Well I’ve posted off my vote and I want to remain in the EU.
To be honest it was never a difficult decision to make for me. I’m not a huge
fan of the EU, I don’t like the way Greece was bullied, I don’t like the
austerity heaped on the poorer European countries, I think there is too much
corruption and I think far too many of the policy decisions are driven by
political vanity rather than common sense.
Fortunately, this referendum isn’t about how perfect the EU
is, it’s about where we see ourselves in the future; a small island or part of
something much bigger. This idea of us turning our backs on our neighbours and
pretending that we’re somehow different from the rest of Europe is just an
anathema to me. I feel European, I always have felt that way. I like being
British, I like being English and I like being a Northerner but none of these
diminish, for me at least, the sense of being European. I guess you don’t have
to be in the EU to feel like that but I really can’t see any point in leaving.
From the outset I thought this entire referendum was just a
huge waste of money. Hundreds of millions of pounds, that we’re always being
told we don’t have, just being poured down the drain in order to pander to the
political vanities of the Right Wing of the Tory party. I assumed it would be a
parade of half-truths and bare faced lies from the start but I didn’t expect it
to be quite this bad.
The standard of debate didn’t fall into the gutter, it
started in the gutter and has just been an exercise in muck-raking and
made-up-bollocks ever since. I feel sorry for those people who are truly
undecided because getting to the truth has been almost impossible.
A classic example of this was the 350 million quid a week to
the EU. We never send that amount to the EU and the people posting it as ’the
truth’ knew that. This of course didn’t stop them continuing to post it. Why?
Well, mainly it’s because they know that a lie repeated often enough becomes
believable to an awful lot of people.
What really annoys me about this figure isn’t that it’s not
true, it’s that it is thoroughly misleading. Government expenditure always
involves enormous figures, so they always sound frightening, so politicians
always use them to their own ends. Apparently, this enormous sum equates to
0.5% of our GDP. To bring this closer to home, if you earn £500 a week, you
would be paying out the princely sum of £2.50 a week to be in the EU! In terms of
our country's income it’s peanuts, but apparently we’re going to pay for
everything from this money; the NHS will be saved, our schools will flourish
and all our fishermen will get new boats. It’s nonsense and the people spouting
it know it’s nonsense.
The other problem I have with this money is why people
object so much to us paying it. Everyone in the EU pays into the EU coffers
based on how wealthy they are. That only seems fair to me. Even countries that
are not in the EU pay into it; Norway, Switzerland etc. all pay for the
privilege of trading tariff-free within the EU. I can’t see a problem with
this. I pay to run a monthly advert in one of our local newspapers. By
coincidence the amount we pay is roughly 0.5% of our turn-over. I can’t be
certain that we get value for money from this advert. Maybe we’re wasting our
money. If we stopped the advert would we really notice any drop in trade? To be
honest I really don’t know. Am I going to stop the advert? Of course not. It’s
a trifling sum of money and if we get just one job from it it’s paid for itself
for the entire year. That’s how I see this money we pay into the EU. Maybe we
aren’t getting value for money but we do get access to the world’s biggest
market. Surely that’s worth something all by itself? And as people keep
pointing out, we’re the 5th richest country on this planet. So being
in the EU and paying this money out is patently not doing us much harm!
The other side of this payment issue links to the migration problem,
which seems to get a lot of people down. The idea of the EU expansion was to
bring our poorer neighbours into the fold. Rather than have illegal immigrants
pouring over the borders every five minutes and our neighbours turning back to
Russia or just falling into turmoil, the EU decided to bring them into the fold,
so to speak, and help them become wealthy like us. Yes, we’d have to spend a
fair bit and yes we’d have legal immigration rather than illegal immigration
but over the longer term it would all work out for the better and, once the new
members were wealthy, the migration would slow right down to sensible levels. Sounds great, eh?
Alas, it doesn’t seem to be working out so well.
The biggest problem with immigration is that it seems to be
a call to arms for every right wing twat in the country. I have no problem with
people disliking the idea of immigration. I have no problem with people
disliking the way it changes their towns and cities. I have no problem with
people fearing for their jobs. Where I have a problem is when people start
calling all migrants, scum, rapists, murderers etc. I really did think that
that kind of mindless racism and xenophobia was on the wane but, if Facebook is
anything to go by, it’s getting worse and worse by the day. I called a bloke
out recently for saying that all immigrants are rapists and before I knew it I
was being accused by the Brexiteers of “using the racist card like all my kind
do” WTF? I didn’t even know I had a ‘kind’. We seem to be turning into a
frothing mass of xenophobes the longer this ‘debate’ goes on. Sadly, history
would suggest that when that particular cat is let out of the bag it doesn’t go
away quickly and it has been known to cause ‘a bit of friction’ in the past. I
hope that’s not going to be the case but it’s not a side of the British
personality I like to see.
