Advice to Voters in the EU Referendum

I’ve already cast my vote in the UK referendum on membership of the European Union. Reflecting on my choice, it has nothing to do with the issues that both sides are debating publicly. What’s more, I strongly suspect that those issues do not matter to the leaders of both campaigns, either.

The size of the UK’s net contribution to the EU budget, the value membership adds the UK’s economy, the ease or difficulty with which the UK would be able to negotiate a free trade agreement in the event of Brexit… the more I think about it, the less I think these questions matter to either side.

For the record, I believe EU membership has a massive net positive impact on the UK economy, and EU migrants (and non-EU migrants) contribute much more in taxes than they take out in benefits.

On the question of democracy, I don’t even feel the need to trot out the standard line that, ‘of course, we all believe the EU needs to be reformed’. I’m pretty relaxed about EU reform, personally. Is it really any less democratic than the system we have in the UK, where for the last four general elections in a row, less than a quarter of registered voters voted for the winning party?

The UK sends its fair share of commissioners to the European Commission. They are appointed by the Prime Minister, just like the members of the cabinet (who do not need to be MPs). Why then do people not routinely refer to Her Majesty’s government as being made up of unelected bureaucrats?

But if I’m honest with myself, I could probably convince myself to see it otherwise if I was a Brexiter. Those so-called facts can be played with, manipulated, reinterpreted or dismissed with ease. What would happen if the UK actually left the EU is entirely hypothetical.

When I ask myself why I am for remaining in the EU, I find that it has much less to do with the objective universe we all share, and more to do with my own identity and values. This is borne out by polls, which show that old men with a limited formal education are by far the most likely to vote for Brexit. University-educated young people are much more likely to vote to stay in.

I’m still relatively young. I studied foreign languages and have a Masters degree in translation, I have travelled extensively in Europe, studied for a year in Italy, I read highbrow literature for pleasure, drink espresso and have a subscription to The New Yorker.

The word for all this is cosmopolitan, which comes from the Greek for ‘citizen of the world’. That’s ultimately why I voted ‘remain’, and I think the same is probably true of many of those who are going around the country trying to persuade others to do the same.

The leaders of the Brexit campaign, meanwhile, have a variety of motives. Some of them are simply old, with conservative values, they feel like they do not recognise the UK as the place they grew up in, and they blame the EU. It has nothing to do with the EU. Who, anywhere in the world, at the age of 60, looks around and sees that their country hasn't changed? That would be a country where there had been no progress. Things change. Some people just can't accept it.

Others, like Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, are ideological neoliberals who want to abolish all regulation, consumer rights and workers’ rights that you have to have as a member of the EU. Others still, ironically, are on the hard left and believe the EU forces too much privatization and free-trade on the UK. These two groups can’t both be right, and if they 'win' this referendum, I expect they will all eventually be disappointed with the outcome.

Finally, one group of Brexiters doesn’t care about any of that, and only wants to win the referendum so they can become Prime Minister. This group consists solely of Boris Johnson.

If you have read this far, you may now be expecting me to try to convince you to vote one way or the other. Of course, I want you to vote to remain, but I also want to be honest about it. I want you to vote remain because I want the UK to stay in the EU, because that’s the sort of thing people like me want. 

I want to retain my rights as a citizen of the EU, to be able to travel visa-free around Europe. I want my European friends to be able to visit the UK visa-free, and I want the UK to take part in and help to shape the European project.

So I want you to vote remain, but that’s not why I’ve written this blog. Rather, I wanted to point out that the people on both sides of the debate who claim to be giving you the facts on Brexit do not care about the facts. They will find the facts they need, or make them up, like Boris has.

My advice, therefore, is to be sceptical of claims made by both sides, and to try to work out what their motives are. You might find, actually, that emotional arguments, not statistics, are the most sincere, truthful and persuasive.