The EU referendum is, perhaps, the most important political event of my lifetime. You see, I'm 31. Not quite a Millennial, but not old enough to remember Thatcher. Voting in this is far more important than a general election vote, since the consequences will reverberate for many many years. I think it's vital for us to all understand why we are voting to leave or remain. After all, people are going to be disenfranchised if they feel misled into voting one way or the other.
Yesterday, I received a Vote Leave posted with "Five Positive Reasons to Leave" written on it. They are as follows:
1. Spend our money on priorities like the NHS.
OK. This would be fabulous. Except it won't happen. I'm sorry. I've spent five years studying the sociology of health in this country and there is no way, NO WAY, any right wing political party is going to invest all that money into the NHS. Consider the state of the NHS since 2010. Consider the changes made. If you work in the NHS, you've seen this first hand. Remember Big Society? We're all In It Together, as the Conservatives bellowed loudly at both the last general elections? Well, what they mean isn't that we're in it together at all. What they mean is that they want social services (the NHS, libraries, social services, children's centres, school nurses, mental health support, victim support, the police, the fire service, housing, care homes) to be run on an increasingly self funded, privatised, or voluntary basis. WE may be in it together, but THEY, the rich and elite, are most certainly not. Look at your town. Remember it ten years ago. When you could get a doctors appointment without sacrificing your first born. When you could go to the library to use the internet if yours was on the blink. When you didn't have to pay £2000+ a month for your mum to be in a nursing home. When you rang the police and they actually turned up. When the health visitors actually came to see you. When housing was affordable.
We may leave the EU, but we will still have the same government in charge, and they show no willingness at all to invest the money we do have into the NHS, let alone extra.
You'll also note that it is worded 'priorities like the NHS'. I'm sure priorities like Trident would suddenly seem important without the protection of the EU. That's not a promise. That's a similie. Ask your ten year old.
2. Take back control over our laws
I'm sorry, did I miss the abolition of Parliament and the House of Lords? Fairly sure we make our own laws. EU laws are of equal status in member countries as national law, so I had a look to see what sort of laws they have made. They are terrible! Awful things like preventing gender discrimination at work and making sure our food is safe. The absolute bastards.
This point goes on to say that we don't get to vote on who makes the laws. This is a lie. We have 73 MEPs. You elected them. Or at least you did if you bothered to go and vote. Bizarrely, a third of our MEPs are UKIP. Do they not WANT a job or something?
There's a strong idea that we can't veto any EU laws. We can. Well, *we* can't, our elected MEPs can, but not if they're in the minority - that's not democratic. For all that the Leave campaign bleat on about democracy, they seem to have a rather odd idea how it works.
And our beloved UKIP MEPs have tried to block laws on things like women's rights in work (either abstaining or voting against them) which really makes me wonder why any women want to support UKIP. Obviously, it's your choice, but why on Earth do you support a party who thinks you're best off in the kitchen?
PS: We can definitely block Turkey from joining the EU and they can't apply to join until they've fulfilled a great litany of requests, which they are taking their sweet time over, so stop worrying that the people you're quite happy to buy holidays from are going to come over here and steal your job.
3. Regain control over our borders
This is such a load of old toss, I don't even know where to start. The truth is, we have no idea what sort of immigration deal we will have if we leave the EU. Nobody has ever left the EU, only refused to join. The most common argument is that we can have immigration laws like Australia. Australia, if you're unaware, have a complicated and expensive immigration policy, based around your ability to contribute to the economy. You can read about it here. This misses a very important point. Australia is not in Europe. Australia is a fucking great island in the middle of nowhere. Australia is two and a half THOUSAND miles from its nearest neighbour. We sit 50 miles from ours. We are tiny. We have no industry (cheers Tories!), we have insufficient agriculture to feed everyone. We need to trade to survive. We are more like Norway than Australia. Norway is not an EU member. Norway has open borders.
The other problem with leaving the EU, which is less known, is that our border isn't in the UK at all. No, our main border is in France. You know when you go to France, and you sit for a fucking year at Calais waiting for Border Control yet sail through Dover? That's why. There's a reason all those refugees are sat at Calais, and it's not for the astonishing brutalist architecture or beautiful beaches. They have been shunted along through Europe, a few thousand allowed to settle here and there, and now they have hit a sea border and can't be shunted along anymore. I have no doubt that, if our border is pushed back to Dover, all those refugees will come and sit in Dover instead. It's not their fault. They are running from a terrible, awful, unfightable war. They would not be living in some shitty, muddy tent by the Channel if they didn't have to. But they strike terror into the hearts of the middle classes, terrified that young Adnan will come over here and I dunno, steal their daughter or something.
