Brexit: Why I Decided What I Decided
Right, this is the last thing I’m going to say on this (as it’s hotted up I’ve gotten drawn into it despite thinking I wouldn’t). It’s your choice and we’ll all have to make the best of whatever the result.
First, a caveat, I don’t totally dislike the idea of our plucky, creative and innovative island punching above it’s weight in the world. However, that’s something of an anarchism in a smaller, globalised world in the midst of some significant macro changes.
I’ve spent quite some time weighing both arguments, fact-checking and looking at the real numbers behind the soundbites, double checking the subtext for politicians choosing a particular side etc etc, blah blah. I would add that any external links here are by no means the entirety of my research and thought on this.
Please note: I’m not about to force my opinions on you or say one side or another is wrong. You can stop reading at any time, I won’t take offence. The campaigns on both sides have been appalling and I’m ashamed in how our elected representatives have behaved. Slow 👏 all round for the ray of light and humanity our parliamentary democracy emanates from every pore out into the world.
That said, here’s why I’ve decided what I’ve decided.
Economy
There doesn’t appear any rational economic case (that I can find) for leaving the EU. See this.
Consensus of economists is clear for remain. It seems that this is particularly driven by the uncertainty that a vote to leave will create.
The markets hate nothing more than uncertainty. The fluctuations in the exchange rate of the Pound (a key aspect of our global competitiveness) and the performance of the FTSE over the last few weeks as the referendum day approaches are a flag saying how much the markets will not appreciate the uncertainty leaving will create. This uncertainty is likely to hurt us as our economy will likely be less competitive, less of a draw for investment, generate less growth and jobs; all which will mean lower tax receipts to spend on the public services we all cherish.
We can’t predict the future, though in the short to medium term (so up to 5 years or so) uncertainty will likely cause an unknown but very unwelcome degree of disruption. In the long term no-one knows, but it appears that smarter people than me expect that our economy will be slightly smaller as a result of leaving the EU by 2030, though all this is, of course, a guess.
If you want more information (and some pretty 📊) about the economic aspects of the referendum debate see:
Woodford Investment Mangement Brexit Report
Capital Economics Infographic (part of Woodford Report)
Centre for Economic Performance (LSE): The Impact Of Brexit On Foreign Direct Investment
IFS: Brexit and the UK’s Public Finances
CBI/PwC: Implications for leaving the EU
National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Forecast
What it looks like with the information I have is quite a likelihood of significant short to medium term pain for no predictable long term gain by leaving.
Science & Technology
Also, consensus of academics is clear for remain. Broadly because regional and global collaboration is how science works on big, expensive, blue sky (read: important) projects and that being attractive to foreign scientists is a good thing for a country. If we don’t do the science other places around the world will and that’s not good for us, our allies or neighbours.
A recent poll of 907 active UK researchers by the scientific journal Nature found that 83 per cent want to remain in the EU while only 12 per cent will vote to leave in the June 23 referendum. Their enthusiasm reflects the scientific success of Britain within the EU. Source
and:
More than a third of the research scientists working at Cambridge are overseas nationals. 23% are from other EU countries. A reflection of the international nature of modern scientific collaboration. Source
Further to this, it’s well documented what the UK’s technology and startup community think. Techcrunch summarises here.
We don’t pay £350 million to the EU per week
This number is intrinsically misleading. I’ve seen a few calculations and they all seem to say that, roughly when you take into account our Rebate and EU contributions into the UK that in reality we invest circa £160 million per week. Yeah, that’s less than half.
Leaving the EU would not mean that this £160 million could be spent elsewhere, says the IFS. A mere 0.6% dampening in our national income as a result of the uncertainty of leaving would reduce the public finances by more than this, leaving less to spend on services like the NHS. Again, without a crystal ball it’s hard to predict the longer term with any certainty with so many contributing factors although it’s reasonable to assume there will be some economic headwinds — if we leave - that are likely to impact how much we have to spend as a nation, although they’re impossible to quantify at this point.
Free movement and Immigration
The ONS — “The UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and the recognised national statistical institute of the UK” — says that net immigration to the UK in 2015 was 333,000. Of which, circa 55% was from the EU — the BBC quotes the ONS here. Yep, that’s just over half of net immgration this whole debate is centred around.
