An old friend sends me this contribution to the
referendum debate, titled June 2016:
Observe
the condescension and disdain
Of
those Important Men who urge ‘Remain!’
We want the thing that they appear
to hate:
An
Independent Democratic State.
The
time is come to cast off foolish fears
And
loose the shackles of the wasted years:
Let’s
be again the people we have been
-
Ah! what a birthday present for The Queen!
I don't suspect irony. My friend is a monarchist.
His first verse reminds me that the Leavers have mastered what George Bush
senior once called “the vision thing”. They are fluent in the language of sovereignty
and freedom, while the Remainers seem to speak only of money. Business leaders understandably
emphasise the financial consequences of Brexit. Carolyn Fairbairn, Director
General of the CBI says, “The message from our
members is resounding – most want the UK to stay in the EU because it is better
for their business, jobs and prosperity” (1). But we might expect our
leaders to offer something more uplifting.
Chief among those “Important Men” urging us to stay are the
Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. “Condescension and disdain”
come naturally to them. Cameron adds a note of desperation, having, in defiance
of his own pro-Europe convictions, gambled the nation’s future for short term
political gain. If this referendum were simply a vote of confidence in the Tory
leadership, I’d be queueing for the exit.
I’m not blind to the difficulties the EU faces. The 2008
crash exposed the weakness of the Eurozone. The refugee crisis has done the
same for the Schengen area. There are no simple solutions to these problems and I understand
the impulse to walk away from the whole complicated mess. But where to? The
past is no longer available. In the world of cutthroat global capitalism,
plucky little Britain going it alone is a mythical island. If we can’t make our
voice heard in the European Parliament, what chance do we have in the
boardrooms of ExxonMobil or Pfizer or Amazon?
June 2016
characterizes such thoughts as “foolish fears”. Its second verse slides into
reverse gear, hinting at a Golden Age of independence and democracy when we had
only ourselves to take care of. But it was never just us –not since the first Elizabethans
began colonising America. For centuries we were part of a larger entity on
which our wealth and power depended. The Empire worked as long as the illusion
could be maintained that our exploitation of other peoples, who had neither
democracy nor independence, was for their own good. That’s over and few people feel
nostalgic for it.
At its best the Leave campaign appeals to our courage and sense of heroic
independence, but the drive to get out of Europe is mainly fueled by less noble ambitions. To the powerless, suffering the effects of austerity piled
on top of recession, Brexit is sold as a way of closing our borders, as
if the paucity of public housing, the creeping privatization of the NHS and the
widening gap between rich and poor were the fault of EU migrants, a group who
in reality, according to recent HMRC figures, paid 3 billion in tax for the
year ending April 2014 and claimed only 500 million in benefits (2).
We're told we could have a new hospital every week with what we pay the EU. Is that the plan, then? Even if we saved anything like this amount, would a Tory government under Boris Johnson invest it in public services? There’s no reason to think so. Johnson has been Mayor of London for eight years during which global developers have run amok. New towers dominate the skyline and thousands of luxury apartments are left empty by foreign property investors while working Londoners are priced out of the market (3). As Prime Minister he would be likely to pursue a similarly aggressive free market agenda.
In the face of Government opposition, EU law has brought us cleaner drinking water, cleaner air, and less polluted rivers and beaches (4). A report commissioned by the TUC notes that the EU has provided “access to paid annual holidays, improved health and safety protection, rights to unpaid parental leave, rights to time off work for urgent family reasons” and “equal treatment rights for part-time, fixed-term and agency workers” (5). The British Human Rights Act, which brings us into line with European law, establishes rights to free speech and personal privacy that were not previously protected (6). The shackles that the Brexit leaders want to be liberated from are regulations such as these.
There’s a danger that the refugee crisis and the terrorist
attacks in Paris and Brussels, added to decades of fake news stories about EU
bans on everything from curvy bananas to bagpipes, will induce people to vote against
their own interests, and not just financially. This would be a good time to celebrate
the wider vision of the EU, how British lives are enhanced by the freedom to
travel, study, work and settle in other European countries, and the many ways
we benefit from the free traffic of ideas and culture among nations bound
together by proximity, tangled history and shared interests.
