EU referendum: Voters give reasons behind Leave or Remain ballots

With voters casting their votes for the EU referendum today, politicians from both sides of the floor have told voters why they should choose to leave or remain in the EU (EU referendum live blog: follow here).

But what do the voters think? We asked people on the street to explain what they thought of the arguments and who they cast their votes for...

I'm voting Remain, says consultant Marieanne Nanson

"From an economic perspective, to be a self-supporting island we would need our own power, water, food, basic goods and strong defences. For power we have recently closed our second biggest source of power down (or are in the process of doing so). Rather than build UK power stations we have built interconnectors to Europe. We will effectively have to buy our power from Europe.

For food we have only 8 days of food in our supermarkets, we do not make the majority of our own food. Remember the Icelandic volcano situation? I'm not saying Europe won't sell us food but these things make a sole island prophecy weak.

Basic goods - we don't manufacture them anymore or at nowhere near the levels we did. Imported goods with taxes and duty (no more single market) will put basic goods up in price. For defence, we have cut our defence spending dangerously low and now will have to defend ourselves. The economic union also gives us peace and stability making our investments solid.

The pound, which is the bedrock of our financial position, will plummet massively post Brexit, as will the Euro - the impact of this could make the previous financial crisis look like a blip.

The markets (trading) do not like big changes and the UK coming out of Europe is a major structural change - it will send ripples around the globe, and the UK will be seen as the place to blame.

Many global companies have their regional offices in the UK; these would have to move to another European centre and cause further unemployment.

In this chaos there would be big winners; I'm sure some of Boris' friends would do very well and quickly get rid of things like the minimum wage, start to sell off NHS services, etc, but the average person in the street is going to lose massively.

I was five the last time we voted on the EU and I am now 50 - I don't think people realise that this is not a "try it and see", it's financial Armageddon."

I'm voting leave, says a finance professional, who wishes to remain anonymous

"A common argument made by the Remain camp is "Yes we concede the European Union is not perfect, but it's better we remain so we can help reform it from within".

The biggest single problem with the European Union is the Eurozone and the single currency. Whilst the Euro exists, the Southern European nations are trapped without sovereign control over their monetary policy and cannot have a sustained economic recovery without creating economic distortions in Germany.

As a result Spanish and Greek youth unemployment is persistently above 40% - feeling trapped and desperate, far-left wing politics emerges and you then get large migration from the Southern European countries to the North.

The Northern European countries then complain the migrants push down wages and use public services etc., etc., and you get far-right wing politics.

As David Cameron pointed out, a great way to curb migration would be for the economies of Europe to recover and create jobs for their own young people - however, whilst they remain trapped within the Euro they cannot do this.

Eventually when the situation gets really bad in one of the Southern European nations, the Germans step in and demand the country gives up its last remnants of sovereignty, i.e. Greece.

So there are two choices for the EU - abandon the single currency or persist and allow dangerous left-wing and right-wing populism to emerge across the continent.

We all know the Europhiles in Brussels would never accept reform of the single currency - therefore as long as the EU exists, the likes of Podemos in Spain and Marine Le Pen in France will continue to surge up the polls.

So going back to the Remain argument at the top that we can "reform from within", this is nonsense and deluded when it comes to the single biggest issue impacting the Continent, i.e. the single currency.

A vote to remain is therefore a vote to support the growth of dangerous far-left and far-right politics across Europe.

In addition, David Cameron says he would never allow Britain to join the Euro - however he wants to remain part of a Union whose entire economic destiny is reliant on the success of a single currency which he has implied is stupid and doesn't work.

This is the most contradictory thing I have heard from the PM in the entire campaign and it is amazing no one has pointed this out.

David Cameron likes to talk about experts all the time as an attempt to ridicule the Leave campaign on the economy.

However, the Leave campaign should point out that most political experts would agree that Brexit is likely to mark the beginning of the end for the EU

So if we should always listen to the experts, then we should be made aware that the referendum is not really a vote on whether to leave or stay in the EU. The real vote is whether to allow the EU to continue to exist for now or kick-start the beginning of the end.

So when we take into account what the experts say, all the follow on arguments about what sort of trade deal we could get with the EU become irrelevant because there will not be an EU.

So if the Remain campaign want to go on about experts all the time, they must acknowledge this.