Yes, immigration is a problem but I can’t see how walking
away from the EU will solve it, after all it’s not our unique problem. The
problems in Syria are the world’s problems and they won’t go away because we
try to ignore them. The issue with EU migrants is a problem shared by the whole
of the EU. The Spanish get pissed off by a million OAP Brits coming over and
buying up their coast line, pushing up house prices and filling up their
hospitals. The Germans have more problems with migrants than we have. The
Polish government has the opposite problem. Every year their best and brightest
up-sticks and head off to the big cities of western Europe seeking fame and
fortune. The current system doesn’t work well for anyone and most of Europe is
fed up with it but instead of trying to form a consensus and work it out with
all the other countries in the EU - and most of them are just as keen as us to sort it out - we would
rather have a temper tantrum, shoot ourselves in the foot, and then attempt to walk/hobble
away.
I wouldn’t mind so much if there weren’t consequences from
walking away but there are. The first is this particularly nasty rise in casual
racism. Whilst it’s only the likes of the BNP screaming bollocks people steer
clear but once it becomes more mainstream, everyone seems to think they can
join in. It really is quite shameful.
The other consequence of walking away rather than dealing
with the problem is that it’s likely to follow us anyway. The EU always insists
on free-movement of people in return for tariff-free trade. Ask Switzerland,
they turned down a deal with the EU in 1992 because they didn’t want the free
movement of people.
The EU sold more to them than they sold to the EU, so they
figured they could play the waiting game. In 2008, after a decade of recession,
they finally gave up and accepted the free-movement of people. They then voted
against it in 2014 because they thought they disliked foreigners more than they
liked the trade – in fairness, they did get A LOT of foreigners moving over
there. Again, they thought the EU would back down, again they haven’t and now
they’re realising that they might actually like money more than they dislike
foreigners after all and so will probably have another vote soon and the polls
suggest they’ll accept the EU’s conditions, yet again.
Yes, yes, yes. We’re not Switzerland… except when we think
it’s good for our argument to be like Switzerland, in which case we are like
Switzerland.
I also can’t see how the Calais issue is going to improve if
we leave. We currently have an agreement with the French that they will
maintain control of the non-EU migrants on their side of the channel in return
for us paying towards the cost of that work. If we leave the French might want
to carry on with the arrangement but, bearing in mind that they get nothing out
of it, I’d be surprised if they do. I doubt they’ll hand the refugees a map and
a boat but I wouldn’t put it past them to encourage them along their way with
tales of cheap Fish and Chips floating in a sea of mushy peas and glorious
renditions of the “White Cliffs of Dover”.
I suspect that you really only have two choices with
migrants; either you spend a lot of money to make their country so nice that they
want to stay, or you spend that self same money on building higher and higher walls, both
physical and metaphorical. As I said, the EU idea behind the Union’s expansion
was that we would bring these poorer European countries into the fold; make
them like us and everyone would be happier. Personally, I think, given time,
this will work. I also think they didn’t really think through the issue with
mass migration. I’m quite used to being surrounded by foreigners and yet I
still found it a bit shocking when I went to Boston a few months ago only to
find the town buzzing but buzzing with people speaking Polish and Lithuanian. I
imagine it’s come as a real shock to the locals, who only ever had themselves
and a field full of potatoes to talk to in the past.
My biggest issue with leaving is the economics. We got
through the worst part of the recession by the skin of our teeth and I really
don’t want to go through that again. I know, Farage and Boris keep saying it
will all be fine but then they both have millions in the bank and can afford to
spend the next 4 years lying on a Caribbean beach and knocking back Bacardi. I
on the other hand have a mortgage and a business to run.
I just can’t see how leaving wouldn’t be a huge hit to our
economy. Firstly, we have an enormous level of debt. We owe various nations and
investors almost 1.5 trillion quid. That’s the most money we have ever owed
anyone, ever! And, under the wise governance of Mr Osbourne, it’s just going up
and up with each passing year.
