Sounding Off – EU referendum: Should we stay or should we go?

Mark Ryan Smith works at Shetland Museum and Archives. He has a PhD from Glasgow University’s department of Scottish Literature and is the author of The Literature of Shetland and various poems, stories and articles. Dr Smith has always been interested in politics and while he has no great enthusiasm for the EU he is frustrated by the increasingly rightward direction of the EU debate and sees a vote for Remain as the least worst choice.

The choice voters have to make in the EU referendum isn’t a very appealing one.

There is the vast, remote, bureaucratic monster the European Union has become. And then there’s Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage.

To anybody with views approaching the progressive end of the political spectrum, the news is that your opinions hardly matter at all.
Unlike the last referendum Scots had the chance to vote in, the idealistic, exciting, hopeful (or, in some folk’s eyes, hopeless) arguments of the left have not featured in any way. As the EU campaign drones on, nobody has much to say about inequality or poverty.

Racism has been a theme, right enough, but discussion of different races and nationalities has mostly consisted of middle-aged men saying things that are actually racist.

You don’t have to look very deeply to find xenophobia and racism in the arguments of the British right. But, in some of their views on European institutions, there are grains of truth to be found.

Europe is overly bureaucratic.

It is distant from the people it is meant to serve (how many people know who their MEP is, for example).

It is bloated and difficult to manage.

And, as the negotiations around the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) demonstrate, it is unquestionably secretive and opaque. These are not just the demented ravings of the right. They are valid criticisms. But does this mean that we should vote No in the referendum and leave the continentals to it?

Should we retreat into fair Albion and have nothing more to do with the whole notion of European political partnership?

If the polls have it right, the momentum seems to be with the anti-EU camp at the moment.

Not everybody who votes Leave will be a racist, but it is the worst elements of the right that stand to gain the most from a British exit.

Champing at the bit to get their votes in and their perceived loss of national sovereignty out, these groups point to the technocratic nature of Europe, the lack of transparency in decision making, the unwieldy nature of European institutions, the disastrous results of a poorly thought out monetary system, and tell us that we’d be better off out of it.

Britain ruled the waves back in the nineteenth century, so why shouldn’t it be great again, without having to deal with the French and the Germans and all the rest of those continentals who aren’t like us really?

But the question is, who wins if British people vote No? The answer is straightforward – it is the xenophobes and racists of the British right wing.

Not everybody who votes Leave will be a racist, but it is the worst elements of the right that stand to gain the most from a British exit.

Europe has enormous problems, nobody can deny that, but arguing for the fragmentation of the European project will do nothing to solve them. All that fragmentation will do is increase opportunities for the right (in Britain and other countries) to influence and enforce nationalist norms, to define their national characters in ever more narrow and bigoted ways, and to increase the stigmatisation and victimisation of people from other countries.

We should resist this at all costs.

But arguing against the fragmentation of Europe doesn’t mean we shouldn’t oppose its way of doing things. The trade agreements with America, for example, TTIP and TISA, seek to enshrine neo-liberal doctrine and strengthen the power of huge corporations to do whatever they want. How can these measures be resisted if we stand outside the room?

Isolating ourselves might seem like a reclamation of national sovereignty, and it might make us feel better to be at a distance from such oppressive legislation, but standing back and allowing corporate capitalism to become even more hegemonic and powerful is surely not a choice we want to make.

Instead of pulling away from Europe, shouldn’t we be pushing further towards it and really trying to exert some kind of positive influence?

The desperation of the Greek debt crisis a few years ago showed Europe at its best and its worst. The imposition of severe austerity on the Greek people, after they had voted against it in a referendum, wasn’t very nice to watch. This behaviour demonstrated both the inequality in a supposed family of nations, and the extent of neo-liberal indoctrination that exists at the highest levels of European power.

The EU, as we saw day after day during the Greek negotiations, has become a neo-liberal club that exists to support the interests of banks and corporations. If it had the best interests of European citizens at heart, it wouldn’t have insisted that the Greeks introduce measures that make life harder for many of its people.

But, and this is the other side of the coin, the Greeks still didn’t want to leave. Despite the bullying, despite the futility of their fight to find a third way beyond Grexit and austerity, the Greeks held tight to the idea of themselves as Europeans.

This doesn’t mean, however, that Europe, as an idea, is dead. Working together in the common interest is surely a good thing.

They had little power or likelihood of success in the negotiations, but the Greeks reminded us of the possibility that Europe could actually be an entity in which richer economies help poorer ones when times are tough. That didn’t happen, of course, but the fact that the Greeks resisted the fragmentation of Europe gives everybody else in the continent a glimpse of what Europe might one day become.

Europe, at the moment, is very, very far from being a supportive coming together of nations. It doesn’t enfranchise its citizens very effectively, and it acts as a support for a neo-liberal economic system. And it will, as it did with Greece, work extremely hard to make sure that no alternative system can emerge.

This doesn’t mean, however, that Europe, as an idea, is dead. Working together in the common interest is surely a good thing.

In this country we should retain the possibility that European cooperation could be a force for good, rather than drawing back across the north sea and pulling up the drawbridge.

The key point, and this is something the Eurosceptics never manage to grasp, is that we can never stand on the outside. In a world of globalised capital, we can never stand on the outside, North Korea excepted. The EU supports corporate power and transnational “free trade”, but exiting Europe will not save us from the oppressive forces of capital.

Massive corporations will still pay people low wages, offer little security and avoid taxes. Big businesses (usually with British government support) will still try to curb workers’ rights and union activity. Inequality will continue to increase and poverty will become ever more entrenched. Leaving the EU won’t make these problems go away – if the Tories remain in power they will get worse – but the coming together of progressive forces in Europe stands a chance of making some kind of difference. Although a leftist pan-European movement is almost impossible to imagine at the moment, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep the possibility in sight, somewhere in the far distance.

If we retreat behind national borders, we close ourselves off from being part of what could, one day, be a fairer, more democratic union of European countries.

I have very little enthusiasm for the EU as it is today, but I have far, far less for the right wing bigotry of the Brexit campaign.

Even if you don’t like the EU, standing against Johnson, Gove, Farage and their chums is still a worthwhile use of a vote.