Truth is that we need both skilled and unskilled people from around the world. We need skilled labour to further build a competitive 21st century economy and we need unskilled labour so more British people can work in the 21st century economy (read: higher skilled, higher paid).
Plus, we offer immigrants and their families (as we always have) the opportunity to upskill and become part of our ongoing success. NB: Yes, as a country could do more at helping the unskilled already here to up/re-skill but that isn’t much to do with the EU.
So why not have a significant proportion of those who want to contribute to the UK come from our closest neighbours?
Both demographically to support our ageing population as well as financially, net immigration benefits us by being higher now than in the past. See this BBC documentary for additional evidence & debate from either side — an upshot is that typically migrants work, are younger, and contribute more to the UK than they take out: £2.5 billion more last year.
It says a lot about us that these facts have become so politically toxic (I’d argue due to misinformation at best) that no elected person seems willing to talk about them openly.
Sure, we could simplify the bureaucracy of bringing in highly skilled people from outside the EU (as a counter to James Dyson’s point); although I’m not currently aware of any reason the EU is preventing us from doing this, it’s just easier from EU citizens to live and work here generally as a result of working inside and alongside our closest neighbours.
The only true way to reduce immigration is to tackle the reasons why people want to come to the UK at source. Things like war, inequality, poverty, opportunity in their home countries.
However, as long as the UK is successful in the world it will be a magnet for people wanting better lives for them or their families. Isn’t it great that people want to come to the UK, doesn’t it mean we’re doing something right?
If public services are stretched in some areas the answer seems self-evident. Build more capacity to accommodate more people there; just as we need to build more houses. Long term it’s the right thing to do and we’ll hopefully avoid a point in the future where we have more retired people living longer and less younger working people trying to support them. This is the economic time bomb that Western developed economies are facing that I think means immigration should be talked about more openly, honestly and in a constructive way.
This, of course, is purposely ignoring Europe’s collective challenges with refugees and how the UK should demonstrate to the world how to behave with humanity in that separate issue.
Global Geo-Politics
It is well documented that in recent years the global political landscape has been shifting. Whether you cite the pull to the far left and right of politics in Mainland Europe, increased Russian aggression, Middle Eastern destabilisation (ahem, some of which was caused by us, by the way), or a redistribution in the global economy towards rapidly growing Asian countries, the world has not been in such a period of change for as long as I’ve been around, in my opinion.
All these large scale shifts mean collaboration with neighbours, allies and partners hasn’t been as important as it will be in the foreseeable future.
UK Politics
The existential ideological battles in the two main UK parties certainly appear a British flavour of some of these (often caused by justified dissatisfaction with politics) global macro trends. The referendum taking place is perhaps a direct reflection of this and the Tories internal battles.
It seems likely that in the result of us leaving that the Government will swing to the ideological right, with likely significant changes within our ruling party.
The social policies once proposed by the pro-Brexit Iain Duncan Smith were described by the European Court of Justice as ‘unfit for a modern democracy’ and ‘verging on frighteningly authoritarian’ Source
This is a parliament that has just passed the Investigatory Powers Bill that will make legal some of the broadest electronic surveillance abilities anywhere in the world and we want them to be more right wing? See here. And here.
Whatever your opinion on this — or whatever your usual domestic political allegiance might be — the fact is we won’t get to vote for or against any of the likely personnel changes within who runs the UK government until 2020. What aspects of our EU derived rights will have changed by then if we leave?
Full Fact (independent fact checkers) say that:
It’s correct that the EU has laws guaranteeing rights in these areas. A judgment by the Court of Appeal last year included a list of “EU-derived rights” that can be used in a British employment tribunal. It includes everything Mr Corbyn mentioned: “paid annual leave”, “discrimination (etc) related to sex”, “part-time workers discrimination” and “agency workers discrimination”. Source
Offering an opinion here: it sometimes feels that if we leave the EU then we’d need such a huge amount of political will, long term planning and sheer to dogged spirit to weather the storm to get to whatever utopia we’re now aspiring to that I’m not convinced the political classes are capable of such a feat in any way. Whatever side or party they can’t overcome arguably outdated ideological points to build a long term vision for the type of country we should be in an increasingly technological, global and ever changing world ← 😏 but this is perhaps a post for another day!