So why aren’t we in the sort of shit that Spain, Italy and
Portugal etc. are in? They are having to pay huge levels of interest on their
debt, so why aren’t we? Well, as far as I can make out, it’s because the money
has to be invested somewhere and, whilst we’re not the greatest economy, we’re
a lot more stable than a lot of others…. Or at least we are at the moment! I
really don’t care if being ‘free’ of the EU works for us in the longer term, I
doubt it will but it might, I don’t know. But in the short term just the
uncertainty by itself is going to cause utter fucking chaos. Boris and Farage
and the likes will be reaping it in by playing the markets but the ordinary
citizen is going to get absolutely hammered.
When it comes to money I also can’t understand this “We’re
the 5th largest economy” argument. It’s a fact that gets trundled
out on numerous occasions but I can’t see why we’d want to leave the EU just
because we’re loaded? We’ve been in the bloody thing for over 40 years, if the
EU is so terrible, how come we’re still the 5th largest economy in
the world? Surely, what with all that red tape and bureaucracy that they
complain about, we’d have tumbled down the charts years ago?
So how have we manged to survive the EU? Did we pull this
off by some sleight of hand, some battle against all the odds? Well if that was
the case surely the Germans wouldn’t be the 4th largest economy
in the world - and yet they are. Well maybe they too managed to somehow
circumvent the evil bureaucrats of Brussels. But hold on, the French are the
world’s 6th largest economy… and the Italians are 8th, the
Spanish 12th, the Netherlands 14th. How have all
these nations managed to make themselves so rich when they are all shackled to
this terrible, bureaucratic and horribly inefficient EU? This makes no sense!
The terrible, unworkable, EU. The EU that’s going nowhere. The EU ridden by
bureaucracy has all these huge, wealthy economies in it? And, they are all
still growing!
I read a piece yesterday saying that we need to free ourselves
of the EU because it is going down-hill. Instead we should be trading with the
emerging nations (BRICS); Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Have
any of these people actually looked at these economies recently? Yes, China is
doing well, although not as well as many had hoped but as for the rest? Go and
have a look, most of them are as stable as Farage after 7 pints of Hobgoblin!
Meanwhile, we have some of the richest nations in the world
on our doorstep and we’re talking of walking away from them because… Well why?
Because it costs too much? It doesn’t and it never has done. Because of
migrants? That issue is a World and EU wide one and is best dealt with by the UN
and the EU as a whole. Because it’s holding us back? It’s the richest trading
bloc on the bloody planet for God’s sake! It’s filled with red tape! So that’s
why Denmark is ranked as the 3rd easiest country in the world to do business
in and we’re the 6th? The USA by the way is 7th and those
lovely BRIC countries we want to trade with? Well they are 116th, 51st,
130th, 84th and 73rd respectively, so best of
luck with that one.
Ar yes, but the EU is undemocratic! Oh right. Let’s have a
look at that one.
A condition of joining the EU is that you can demonstrate that
you are a democratic nation. Quite how the hell we managed to get in is beyond
me because we, on the face of it at least, are the least democratic nation in
Europe. Ok, a few other European countries have a hereditary Head of State,
although most have no official power – ours, on paper at least, is very powerful
but just opts not to use it – but no other European country has anything as
remotely feudal as our own House of Lords.
I’d believe the people who go on and on about EU democracy
if they’d ever shown any inclination whatsoever to sort out our own deficiencies
in that area but they haven’t. When you do push them on it they point out that
our system works, which in a way is right, and is also a good argument for the
EU’s deficiencies, since they too work quite well.
The big problem with democracy is that it only works if
people vote. In the last EU election 35% of people in the UK eligible to vote
actually bothered to. The sheer audacity of people to complain about democracy
when they can’t even be bothered to tick a box, fold a piece of paper and pop
it into two envelopes! Ok, you also have to lick the envelopes and I guess for some folks spittle doesn't come cheap, but if you can’t
be arsed to at least use the postal vote then you have no right to moan about a
lack of democracy.
The big ‘democracy’ criticism is always about the EU
Commissioners. They are not directly elected, rather, every 5 years, each nation
within the EU gets to nominate a commissioner, with the Commission President
being directly elected by the European parliament – the people we can’t be
arsed to vote for. There is a call for the commissioners to be voted for
directly by the electorate of each nation but the problem with this, aside from
the fact that hardly anyone will bother to vote, is that commissioners get
assigned a portfolio – Transport, environment, agriculture etc. So, if you want
your nation to have a bit more power within the EU you put forward an expert in
one of the more important areas. If he or she is deemed to be the best
qualified for that role they get that important portfolio – I dare say a fair
bit of horse-trading takes place here.
