EU Referendum

Credit where credit’s due: an under-appreciated reason why Britain voted for Brexit – and a possible solution

/ Tom King / 1 Comment

This morning, Theresa May tweeted this. She must have got up pretty early on a Saturday morning to make that nice infographic. Who’d be prime minister, eh?

What an excellent policy! I don’t know about you, but I don’t think of this kind of basic, decent move as something I would naturally associate with the Conservatives.

They don’t usually show much interest in tinkering boringly with the finer points of consumer finance to give us all a better deal. (They’re usually more interested in keeping their donors onside, often by shaping the financial system in their favour.)

So, this is almost certainly good news. Most of us have probably experienced unexpected surcharges on card payments at one time or another, whether it’s at your local cornershop or when buying train tickets online. This ought to cut that out at a stroke.

There’s one small problem with how Theresa May’s presenting this. And here it is: the UK government didn’t come up with the idea. It’s a requirement of the EU Payment Services Directive 2, which came into force in January 2016. Today (13th January 2018) is actually the last possible day for EU member states to enforce this part of the directive.

This is also key to the policy’s success. Because it’s being introduced as an integrated requirement across the 28 member states of the EU, the likelihood of companies raising prices to compensate, or stopping card payments entirely, is probably pretty small.

Armed with this information, we can now revisit May’s tweet. It can be read two ways:

  1. She, a Conservative prime minister leading a government whose sole policy is leaving the EU, is taking sole credit for an EU initiative that had nothing to do with her;
  2. She, a Conservative prime minister leading a government whose sole policy is leaving the EU, is associating herself and her government with the EU to such an extent that she is willing to use the first person plural.

I don’t know about you, but I’m plumping for 1.

Why does this matter?

This kind of failure to allocate credit for policies that actually benefit voters and society is a big part of why the UK voted to leave the EU. Voters see the benefits without understanding the process. (It’s also, incidentally, why people continue to vote for the Conservatives rather than the Lib Dems despite the coalition government’s most popular policies – on income tax, environment, marriage and even plastic bags – all coming from the smaller party.)

This is a huge problem in democracies the world over. Democratic governments generally don’t advertise, and that’s a good thing. And if they do, it’s generally to market new policies that are reliant on widespread public knowledge, an approach that often fails, and often because the policies are terrible.

Two recent examples are the Green Deal (a catastrophic failure where the government over-promised, rushed the policy out, and failed to market it, sometimes all at once) and the Help to Buy scheme (quite good take-up, but for a policy that actively exacerbates the housing crisis).

But that general lack of marketing means it’s political parties who market successes as their own, even when they aren’t.

A possible solution

I have been giving some thought to this problem of late. It seems to me that we need some kind of independent platform – maybe just a website – that details the source, development and impact of policies, and gives credit where credit is due.

Sure, not many voters would read it very often, but if done with sufficient quality and transparency, it would be a hugely useful resource during election periods – potentially making VAAs more accurate, and enabling journalists and broadcasters to refer to it.

Although there is a ton of money going into new fact-checking initiatives at the moment, these tend to be reactive. This would be one way to build a bank of accurate information that could also serve organisations like Full Fact, strengthening their ability to scrutinise.

It would be a major undertaking, requiring a number of permanent researchers and fact-checkers to aggregate the information, and then some savvy marketing and social media activity to promote its existence.

If you’re interested in helping to create such a website or platform, I have many further thoughts. Feel free to get in touch with me via the comments, Twitter, or Facebook.

The EU referendum should be rerun based on this Leaver’s vision

/ Tom King / Leave a comment

You probably won’t have heard of Pete North. Unless you’re a political geek who’s followed the developments since the EU referendum exhaustively, you also won’t know what the Leave Alliance is. To cut a long story short, the Alliance has usually been one of the more sensible groups advocating Brexit, and North is its spiritual leader.

Yesterday North published a post on his personal blog setting out what he now expects to see happen. He takes for granted (as do I) that there will be no deal arising from the current, increasingly frantic, negotiations between the UK government and the EU’s team led by Michel Barnier.

He then sets out what the likely effects of this ‘no deal’ scenario are. They include:

  • A ten year recession, never before experienced by anyone under 50
  • Unemployment back to where it was in the 1980s
  • A spike in crime
  • Major cuts to the armed forces,  including RAF reduced by a third
  • Enormous price rises as British produce becomes accessible only to the rich
  • A skeleton NHS, poorly staffed, partly because immigration has slowed to a trickle

What is most striking is that he is happy to live with these effects. He says: “I have always primarily thought Brexit would be a reboot on British politics and culture. In a lot of ways it will bring back much of what is missing,” and that “I think, given the opportunity to vote again I would still vote to leave. Eventually it gets to a point where any change will do.”

I would love to see a polling company set out this scenario for people and then ask them to say which way they would vote in a new referendum. If we had had this kind of candour from the Leave side during the campaign in 2016, it seems most likely we would have had a very similar result to the 1975 referendum, with a vast majority for staying in.

I’d love to hear from people who voted Leave, too, as to whether they would have done so had this been the outcome offered to them.

The Manifesto Problem

/ Tom King / Leave a comment

An excellent piece from Helen de Cruz, an academic at Oxford Brookes University, has been doing the rounds. The article explores the reasons why so many pro-EU voters ended up choosing Labour, despite the party’s evident “hard Brexit” stance. This is based on data from surveys conducted by de Cruz in pro-EU groups on Facebook. It lands on the conclusion that those who lent their support to Jeremy Corbyn’s party

did vote Labour for tactical reasons, but they were also attracted by the Labour manifesto and identified with the party’s anti-austerity message. They voted for Labour in spite of its Brexit stance, not because they were all of a sudden pro Brexit.

Anecdotally, this chimes very closely with the decisions many of my friends and family made in choosing Labour. They were closer to the Liberal Democrats on the issue of Brexit, but saw a tactical vote for Labour as more important given the danger of a large Conservative majority.

Jezza and Maccy D

I could not personally agree with this stance. While I was terrified of a renewed mandate for Theresa May (who I’ve written about extensively as a massive threat to the United Kingdom and to the world), I saw a polarisation of the UK’s domestic politics along with an alignment around ‘hard Brexit’ as the worst possible outcome. In short, this was an election in which Brexit was the be-all, end-all issue; however popular Labour’s flagship policies may have been (and they were undoubtedly popular, rightly or wrongly) they were meaningless against a backdrop of a poor deal – or no deal – with the EU.

Of course, that’s not how the election campaign went down. Both Labour and the Tories were allowed to get away with either limiting their references to Brexit or avoiding any kind of specificity on what precisely they planned to do during negotiations.

In Labour’s case, this vagueness was so complete that the position taken by Corbyn and John McDonnell since the election – a reiteration of the party’s manifesto statements on the single market and freedom of movement – has been met with dismay by a lot of Remainers.

There seems to be a commonly held belief among some voters that party manifestos, far from being complete plans for government, are a kind of pick-and-mix. I thought I would test this through a Twitter poll. Given my followers are predominantly pro-EU, liberal types with a disproportionate interest in politics national and global, I expected the answer to be pretty clear, but instead it was surprisingly split:

This seems to be the most salient question arising from this election. Is the Labour party’s leadership entitled to claim that its voters supported its stance on Brexit? This obviously has huge implications should the embattled Theresa May eventually decide that it’s time to go and a new election eventuate. Because, after all, Labour massively outperformed expectations despite adopting a stance on Brexit that, in isolation, clearly alienates a large number (perhaps the majority) of its voters.

The broader question, of course, is what manifestos are for. They are important for parliamentary procedure, because the Salisbury Doctrine, which limits the ability of the House of Lords to contradict government policy, is based on them. As such, it is essential that parties feel able to rest on the support of voters for their manifestos as a whole; yet this election has thrown up more than ever the confusion that can ensue as a consequence.

It is probably about time we revisited the idea of deliberative democracy in broad terms as a theory of civics. Democracies surely cannot survive this amount of cognitive dissonance for long.

