I don't vote often; I have a rather tortured relationship with democracy because whether or not I approve of a person or policy has very little to do with the qualities of that person or policy, and I think that it'd be better overall if people like me just shut the hell up and left the task of running stuff to those with an education and expertise. I voted in the last general election simply to add to the weight of votes against UKIP, rather than out of any positive choice. All the same, I shall put my scepticism about plebiscites and elections to one side in June, and I shall vote for the UK to stay in the EU. But I shall do so with a heavy heart. Why so? Because the terms on which the referendum is to be held are so dispiriting.
The syntactically-clunky wording of the referendum will be
Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?This was at the behest of the Electoral Commission; the European Union Referendum Act (2015) has a couple of formulations of the ballot. Technically, neither wording has anything much to do with what David Cameron has just negotiated; but for him to ditch that negotiation would be such an act of brass neck that it's fair to say that the bindingness of the referendum will be tied to the agreement reached on the 19th: should anyone try to depart from that agreement, there'd be significant pressure to overturn the referendum result. (I predict that that'll be UKIP's strategy whatever happens: insist that the deal is not being enforced properly by those dastardly Europeans, therefore they're acting in bad faith, therefore leave. The result will make no difference at all to the likes of Farage.) To all intents and purposes it's a referendum on an agreement that noone will read, and that the Leave side would reject no matter what it said unless it said "leave now". But the agreement is central; and this is the problem.
What bothers me is that by voting to remain, one is tacitly agreeing that the terms of the agreement represent the most desirable outcome. For my money - speaking as the kind of person who'd prefer to remain under almost any conditions* - this is not the case. It's not the case because it undermines why I consider myself to be a European.
For me, the case for the EU is, at root, an emotional one. Is a common market good economic sense? Probably; but that's not why I'm pro-EU. Is the EU good for peace? Probably, but, again, however important that is, it's not the thing that gets me. Does the EU represent the best arrangement for workers and for the environment? Probably; but all these things are added bonuses.
No: for me, the important thing is a deeply optimistic vision of a post-national continent. I live in, and am acculturated , a part of the world that, after inflicting on itself some of the most staggering moral fuckups ever (and inflicting them on the rest of the world, admittedly - but it was the self-infliction that mattered for what I have in mind here), decided to embrace a particular kind of future: a future that would take the best bits of a history dating back to Mycenean Knossos, and to carry them forward - and for the first time, to do so wittingly. We wouldn't hide from the fact that we'd produced Mengele; but we'd embrace the fact that we also produced Homer and Shakespeare and Goethe and Beethoven and Rabelais and Britten and Wren and Newton and Aristotle and Rembrandt and Cicero and Lorca and Spinoza and Watt and Voltaire and Sophocles and Holbein... and... and... and we'd make a conscious effort to continue that story - and to continue it in the service of a whole continent (indeed, the whole world, should the rest of the world want it: we wouldn't be precious).
In many ways, it's a restatement of Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment. I find it intoxicating. The idea that individuals who find themselves anywhere between Thessaloniki and Thirsk could take their place in the grandest of narratives is astonishing. That we'd be more secure, and richer, and happier, and all the rest of it would - I think - be a near-certainty; but it's the grand (and admittedly rather romantic - Treaty of Rome-antic!) vision that carries the weight.
A component of that vision is that anyone on this continent would enjoy the same rights, freedoms, and entitlements. We'd be working towards a truly unified Europe. (Maybe a unified world eventually - but Europe for now.) Vital to that would be the strength of mind to put to one side vulgar claims about the national interest. We'd aspire to a vision in which one's quality of life would not depend on ethnicity or sex, and - more importantly perhaps - would not depend on physical location: for as long as you're in the club, that'd be all that mattered.
This speaks to the garbage that the UK press has been churning out about European workers stealing "our" jobs, or "our" welfare: the aspiration would be that "our" would refer to... well, everyone in the EU.
(INTERLUDE: It's just occurred to me that this vision of the EU is somewhat like The Culture. Good.)
In the shorter term, of course, there would be disparities; but we'd have sufficient greatness of soul not to let that matter. We in the wealthy north-west would not begrudge assistance lent to those from the south or east, not least because the vision of what a true union could be would sustain us.
Is all this wildly idealistic? Yep. But what's the point of politics without ideals? And this is a good ideal.
The deal on which we're being asked to vote has none of that. It is small-minded, constrained from the get-go by the fact that it has only come about at the behest of the reactionary right. It sacrifices the grand vision of solidarity across borders with accountancy and a concern for the flow of pennies from one exchequer to another. It is a squalid deal, not because it's a bad deal given the terms in which it is framed, but because it is designed to win over just enough of the membership of that reactionary right to keep us vaguely members of the club. It's the terms of the deal, and the concomitant notion that we should be treating the UK as the focus of moral attention, that bother me.
For sure, it's more likely that we're going to stay in on these terms than we would be on my grand visionary terms. But if and when we do wake up at the end of June to see that we're still members of the EU, it'll be hard not to ask what the cost is. More: to the extent that the whole debate will be framed in terms of what is right for the UK - one among 28 motes of dust kicked up by the Treaty of Westphalia** - it'll be nothing short of embarrassing. I already feel the need to apologise for my compatriots every time I meet someone from the mainland. What on Earth must the rest of Europe think of the red-faced, small-mouthed, arseholes who so consistently set the political tone here? It'll be 67 times worse soon.
And that's why I shall vote to remain with a heavy heart. In a sense, the fact that there is a referendum on terms that were reached due to the electoral needs of the Tory party means that we don't get the chance actually to demonstrate support for the European project. We get to choose between an option that's contemptible, and another that satisfies itself with trying to fend off the contemptible. The latter is preferable, of course; but amputation is preferable to gangrene, and it doesn't follow from that that one would ideally endorse the former by choosing it. By voting to remain, it'll look like we're voting to remain on Cameron's terms.
I am not voting to remain on Cameron's terms.
Would that we had something a little less dispiriting.
* True story: in 1997, I chose to start writing my cursive "7" as "
** Now there's a thing: the fetishisation of the nation-state that drives parties like UKIP can be traced back to a treaty in which none of the nations of the UK played any part. How's that for European interference, eh? If only the xenophobic right had a sense of irony...
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