The problem with a democratic election is that we’d either end
up sending Joey Essex to represent us in Brussels or each country would end up
putting forward people who either have no expertise worthy of the name (Hi
Joey) or we have a commission with 20 environmental experts but not a one who
can even identify a tractor.
At the moment there is also a call to increase the power of
the European Parliament, who currently vote laws in but do not have a role in
actually creating legislation – that’s the role of the commissioners. This will
probably happen but the downside of that is that it will probably take the EU
even longer to pass laws.
All told, whilst far from perfect, it's not actually as
undemocratic as people like to make out, certainly not as undemocratic as the
UK.
The final argument from the Brexit brigade is that we have
lost our sovereignty. Whenever I hear this argument “Rule Britannia” starts
playing in my head, no idea why.
The problem with sovereignty – the ability of a people or a
nation to rule themselves – is where does it end? We spent most of last year
telling the Scots that Scotland being a sovereign state was a daft idea. Why?
If it’s so good for the UK, why on earth isn’t it good for Scotland? Or Wales,
or Northern Ireland, or the North of England? Where do you stop? Freedom for Tooting?
In reality, absolute sovereignty, in terms of complete control
and independence, is a myth. We live in an interconnected world where decisions
made in China (to dump cheap steel for example) have massive impacts on the other
side of the world – although the UK vetoing EU tariffs on the practise didn’t
help. You can beat your drum and wave your flags as much as you like but it
doesn’t give you complete control over your country or region.
The closest you can get to real sovereignty is hegemony i.e. to be more powerful
than everyone else. The USA tends to get its own way most of the time, China is
learning this and starting to throw its own weight around and Russia is once
again beating its chest. Fortunately, the EU is no push over itself. As a union
of small but rich and relatively powerful states it can stand toe to toe with
pretty much any one – although militarily it’s rather weak.
So to me that leaves an obvious choice. Since we can’t stand
up against the big world players by ourselves – and stop kidding yourself, we
can’t – who do we want to take our lead from? The US? They never seem to
actually listen to us and I personally don’t have much faith in their beneficence.
China? Er, thanks but no thanks. Russia? Well, maybe China isn’t that bad after
all?
The EU, for all its faults, is filled with countries that
share most of our core values and beliefs. Yes, we might not get our own way
all the time but who does in a union, and why does it really matter? And why do
we seem to think we are the only nation with a sense of identity that needs protecting?
You seriously think the Germans would just give up their sense of being German?
That the French don’t share our sense of individuality and the feeling that we’re
better than everyone else? Of course they do, we’re all basically the same. And
that’s the point, sovereignty is only a genuine issue if you have a fundamentally
different belief system or fundamentally different desires from the rest of the
people you share sovereignty with. Whilst the majority of our fellow Europeans
want the same things from life as we do – and I believe they do – it’s better
to work together and share sovereignty as a powerful EU. Globally, we’re far
more likely to get a European vision of the world if the EU is a powerful voice
within it and I believe that a European vision of the world is going to be a better place to live, for everyone, than an American, Chinese or Russian world.
That’s not to say that local control is a bad thing, it isn’t,
it’s just getting the balance right between what happens in your town, your
region, your country and your union. I really don’t buy into this argument that
laws passed in Westminster are bound to be better than laws passed in Brussels.
I look at the house of commons and I don’t see ‘us’. I see a
bunch of over privileged, public school wankers with whom I have absolutely
nothing what so ever in common. I suspect Brussels is the same but with an
accent, but this idea that, free from the shackles of Brussels, our MPs would
suddenly become half decent and start making laws that actually benefited
ordinary citizens is bollocks.
I really don’t care if a law comes from Brussels or
Westminster. All I care about is if it’s a good law or a bad law.
Anyway, why am I posting this on a Fatherhood blog? Well
because it’s my son who will be affected most by all of this. It’s not that I
fear for his well being if we leave, nor that I think European war will break
out or that he won’t be able to travel around Europe and make friends with
other Europeans. It’s more that I worry about what the UK will become and,
without us, what the EU will become. The tone of this entire debate has been
largely loathsome and I really don’t like the idea of him growing up with a
‘little-island’ mentality, treating foreigners with disdain and looking at the
world only as an opportunity for profit. I hope that won’t be how we become but
I can’t help feeling that leaving the EU would be a terribly misguided step in
the wrong direction and that my son and his generation will be the ones who end
up paying the price.
Boris as PM? Brrrrr!