In the referendum, my husband voted Leave and I voted Remain. Within a week, he and I had changed our minds! He was uneasy to find himself rubbing shoulders with outright racists. I was dismayed to find the EU’s senior officers, rather than ask seriously why we wanted to leave, instead lash out with a flood of insults and a flat refusal to negotiate that could hardly have been more calculated to alienate us further.
A personal background: I am myself an immigrant to the UK, my husband and two kids and I have lived in four different countries in the past two decades, and I still have family living in six different (other) European countries whom we regularly visit. My husband and I both work in financial services in London. No one’s ever refused either of us a work visa even outside the EU. Immigration is very good for us – more nurses and doctors in the NHS, cheaper builders for our “mansion,” cheaper nannies for our DC who in any case each hold three passports. We have nothing to lose personally from the EU – or Brexit.
But sorry. The question was, why did some of us have reservations against the EU in the first place?
Consider that Britain was never fully on board, and why not. We (I am very proud to say “we” of Britain) didn’t join the euro – and subsequent events proved us right. As the financial crises in Greece and Italy demonstrated, the euro is basically a mechanism that systematically siphons money from the poorer less developed countries of the south and east to the richer in the north.
We didn’t join the Schengen zone – and subsequent events proved us right. As the migrant crisis of 2015 demonstrated, the EU is more concerned with raising walls to keep the rest of the world out than with expanding freedom of movement. Ask yourselves: on what moral basis should any country open its borders to Bulgarians and not to Syrians?
Since 1975 Brits have complained the EU is undemocratic – and it seems we were right about that, too. Why do people accuse Theresa May of being intransigent when the EU side have not budged a millimetre since David Cameron first went to them? And when our parliament fails to agree because there is genuinely no consensus among them or in the country as a whole, notice how Junker, Barnier, Macron et al react with shock and horror: oh, no, they’re letting their elected representatives vote – make them stop!
And why, oh why, is more fuss not being made about the Aachen accord last year – when Germany and France announced, without a flicker of shame or criticism, that from now on they intend to get together and agree on how to run the EU before every major EU vote? (Though, without looking anything up, can you even diagram the various councils and presidents of the EU, and how it’s supposed to work?)
Against all that, of course, I believe it’s a really good idea to have more multi-lateral organisations and international cooperation in general. Sadly, as I say, I am beginning to fear the EU is only in favour of cooperation among its own members, not with the rest of the world.
I did also believe that it is best to work for change from within. But that is only possible if the organization in question sees a need to change and is willing to change.
Now I think that the EU is a bit like the League of Nations – and that we may have to scrap it wholesale and try again for a functioning UN.
Not a reassuring analogy – the collapse of the League led into World War II – but that’s the great thing about democracy: voting and arguing take the place of fighting. I do wish we could talk about it on MN without insults.