Thoughts on the EU referendum, immigration and equality

For the vast majority of us our wealth, freedom and security are largely an accident of birth and geography. Through being born in this country, at this time, those things have been gifted us — they are less the result of our own hard work and determination, rather just good fortune. Our position is something we inherit off the back of thousands of years of history. And that history has been achieved in part through exploitation, subjugation and interference across the globe. That dependency and that continued desire to exploit remains.

We want to be able to travel freely and cheaply anywhere in the world. We want the things we buy to be ever cheaper. We want unfettered access to the resources that sustain our lifestyle. And through our media and entertainment we broadcast our good life across the globe.

Yet we seem to act surprised when those who haven’t been as fortunate as ourselves — those whose place of birth did not gift them with the same freedom and wealth, those who have suffered from poverty and (often life-threatening) insecurity, those who have heard our messages of self-betterment and want to make a better future for themselves — decide to act, decide that they would like a share of our comfort and wealth, sometimes at great risk to their own personal safety.

And now we appear to be sleepwalking into a reaction that wants to pull the drawbridges up, wants to retreat to the old island mentality. We talk of equality, but only if it means more for them, not less for us (and never really work through the implications of that stance). In a world where the relative disparity of wealth has never been more obvious and never more visible to those at the bottom, where our values and brands are pushed centre-stage to every corner of the world, where low-cost global travel has become so prevalent, we seem astonished, indignant even, that others want a share of this life of Riley. And that they do so by taking matters into their own hands in the only way they know how — by moving towards the dream. After all, on current form there’s going to be a long wait before that trickle-down theory results in any significant, equitable redistribution of wealth. If anything it feels like trickle-up at the moment.

Clearly as a nation immigration, economic or otherwise, is an issue. To pretend otherwise is naive. But we must understand that all the while we live in an unfair world, all the while we benefit from our exploitation of the rest of the planet, both people and resources, all the while we accept an increasing inequality — either knowingly or tacitly — we are going to be subject to these pressures. And they are only going to build, to get stronger. They are not going to go away whilst there is so much obvious inequality.

We don’t build a fairer world by building ever higher walls. We don’t progress by isolating ourselves.

The future for humanity has to be one of co-operation, of coming together, of union, of sharing, of working for the common good. That might even mean giving up some of our privilege to obtain that. Is that a price we’re willing to pay?