Getting to grips with the EU debate

As he often does, Dr Richard North has made a thought-provoking but bracing point.

He was commenting on the democracy campaign group Bite the Ballot who have complained that there is insufficient information for young people to make an informed decision on 23rd June and that the young were therefore not merely being “apathetic” when it came to voting, but genuinely frustrated and confused by the lack of such information.

To which North responded:

“Never in human history has so much information been so freely available for such little cost. If people, young or old, really need information, they can find it. All it takes is the will and the determination… In my experience, if people don’t know anything about something as profoundly important as the referendum on the EU, then it is because they don’t want to know.”

Having been involved in this debate for some time, I know exactly what he means.

But as is my nature, I’m a little more forgiving not least because the European Union and Britain’s relationship with it is a vast subject area. Part of its complexity is that it brings together under one umbrella a series of sub-topics that are themselves large.

Take for example, immigration. Some people make a living just researching, following and writing about immigration, or legally interpreting it in order to advise others. There are whole think tanks devoted to it.

Then there is the European Union itself and how it operates, which can be labyrinthine despite (or even because) the EU publishes a lot of documents online. Alongside this is European Union law — a very large and growing body of law, which is a specialism in legal circles.

Then there is the sub-topic of trade, how it operates inside the EU, outside the EU, and indeed across the world. Again there are full-time experts on this subject who operate in what is a very technical area.

One can easily think of other big sub-topics: economic and monetary policy; foreign and defence policy; security; energy and the environment. And so on.

If that weren’t enough, one then has to consider the inter-play between these sub-topics and the ongoing subjects of capitalism, socialism, liberalism, and democracy.

So the EU is a very large umbrella subject indeed, and one could spend a lifetime on it and still learn new angles and facts about it.

One can of course approach this whole subject at an entry level — and some do — relying on a gut instinct that the EU is wrong, appears expensive and corrupt, and “keeps telling this country what to do”. A similar approach happens for the Remain side whereby “Europe” is associated with being outward-looking and internationalist. A Remainer suggesting that they are pro-EU “because I have traveled widely in Europe and speak Spanish/French/etc” also betrays an entry-level approach to the subject [this example is not uncommon]. In both cases, an entry-level approach leads to a lot of post-hoc rationalisation of one’s outlook, supported by reading or listening only to those who have the effect of confirming that outlook.

However the deeper one digs into the subject, one quickly finds there are many other “levels of knowledge” beyond this. And of course each of those big sub-topics under the umbrella of the EU debate each has their own levels. An objective person doing their own research and applying some critical thinking could draw different conclusions about the EU as they work their way through each level of each sub-topic. Or they could spot something in the inter-play between sub-topics that causes a “penny to drop” one way or another.

Consequently the whole EU debate can seem daunting because for the genuinely inquisitive, at what point does one stop digging and “come back up” to declare one’s position and the justification for it?

And that’s just for the genuinely inquisitive with time to spare. Most people don’t have time to spare as they are too busy bringing up their children, paying the mortgage, and generally keeping their heads above water.

I would also venture to suggest (without any immediate evidence to hand) that most people are not very good at research. People, when they are not time-constrained, can be intellectually lazy and rely on “pattern formation” rather than detail. That is to say, wanting to draw a conclusion before having absorbed a sufficient level of detail. Indeed my own predisposition is to push down to a certain level of detail but I then reach an intuitive point where I suddenly want to “find the pattern” and declare a conclusion (a good disposition to have in the business/management world where one has to understand matters but also make quick decisions).

But for many people it is easier to operate at a fairly superficial level. And such people therefore want a relatively undemanding and objective statement of the arguments from either side. In that sense, yes, they want to be spoon-fed.

And as the Leave side is the change proposition in this referendum, the onus is on Leavers much more than Remainers to make the arguments accessible to the undecided.

So we may just have to suck it up, as they say.