Small Unimportant State Calls Fresh Elections as Corruption Accusations Fly

/ Tom King

The Prime Minister of a small European nation has called for a general election. But the leader of the country’s incumbent hard-right government faced immediate demands to come clean as it became apparent that state prosecutors were preparing to bring charges against around thirty of the party’s legislators and staff over irregularities in the previous election – held two years ago.

The ballots cast back then had catapulted the PM’s predecessor to a shock majority in the national parliament, with the idiosyncratic electoral system giving the party more than half of the seats on a mere 37% of the popular vote. But investigations by a state-owned media channel found that there had been over-spending in several key seats, and that in some cases spending hadn’t been declared at all.

It became clear that this had the potential to have decided the election, and that without this undeclared assistance, key marginals may not have fallen into the hands of the blue team.

Police forces followed up on the media investigation, opening 29 cases a year after the election. 29 by-elections would be more than enough to create a political earthquake; the government’s slim majority was only 12.

The then PM was in a bind. He’d run into difficulties with that tiny sliver of control, and despite the uncertainty over the legitimacy of his position, he decided to take drastic action. Calling a referendum on the country’s place within its most important trading bloc seemed unnecessary, even foolish; but it would appease those on his backbenches who frequently seemed to be sharpening their daggers.

The referendum was a parade of falsehoods. The campaign director of the winning side admitted later that they would not have won without telling a straightforward lie. They claimed that money ‘saved’ from abandoning free trade would be spent on the nation’s health services – a claim that was immediately abandoned by the campaign’s own leaders after the result came through.

Nonetheless, the decision was made. A cosmic cloud of political fallout followed. A summer of insanity in which both the governing party and the opposition held leadership elections, only for the former to be left with a coronation and the latter to retain their previous leader, despite his deep unpopularity.

Not only that; the new PM had been on the wrong side of the result in the referendum, but now appeared to be dead set on implementing that unwanted result.

Of course, the people did not have the opportunity to offer an opinion on their new leader. The argument ran that the general election had given the party a mandate, and that the mandate had been refreshed and strengthened by the referendum, even though the party’s official policy had been defeated in that referendum, and even though the country’s leader had had to resign in ignominy.

The new PM quickly set about testing the strength of that mandate by abandoning the commitment in the previous election manifesto to stay in the trading bloc even if the referendum was lost. At the same time, a vicious campaign against dissent was beginning to swirl in the media, with judges involved in assessing the constitutional impact of the plebiscite branded ‘traitors’ and ‘enemies of the people’. This language was not condemned by the PM herself.

Just a few months after the new PM was elevated, it became clear that her top aide had been involved in the election expenses scandal. Further evidence was uncovered a few months later.

Once again, though, the party pressed ahead. A seismic decision was taken: the country officially began the process of leaving the trading bloc. This was despite further revelations – that same month – that the party’s headquarters and many top officials had been deeply implicated in the election expenses scandal.

All of which brings us to the present. Today, the Prime Minister called for an early general election, presenting this as a natural way to refresh her government’s mandate and strengthen her hand in negotiations. But it seems clear from this torrent of obfuscation and chicanery that it is only about one thing: shoring up her corrupt, disastrous and potentially illegal regime by any means necessary.

How the country can continue to pursue its extreme policy of self-defenestration, at a stroke making its economy less competitive and taking freedom and rights away from its people, is unclear. It would at least have been appropriate to wait until the police forces and the prosecutors had finished their inquiries.

Instead this plucky island nation is now faced with the prospect of a quasi-dictatorial PM whose power was acquired in an undemocratic, opaque fashion, prosecuting policies on behalf of her friends and cronies, not the nation she represents.

It must now be the role of international observers and – perhaps – interventionists from prominent countries to build an appropriate response.

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“Crush the Saboteurs”: Vladimir Lenin

The murder of Jo Cox taught us nothing

/ Tom King / Leave a comment

Maybe we were all dreaming. Maybe the 16th June 2016 passed without incident in British politics. Maybe that Thursday, a week before the referendum on EU membership, was quiet and peaceful.

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Flowers for Jo Cox

But we weren’t dreaming. And the horrific events that day, as a young Labour MP was shot and stabbed multiple times by a British nationalist neo-Nazi, will never stop haunting our country and our democracy.

The slow march of history is providing live context for that terrible day. These events are being shown for what they really were: mere collateral damage in the war of identity perpetrated by fascists. Not an isolated incident, but the natural consequence of ugly rhetoric whipping up outrage and carving division into the soul of a nation.

The newspaper headlines today say it all. The Daily Mail and the Daily Express have spent my lifetime viciously attacking anyone who does not conform to their hateful, racist ideology. Now that the EU is gone and the government has adopted their policies on immigration, they’re turning their fire on the people who have held them at bay for so long.

Daily Mail, October 12th 2016
Daily Mail, October 12th 2016
Daily Express, October 12th, 2016
Daily Express, October 12th, 2016

Thomas Mair, Jo Cox’s alleged murderer, gave his name as ‘Death to Traitors’ in court. And here the two chief attack dogs of the fascist right are, consciously using the same language. People who voted to remain in the European Union are not merely wrong: they are unpatriotic and subversive, and they are actively plotting. They are to be ‘damned’ and ‘silenced’.

We’re not talking about some cesspool backwater of the internet like Breitbart or Stormfront. These are ‘mainstream’ newspapers read by hundreds of millions. The Daily Mail’s website is the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world. Not just in the UK; not just in Europe; in the world.

Liberals have spent their lives mocking these newspapers. We write cutesy little songs about them. Sometimes we write serious songs about them. We pour scorn on their blaring headlines and we chortle at their farcical claims. We know they’re wrong and, confident in our grasp of the truth, we’re comfortable letting other people have the comfort of the lies.

And meanwhile those lies are taking hold. They are creating an environment that is poisonous to its very core. They are legitimising the febrile, turbulent, volatile attitudes that not only appeal to ignorance but demand it, cosset it, feed it, and turn it into something that feels like certainty.

We let this happen all the time. Last week there were a few timid voices against the tide of vitriol spouted by government ministers. One of them was mine: I wrote a long blog post about it. Notable among the many responses both here and elsewhere was a recurring theme: I was upbraided for using the terms ‘fascist’ and ‘racist’ too loosely. I was told that it was too much, that I was being hysterical, and that it undermined the point of the article.

The people who said this should be ashamed of themselves. The clearer it becomes that voices, livelihoods and lives themselves are considered dispensable by powerful people and institutions in the UK, the more we must respond. I’m ashamed of myself for having put mealy-mouthed caveats on some of those statements; ashamed, for attempting to soften my condemnation of an existential threat to humanity.

So I won’t stop using those terms. I won’t stop calling out fascist rhetoric and fascist policy when it is staring me in the face. I refuse to be silenced as the Daily Express demands. And I refuse to stand by and allow these bastards to spit on Jo Cox’s grave.

Theresa May’s Britain: disgraceful, unpatriotic and openly racist

/ Tom King / 69 Comments

I can’t remember a worse day in British politics than October 4th, 2016. Today ranked far below even last year’s general election, when 49 of my party’s MPs were defeated, and June 23rd, a date I thought had established itself as comfortably the worst domestic political event of my lifetime.

I have spent the day in a state of bewilderment, anger, disgust and despair at the way the Conservative government is dragging the country into a disgraceful mire. They claim to base this on a single vote, a vote to leave the European Union, that was decided on a knife-edge – a mere 1.3 million votes out of 33 million. On the basis of this vote, they claim to understand what “the public” wants, and even what it thinks. Just look at tomorrow’s Daily Mail front page, if you can:

That is the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, calling other people elites. Making up non-existent elites that you can then blame for the country’s ills is textbook fascism.

Of course, this also illustrates another fundamental problem the UK faces: a media that is not just supine but more than happy to promote this kind of language in the face of the truth.

And the truth is utterly stark. The government that Theresa May is running can now only be described as overtly racist. The policy announcements made today by successive ministers were worthy of 1930s Germany and, as UKIP MEP Patrick O’Flynn rightly crowed, redolent of his party’s 2015 manifesto:

The fact that his party’s leader Diane James resigned tonight after 18 days in the job is no more than a depressing footnote to today’s events. The spectre of Nigel Farage’s inevitable return no longer feels threatening given what the Conservatives have become.

