I cannot vote on the same side as Farage, Galloway, Gove,
Duncan Smith and Hoey, the politicians I hate most in this country. If I was
being kind I would say that they are a bit weird. Even the most hardened
anti-EU campaigner must admit that the Vote Leave leaders are a bit weird. I
know the pro-EU team have Corbyn and Osborne, but they are the equivalent of
Grimsby Town FC compared to the Barcelona of weirdness that is the Vote Leave
leadership. But if they were just weird, it wouldn't be a problem. Farage and
Galloway are dangerous bigots who each have a diametrically different vision of
the world and what Britain should look like, and I'm not sure either of these
Britains are ones where I want to live. The journalist Marina Hyde wrote an article on Nigel Farage last week for the Guardian, shortly after he had
launched that odious poster and shortly after Jo Cox had been shot dead. One paragraph
hit the nail on the head:
"There are many people I respect and admire voting leave – there are people in my family voting leave. I understand their reasons. But they must stomach the reality that a vote for leave will be taken by Farage and countless others as a vote for him, a vote for his posters, a vote for his ideas, a vote for his quiet malice, a vote for his smallness in the face of vast horrors. Is it worth it?"
Then there's Boris. Everyone loves Boris, don't they?
Certainly the Vote Leave campaign love Boris, because the weirdos have been
told to keep their heads down during large parts of this campaign for fear of
frightening the horses. I liked Boris, he was always good value and, at the
start of the EU campaign, I could easily see him leading the Tories into the
next election. However, it became clear from the early stages of the campaign
that this referendum was as much about buffing up Boris's CV as it was about
getting out of the EU. His media-orchestrated 'will he, won't he' decision gave
a pointer to what was to come. Subsequently, his contradictory views on EU (two
articles in the Telegraph; one 'we should stay in', another 'we should leave';
pro-Europe quotes in his Churchill book) together with a borderline racist
comment on why President Obama wants the UK to stay in the EU have undermined
any political credibility he had in my eyes. This referendum seems to have developed
into a referendum on the future of the Conservative party, and, unfortunately,
also a referendum on immigration.
It saddens me that when the Vote Leave campaign focuses on
immigration their poll ratings go up. It saddens me, because it reminds me that
there is a xenophobia in certain parts of this country, where the word
'immigrant' is spat out like a bad taste. In my view, immigration into the UK
over the past 60 years has been a good thing. We are a better country for the
cultural diversity that immigration has brought us. We are also a more tolerant
country, prepared to look outward beyond the White Cliffs of Dover rather than
focus inwards on our own problems. Prepared to welcome people who make a
valuable contribution to our society. Prepared to accept people who are in dire
need of help, often as the result of what our country has done to theirs. And it
is my view that we should be an outward-looking rather than an insular nation that
is at the heart of why I’m voting Remain.
I will be very disappointed if we vote to leave the EU, but
I suspect that, if we do, then there is a long way to go before it actually
happens. More than anything, however, I will be disappointed because it will
signpost that we are becoming a nation more focused on ourselves rather than
others. One of the internet clippings I saved was a shared post from one of my
Facebook chums and it sums up nicely how I feel:
"If the leave campaign was about how Britain could contribute more to the world if it left the EU then I'd be interested. But it's not. It's about how Britain can give less and take more from the world - and how it can keep the rest of the world out. Come on Britain, we're better than that.”
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