Polly Toynbee has an excellent article in The Guardian on June 14th. She points out that, however well the dangers of Brexit are explained, people simply are not listening. Immigration and Turkey are what is on their frontal lobes. The reality is that An actual Brexit will mean little change, except a big drop in sterling and thus higher prices. The same migrants will be there and the same sense of powerlessness. The inevitable recession will mean more misery, the country will still rely on the City and property bubbles. Meanwhile most people will continue to have low skills, low productivity, atrophied public services, hopes raised and dashed. Boris and Gove will have changed expectations and may be unable to control the situation, especially as a triumphant, extreme right wing government will enact more stringent government cuts, and disillusionment increases
I spend a significant time in Britain and find the level of service, to be polite, disappointing. People are not trained for their jobs and don’t understand the products they deal with. To say “nothing works” is an exaggeration, but if it were not for the foreigners who populate the shops, the frustrations would be immense. What Britain tends to get are the young, enterprising Europeans, maybe better educated than many Brits, and only passing through as they improve their English. Ban them and I shudder to think what customer service will be like. Meanwhile, other migrants enter, somehow or other, their small boats beached in obscure coves, No one will be able to police that adequately. Any improvement promised is pie in the sky. (The whole thing is, in my opinion, a political ploy by the Right to get rid of Cameron and install a neoliberal government).
By all means, hold me to this! Prove me wrong!
One of the things Toynbee gets right is the horrific and inappropriate nature of the Leave campaign’s latest poster, which features a large crowd of refugees. It says we are at ‘breaking point’ and must take back control. The implication that leaving the EU will help deal with the refugee crisis is utter nonsense- refugees will continue to come regardless. If anything, staying in the EU allows us to deal with the crisis better, because it allows for international co-operation between border agencies and creates a mechanism in which refugees can be distributed in Europe more equitably.
More importantly, what makes the poster so vile is that it incites hatred against refugees; it implies that the refugees themselves are the problem, not the Syrian civil war that displaced them in the first place. One of my worries about Brexit is that it will empower the extremes in British politics. Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and general xenophobia are all already far too common. A vote to leave will only increase the levels of bigotry. Its no surprise that every far right group in the UK wants to leave the EU, as well as a fairly large chunk of the far left. Support for Remain is the highest amongst the liberal centre.