I am sitting here on 22 June 2016 in the United Kingdom, the day before the EU referendum. By the end of tomorrow we should know if we remain in Europe or leave.
I have listened to all the campaigns and the arguments made by both in and out. My conclusion is that the information offered on both sides is woefully lacking in fact and reasoning. So I do believe that many people will vote in if they have listened to the fear of what might happen if we left, or will vote out if they fear we will be invaded by hoards of immigrants.
The fact is that nobody knows what would happen in the future if we stayed or left. We have no idea what the consequences of choosing either path would be. So there is no point in voting on the basis of what either side say might happen.
Many people have claimed that the economy would suffer if we left the EU. I would say this is a bit rich coming from some people in the government who have made the UK go through years of austerity. The middle classes downward have already experienced an economic suffering. The remain crowd argue that all the suffering would go to waste if we left. and yet the global economy is poised on the biggest downturn in history, so there is not the slightest guarantee that remaining in the EU will make our economic fortunes any rosier.
Immigration is another issue that causes consternation. The remain crowd express how the country has benefited from the diversity of immigrants and that those who come into this country put in more than they take out. This may well be true in terms of tax revenue and in the cases of people filling much needed job placements. But the stress of too many people and not enough infrastructure to accommodate them causes its own problems. Two examples are easy to demonstrate this: housing and wages.
The market principle of supply and demand has meant that too many people and not enough houses have pushed up the cost of buying or renting a house to ridiculous levels. First time buyers of reasonable means cannot afford to save for the deposit to buy a place and with rents taking and average of 42 hours work on the minimum wage it is virtually impossible to make ends meet and save anything near the kind of money to put together a £20,000 deposit plus fees this side of the age of 40. (renting a 2 bedroom house in London is £1200 a month and 42 hours on minimum wage, without tax, is close to £300 a week.)
Too many people in this country created a housing crisis. Politicians will argue that Labour / Conservatives did not build enough houses and that this is the problem. But if builders cannot build and make a profit they will not build and if employees cannot save to buy a property they will not buy. Wages simply no longer meet the level at which buying a house is feasible.
And speaking of wages, particularly the minimum wage - what the Conservatives laughingly call the living wage - the fact is it is not high enough to be a living wage. And with more and more unskilled labour coming into the workforce, the employers are in a race to the bottom in terms of the hourly rate they can get away with. This is the kind of employers market where zero hours contracts become the norm, which in turn makes getting a mortgage for a house impossible.
Trade is another argument used by both sides to no good effect. David Cameron announced that a trade deal with Canada was the best trade deal that the EU had worked on and that it had taken 7 years already. Using this as a guide he then goes on to say that if we left it could take another 7 years.
This is, of course, nonsense. To begin with there is only one country to make a decision if we were trading on our own. We would not have to ask 27 countries to all agree on every paragraph. Arguable you could divide that 7 years by 27 and do a trade deal in a few months. BUT CETA is a disastrous trade deal that, like TTIP (which Obama warned us we might be at the back of the queue for) is written by corporations for corporations. There are clauses like the ability of a corporation to sue a sovereign nation for loss of future profit, therefore there is a way of getting all the fracking, GMO frankenstein foods, glyphosate and every other undesirable product to our shores. I for one would be happy to be at the back of a very long queue for this kind of trade deal and would welcome leaving on this basis alone.
Finally there is the argument of democracy. The remain team argue that we have to be within the EU in order to change it. However, given the derisory concessions that David Cameron brought back in order to have a referendum at all, it is incredibly unlikely that this, or any sovereign nation will get close to ousting the unelected, and therefore unaccountable, decision makers at the EU centre. So if we can’t elect them out, we are no longer living in a democracy. The EU will decide what direction we, as a block of countries, will head towards. The corporations and the central banks will lead the way.
So what do you vote for? This is indeed a landmark decision. In my humble opinion, if we vote to remain, we do everything that the banks and big business want us to do. George Soros warned that the pound could plunge if we voted out. Now this is important to consider. Think of what happened to your money the last time the pound plunged. Not much eh? In fact people in middle class and below who struggle to make ends meet will probably notice it as much as the £3.00 or so difference a week the annual budget offers. The chancellor talks millions of pounds but we are affected in terms of a few quid. If the stock market lost a billion pounds tomorrow, you and I would see as much of it as we see now… nothing.
If you want a reason to vote to remain, make it that you want to see a United States of Europe and to have Brussels control your tax and give up the NHS to private enterprise (TTIP will do this and it is not scaremongering). No matter how much you argue otherwise, that is the inevitable conclusion.
If you want to vote to leave, make it that you want to stay as an independent country and make your own deals with the world. You will still have to deal with the biggest corporate pirate in the world, the corporation of London, but you might at least get the last say what you will or will not accept into our country.
