, and integration proceeds at the behest of the countries.

“The European Union is not a state. It might become one in the distant future but the recent developments suggest that even if the Union is heading that direction, it will take longer than predicted and desired by its Founding Fathers. The European Union does not have the powers of the state. Its Member States voluntarily conferred competences to the Union through the medium of the treaties. The power the Union enjoys has thus been delegated to it by means of the legal process, in contrast to unwritten social contract governing the relations between the state and citizens. Member States retain their sovereignty and the Union can only exercise its feeble enforcement power in case of non-compliance with laws in areas under its competence.”

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Foreign leaders from around the Western world are trying to convince Britain to stay. From the embarrassing, like foreign legislatures reading poems, to the irrelevant, like Dutch newspapers carrying anti-Brexit covers, it is questionable how much of an impact many of those actions will have.

U.S. President Barack Obama decided to get into the act, too, urging Britain to stay. While Maitra said Obama had made some good points, at the end of the day, it might not be taken kindly by many Brits; “it is unbelievable to think any country, or even the British PM urging Americans to sign and ratify UNCLOS, or form a borderless union with Mexico and Canada, or join AIIB led by China. Not going to happen. Ever.”
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Sumantra Maitra says, following the assassination of Labour MP Jo Cox, “Never since the early 1980s, had it been so toxic.”

And: “For far too long, British white nationalists has been regarded as stupid idiots who can’t spell or construct a single English sentence, but not anymore. They are a threat, just as much as ultra nationalism across Europe and US, and they need to be identified and dealt with firmly, with extreme prejudice, if necessary.”

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The controversy over huge numbers of refugees and migrants in Europe has fueled the right-wing. Across Europe,

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