I SPENT most of my life in the Soviet Union and that is exactly the reason why I shall vote leave in the EU Referendum on Thursday.

My country, Azerbaijan, just like Britain, had one of the strongest economies among the 15 other countries. We had natural resources of oil and gas as well as a chemical industry, but the income we were generating wasn’t spent on our needs. Instead it was sent to some of the poorer countries within the union.

Azerbaijan, like Britain in the EU, had to pay for all the initiatives the Moscow leadership was coming up with, including support of Cuba, Mongolia and Vietnam.

When, 70 years later, the Soviet Union fell apart it left countries in a state of economic shock, as the leaders in the Politburo, just like the EU autocrats, tried to make all 15 countries so dependent on each other that none of them had a properly developed infrastructure or industry. The poor countries became even poorer.

The lesson to learn from the Soviet Union of countries with different political, economic and cultural differences stacked together is that it simply didn’t work and could not be made to work.

The EU is turning into such a union, more and more. The unelected, unaccountable, bureaucratic leadership of the EU now strongly resembles the Politburo, enjoying the privileges of high standards of lifestyle, huge salaries, guaranteed private medical insurance and private school education for their children.

And what do British workers get in return? Reams of regulations for cucumbers to be straight and bananas ‘free from malformation or abnormal curvature’.

This is the one chance we British citizens have. If we don’t leave the EU now, we will face economic disaster when it falls apart in the not so distant future.

It is a Titanic sinking to the bottom and any suggestion to stay on board and save it is irresponsibly turning a blind eye to the glaring example of the disastrous idea that was the Soviet Union.

AZA ZEYNALOVA
First Turn, Oxford