Theresa May was the one who popularised the concept of the Tories as ‘the Nasty Party’. Now she presides over some of the nastiest policies ever devised in British politics. It started early this morning with the announcement on doctors. When I read this I didn’t expect it to be the least worrying policy pledge of the day:

That’s the Defence Secretary promising that in future military conflicts, British soldiers will no longer be subject to the European Convention on Human Rights. In theory this would mean they were less susceptible to investigations into battlefield behaviour and abuses. In other words, because they’re beautiful British troops, we should just trust that they’ll do the right thing and remove the external mechanism designed to hold them accountable (you know, the one that British lawyers helped to draft after the second world war). Thankfully, it seems that this policy is actually unworkable in practice, but it certainly kicked October 4th off nicely.

It warmed us up for Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May’s main announcement of the day:

Ok, let’s think about this. There are innumerable problems with this policy. To list a few:

  1. Setting a deadline by which foreign doctors must presumably leave (or be deported?) makes working in the NHS far less attractive for current and potential new foreign doctors. Given the NHS has a massive staffing shortage at present, the government wants to expand its services, and there is a rapidly ageing population, this is shortsighted.
  2. Setting a deadline by which foreign doctors must leave makes it far more likely that they will leave sooner. Why would you want to stay in a country that doesn’t want your highly prized skills? There are any number of other countries you could work in.
  3. Further numbers of home-grown doctors being trained is a great idea, but recruiting people is currently proving difficult. That seems to be mainly a response from students to chronic mismanagement and confrontational behaviour by, oh, the government. Things have got so bad that this year medical degrees went into clearing for the first time.
  4. Even if you can manage to train enough new British doctors, they will be just that: new. These foreign doctors have probably been here for a while, and if by some miracle they stay for another nine years, they’ll be very experienced. So the NHS will lose a lot of experience and institutional knowledge regardless, decreasing the quality of care for its patients.
  5. Finally, even if you replace all the foreign doctors with British ones, you’ll have the same number you started with, when the problem is that there’s a shortage. I need not explain this further, but for Jeremy Hunt’s benefit, if you have no more doctors at the end of the process than at the beginning, you have spent a lot of time and money on solving nothing.

You’ll notice I’ve left out the biggest problem with it. That is, naturally, that it is racist. There is no justification given for the policy other than their foreignness. That is simple racism. Explicitly discriminating against foreign doctors purely because they are foreign is unequivocally wrong.

Next up was Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary. She had a smart idea about cutting immigration too. Here it is:

In case you don’t know, providing education to international students is one of Britain’s most successful exports. Our universities make a ton of money from it. That money massively subsidises British students, keeping tuition fees lower and helping universities plan their financial future.

This policy achieves an impressive triple whammy:

  1. Telling international students they aren’t wanted – thereby reducing demand
  2. Telling universities they can’t be sure whether they’ll be able to recruit international students in future – throwing their plans into disarray
  3. Ensuring that tuition fees will almost certainly rise for British students

Another irony of this particular policy is that evidence suggests a vast majority of the public understand the difference between student immigration and employee immigration, and think people coming here to study for a short period is a great thing. But it’s probably simpler for Amber Rudd to pander to racists.

That certainly seems to be the case for her other policy, a requirement for… well, here’s the Times headline:

Firms must list foreign workers. And if they don’t employ enough British people, they will be ‘shamed’.

Can the Tories even hear themselves saying these things? Surely this runs counter to all their instincts. Even if we’re only talking about being pro-business – the most mercenary of all possible considerations – this is going to be a nightmare for everyone; enormous bureaucracy for no discernible purpose. Meanwhile a lot of the people who invest the most in our economy or have the best skills are foreigners – think of London’s tech industry, which is one of the world leaders.

But again, the real question for Amber Rudd and Theresa May is how they sleep at night. How do they live with themselves? This is bordering on fascism.

Speculation has raged since this announcement on how these pledges might be implemented. My money’s on yellow stars for the foreigners so they’re easy to spot. And for those unpatriotic firms with too many of the blighters, maybe the UK Border Force could smash their windows. I’m sure that would get the message across.

Last but not least in this parade of political putrescence comes our old friend, disgraced former minister Dr Liam Fox, who was forced to resign in disgrace until Theresa May graciously gave him a Cabinet role heading up all the non-existent trade deals we will try to strike after leaving the EU.

It was pretty difficult to identify the most egregious moment of this spectacular shitshow, but I think this statement by Fox takes the prize. We already knew that May’s government had not ruled out using EU citizens in the UK as a negotiating tool, but this particular description betrays how infantile these people are.

Fox really appears to feel hopeful about the tricky – to put it lightly – negotiation the government has to perform with 27 other EU member states. And one of the ‘main’ reasons for this hope is the number of EU foreigners living in the UK. And the reason Liam Fox is hopeful is that the British government will be able to threaten other countries about the future welfare of their citizens.

Consider that there are 3.2 million EU migrants in the UK at present, around 5% of the population. Let’s assume you know 100 people. 5% means you almost certainly know some of these people personally. They almost certainly go to the same school as your children. Depending on where in the country you’re from, there’s a not-insignificant chance you might be friends with them or your relatives might be married to them.

If what Liam Fox said does not disgust you, appal you, and make you sick to your stomach, then I don’t really want to know you.

Some final thoughts. I am angry. I want to do something to stop this awfulness from continuing and succeeding. I intend to use the minimal tools at my disposal to do so. That means campaigning for the Liberal Democrats, even from afar, and supporting all other ways I know of to fight this danger, including trade associations, independent (and sane) media, and online debate.

You might be wondering what Labour were doing all day. A lot of other people were too. Surely, on a day of such infamy and disgrace, they would stand up as the opposition the country needs? Especially after Jeremy Corbyn chose to defend immigration at their recent conference?

Eventually they tweeted this:

As a fellow Lib Dem on Twitter put it:

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

If you are anywhere near as angered by this litany of disgrace as I am, then please join the Liberal Democrats, today, and help us campaign. David Cameron’s resignation has caused a by-election in Witney on October 20th. A victory for the Liberal Democrats would send the loudest possible message to Theresa May and her pernicious ministers that this approach to Brexit and to government is completely unacceptable.

The symbolism of a passport 

/ Tom King / Leave a comment

Last night I had my first experience of the Sarajevo Film Festival. Now in its 22nd year, the event, started in the pain and confusion of a prolonged siege, continues to go from strength to strength. 

The showing at the Summer Screen was of a documentary called Sonita. The titular protagonist is a teenage Afghan refugee living in Iran illegally, who has an urge to become a rapper. 

It’s a very powerful film, by turns harrowing, disarming and uplifting. The direction of the story is clear but by no means certain; at one critical moment it appears that Sonita will be brought back to Herat and sold as a bride, just so that her brother can buy a wife for himself. Only the film-maker’s personal financial intervention can avoid this outcome. 

For me the most moving moment was when the young woman received her new passport. In a scene earlier in the documentary it had become apparent that she had no papers – neither from Iran nor Afghanistan. At a stroke, as she held the little blue book in her hands, she knew what it was to have a personhood partially restored. She suddenly had agency. 

It brought me to tears. 

In the UK there is currently a campaign going on to change the colour of our passports from dark red to dark blue. The Sun newspaper, our most widely read tabloid, made an oversize replica and took it to Parliament to lobby MPs. 

Needless to say, we also recently voted as a country to leave the EU so that we can make it harder for people to reach our land. Much of the anti-immigration feeling has been whipped up against people like Sonita. 

It brings me to tears. 

We don’t need an election – but a general defection

/ Tom King / Leave a comment

A week is a long time in politics. This has, I think, been the longest week I can remember. Rewind just seven days and we were waking up on that fateful polling day, with most Remain voters like me cautiously confident that we would pull through and that disaster would be averted.

Instead, political and economic chaos reigns. The Prime Minister has resigned and a Tory leadership election is well underway. All of the candidates would take the country to the right as well as out of the EU; the only question is whom you think would do it least horribly. Debating with Jeremy Cliffe of the Economist yesterday, he suggested that Theresa May would be better than Boris; Chris Terry, weighing in, advocated May’s ‘ruthless competence’ over Boris as an ‘unprincipled liar’.

