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| Leave or remain – Britain’s fortunes hinge on a Europe in need of repair | Leave or remain – Britain’s fortunes hinge on a Europe in need of repair |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| At the start of the referendum campaign the BBC decided to be impartial. It told its news staff to balance each item by getting the opposing camp to rebut it. It’s like taking an emetic with every mouthful of food. It ruins the taste and numbs the brain. | At the start of the referendum campaign the BBC decided to be impartial. It told its news staff to balance each item by getting the opposing camp to rebut it. It’s like taking an emetic with every mouthful of food. It ruins the taste and numbs the brain. |
| I have sought the same ideal by a different route. Early on, I decided I would switch “loyalties” between remain and leave on alternate weeks. We all view the news through the tinted glass of prejudice, so I would see how the argument altered each week by changing my prejudices. The exercise has been tough, yet somehow exhilarating. | I have sought the same ideal by a different route. Early on, I decided I would switch “loyalties” between remain and leave on alternate weeks. We all view the news through the tinted glass of prejudice, so I would see how the argument altered each week by changing my prejudices. The exercise has been tough, yet somehow exhilarating. |
| My remain weeks have been undeniably more comfortable. A majority of London friends are for remain. When I say I agree with them, they reply: “Fine, we are glad”, and talk about the weather. Remainers are insiders, metropolitans, confident in their views as in their skins. They have something to lose from change. They are the British establishment in both its liberal and its conservative guises. | |
| My Brexit weeks have been a different matter. They are edgy, disruptive, intellectually reckless. When I tell people I might vote Brexit, I see a cloud crossing their brow. They suddenly wonder where I am coming from. | My Brexit weeks have been a different matter. They are edgy, disruptive, intellectually reckless. When I tell people I might vote Brexit, I see a cloud crossing their brow. They suddenly wonder where I am coming from. |
| “You can’t mean it,” they say. “You would be with Johnson and Farage?” On the other hand, Brexiters are delighted. They are a freemasonry of believers, Lollard heretics against the Holy Roman Church. Theirs is the equivalent of the bent finger handshake. Brexiters are intense, partisan and fearless of risk. They share with remainers only a conviction that no evidence will change their voting intentions. | “You can’t mean it,” they say. “You would be with Johnson and Farage?” On the other hand, Brexiters are delighted. They are a freemasonry of believers, Lollard heretics against the Holy Roman Church. Theirs is the equivalent of the bent finger handshake. Brexiters are intense, partisan and fearless of risk. They share with remainers only a conviction that no evidence will change their voting intentions. |
| I have found these divergent loyalties hard to sustain. Everyone claims to “want to know the facts”, but they do not really mean it. They want the facts that support their case. Hence the sheer mendacity criticised last week by Andrew Tyrie, of the Commons Treasury committee: “It’s impoverishing political debate,” he said, “and the public are thoroughly fed up with it.” | I have found these divergent loyalties hard to sustain. Everyone claims to “want to know the facts”, but they do not really mean it. They want the facts that support their case. Hence the sheer mendacity criticised last week by Andrew Tyrie, of the Commons Treasury committee: “It’s impoverishing political debate,” he said, “and the public are thoroughly fed up with it.” |
| I tell people I might vote Brexit. You can’t mean it, they say. You would be with Johnson and Farage? | I tell people I might vote Brexit. You can’t mean it, they say. You would be with Johnson and Farage? |
| The weeks I have spent cheering on remain have been up and down. I have hated the Treasury’s project fear. We are told its strategy is based on its perceived success in the 2014 Scottish referendum, which it could equally be said to have almost lost. Nations invited to vote on self-government rarely put their wallets first – witness Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia, perhaps Catalonia. They vote the tribe. | The weeks I have spent cheering on remain have been up and down. I have hated the Treasury’s project fear. We are told its strategy is based on its perceived success in the 2014 Scottish referendum, which it could equally be said to have almost lost. Nations invited to vote on self-government rarely put their wallets first – witness Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia, perhaps Catalonia. They vote the tribe. |
| I was in a remain week when the Treasury told me that by 2030 – 14 years off – Brexit would lead to a 6% loss in national income. It would also lead to a £4,300 fall in household earnings. I tried to cheer this rubbish but it was clearly a dodgy dossier, since demolished by the economist Tim Congdon in Standpoint magazine. Treasury officials seem as corruptible as MI6 before Iraq. | I was in a remain week when the Treasury told me that by 2030 – 14 years off – Brexit would lead to a 6% loss in national income. It would also lead to a £4,300 fall in household earnings. I tried to cheer this rubbish but it was clearly a dodgy dossier, since demolished by the economist Tim Congdon in Standpoint magazine. Treasury officials seem as corruptible as MI6 before Iraq. |
| Likewise the hilarious daily roll-call of the great and good. It is like wandering through Westminster Abbey and reading the names on tombs. Good heavens, there is Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, James Bond, Virgin Atlantic, Hamlet, luvvies and the Queen. A galaxy of British worthies seems to have been whipped to the front to dazzle the enemy. | Likewise the hilarious daily roll-call of the great and good. It is like wandering through Westminster Abbey and reading the names on tombs. Good heavens, there is Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, James Bond, Virgin Atlantic, Hamlet, luvvies and the Queen. A galaxy of British worthies seems to have been whipped to the front to dazzle the enemy. |
| My best remain week has been this past one, spent in Germany. The Germans, at least those in Berlin, are horrified by the prospect of Brexit. They plead that the EU is going through an existential crisis. Britain cannot be immune from this. It must surely have a care to support those forces seeking to clean the place up. Please do not depart the scene just now. In historical terms, they might say, Britain faces not a thirty-years’ war moment (stay out) but a Waterloo one (stay in). | My best remain week has been this past one, spent in Germany. The Germans, at least those in Berlin, are horrified by the prospect of Brexit. They plead that the EU is going through an existential crisis. Britain cannot be immune from this. It must surely have a care to support those forces seeking to clean the place up. Please do not depart the scene just now. In historical terms, they might say, Britain faces not a thirty-years’ war moment (stay out) but a Waterloo one (stay in). |
