EU Referendum – why I am voting for Europe

On Tuesday we will be back in London after three weeks in the Loire. Back in time to vote in the UK's EU Referendum on Thursday, which is the most important vote in my lifetime. Having always been Pro-Europe I will certainly be voting to Remain. I hold a British passport but I consider myself to be European, so it makes no sense to me to turn our back on Europe – its culture, the UK's major trading partner and the European Union. 

 

Take back control!

Britexiters claim that leaving the EU will give us our country back. It will do no such thing. The UK has already negotiated exceptions, such as to stay out of the Euro and the Schengen Agreement. There are claims that we will thrive outside the EU perhaps with a free trade agreement with the Commonwealth countries.  

This is surely fantasy! Far better to be together with our major market with a voice rather to run away and hope for the best. A free trade agreement with the Commonwealth harks back to the time of the British Empire at the end of the 19th Century. The Asia Pacific region, for instance, is the closest and most enticing market for Australia and New Zealand not the UK.     

Curiously and sadly a number of the English regions that are predicted to vote leave are the very same that have benefited from European Union aid to depressed areas.    

Voting to leave the EU on Thursday will hand control of the UK to people like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage. Johnson famously could have gone either way on Europe and is widely seen as only campaigning for exit because he sees this as his chance to become Prime Minister. Furthermore he has cheerfully admitted that when based in Brussels as a reporter he invented new stories about European legislation – shapes of bananas etc.  

  

“People in this country have had enough of experts,” according to Michael Gove. Fair enough, perhaps, from a member of the public but a truly extraordinary statement from the current Minister of State for Justice. How does UK case law function if it isn't the distillation of legal decisions by legal experts – judges – over many years? Furthermore Gove was previously Minister of Education, somewhat of a worry if the education of our children is in the hands of someone who mistrusts expertise!

UKIP and Nigel Farage playing the race card – poster launched 

the day that MP Jo Cox was brutally murdered 

Echoes of Nazi propaganda

And the vile Farage – head of UKIP ? Ever ready to play the race card as the UKIP poster shows. Farage launched this poster that shows migrants moving into Slovenia playing on the fears of uncontrolled immigration into the UK just hours before the MP Jo Cox was murdered. The man charged with her murder gave his name in court as "My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain." 

Clearly Farage didn't order the killing of the MP but he and his party created the mood music – you reap what you sow!

Rather belatedly Gove admitted on Sunday that he 'shuddered' when he saw the UKIP poster.   

After a surge by the leave campaign, the latest opinion polls show a move back to Remain. Let's hope Remain carries the day on Thursday. It will be tight!   

     

Andrew Jefford's eloquent plea for the UK to remain in the EU

Vote Leave is led by Boris Johnson
who has long been a supporter of the EU

In just over a month the UK will vote on whether to remain a member of the European Union or leave. The Referendum will be on Thursday 23rd June 2016. Given that we joined the European Community in 1973 – 43 years ago – holding another Referendum on whether to stay in or not rather underlines our always ambivalent attitude to the European Union and the European ideal.

I have long been a convinced supporter of a European Union and hope that we will vote to remain in the EU. I see myself as a European whose main home is in London. To vote to leave would be a terrible mistake.  

Yesterday wine writer Andrew Jefford posted on Facebook an eloquent and wise plea for remaining in the European Union:  

'These are my children’s eyes, photographed by their mother. They are young British citizens who, at present, live as freely in Europe as they could in the UK. They aren’t, of course, old enough to vote in the UK’s June 23rd referendum on continuing membership of the European Union, but their lives will be affected far more than my life will by the outcome. If you are a young British voter, please vote. It will be the most significant vote you’ll ever cast. No General Election will ever have this level of significance.

The economic arguments for Britain remaining in the European Union are many and compelling. Leaving would be an act of economic self-harm. Most of the putative upside – only thinly sketched out by those who wish the UK to leave the European Union – is hopeful fantasy, as would quickly become evident in the slow economic hangover that will follow any possible vote for Brexit. Independent international economists overwhelmingly concur with this view. 

EU migration to the UK has been of great economic benefit. Farming, transport, construction and the health service are four sectors among many which would struggle in the UK without EU workers. Migration is not a separate issue to economics, as those advancing the Brexit argument assert. 

Read the rest of Andrew's post here. 

Andrew Jefford