I can’t personally look past May’s authoritarian record as Home Secretary (particularly on migration and surveillance), her obvious lack of interest in campaigning strongly for the Remain campaign, and her commitment to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. Boris may have demonstrated that he is unprincipled, power-hungry and largely incompetent, but he should be made to lie in the bed of lies he helped create.

The benefit of a Boris leadership will be that two of the main Vote Leave figures – Johnson and Gove – are likely to be held responsible for whatever deal comes out of the Article 50 negotiations with the remaining 27 EU member states. As this deal now seems almost certain to be EEA membership with no concessions on freedom of movement, it is going to be disappointing in the extreme for large numbers of the 17 million Leave voters – probably the majority.

As I’ve written previously, the consequence of this will be a betrayal narrative whereby UKIP gains support, perhaps seizing a sizable chunk of those 17 million and adding to the nearly 4 million they won last year. The question will be whether they can turn this into electoral success. In this light, today’s news that Arron Banks – who has been Banksrolling both UKIP and Leave.EU – is considering setting up a new party is highly significant. UKIP’s problem so far has been spinning their growing, seething mass of resentment and protest into the pure green of Commons seats, and that’s largely because they’re incredibly ill-disciplined. It’s also because their one MP, Douglas Carswell, appears to disagree with Nigel Farage on everything other than EU membership itself.

Banks is wealthy enough and committed enough to see this transformation through, and when set against the referendum result, the rise in far-right activism (and racial abuse and violence), and the economic chaos that is going to envelop our country for years, the drumbeat of fascism is set to ring louder and louder in our ears.

So now we turn to look at the other casualty of the week just passed. The Labour Party is going through its death throes. Jeremy Corbyn and his small band of strong-willed acolytes appear to be hellbent on driving the party into the ground. It now seems clear that the leadership actively obstructed the Remain campaign, rather than simply soft-pedalling on its own activities. How complicit Corbyn himself was in this is unclear but he doesn’t seem to be able to control his own aides, particularly Seumas Milne. People talk about Corbyn having ‘delivered’ the Labour vote, but this has been contradicted by many senior Labour MPs including Sadiq Khan, who has said very clearly that in important areas Labour voters had no idea which way the party was facing.

Corbyn himself has since refused to resign even when 80% of his own MPs withdrew their support. When set against Cameron’s gracious and immediate resignation, this is an unprecedented, unjustified and deeply dishonourable decision. Meanwhile, he continues to put the support of Labour members – around 250,000 people – ahead of the voters who desperately need an effective opposition. And worst of all, his cabal appears to be threatening MPs with deselection in order to shore up his position.

But we can’t entirely let the Labour MPs off the hook. They acted quickly in the aftermath of the referendum campaign to try to jettison their leader. But they’ve somehow got into a situation where his position is untenable, but failed to identify a clear candidate to challenge him. It seems to me that this is because they know two things. Firstly, whoever challenges him may have an uphill battle to win over members. Secondly, even if they do win the leadership, they will have to try to reconcile the extreme disparity inherent in their party’s support.

In my view they are most likely to try to do this by moving on the migration issue – becoming even more anti-migration in an effort to keep their northern and Midlands heartlands from falling into UKIP’s lap. This fateful decision will make them unelectable in the more liberal constituencies; they may even find that their grip on London begins to loosen. Their unique selling point will have been lost both to UKIP, which will outflank them on rhetoric, and the Tories, who will continue to outflank them on competence.

It’s a gloomy story. Reading the commentary of pundits over the course of the past week, it’s also one for which very few people can see a happy ending. I will admit that I am more pessimistic about the state of British politics than I was even just last year, when my own party lost all but 8 of its 57 seats.

But there is a way back. And it isn’t through a hasty second referendum or a snap general election. People will need breathing space to think through the simplest way forward: the way that will allow a genuine opposition to develop, one that opposes both a national and international settlement characterised by insularity, fear and protectionism, but also promotes genuine cooperation, targeted redistribution of wealth, and a fair deal for local communities. Most of all, this opposition has to have a clear, coherent message to fight the resurgent racist nationalism that is currently enjoying open season.

This opposition can only be created within one party while the electoral system we have continues. And the only party currently capable of providing such an opposition is the Liberal Democrats. We are the only party that stands across the United Kingdom; the only party that has a clear policy on continuing EU membership; the only party with a leader who is not in the process of resigning.

So it is now incumbent on any MP (or indeed any member or activist) in any party who considers themselves generally humanitarian, internationalist, open to the world, pro-immigration, pro-trade, in favour of progressive taxation, moderate, anti-fascist – in short, liberal – to consider defecting to the Liberal Democrats. Ask yourself this question: what am I realistically going to achieve if I stay where I am?

If you’re in the Tories, your party is about to be captured – irrevocably – by either a crazy-haired clown who hides his racism and thuggery behind jaunty classicisms and changes his views more often than I change my socks, or a ruthless person who has used her years in the Home Office to make life hell for millions of workers and students and to threaten our way of life by insisting that we should all be monitored by a surveillance state so all-encompassing that it could teach the Stasi some new tricks. Neither of them appear to have any interest in Britain’s place in the world whatsoever.

If you’re in Labour it’s even worse. You’re led by the ultimate lame duck, someone whose authority is now so denuded that your party’s status as the official opposition was officially challenged today by the Scot Nats. He doesn’t appear to believe in politics at all and is forcing your MPs to hammer their heads and hearts repeatedly against a brick wall to no discernible purpose.

Now think about what it would say if you did make the switch. I know we are a very small party right now. But the benefits are very clear:

  1. It will give you a renewed, distinctive platform to articulate more clearly your views on the referendum and the negotiations that must now take place;
  2. It will give the Liberal Democrats another powerful and authoritative voice. At the moment we lack a large number of voices to make the case and our leader Tim Farron can only do so much;
  3. It will help to shift the conversation away from the current chaos engulfing your current parties, giving them time to regroup and ensuring that we do not miss the chance to nip racism and fascism in the bud;
  4. It will strike an important note of consensus and collaboration in a political system currently defined by division, suspicion and mistrust;
  5. Most of all, it will be a place of optimism and hope where you are welcomed, rather than a party dominated by suspicion, cruelty and often outright hostility between supposed colleagues.
We don’t need a general election straight away and in any case it now seems clear that one will not be called. Instead, we need a general defection, so that when the time comes – and it will, perhaps sooner than we think – we are prepared and able to stand up for the values that didn’t just define our political parties, but our country, for generations.

Why I’m voting to remain in the EU

/ Tom King / 7 Comments

I am going to explain in this post why I think a vote to remain in the European Union is the only responsible choice. I’m not going to link to sources as it would take far too long, and anyway I want it to be clear that this is my own view, based on everything I have read and absorbed during the debate to date.

The “too long, didn’t read” version: On every conceivable issue, remaining in the EU would be a more sensible and fair course of action for the vast majority of people – both in the UK and elsewhere – than leaving. It is right to fear something as absurd, unnecessary, alarming and damaging as a vote to leave would be.

If you don’t think my view is worth much, and you want a list of different sources on the campaign, try here. It aims to give a fair hearing to all sides.

Fair warning: this post is very long so here’s a list of internal links if you want to jump straight to different sections.

Take me to…

The “Common Good” Approach

UK politics has largely abandoned the concept of the common good. In fact, it’s questionable whether it was ever supported. For almost a century British politics has been dominated by two parties, Tories and Labour, which were deliberately set up to preserve the interests of particular social groups rather than society as a whole. More than any single thing they’ve done – and they’ve done a lot – this is why I am instinctively hostile to them.

Nonetheless, I still try to apply the principle of the common good to my own politics. The Rawlsian original position, incorporating the idea of the “veil of ignorance”, is vital to this process. It is not perfect but as a structure for thinking about the social contract it is unsurpassed. It also has roots in many other writers’ and philosophers’ wisdom, from John Stuart Mill to Jesus Christ. Jesus famously told the parable of the Good Samaritan, answering the question “Who is my neighbour?”; this approach essentially expands that to ask, “What if I were my neighbour?”

