The European question

Dear all,

This Thursday the British electorate will make a significant choice: whether to remain part of the European Union or leave it? Whether to be part of a regional community and ‘play with the other kids of the neighbourhood’ or to choose to keep to itself, to aspire to some form of ‘splendid isolation’?

The vote can easily go either way, there is very little polling that gives a good indication of the trend -- no precedents and no real history of how the voting demographic will choose. What is clear though is that it’s probably going to be very very close. Nobody really wants to make any predictions about the picture that will emerge on Friday morning.

The referendum has divided Britain -- across generations, across political parties and, perhaps most significantly, across class. While the middle class is seen to favour remaining part of the European Union, it seems fairly evident that large sections of working class voters feel strongly anti-EU because they perceive it as a system that allows other Europeans to come into the UK and take their jobs, their housing and their benefits.

The Leave campaign leaders have exploited this perception successfully, and even though many have been at pains to point out that EU nationals make up less than half of Britain’s net migration rate, the impression of hordes of non-English speaking workers flooding into Britain persists.

The other sentiment fuelling the Leave supporters is that the system is not democratic and major decisions affecting Britain are made not by their own elected representatives but by ‘bureaucrats in Brussels’. While there may be an element of truth in this as the EU has a rather odd structure, it is also true that Britain does send elected representatives to the European Parliament.

But, say critics, it is the Council rather than the Parliament that makes key decisions in Europe.

The EU laws and directives are also a source of irritation to many. More and more regulation is never popular with citizens and the EU regulates a great deal -- in all aspects of law -- employment, environmental, human rights etc. etc. But EU law is also progressive -- mandating fairer employment practices, more family-friendly policies (the right to both paternity and maternity leave) and more gender equality.

Read also:Between the Remain-Leave vote

So it appears that while older voters favour the Leave vote, younger voters are more inclined to the Remain camp; working class voters are more inclined to want to leave the EU and more affluent voters to want to stay. And at the top level of national politics, the referendum has divided political leaders and parliamentarians, particularly in the Conservative party. Thus you will see peculiar alliances -- like the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron sharing a Remain platform with London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, the man who until recently he’d been accusing of sharing platforms with ‘IS extremists’.

But at the end of the day, this might turn out to be a referendum mainly on the question of migration. Which might be a pity because, well, surely, it’s better to be part of a community that works together than to be outside it? Because there is probably strength in unity.

As for the question of jobs and work ethic, I think that what the UK really needs in this situation is to improve its system of education: make it more rigorous and competitive and international, and instil aspiration, ambition, motivation and discipline in young people…. To make them as employable as their EU counterparts.

Thursday’s vote is an important milestone in the politics of the post-20^th century world. Let’s see what choice the British people make….

Best wishes