On the shambolic state of domestic politics represented in this campaign, I’ll let Boris sum it up from a couple of years ago:
Trade Deals
If we leave we’ll have to renegotiate everything. Even if we follow WTO rules this could take years, all adding to the uncertainty and potentially a negative drag on the UK both politically and economically.
An exit from the EU, for example, would cause the UK to lose the preferential access to other markets covered by 36 trade agreements with 58 countries negotiated by the EU. Source
This is even if you ignore that 45% of trade (and 55% of export profits) actually come from EU countries, that we’d be losing our tariff free status and would have to go through tough negotiations after possibly destabilising Europe further than it already is — 😵 of course they’re going to just give us a better deal than we have right now without us contributing, right?!?!
Even if we fallback on WTO rules whilst the discussions take place:
The WTO had never gone through such discussions with an existing member, he said, and even the procedures for doing so remained unclear. But the likely complexity of such talks, Mr Azevêdo said, made them akin to the tortuous “accession” negotiations countries go through to join the WTO. Even a small economy such as Liberia, which last year became the WTO’s 162nd member, took years to agree the terms of membership. Source
Also, the EU has negotiated together for forty or so years, the UK doesn’t actually have a department of government that negotiates complex trade deals, it’s a challenge to be optimistic about how long or how positive these negotiations might be for us.
It’s also an interesting statistic to note that between 1999 and 2014 we only grew the share of our exports to the rapidly growing BRIC countries from 5% to 8%. This, for me, raises the question if we’re less competitive due to increased tariffs, or just trade less with Europe how long will it take to not only create trade deals but actually create the trade itself. Capitalism doesn’t work by signing a piece of paper and then magic. And, of course in relation to trading outside the EU:
Nothing in EU rules prevents us from working hard to increase our trading with them. Source
Further Integration & Sovereignty
It’s been argued that it now makes clear sense economically for the Eurozone to get closer (sort of, if the single currency isn’t scrapped altogether as un mauvais gros projet), however for those EU countries outside of the Euro then it is perhaps is a central tenat of future reform that those not embroiled in the Euro need not face ever closer political & legal integration.
Whilst commonly derided, Cameron did negotiate some precursors to this earlier this year that are worth mentioning. For example:
It is correct that Prime Minister’s renegotiation deal in February did not change the EU treaties. It gives a commitment to do so in future. The deal says that the UK “is not committed to further political integration into the European Union” and rules out discrimination based on currency. It promises that this will be written into the EU treaties when they’re next revised, as the EU leaders making the deal have no power to change the treaties on their own. Source
I know, hardly a song and dance. It is, however, a start.
Check out Professor Michael Dougan’s analysis here in particular reference to sovereignty plus trade and the weight of independent evidence of how we benefit from the EU:
EU Institutional Reform
This guy is voting solely based upon EU institutions being undemocratic. To vote on a single issue is, in my humble opinion, negligent and somewhat naive.
If the question on whether to remain or leave were “are EU institutions undemocratic?”— and we could totally ignore all of the above — then it would be an easy choice.
However, of course the EU as it currently exists isn’t perfect, however, the UK will have no chance of reforming it from the outside, whilst still being highly likely to be impacted by it in future (as we can’t change geography). It seems that it’s become almost consensus within the Remain camp that should we stay in the EU, the UK would want serious reform of the institutions. There’s rumblings that we’re not alone amongst other member countries which would likely help.
I’m sincerely hoping that UK politicans come through on this if there’s a vote to remain, as it seems needed and feels like it would generally reflect the emotional sentiment of the UK generally. However, whatever happens on this, when weighed against all the other aspects of the decision it’s not enough to justify walking away at this stage, without doubling down on reform first.
WTF!
If none of the above helps support your decision making, then perhaps that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin want the UK to leave the EU might be a final feather. 😱 In what parallel universe have we now entered that they’ve got the right idea?
And finally…
So, all these things collectively are why I’m voting to remain.
No the EU — indeed the world — isn’t perfect; but you’ve got to be at the party to change the music.
Of course, it’s not easy to have an equal say in the future direction of a whole nation, perhaps continent, on imperfect data in a sea of noise and shouting; although it is one we should all take extremely seriously and weigh the total picture before casting our individual votes.
💯 You made it 🙌
Good luck & I’ll see you after!
Adam