The benefit of this approach is that it does not ignore the individual even as we consider a question so sweeping as the UK’s membership of the European Union. We can begin to identify, for instance, the people who may be affected by a decision to remain or leave, ordered by the probable impact of the decision on their lives:

In the UK

  • UK citizens (in all their shapes and sizes – urbane Londoners, impoverished working class folk, Scottish nationalists, etc)
  • Irish citizens living in the UK
  • EU citizens living in the UK
  • Non-EU migrants living in the UK

In the EU

  • UK citizens living in EU member states (particularly France, Spain and Italy)
  • EU citizens living and working in their own countries or other member states
  • Non-EU migrants living and working in the EU
  • Refugees fleeing into the EU

On the fringe of the EU

  • Citizens of countries hoping to join the EU
  • Citizens of countries threatened by or already attacked by Russian aggression

Global

  • All world citizens

There are of course other things to consider, such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and the rest. But for now let’s keep it simple. When I consider whether to leave or remain, I am actively trying to consider the impact on all of these groups. I want my decision to avoid harm to any of them, if possible, and ideally to create benefit for all.

So now let’s explore, issue by issue, what the impacts of the referendum vote could be, and whether a Remain vote aligns with this idea of the “common good”.

Economics

Like it or not, the world runs on money. A referendum on EU membership is certainly a chance to consider big, existential questions, and I do that below. But any assessment of the common good has to consider the impact on ordinary people’s circumstances.

The UK Economy

There is absolutely overwhelming consensus among economists and financial experts that a vote to leave the EU would create major short-term problems for the UK economy. Even the Leave campaign has not seen fit to contradict this assessment: their working hypothesis is that there will be a recession for a couple of years and then growth will return.

That simply isn’t good enough. One of the reasons we are in a parlous state politically is because the recovery from the last recession (2008/09) was so anaemic. We are arguably in a state of hidden depression as a country, as a continent and as a world. Yet people seem to have forgotten that the impact of that recession was hugely disproportionate: as with every major financial crash, it was people on low and middle incomes who suffered, and continue to suffer most.

The Leave campaign has taken an incredibly narrow approach to economic matters. They have focused on the idea that if we leave the EU, we will have more money to spend, as we won’t be paying our fees any more. They have lied about how much this will save the country time and time again. And they have totally failed to engage with the wider benefits that being part of the EU club brings the UK economy.

Worse still, they have entirely failed to set out clearly what their preference is for a new deal after we exit the EU. At various times, they have implied that they like the idea of having a deal with the EU along the same lines as Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and even Albania. But they have never specified which they would pursue – and there are immense problems with all of these. For example Norway still makes significant financial contributions to the EU, has to accept the vast majority of EU regulations, and (worst of all for Leave) has to embrace free movement of people – without having any say on the rules.

Britain’s clout in the EU is considerable when it comes to economics, and we have successfully used our influence many times, not least to defend London’s competitive advantage on financial services. The UK government also succeeded in appointing its current EU commissioner, Lord Hill, to a vital and powerful role, overseeing the entirety of the EU’s work on financial stability, financial services and capital markets union.

Here’s the economic reality of Leave: we don’t know what we’re getting into. We don’t know what kind of deal our political overlords will attempt to make. It is highly likely that the EU and large economies like Germany and France will want to make an example of the UK in order to dissuade other countries from following in our footsteps – and that is its right.

We will enter a period of economic recession, perhaps depression. The impact of this will not just be on the UK but on the EU and on economies around the world – including the US and China. Lives will be ruined. Jobs will be lost. There will be less money available to pay for public services and social security safety nets. And we will be led by a political party, and likely by a prime minister, whose response to recession is austerity. How do we know this? Because that is what they did last time.

This is a theme I’ll keep returning to, because it’s very important to recognise it. If we vote to leave the EU, we will still be led by the same government that is in charge today. That means a majority Conservative government, probably with a new prime minister – and that prime minister seems highly likely to be either Boris Johnson or Michael Gove. (The other options – George Osborne, Theresa May, Philip Hammond – aren’t exactly cuddly One Nation types either.) The Conservative party is not there to represent the majority of people: it is there to represent the minority of wealthy, older people who keep it in power.

The combination of huge economic uncertainty, an economy only gingerly recovered from one of the biggest recessions in history, and a Tory party even more hellbent on destroying the state’s power to intervene positively in people’s lives is not one I can vote for in good conscience.

So the economic argument for Remain is overwhelming from a UK standpoint.

The Eurozone and other European countries

It isn’t just about the UK, though. A decision to leave would also have a major impact on the credibility of the EU as an institution capable of stimulating economic prosperity. It is probable, although harder to predict with confidence, that a nation of the UK’s size moving towards the exit would create sufficient upheaval and uncertainty that the entire bloc might fall into recession.

That is no small thing given the travails facing some of the EU’s weaker economies. Greece is in a parlous state but several other nations are also in danger – Italy being the most pressing.

Destabilising the European economy would be one thing if it could be set against obvious economic gains for the UK. As it is, though, even the Leave campaign recognises that the short term consequences of exiting the EU will be negative. Again, then, the economic argument is for Remain.

A wider issue for some Leavers seems to be that the UK puts more money into the EU than it gets back. This betrays their inability to see beyond national borders and empathise with other nations; at heart, it betrays their belief that economic redistribution is simply wrong. As someone concerned with the common good, I cannot go along with that view; the UK is one of the richest nations in the world (for good reasons and bad) and should be proud to give some of its wealth away to poorer countries.

Without the EU in place, that becomes less likely: European countries do not tend to be considered impoverished enough to warrant overseas development aid (ODA), and with Gove or Johnson in Downing Street the likelihood of major increases to ODA spending is slim to say the least.

Then we can also consider those countries that have yet to join the EU, but wish to. I currently live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a beautiful country that suffers from the legacy of a peace agreement, the Dayton Accords, that froze into place the ethnic divisions that had erupted into war. Like many of the other countries in the Balkans and on the eastern fringe of the EU, it is in the grip of corruption and organised crime. It desperately wants to join the EU and access the single market. The EU is using that desire to encourage change in the country – improved regulation, better environmental standards, and the introduction of border controls, for a start.

The same process is going on in several other countries and has been for some time, as part of the EU’s enlargement process. Progress on reform means access to valuable EU funding. This is excellent evidence of the benefit of an expansionist supranational institution where core members are committed to the prosperity not only of its existing members but of prospective joiners. To me, it is one of the EU’s most laudable goals.

A British exit puts all of this at risk. The EU is at a low ebb in any case, lacking confidence and being chipped away at by petty nationalism. If we undermine it further by withdrawing our consent for the overall project, the European continent loses one of its best ways of securing future prosperity for developed and developing economies alike.

The global economy

The impact of Britain’s exit from the EU on the global economy is less certain. Leading American economist Janet Yellen, the chair of the Federal Reserve, is on record as of yesterday saying that Brexit could delay an interest rate rise and hit overall demand in the US. She warned of ‘significant economic repercussions’, something that other major economies around the world will also be concerned about. It’s certainly possible that the uncertainty created by an economy of the UK’s size and importance being shaken to this extent could plunge the entire global economy back into recession.

However, I think the main point to make is on the long term effects. By 2030, the three major economies of the world will be the US, China and the EU. Other national economies show no real sign of growing quickly enough to bridge the gap to these titans. Moreover, China is slowing down from its period of miraculous (unbelievable?) growth, while other emerging economies like Brazil and Russia are currently captured by corruption and organised crime, showing no real sign of improvement. Brazil in particular is in a dreadful state politically and economically.

The idea that the UK standing alone will somehow be in a position to forge ahead outside the EU, building bilateral trade agreements with whomsoever it chooses, does not resemble reality in any form. There have already been warnings from the President of the United States and from the head of the World Trade Organization that any new trade deals will be extremely costly and time-consuming.

