I’m a mixed-race Briton – and I’m backing Brexit.
Yes, the campaign has got nasty, and yes, it can feel like walking through fog to separate fact from spin, but it’s important to keep campaigning on facts and reason, as the result will have long-term impacts on the UK and Europe, well beyond any one politician’s individual career or ambition.
Firstly, let me say that I do not hate Europe and have never wanted a messy divorce from the EU. Like many Brits, I travel to Europe, do business in Europe, have friends in Europe and love European culture. Why we need to be governed by the EU to make that happen has never made sense. Indeed, the great British package holiday to the Med was pioneered in 1952 – the same year the European Coal and Steal Community was born, decades before the EU even existed.
Exactly what policies a post-Brexit Britain will have is not for the Leave campaign to decide – the whole point of the referendum is that it will give real meaning to general elections again. It is simply ludicrous that we are debating a power of recall for domestic MPs, but cannot recall an EU Commissioner. UK political parties are offering more devolution – the power to fix yellow lines – to elected city mayors, but our national government cannot bail out its own steel industry. The European Parliament is the only parliament I can think of in the developed world, where its elected representatives cannot propose legislation, and can only vote on what is handed to them by civil servants.
France and the Netherlands both rejected the EU constitution in 2005 referenda and were ignored. Ireland was told to vote again to give the “right” answer when her people rejected the Lisbon treaty in 2008. This is a fiat “democracy”.
Britain has seen waves of immigrants, from Jews to Huguenots to Belgians during the First World War.
We invited Afro-Caribbeans, Indians and Pakistanis to fill our skills shortages in the 1950s and showed compassion to Ugandan Asians persecuted by Idi Amin in 1972 – before we joined the EEC.
And we did this because the national character of Britain is one of giving, and offering a chance for success. That is a far cry from imposing an open door policy with a right to access an already-strained welfare state. There must, during times of recession, be a means of any country to put a brake on immigration, and to choose those who fits our economic needs best, from all over the world, not just one continent. How can that possibly be racist?
One of my great fears is not just about the EU we have today, but the risks of what a Remain vote will bring in the future – a question that people who want to remain in the EU have resolutely refused to answer. Will there be tax harmonisation? Will there be an EU army? Will the financial services sector see additional taxes? Could Britain’s seat on the UN Security Council be replaced by an EU one? No one can say with certainty.
We are told that the EU ensures we have human rights, but most of our critical rights were enshrined in law before Britain ever joined the EEC in 1973. The Monarch’s powers were curtailed in 1215, before any modern European country existed. The Slavery Abolition Act eliminated slavery across the whole British Empire 100 years before Hitler was elected to power. Equal pay was enacted in 1970, homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967, women were granted the vote in 1928, universal franchise extended in 1948, and the Race Relations Act entered the statute books in 1965.
Had the EU not strayed from being a free trade zone, then my vote may well have been different. I would like to see a post-Brexit Britain trade and cooperate with Europe, and continue to enjoy all the best that her countries offer.
I am far from a little Englander – I want Britain’s sights to be bigger, better, global and accountable.