The reasons to vote to remain in the European Union even when you hate it
The decision about how to vote in the upcoming European Union referendum is more complicated than I thought it would be. I have spent a good many weeks arguing with myself about it. I have come to the conclusion to vote to remain based on a negative choice, rather than a positive one.
The side-effect of any choice in the political sphere is that the side one chooses, if that side happens to win, takes a vote as unqualified support for everything that side stands for. If, for instance, you in an election decide to cast a vote for a particular party simply in order to keep another party from gaining power, the party you choose will take your vote as support for everything it has ever said and done.
Voting to remain in the European Union will, then, be taken as complete support for Neo-liberal, unfettered Greek-breaking ultra capitalism. Already, for instance, I have been accused of endangering Scottish independence by splitting my vote between the SNP and the Greens here in Edinburgh Southern in the recently concluded Scottish parliament elections.
People assume that my constituency vote was my real vote, and the list vote was my chance to dally around. It was in fact the other way around. My firm vote was the list vote, and as the Greens fielded no candidate in Edinburgh Southern, my constituency vote was up for grabs.
It ended up with the SNP simply because I didn’t want the Liberal Democrats, the Tories, or Scottish Labour anywhere near power. The SNP vote was simply to stop the other three. Yet here we are, where the SNP vote is automatically assumed to be my real vote that could be ’stolen’, and the vote for the party I actually support was ’wasted’. I am an “SNP supporter” who was tricked into splitting my vote. Or something.
As a lowly individual without a platform, I will fall into the amorphous anonymous pool who can’t appear on television or in print and explain my shades-of-grey thinking. I won’t be able to do so about the vote to remain in the European Union either. This blog post, which few will read, and fewer will care about, is the only place where I can explain myself.
So, I don’t support the current European Union at all. I only make my choice because the other side in the referendum is much, much worse than the Neo-liberal unfettered Greek-breaking ultra capitalist side which employs tactics which was used against my side in the Scottish independence referendum.
The irrational residue of hate and loathing I have for the unionist parties today come from those tactics. Much of Scotland agrees with me on that, which is why the unionist parties are a marginal force in Scottish politics — yes, even the much vaunted Ruth Davidson of the new Ruth Davidson party who only won 22 % of the vote. Even as the Neo-liberal unfettered Greek-breaking ultra capitalst side of Remain uses Project Fear tactics, the other side is worse.
The other side says they are democrats, but they want a type of democracy that has two wolves and a sheep voting of what to have for dinner. The other side is about generalising traits across groups of people, i.e. Muslims or LGBT or Brown people. The other side is about picking and choosing who can be included in the group which is allowed to participate in democracy and vote about what’s for dinner. The “democracy” that these people want is a majoritarian nightmare defined by who is excluded, and about who is targeted for official sanctions. Woe be to those who are not officially accepted.
The other side’s core ambition is to stop “the wrong sorts” from coming here and having any influence, and the other side’s core motivation is that whatever influence “the wrong sorts” have is unremittingly bad. It is also to strip away any influence of “the wrong sorts” who are already here. Poor people, immigrants, women, and so on. It is the democracy of white middle aged men of a certain type who wants children in school paddled and lashed, women tied to the stove again, and brown people grateful for the “civilizing benefits of the Empire”. LGBT people should be, again, “sent to prison as the perverts that they are”.
No, these ideals are not expressed on the Andrew Neill show, or on the Marr Show on the BBC. All this is couched in language about “self-determination”, culture, values, sovereignty, and patriotism. But these ideals are expressed once the doors shut, once the press leaves, and once the tongues loosen in the company of the “right sorts”.
All that is bordering on fascism. In a choice between Milton Friedman and Benito Mussolini or Franco, I would hope that sane people would vote for Friedman. The neo-liberals will take my vote as support and fill the television sofas with their smug assurance about how Britain, if we vote to remain, have selected them. They will claim that the UK has chosen to support everything they’ve ever said and done. But… with the neo-liberals we will live to fight for another dawn, for another life, for another future. It will be the neo-liberal hell we know, and not the cess-pit hell that the Brexit campaign explicitly doesn’t promise, but desire above all else. With the neo-liberals all we get is the smug conviction, but with the other side we get the sanctions and the punishments if we’re part of “the wrong sorts”. If I’m going to lose by chosing one side or the other, I will chose the side where I lose the least.
So, in the upcoming European referendum I will, and it will break my heart, vote for Milton Friedman. The alternative is to vote for Benito Mussolini or Franco.
Edit: Fixed some typos, and clarified some bits. Emphasized other bits.