The one saving grace in this may be that London is no longer viewed as the preeminent home for dirty money. But at the same time, there will be far less incentive for the UK to take a leading role in tackling corruption if we are seen as a small-minded pariah state rather than as a prominent global power. And the thing is, there are already ways to deal with that unwanted reputation now: we already have the ability to clamp down on tax evasion and avoidance, put people in jail and fund investigative work that exposes the structures enabling offshore tax haven usage.

So, again, based on the wider economic ramifications, I can’t see a good argument for voting to leave the EU.

Immigration

Will leaving the EU actually give us more control of our borders?

Let’s turn to the reason many Leave supporters want out of the EU, then. You will find time and again that this trumps (pun intended) the economic argument for lots of people. The argument runs that it may be even worth giving up some temporary economic security if it means regaining control of our borders. Nigel Farage is on record as saying that he wouldn’t personally object to being poorer if it meant we could keep people out who we don’t want.

The reason people want to come to the UK is that we are a successful country. What these people are saying, in essence, is that they are prepared to run down the UK in order to make it less attractive for new citizens, forgetting that this also harms its own citizens. It’s a remarkable argument to make, as it also totally ignores what many people are trying to escape: they can be fleeing conflict of course, but they can also be fleeing the result of historic conflict and political instability.

There’s no attempt at all on Leave’s part to understand this or to empathise, only the narrow-minded belief that the UK deserves to be suspended in some sort of sepia-tinted stasis (or ideally wound back to a time when there were fewer immigrants already fouling our golden shores).

Of course, the myth behind the myth is that immigrants are robbing us blind twice over: stealing our jobs and also taking vital resources through the UK’s generous benefits system. Obviously, both cannot be true, but lies like this have taken hold to such an extent that they are no longer questioned. The fact remains that you are more likely to be treated at A&E by an immigrant than standing in the queue behind one. Time after time, evidence shows that EU migrants contribute more to the economy than they remove, and that the people who are the biggest burden on the British economy are, well, British people.

I wouldn’t exist were it not for the generosity of previous generations towards immigrants. My mum is Indian and I am half-Indian. While India isn’t in the EU, there are millions of people in the UK in the same position as me from all sorts of European backgrounds. To see the country I was born and raised in turn away from that position of open-minded generosity sickens me.

So it’s clear I don’t agree with the Leave campaign’s attitude on immigration. In fact, no major party is adequately pro-immigration for my liking – not even my own, the Liberal Democrats. Labour, and the Lib Dems to a lesser extent, have allowed themselves to be dragged into a race to the bottom on immigration rhetoric that is poisoning our country from the inside out.

But all that aside, would leaving the EU even have the effect the Leave campaign claims? I’m not so sure. It is undoubtedly true that, having left the EU, we would initially regain total control of our own borders. The implications of that are more complex than you might think, though.

First of all, the UK-France border could no longer be in Calais, but in Dover. The Le Touquet agreement was negotiated on the basis of the UK’s membership of the EU, among many other things, and there is no guarantee that it would continue; French ministers have already made noises to the contrary. That means the dreaded “Jungle”, so despised by right-wing tabloid newspapers, could come to Britain.

Secondly, and more importantly, the Leave campaign has sporadically suggested that a new deal would be done with the EU to enable trade to continue. As discussed in the Economics section, they have never set out what this would look like. However, we can probably assume it would look something like the agreement that set up the European Economic Area. Other countries involved in this – Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, all members of the European Free Trade Association – have not only had to accept the principle of free movement, but have gone further by joining the Schengen Area.

If you don’t know what Schengen is and you’re anti-immigration, listen up: Schengen enables passport-free travel without any kind of border control. It basically acts as a single country for travel purposes.

I personally love the idea of Schengen, and wish the UK had not opted out of it. But if you are anti-immigration and like the idea of border controls, I hate to break it to you, but EU migration is actually likely to get “worse” and more difficult to control if we leave the EU than if we stay in it.

You might argue that Britain will somehow negotiate a better deal than any country before it has. But the EFTA countries were able to negotiate their deal from a position outside the EU, rather than after leaving it – a far stronger position – and look where they ended up. To think the UK is somehow immune to the negotiating power of the world’s largest trading bloc is wishful thinking in the extreme.

So, whether you’re pro- or anti-immigration, staying in the EU appears to be more beneficial for the UK than leaving it. It shows both that we are committed to being an outward-looking country and it means we won’t have to cede further control of our borders.

What about UK citizens living in EU countries?

This is another important question. There are around 1.2 million UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU, while 3 million EU citizens live in the UK. It is a real shame that the vast majority of these people have been denied a vote, given their lives could conceivably be changed significantly by a decision to leave.

While deportations of existing residents are unlikely, there’s every chance that countries with sizeable populations of UK immigrants like Spain and France could introduce new charges to access public services, levy additional taxes on UK-owned property, or introduce new requirements to allow children into the school system.

Without some concessions to freedom of movement, too, it makes these people’s lives far harder – their families may find it more difficult to visit on short notice, or they may have trouble getting access to healthcare in an emergency. That could, in turn, increase the number of people returning from overseas. They won’t be young, eager, energetic people looking for jobs and a chance in life; they’ll be old people looking for housing having sold property on the Algarve or in the Dordogne, driving up property prices further and unlikely to contribute to the economy in any useful way.

Some of the concerns around this question have been overdone by the Remain campaign, but we shouldn’t simply discount it as a consideration. If the purpose of political decisions is for the common good – and if you were in these people’s position – what would you do?

Democracy

This is probably the issue I’ve had to debate most during this referendum. The issue of democracy has been placed at the very heart of the Leave campaign. The claim runs that the EU is unaccountable, and that there is a democratic deficit. The theory is epitomised by Michael Gove’s vivid statement that “one of the most powerful symbols in our democracy is the removal van”: this is another way of saying that if you can’t kick out the people who make decisions and laws on your behalf, then the system you’re in can’t be called a democracy.

First off, let’s recognise something: the EU could stand to be more democratic. The Commission, in particular, has too much power. It should be recast as a proper civil service, depoliticised entirely, and its monopoly on proposing legislation should be ended. The simplest way to do this would be to give more powers to the European Council, asking them to propose concrete legislation rather than set a direction of travel, and to the European Parliament, which already has powers to initiate legislation.

It should be noted that the Parliament has had its powers significantly extended by recent treaties and has intervened decisively twice in recent times to remove or challenge the Commission; removing Jacques Santer’s corrupt and fraudulent regime in 1999 and forcing Jose Manuel Barroso to reshuffle his team before taking office.

The EU as a whole also needs to do a far better job at educating its citizens – in every Member State – as to what its institutions do, who we are electing when we vote, and why it matters. And serious thought should be given to the problem of subsidiarity. While David Cameron has secured a deal on this – the so-called “red card”, where national parliaments can object to a law so that it is amended or withdrawn – the importance of transnational issues should be sufficient to warrant a strong program of activity without resorting to tinkering with tiny issues.

To suggest as many do that the EU is undemocratic in the round, though, is simply wrong. EU law is actually held to a much higher standard than UK law, as logic would dictate; it has to be approved by 28 very different nations, rather than one (or sometimes three or four). The process for making law in the EU is exacting, sometimes painfully slow, and introduces democratic checks and scrutiny in excess of what exists in Westminster:

Image by Jude Kirton Darling, Labour MEP (src)

And while we’re on the subject of Westminster, let’s just think through how democratic the UK’s own system is:

  • We have an unelected, hereditary head of state.
  • We have a head of government – the prime minister – elected by a self-selecting group of political obsessives (party members) rather than directly by the people.
    • This means that the position can be vacated and filled mid-term without recourse to the electorate, as has happened twice in my lifetime.
  • We have a government appointed from the elected legislature. Ministers are not required to be confirmed in their positions by the Parliament (unlike in the EU).
  • We have a Cabinet personally selected by the prime minister and that can be changed on a whim.
  • We have a whole House of Parliament that is unelected. People are appointed to it – political patronage, obviously open to abuse and corruption – unless they happen to be a high-ranking Bishop or someone whose male ancestors were Earls.
  • The prime minister can appoint people to his Cabinet who aren’t in either House of Parliament: he does this simply by making them a member of the House of Lords.
  • The other House of Parliament – the Commons – is elected using a system that has very little relation to the numbers of votes each party receives. At present:
    • The Conservatives have 50.8% of the seats on 36.8% of the vote;
    • Labour has 35.7% of the seats on 30.5% of the vote;
    • The Lib Dems have 1.2% of the seats on 7.9% of the vote;
    • The SNP has 8.6% of the seats on 4.7% of the vote;
    • UKIP has 0.2% of the seats on 12.7% of the vote.