| Related: I’m backing George Osborne’s Project Fear – if it helps keep us in Europe | Martin Kettle | Related: I’m backing George Osborne’s Project Fear – if it helps keep us in Europe | Martin Kettle |
| Here I find the remain camp at its most constructive. It wants to bring change to the EU whose free trade principles (if not practices) are in Britain’s interest. But it has been saying this for a long time and, yet again with Cameron’s latest deal, has failed. Hogwash about top tables, negotiating influences and punching above its weight mean nothing. It has to deliver, or this issue will just not go away. | Here I find the remain camp at its most constructive. It wants to bring change to the EU whose free trade principles (if not practices) are in Britain’s interest. But it has been saying this for a long time and, yet again with Cameron’s latest deal, has failed. Hogwash about top tables, negotiating influences and punching above its weight mean nothing. It has to deliver, or this issue will just not go away. |
| My Brexit weeks are the opposite. I toss aside the Mercedes and its slick cruise control. I wheel out the Harley Davidson and head for the open road. I scorn project fear, and laugh in the face of the corporatist dragoons as they march to the beat of George Osborne’s drum. Let them sneer at Switzerland, Norway and Canada, I say, they are hardly poor countries. | My Brexit weeks are the opposite. I toss aside the Mercedes and its slick cruise control. I wheel out the Harley Davidson and head for the open road. I scorn project fear, and laugh in the face of the corporatist dragoons as they march to the beat of George Osborne’s drum. Let them sneer at Switzerland, Norway and Canada, I say, they are hardly poor countries. |
| I summon from retirement my old student heroes, EF Schumacher – the ghost of small is beautiful – and Joseph Schumpeter, the prophet of risk and disruption. Brexit responds to project fear with project liberty. Self-rule trumps economics. Every mercantilist has an interest in trade, which will continue between Britain and the European Union whatever happens – everyone knows it. Some diplomats may have to work a bit harder after Brexit. It will do them good. | I summon from retirement my old student heroes, EF Schumacher – the ghost of small is beautiful – and Joseph Schumpeter, the prophet of risk and disruption. Brexit responds to project fear with project liberty. Self-rule trumps economics. Every mercantilist has an interest in trade, which will continue between Britain and the European Union whatever happens – everyone knows it. Some diplomats may have to work a bit harder after Brexit. It will do them good. |
| There is an obvious risk in leaving the EU. But risk is the lubricant of capitalism, just as national democracy is the guarantor of social welfare. It may be a long boring word, but sovereignty matters. Boris Johnson was justified in recalling past, disastrous attempts to assert pan-European government – even if he broke Jenkins’s law, that whoever mentions Hitler loses the argument. | There is an obvious risk in leaving the EU. But risk is the lubricant of capitalism, just as national democracy is the guarantor of social welfare. It may be a long boring word, but sovereignty matters. Boris Johnson was justified in recalling past, disastrous attempts to assert pan-European government – even if he broke Jenkins’s law, that whoever mentions Hitler loses the argument. |
| On the other hand Brexit weeks have been spoiled by its cynical addiction to migration. The reality is that British immigration, from Europe or elsewhere, has always been a function of the economic cycle. It is just not plausible that this will substantially alter. If leave wants to play the open market card, which it can with aplomb, it negates it with pledges of severe migration control. | On the other hand Brexit weeks have been spoiled by its cynical addiction to migration. The reality is that British immigration, from Europe or elsewhere, has always been a function of the economic cycle. It is just not plausible that this will substantially alter. If leave wants to play the open market card, which it can with aplomb, it negates it with pledges of severe migration control. |
| My indecision remains intact. In Germany this week I found alarming complacency towards the damage the euro is inflicting on Greece, Spain and Italy, and complacency too towards the harm the EU’s trade barriers do to the developing world. The EU has become a smug, dysfunctional, economically cruel cartelised oligarchy. It is sustained not by any democracy but by paid sycophants and corruption. | My indecision remains intact. In Germany this week I found alarming complacency towards the damage the euro is inflicting on Greece, Spain and Italy, and complacency too towards the harm the EU’s trade barriers do to the developing world. The EU has become a smug, dysfunctional, economically cruel cartelised oligarchy. It is sustained not by any democracy but by paid sycophants and corruption. |
| Yet the EU is the overriding fact of modern Europe. While I still believe Brexit would have little lasting impact on the British economy, a much greater risk is for Britain to leave a tortured Europe with a reactionary Germany in the ascendant. Germany has somehow to liberate southern Europe from its euro-currency prison. It has also to concede some reform to the discredited shambles of the present EU regime. These things have to happen in the interest of all of Europe, EU or no. | Yet the EU is the overriding fact of modern Europe. While I still believe Brexit would have little lasting impact on the British economy, a much greater risk is for Britain to leave a tortured Europe with a reactionary Germany in the ascendant. Germany has somehow to liberate southern Europe from its euro-currency prison. It has also to concede some reform to the discredited shambles of the present EU regime. These things have to happen in the interest of all of Europe, EU or no. |
| What will do most to bring them about is the overriding question of this referendum. It could well be a half-hearted British gesture of collegiality, or it could be the almighty shock of Brexit. I am still not sure. I have three more weeks of torment to go. | What will do most to bring them about is the overriding question of this referendum. It could well be a half-hearted British gesture of collegiality, or it could be the almighty shock of Brexit. I am still not sure. I have three more weeks of torment to go. |