On the 23 June 2019 a referendum was held in the UK about whether
the UK should remain in the EU. Just under 52% said we should leave and just over
48% said we should stay. A very close result
indeed. One lone MP said “We need to look after the 48% as well.” A close result like that would not allow a trade
union to act, especially as only 37% of the people eligible to vote in fact
voted to leave. Its screams anyway that we all need to take a closer look at
the problem. We need to find a third way.
The search engines heated up the next day. They were all
looking for definitions of what the EU is. What? You’ve voted to leave or stay
in something you don’t understand? Later conversations have proved that there
is a lot of misunderstanding about what the EU actually is.
As I drove to work each day in the last few weeks before the
referendum I nearly always had to stop
at a set of traffic lights that had pinned to it “£350,000,000 a week isn’t trivial”.
That made me feel uneasy and I thought it couldn’t be right. I looked into it.
It’s actually nearer £250,000,000 and we get most of it or perhaps more than it back:
money for our regions, particularly Wales, farmers’ subsidies and major funded
projects. “So will the government give us that now?” they cry. On your bike, sunshine. I pay enough tax already. Looking at it another way, for approximately
£134 a year per person we get a set of laws that are fair, a court we can go to
when our own judicial process fails us, access to many international projects
and grants, a significant say in what goes on in the great landmass just offshore
and the access to the same emergency medical treatment as nationals in 27 other
countries. The latter will cost more than that if you have to have a year round
policy because you travel a lot. Ironically
the port of Ramsgate is crying out for EU money and won’t be able to offer a
port to the shipping company that has no ships that was to help deal with the post-Brexit
chaos.
“It was the Boomers,” they said. “They want to take out citizenship
away.” Not this Boomer, actually and in fact I only know a handful who voted Leave,
but I guess that’s just the circles I move in. It is highly likely that many
Leavers have now died. Many Remainers
have become 18. Many Leavers have changed their mind.
Then we find out that Leave broke electoral law.
And possibly our Russian friends were involved.
The two main political parties are divided but MPs have to
follow the instructions of their whips. We
have to trust our MPs to represent our interests, and I actually believe mine
does. I also totally accept that from time
to time he will vote in a way that I don’t want him to but for the most part he’ll
represent my views. He is also duty-bound to be clued up and act
in our interests, often on matters that we don’t know enough about to form a valid
opinion. Doesn’t there also come a point
when he must go by his conscience? It is puzzling that so many MPs are clear that
Brexit will bring about many uncomfortable changes yet they still go ahead with
the “will of the people” which wasn’t ever that strong in the first place and
looks decidedly weak now.
And let’s look at “the people”. What about all of those working age people who
pay taxes here, propping up our aging and young population, who didn’t have their
say? And the disenfranchised British nationals who have lived out of the
country for more than fifteen years who also can’t vote in the state where they
live. Oh, the Boston tea party failed completely. We
still have taxation without representation on this planet.
So who should vote on national matters? The people who live and
pay taxes in the country for sure and the nationals of that country wherever
they live? I can see arguments for and against
both. Yet couldn’t common sense establish something? Something like the
allowance to vote after you’ve been paying taxes for three years? Having 0.5 of a vote if you’ve been out of the
country for more than fifteen years?
Is the EU crumbling? There is anti-EU feeling in Italy,
unease in Spain and Germany and civil unrest in France. A shame. The EU could have fulfilled Churchill’s
idyll of peace in Europe, of people being citizens of their own country and of
Europe, and the 28 together could be a really strong unit.
Yet maybe we have greater cause for concern at home. At least Brexit has highlighted our PM’s
disregard for democracy and at least we have been able to stop her. Some sort of democracy is still working but
we need to be vigilant. Three times she has tried to rush through decisions without
proper parliamentary process. More worryingly,
perhaps, both she and her predecessor have tried to fiddle with the Declaration
of Human Rights.
Let’s hope there is enough democracy left to keep the world
safe.
No comments:
Post a Comment