10 March 2016
A letter from Mr Don Urquhart
Sirs,
Confessions of a Europhile
I am trying to be objective about the EU referendum. We seem to be in a dialogue of the deaf at present. Politicians and apologists on both sides have their scripts which they trundle out regardless of the audience impact. In the hit American comedy series “Parks and Recreation” Lesley Knope, a town councillor, frequently reminds her constituents that Pawnee Indiana is 4th in the USA for obesity. She is not alone in her masterful use of statistics. I wish I had a pound for each time I have been told that Britain has the world’s 5th biggest economy.
Diary Entry 20/02/2016
It says it all. David Cameron has just emerged from 10 Downing Street to tell us what he has negotiated and why it is so important to stay in the EU. The BBC switched to Malcolm Rifkind for him to say what a fine job the Prime Minister had done. Is he the best spokesperson they could find? Cameron announced 23rd June as the referendum date. As they will all tell us, it is now down to the British people. We will be assaulted with unintelligible propaganda on both sides from people you would not trust to pop down the road for a packet of fags.
The Economy
I am not Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz or in fact any sort of economist, so I am left cold by expositions delivered by inners and outers of the relative merits for the UK economy. If anything I am inclined to not rock the boat. Again I would like a pound for each time I have been reminded of the need to hold nurse’s hand as prescribed by Hilaire Belloc. Who am I to believe, the austerity Chancellor, PR Dave, Blustering Boris or quiet and deadly Duncan-Smith? Instinctively and in reality I believe not a word coming from any of our political leaders apart from Caroline Lucas.
Follow Caroline?
Caroline believes that we have a better chance of achieving climate change goals if we are in the EU. She might be right. I am sure that in Brussels there are groupings of environmentalists who lobby for climate change policies. But I am struggling to see what difference our EU membership makes to this campaign. Will the EU climate change fans ignore those of the 5th biggest etc.? I cannot see it making a ha’porth of difference to the ultimate achievement of climate change goals or lack of. It could be that I just don’t understand how crucial the British contribution is in the EU environmental forums. Caroline might carry many of her fans with her but, much as I love her, she is not making a compelling case to me.
National Security
I bow to no one as an internationalist. I wish the UN had teeth but we all know its limitations. The balance of power thing is still alive and well. At the end of the day Russia, America and China need to step carefully around each other to maintain a fragile peace. The European Union is not a player militarily although the member countries might occasionally chip in to help the Americans out. Our EU membership does not appear to interact with our national security.
Immigration
However you dress it up it is not about climate change, national security or economics. It is about immigration.
I wish I had a pound for each time a politician has told me that immigration has been a net benefit. I’m sure that immigration has been highly beneficial for people running companies relying on cheap labour but if you are at the wrong end of society looking for accommodation, a decent education for your kids, reliable medical services or a bobby to sort out the local gangs you might not agree.
I am uncomfortable to be making a case against immigration. Friends and relations will queue up to discard me as racist, small-minded, xenophobic, whatever. I am not against immigration per se. The mass movement of people into Western Europe and away from conditions of war and poverty is a totally different issue from our membership of the EU. We can do as much or as little as we wish for these people regardless of the referendum issue.
Zoe Williams, who writes for The Guardian, has made the point that we should discuss the problems of people who are already here before talking about immigration. So here are my thoughts on the impact of the EU referendum vote on the issues confronting our current residents.
Housing
Instead of building affordable housing the government comes up with fancy schemes which are about housing but are not about getting everybody decently housed. Property Developers are getting rich by sitting on projects in order to create scarcity and force prices up. How will membership of the EU affect this situation? The most recent government statistics have 140,000 new homes being completed each year. Net migration is running at 336,000. I think the balance of probability is that membership of the EU carries with it an uncontrollable increase in the number of relatively poor people to be housed.
Education
I worry about struggling schools and I see plenty around me and in other parts of the country. They have many problems emanating from poor leadership and inadequate resources. There are over 1500 schools where the majority of children do not have English as their first language. I suspect that the same can be said of many of the teachers also, as the Department of Education pays agencies to trawl the world looking for people they can put in front of children as ersatz teachers. Some schools do wonders considering the exodus of disillusioned teachers and the unplanned arrival of pupils and parents who have difficulty with English. I ask myself what impact the EU has on struggling schools and have to conclude that staying in the EU almost certainly means more families struggling with English and therefore increased pressure on under-resourced schools.
Health
Whatever the government says, the health services are being cut. For example, our local A&E often has people queuing outside in the cold and A&E departments nationwide are being ruthlessly expunged. Membership of the EU means more people coming to the country and longer queues for vital services.
Crime
The police are being cut. Perhaps there was some fat, but I have the impression that if you’re burgled the only way of getting it investigated is if you have a hotline to some local bigwig. If you live in a block of flats where they do drugs in the lobby and enjoy intimidating the local populace it’s tough luck. Does the EU make this any better?
The Project Fear of the Outers has people from outside Europe obtaining EU passports and flooding into the UK. And they might be closet terrorists. If you’re living in an inner city you might feel inclined to take this into account when casting your referendum vote. And you might dismiss the argument that the Germans won’t be giving out passports for 5 years as wishful thinking smuggery.
Europhilia
I am a Europhile. I holiday every year in France. I lived in Germany for a while and have many friends there. I fully appreciate the contribution of the EU to war avoidance in Western Europe for the last 70 years. Emotionally I would be comfortable with a federation of European states, but Greece and the migrant crisis demonstrate that the project is too complex to deliver at this time. And it seems that membership of the EU has a negative effect on our crumbling public services. I wish it were otherwise.
Yours, etc
Don Urquhart
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