In short, the UK has nothing to say to the EU on democracy. Our system is as broken as it gets. The total lack of any kind of positive proposal from the Leave campaign on reform of the UK’s democracy shows just how little they value the concept itself.

Layer on top of that the current UK political situation and things start to get really ugly. Who are the people we are going to give more power to if we leave? The current majority Conservative government is appalling in all sorts of ways.

  • It is kicking out legitimate immigrants vital to our education and healthcare systems in the name of hitting a target it will never reach.
  • It is attacking our civil liberties by introducing mass state surveillance (with Labour’s blessing).
  • It is trashing our decent record on the environment by reducing investment in renewable energy and encouraging fracking.
  • It is threatening to destroy the BBC’s place in our society as a neutral source of political coverage and as a producer of high quality TV and radio.
  • Worst of all, it is standing firmly against any attempt to reform our democracy, and actually attempting to make things worse by cutting opposition funding, forcing through boundary changes, etc.

Meanwhile, there is no prospect of any party seriously challenging the Conservatives while Labour is led by someone of such limited calibre as Jeremy Corbyn – and you’ll note I’m not even getting into his actual politics.

We face at least nine more years of the Conservatives, and even if we stay in the EU, that gives them plenty of time to destroy what is left of our country’s best qualities. At least the EU holds them back to an extent, and other European institutions guarantee our human rights. Leaving the EU will only encourage attempts by senior Conservatives to remove the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights – something the Home Secretary is already advocating.

In summary: UK democracy is in a parlous state, and removing EU oversight from the government is likely to result in significant further harm. The EU has shown more promising signs of reform in recent times than the UK has, and is starting from a better place. So, once again, it is clearly right to vote to stay in.

Voter Registration

One way of testing a supposed commitment to democracy is whether the Leave campaign is encouraging voters to register in time for the referendum. As I write this section, the deadline for registrations is approaching. I have seen any number of neutral institutions and Remain campaigners – including the official campaign, the Electoral Commission and the government itself – encouraging people to register. By contrast, this was the 0fficial Leave campaign’s effort:

Page on Vote Leave website

While they eventually changed the page that this button led users to, it originally led to a splash page thanking people for supporting the campaign. Even after they changed it, it still only led to another page asking whether people had registered. This is shameful behaviour and demonstrates just how little the official Leave campaign cares about democracy. (It is also a pretty low way of collecting voter data.)

Of the two sides, only Remain has shown any kind of active and tangible commitment to democracy. This only bolsters my view that staying in will be the better course for those of us who consider ourselves democrats.

Sovereignty

The sovereignty argument is very important to the Leave campaign. Along with the idea that we can rid ourselves of the “undemocratic” EU, the idea that we can “take back control” by quitting the institution is literally their campaign slogan. The argument is that we have given away control of the key decisions that affect our lives to a load of unaccountable bureaucrats. As I said above, they feel so strongly about this that they are willing to risk economic pain (if not for themselves, then for the country at large) to regain parliamentary sovereignty.

The problem for me here is that it’s very clear that sovereignty is not a binary concept. If we want to be black and white about things, the UK Parliament is clearly sovereign over our EU membership; if they so chose, they could simply repeal the 1972 European Communities Act and we would be out. Such a move would be mercifully quick in comparison to the interminable campaign we are currently experiencing.

But in day-to-day matters, yes, EU membership does impinge on national sovereignty. EU law can overrule UK law. The European Court of Justice can effectively veto acts of the UK Parliament. It’s worth constantly reappraising whether this is a price worth paying for our membership.

The truth is, though, that we make trade-offs about sovereignty all the time. That is what international treaties are for. Throughout Britain’s history we have been involved in treaties that required us to act if another nation was threatened or invaded; that is why the First World War happened. That is how NATO also works. Standing alone – what Nigel Farage would call “independence” – can make you weaker if it reduces your influence or makes you more reliant on fewer allies.

One of the reasons we think so little of the EU is that our own Parliament is terrible at scrutinising the laws that come from Brussels. The House of Lords takes a more active role than the Commons in doing so and MPs, who are in any case hugely overworked, take little interest in the intricacies of obscure European regulations. They have enough to do rubber-stamping the government’s statutory instruments.

In discussions on this aspect of the referendum I frequently find myself banging my head against a brick wall, though. There is a sizeable number of voters who genuinely believe that the UK has somehow given itself away to Europe, and that only by leaving can we ensure we do not lose our sense of self. I just cannot identify with that. To me, part of the richness of the EU is in travelling from country to country (easily, thanks to being an EU citizen) and seeing just how well preserved the sense of national identity is. It strikes me that the chippiness of the Leave campaign proves pretty well that we have lost none of our Englishness.

Our world is increasingly borderless in every important way – financially, culturally, and technologically. There is no way to turn back time and no way to pull up the drawbridge. I want the UK to be a modern, successful nation that plays its part in all major international institutions. That means voting to Remain.

A final thought on this issue: our sovereignty will almost certainly be immediately diminished if we leave the EU. We will lose Scotland, and possibly Gibraltar. A movement for independence in Wales could well begin. Who knows what might come next. It really could be Little England, a tiny nation with limited resources, reliant on its shrinking financial services sector, forced to become an out-and-out tax haven to survive.

Foreign and defence policy

The debate on foreign policy, and defence, has become extremely poor in the UK. The general election last year lacked any real sense of what is happening outside the UK. The only small reference to defence policy was about the renewal of Trident, on which both major parties agree, but they managed to find a way to argue about it anyway. The only other area of debate where foreign and defence policy crop up is through the prism of the immigration debate.

This shows just how parochial and selfish we have become. Rather than talk seriously about solutions in Syria, we are more concerned with dealing with the aftermath by keeping out the refugees. That neither helps the refugees in question, who are frequently so desperate that they are willing to risk death to escape death, nor does anything to address the real problems in the region.

This bad situation is made worse by the fact that Europe, the continent, is at its most vulnerable for some time. The threat posed by Russia to European and global stability is significant. Putin is a vicious dictator who does not ask “why”, but “why not”, and responds to weakness with further aggression. People in the UK seem to be ignorant that Russia continues to invade other country’s territory and, through insidious media networks and online trolls spreading mendacity and misinformation, is continuously attempting to undermine governments in the entirety of Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, our main non-EU ally is readying itself for a two-horse race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. While I am confident that Clinton will win, nothing can be discounted in a two-horse race, as we’ve seen with this referendum. Trump is the wild card to end all wild cards, and senior Republicans who were earlier dismissing him are now falling into line behind him.

The total lack of discussion about what any of this means for the UK is shocking. Only the Remain campaign has really tried to raise the issue, although it has been tentative and weak in doing so. But surely this is a very real consideration. Without EU membership and cooperation, the UK will be heavily reliant on NATO. Yet Trump himself has called NATO obsolete and thinks that it needs to pivot towards combating terrorism, something that is probably linked to his well-attested admiration for Vladimir Putin. That admiration is reciprocated in the Kremlin, which has already endorsed Trump’s candidacy.

Putin himself could not be more clearly attempting to destabilise the EU. He likes to deal with nations one-on-one, where brinkmanship is part of the game. A united, multilateral, supranational institution like the EU is probably his idea of hell, partly because it reminds him that the Cold War was lost. While he has been careful to avoid being seen to intervene directly in the referendum campaign, it’s very clear that Russian state propaganda channels like Sputnik and Russia Today (RT) are pumping out the Brexit message – Farage is frequently to be found on RT – while Putin has also been travelling to other EU countries such as Greece to try to warm up relations and ensure that a future outside the EU becomes more attractive.

Trump may not win. But I am hardly confident, and I certainly don’t want to be outside of the EU if he does. We are going to need all the help we can get in that horrifying scenario.