If we leave the EU, what happens to the EU migrant workers that live here? Do they all get shipped out wholesale? Do they have to apply for work permits? What about the ones that have married and have families? The current draconian immigration rules states that, to live here as a non-EU migrant, you have to be earning over £35k. Consider that the average salary in the UK is around £26.5k, and that a lot of EU migrant workers are working for shit all in factories and on farms, and there's going to be an enormous mass deportation. Which is, apparently, what the Leave campaign wants. But who will fill those jobs? What about EU migrants who have married English people? Do they have to go? Are a lot of kids going to suddenly be in a one parent family? This is not hyperbole. It is people's actual lives.
And what of the British in Spain? This bit of paper informs me that 250000 EU migrant workers came here last year. There are 760000 Brits in Spain. They will FLOOD US. We will be OVERRUN by hypertanned Spanglish people who insist on sleeping half the afternoon! How will we cope???
4. Take back control over security
Apparently, "the European Court controls how we fight terrorism and this is dangerous". I would actually argue the total opposite. I would much rather have the intelligence and security of the entire EU working together against terrorism than just us. Consider this. When the IRA were attacking the British every five fucking minutes, we had well over a hundred terrorist incidents in twenty five years. Since 2001, when the Islamic fundamentalist threat made itself known, we have had one definite organised incident and four lesser incidents. I feel relatively safe from terrorism here.
5. It's safer to vote Leave (see 4) and take back control (see 3) rather than keep sending our money (see 1) to an EU which is costing us more and overruling our law (see 2).
So you couldn't even think of five positive reasons to leave the EU? What child wrote this leaflet?
The thing is, I really hate David Cameron. I hate how he is invisible. George Osborne, IDS when he was in charge, Gove, they all get the blame while Cameron deflects and hides and seems to avoid the criticism he should be receiving. But the EU referendum is a happening under his premiership, and he supports staying in. I don't want to support him, but it's not about him. Leaving isn't about supporting that absolute cuntosaurus liar Johnson or melty-faced sexist racist shitbox Farage. It goes far beyond interparty politics. But it has degenerated into the two sides of the Conservative party essentially blowing raspberries at each other, and I don't trust a word any of them say. Neither should you.
When deciding how to vote, think about what's important to you.
The main reason I'm voting to remain (are you shocked?) is because the EU have done more for working rights than our government would ever do. The government keep trying to gently dismantle working rights - they've already done a fair bit, by making it financially difficult to take employers to a tribunal for example, and encourage zero hour contracts - and left unchecked, they will end up somewhere near the re-institution of serfdom. I understand why a lot of traditional Labour folks end up supporting UKIP, but they don't want to protect you. They don't actually care that you don't have any money and feel like you're surrounded by Europeans at work and that you're struggling to feel like you have a future. They want power, but they don't have social responsibility. They stand as the working man's party, but as they have demonstrated repeatedly at the very parliament they claim to despise, they don't want you to have rights. They don't even care that your rights are being debated.Why would they be any different if they were in power here?
One more thing, that I discovered yesterday. In 1996, Manchester's city centre was bombed by the IRA. The damage cost was estimated at £700 million at the time. The government gave £300000 as hardship relief and £150000 to begin the rebuild: that is less than half a million quid. When asked in parliament why the amount given was so small compared to the total damage, the Minister for the Environment said that the TWENTY ONE AND A HALF MILLION POUNDS given by the EU for rebuilding could be considered "British money" and that having to raise an equivalent sum to meet it by private or public means would be easy. So why didn't they? They are quite happy to take and acknowledge the EU's cash when it suits them. You can read the whole exchange here. Manchester is the current European city of Science.
We don't know what happens next. We don't know whether leaving the EU would be the best thing that ever happened to our country (although, considering the previous global empire, unlikely). We don't know whether it would be the worst. And whatever the Leave or Remain campaign tell you, they don't know either. This has never been done before. You have to trust your gut. And my gut tells me that Farage, Johnson et al do not have my best interests at heart.
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