David Cameron also said on the Sky News debate that there are no risks to remaining in the EU - this is a clear lie

Just after Brexit, the Spanish elections are likely to see Podemos as part of a ruling coalition. Next year in the French elections, it now seems likely the more moderate candidates will have to offer the French people a referendum on Europe to fend off Le Pen (straight out of the Cameron playbook).

If Podemos starts holding Brussels to ransom, the French vote out or the Italian banks go bust, then the EU will come tumbling down.

I'm voting Remain says Ilona Korzeniowska, chief editor of Polish Express

I think Brexit is a new experience for all of us in Europe. I want the UK to stay in the EU. If the UK left the EU, it could hurt many hardworking people from other countries, both inside and outside of the UK. I think the world is changing every minute, every year. The most important problem now is to stop and fight against terrorism. Can the UK do it without the help of other countries?

Polish community feels good in the UK; we live here because we like British culture, British neighbours, our work here and the many possibilities we have to enhance our life and make it more interesting. We study here, we are very hardworking, we also spend time laughing and spending time in pubs, concerts with our British friends.

We give a lot to Great Britain and we feel Great Britain gave us a lot of possibilities. Of course I think some of Polish immigrants are afraid how it will change their life; some have British citizenship, some of us will go to another country or will come back to Poland. I think nobody exactly knows what Brexit means for any of us: Polish community in UK, immigrants from other countries, even for British citizens. This is just a project, but a project that is a long way from implementation into the real life. I will vote for Britain to stay in the EU.

I'm backing Leave, says voter Darren Gallagher

A few months ago, I heard from a Facebook page the concept of Lexit (left-wing Brexit). With quotes from the late Tony Benn and Bob Crow, these seemed to be the fire that I often felt that Unite lacked within its political dealings.

Corbyn is promising a re-nationalised rail service in a 2020 win. However, Labour-Uncut showed some detail in this, and if we remain in the EU we would only ever be a watered down nationalised service, with privatised elements. I see this as hugely flawed. I believe the first steps to rebalancing of wealth stems from nationalised basic services. Travel. Energy. Water. Communications. And a significant drive of affordable social housing. These modern basic needs for a happy life should not see year on year price increases for the profits of shareholders.

As a commuter to London, I've paid around 10% increases year on year, and now pay £5250 annually for a service that has not a single extra train running on it. Abellio are also rated as one of the worst in the country for service. They have a monopoly on our line, so the concept of a privatised service offering competition is now one most commuters consider laughable. Of course, Energy bills, water rates and telecommunications have all seen increases in prices above inflation, this capitalist idea of endless growth hit its peak a while ago, now we the users are paying more so someone can make annual growth rates.

I'm tired of the scaremongering amongst the media and from the current cabinet. This idea that we are immediately going into turmoil, ignoring the fact it will be at least two years before we actually leave due to the treaties terms, is outright nasty. Boris will probably end up with a broken party and will have lost the Tories' 17 majority, passing anything will be near impossible if the SNP, Labour and Tory rebels can work together. I look to the Scottish referendum and how the promises of an IN vote were broken one by one. There's actually a "Wee black book" available showing the pre-referendum promises of IN and what happened after.

We have Neoliberals running the UK, in it for themselves, their friends and masters. If Lexit is successful, what is needed is a lot of grassroot movements working together to get a strong voice opposing further austerity and fighting every fight they need to have. Alike the SNP, they didn't wait a heartbeat on getting the Scots behind them after IN, we need to come together to oppose Tories, the objective to be a 2020 Corbyn win followed by decades or re-nationalisation and anti-neoliberal policies. Deals such as TTIP will no doubt already be agreed by 2020, and we need to reverse these trade deals that work for the few, and never for the disenfranchised working classes.

I think project Europe was always going to fail. All its aims from 1989 are in place, but every aspect is now in crisis. To make the EU truly work you need all Europeans across all countries to be on board with many changes. A single currency for the UK, a flat conversion of economic policies across all member states. Taxation, with more open representation, across all states and ultimately a democratic leap forward.

Personally, I am not a little Englander, I see myself as an internationalist. The first challenge is to take on the neoliberals at home, and Unions can help do this. We can strive for better workers' rights, more equal pay and services that don't leave the majority of people requiring welfare from the state to top up their wages just to make ends meet. I think at some point the private sector that I am part of, needs to truly show solidarity with the public sector, this will never happen within a system whereby we are influenced to despise each other.