Human rights

The European Convention on Human Rights is not part of our relationship with the EU. It is a separate document to which we are a signatory, drafted by the Council of Europe at the recommendation of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and with the oversight of British MP and lawyer Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe. The European Court of Human Rights was established by the Convention.

As such, leaving the EU will not directly affect the UK’s position on human rights in itself. We will continue to be a signatory to the Convention and cases will continue to be heard in Strasbourg.

However, it would be ridiculous to suggest that there would be no impact on the wider human rights debate. The current Conservative government came to power on a pledge to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. They have found this near-impossible for many reasons. Withdrawing from the Convention might solve many of them, but by no means all; the problem of the Good Friday Agreement would remain, for example.

Nonetheless, this is why Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has proposed staying in the EU but withdrawing from the Convention. (Obviously another reason is to differentiate herself from the current leadership by striking out as a different kind of Eurosceptic.)

The impact of exiting the EU would be to renew the focus on the ECHR as just another example of meddling supranational institutions standing in the way of British justice. The number of myths peddled about the ECHR is already staggering; if the Leave campaign’s lies succeed, then that will only encourage the nationalists in the media to begin the next round.

I like the ECHR much more than I like the EU, and believe that anything that puts such an authoritative, powerful defence of human rights and civil liberties in jeopardy must be resisted strongly. Therefore, this is another reason to vote Remain.

Intergenerational equity

The final piece to this puzzle is the principle of intergenerational equity. What’s that, you ask? It’s the idea that each generation should bequeath to the next the same privileges it has enjoyed. To put it another way, successful generations should not pull up the ladder behind them to prevent young people from leading good and happy lives.

The baby boomer generation, born in the 15 years after the end of the Second World War, has had an unprecedented degree of good treatment and good fortune. Being of a certain age, they grew up used to the idea of Britain as a proud nation: proud of having stood alone against the Nazis, proud of being the country of Churchill and Monty and the Dambusters.

But as they entered their  teens and their twenties, they also reaped the benefits of an economic recovery and a political class that understood the importance of social infrastructure. They also benefited from free or very cheap university education, if they went. They benefited from low house prices and have seen their property appreciate in value many times over. They own houses that are too large for their present needs, and very often they own more than one. They even got to see England win the World Cup, for goodness’ sake.

In older age, they have been protected from the worst effects of the 2008 recession thanks to a coalition government that introduced one of the most generous systems for uprating pensions that can ever have been devised. I still wince to think that it was a Lib Dem minister that was responsible for the ‘triple lock’, a policy utterly in favour of the Conservatives’ natural constituency.

To put it bluntly: baby boomers have had it better than any other generation of people in the UK, and the generations coming after them are experiencing a lower standard of living. This is well-attested. It may sound strange to that cohort of people, because after all, there’s always someone better off than you, isn’t there, but it is true.

By contrast, my generation in the UK – the so-called ‘millennials’ – is generally outward looking. People aged 18-40 are overwhelmingly pro-EU. We grew up in the open world of the internet and of regular travel by air. We do not really experience national borders in the same way as they used to be thought of; we certainly haven’t experienced what it is like to have to defend them from attack. We like the EU because we can study and work where we want, and because it is reducing the cost of using our mobile phones while we’re escaping from the British weather. We tend to be equally suspicious of all authority, and perhaps more suspicious of authority closer to home. We know we get shafted regularly by a government that doesn’t really care about young people, because they don’t vote.

I graduated in 2008 as the recession tore apart the global economy. I applied for around eighty jobs before I decided to take an unpaid internship, and I could only afford to do that because I had generous support from loved ones. Most people my age other than the trustafarians are painfully used to paying most of their wages in rent, gaping CV gaps, taking bar work or manual labour, endless short-term or zero-hours contracts. Most of us have accepted that our most cherished skills and creativity may not be applied to work we actually enjoy for some time – if ever.

Hugo Young once said that Britain’s relationship with the EU is “a perpetual struggle between the future it could not avoid and the past it could not leave behind”. A more brilliant encapsulation of this referendum is hard to imagine.

Older people should think very carefully about the country they want to leave to their children and grandchildren. To take the UK out now will be a final insult to the generation that will be paying – despite flatlining or shrinking salaries, no property assets and poor pension provision – for the baby boomers’ social care.

Could I ever have voted Leave?

As a Liberal Democrat, I recognise that the European Union project is very problematic. There are many things I would change about the structure of the EU and the way it functions. One of the biggest problems with the Remain campaign – and David Cameron’s petty, small-minded renegotiation before it – is that it has failed to articulate any kind of reform programme for the future.

Many of the criticisms levelled at the EU have considerable weight behind them: it is opaque, difficult to understand, and often lacks democratic accountability. I have worked with EU officials and navigated its innards for long enough to understand why it takes so long to get things done. Moreover, insufficient work has been done to prepare the ground for lofty ideals like ever closer union; political integration simply must precede economic reform if it is to be sustainable.

Why do I say all this? Because, contrary to what you might think if you’ve read much of my recent output on Twitter or Facebook, there was a case to be made for leaving the EU that could have persuaded me. That case might have gone something like this:

We believe that the EU is a noble idea, but one that can’t match up to the reality of vast differences in culture, economic performance and political beliefs.

Power is best put in the hands of the people – and should only move upwards when it is essential for decisions to be taken together.

The EU has taken too much power from national governments. There’s a case to be made for a single market and for cooperation on specific issues like crime and terrorism. But no country in the EU is incapable of managing its own affairs.

We’re advocating a vote for Leave. But we know we can’t ask you to throw off the EU comfort blanket if our own house isn’t in order. So to make sure the British people know we mean what we say, we are also proposing a wide range of reforms to make sure power really does rest with the people. In the event of a Leave vote:

  • We will hold a crowd-sourced constitutional convention that aims to enshrine our patchwork of rights in an authoritative document, that will consider:
    • Immediate introduction of an elected House of Lords
    • Consideration of a new voting system for the House of Commons
    • Introduction of proportional representation in local elections
    • The break up of the Treasury which has become far too powerful
    • The abolition and replacement of the monarchy upon the death or abdication of the current Sovereign in favour of an elected head of state
    • The introduction of a genuine federal system for the United Kingdom giving maximum power to its nations and regions – incorporating reform or replacement of the Barnett formula
  • The UK will remain committed to participation in the single market, and will be humble enough to accept that this will mean complying with EU principles on the free movement of people
  • No citizen will go unsupported through transition to the new trade settlements we will need. This may mean extra taxation, extra borrowing or cuts in public spending
  • Workers’ rights will not be watered down but will remain aligned with EU regulations, except in cases where we have improved upon those such as maternity leave
  • Environmental regulation will continue to match or exceed the EU’s in rigour and that we will not rely on cheap, low-quality imports of energy, food or other products
  • We will make additional efforts to preserve the UK’s status as an outward-looking nation through other supranational institutions including the United Nations, NATO, OECD and the G20, as well as through renewing relationships with Commonwealth countries
  • We will create new ways to provide direct support to EU member states such as Greece who are suffering from mistreatment due to their membership of the eurozone
  • The BBC will be supported and strengthened as an important part of our public life as an independent, politically neutral broadcaster in a media landscape characterised by strong political biases
  • Any new attempt to manage immigration will reflect the many positive reasons why people might want to come to our country (e.g. international students, who leave soon after arriving), starting from the proposition that all migrants have talents and skills to offer

The benefit of this approach would have been that it is honest about potential downsides to leaving the EU. It offers some serious ways to empower British citizens and preserve or improve the UK’s place in the world. Sadly, we are not being offered anything like this. If we had, I would be seriously considering voting to leave.

EU Referendum: a list of useful sources

/ Tom King / Leave a comment

I have been writing a lot about the EU referendum. During the course of doing so, I’ve realised that there is no obvious place that brings together many of the main statements and positions on either side of the referendum debate. This is therefore a “live” list, to which I will add interesting and useful sources as they appear. It will be useful for me to consult from time to time, and hopefully others might find it helpful too.

Feel free to suggest additions in the comments.

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