Vote Leave – a moderate view

While distancing myself from the unhelpful populist rhetoric, I would like to offer an alternate view against some apparently reasonable Remain arguments:

1. “We are too small to go it alone in the face of increasing globalisation.”

   That may be true, but are we in the right club for our needs? Here’s a small scale example: NHS Speech Therapists originally had their own union, which a decade or so ago managed to negotiate a favourable equal pay deal by comparing them to other NHS disciplines. Now their union has merged with the huge Unite union and since then Speech Therapists’ caseloads have gone through the roof, pay is falling and the service has fragmented. Unite cannot represent them effectively because they also represent most other health workers so can’t be seen to favour of one over the other. In the same way, do we want the UK government or an EU government to represent us? Do we believe that the people of the UK and the European political class are similar enough for them to act in the UK’s best interests? This leads on to…

2. “We need to be in a like-minded club to deal with economic and security threats and to negotiate large-scale trade deals.”

   Like-minded? The countries of the European Union are wonderfully diverse. We have the hard-working, rule-making Germans in the north, all the way down to the laid-back Mediterranean countries in the south. We have the high wage, highly mechanised countries in the west and the low wage Baltic states in the east. All of which is a gross oversimplification of the differences in attitude and culture. In particular, the attitudes to laws and authority are so different that I don’t see how all these countries can make any meaningful, universally binding agreements at all. We would be much better off joining with more like-minded (maybe commonwealth?) nations where true unity of purpose is more likely.

3. “The pound will fall and there will be economic disaster.”

   Yes, I’m sure the pound will fall, making imports more expensive, at least in the short term – but is this all bad? We currently have a huge trade deficit (we buy in much more than we send abroad) which the government are concerned about and would like to address (‘balancing the economy’). If the pound falls this will improve naturally as higher prices of imported goods will make it economical to make things locally and our products and services will be cheaper for customers abroad. This in turn will increase employment and should actually strengthen our economy in the long term.

4. “We have more influence and are better able to affect change from the inside.”

   The EU is structurally flawed and undemocratic. I haven’t got space to explain how it works (see europa.eu/about-eu/institutions-bodies if you’re interested), but in practice the (unelected) Commission seem to have all the law- and policy-making power, with the elected parliament only really having a power of veto. Every country has a commissioner and I can guarantee you have not heard of the current UK one. Unlike our own government, there is no mechanism for influencing the main sweep of policy since the MEP’s we vote for have no say on which laws should be made, but just whether the law as presented to them is passable. As for the treaty change needed to rectify this, the chance of getting to debate it seems remote, let alone achieving unanimous agreement with the 27 other states. It seems to me that the only way of getting the EU to make the changes it needs is for a respected block of people to show their dissatisfaction by voting Out.

I can’t say that there aren’t clear risks, or that the future will be definitely brighter one way or the other. On balance though, for the improvement of our country and the promotion of democracy, I think we should vote Leave.