Brexit notes

A safe departure

The government wants you to believe that Britain’s departure from the EU causes economic chaos. This is a lie. The government knows that we cannot unpick forty years of integration overnight. We will use a transitional agreement and leave the same way we went in. Gradually.

The official campaigns exaggerate and treat you like children. The truth is that Brexit is a process, not an event. The political realities will force the Government to use an off the shelf solution to ensure continuity of the single market. There is no other practical option in the time available. That means little or no immediate change for business. The scares are unjustifiable.

An amicable deal

The Eurozone economy is not in great shape. Anything that could cast doubt on Eurozone recovery is something the EU would seek to avoid. That is why we can expect a rational and careful negotiation.

The EU won’t be in a rush to make special concessions or everyone will want to leave. But Britain as a major economy has leverage and the EU will be mindful that it must do business with us in the future. We won’t get everything we want and we will make compromises but we will get a deal that minimises risks for both sides. Nobody can afford any drama.

What we get won’t be ideal – but it will be a good start. Brexit is only the beginning. We cannot expect huge changes to regulation inside a decade, we won’t be saving money to invest in the NHS and we won’t be closing down freedom of movement. Hard liners will be disappointed but it marks the first stage in the process. Leaving the EU.

A long road

The EU is far more than just a trade bloc. It is a government. Over the years we have dismantled our capacity for self- government and handed vital functions of government to Brussels. We will have to take our time to rebuild and evolve our way out.

We may decide to keep some EU cooperation programmes and continue paying for them. Brexit is not about ending EU cooperation. It’s about having control over our own policies.

As we evolve out of the EU we will draw down our EU commitments. As we take back control we will develop new ministries and departments resulting in the biggest shake up of Whitehall since the war. We will take back responsibility for our trade and aid policy and participate fully on global forums for trade and regulation - without EU supervision and control.

We will then push for democratisation of the global bodies that make the rules.

Our new settlement will require that we change our approach to domestic governance and initiate democratic reforms, returning powers to local authorities – making greater use of referendums.

A rebirth of democracy

Brexit is not about cutting ourselves off from Europe. Leaving the EU is not about immigration, trade or economics. It’s a recognition that we do not need to be a subordinate of a supreme government for Europe. We can do just as well without it.

The world has changed since the EU was created. They laws we live by are designed for a pre-internet world. The rules of trade are no longer made by Brussels. They are made by major international regulatory bodies. We don’t have our own vote or a veto in any of this. This is why we need to leave the EU. Too much is decided before MEPs even get to look at the rules – and they don’t know what they are voting for.

We need proper scrutiny of the laws we adopt and we can only do that if we are independent of the EU. It’s not about making our own laws. To make global trade work we will need global rules. But it should be us who have the final say.

Leaving the EU means our own government is free to innovate without the constraints imposed on us by the EU. It will mean that the buck stops with ministers and when we cast our vote at general elections our votes will actually matter for a change.

All of us know that something big needs to change. Brexit is the catalyst.

Best of both worlds

Trade is no longer about tariffs. It’s more important to remove red tape and things that cause delays. The EU has improved things inside Europe but it makes impossible barriers to the rest of the world. Britain can remain part of the European single market by joining the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). That means we have all the trade advantages of the EU but fewer restrictions. We can pick and choose who we do deals with and which other alliances we join.

We may still cooperate with the EU and it’s only fair that we chip in where we have common interests but leaving the EU means we get to decide what those common interests are. Free of the EU we can open up our markets to the rest of the world and create many new export opportunities.

Immigration

Nobody is proposing we close the borders. We will probably keep freedom of movement. Immigration is a complex subject and we cannot reduce it to simply blaming freedom of movement. Taking drastic measures won’t fix the underlying problems. One thing is for certain though. Nothing will change if we stay in the EU.

Much of the reason we see bodies washing ashore is down to obsolete international conventions encoded into EU law. Because the EU cannot reach agreement, there is no chance of it initiating reform. Britain can show leadership by seeking reform at the global level.

We won’t do ourselves any favours by making border controls tighter, passing on costs to business and landlords. But what we can do is reduce the need to come to the UK by having an independent trade and aid policy. Too much of what the EU does is corrupt and unaccountable. Britain can help develop emerging economies and can mediate in conflict resolution. That has always been the best way to reduce immigration and we won’t fix much by building walls. It’s cheaper to fix the problems at source.

Time for real change 

We have been stuck in a political stalemate for forty years and now the cracks are starting to show. Everybody realises something is wrong and that we need change but government can never reform itself. We will have to push them into it. Only a vote to leave will do that. If you vote to remain everything will stay as it is and your votes won’t matter. Brexit is our one chance to break with the failed ideas of the last century. It is a chance for meaningful change and a chance for real democracy.

A tragedy of eurosceptics

I couldn't be less impressed by Vote Leave or Brexit the Movie. I have no time for classic euroscepticism. It's well past its sell by date. Underlying all the empty rhetoric about going global lies a core or people who would have us revert to imperial measurements and restart the Commonwealth and haven't updated their thinking since the early nineties. 

The basic premise is still right. The EU is a fraudulent anti-democratic empire with no intention of reforming but the notion it stands in the way of Britain becoming a buccaneering libertarian utopia is just one that doesn't fly in a world of globalised regulation and global trade harmonisation efforts. The internet alone has rendered much of the debate obsolete for both sides of the argument yet this is lost on them. It's why the debate we're having today is nearly identical to the one we had in 1975.

What's lost is the complexity and depth of EU integration. We seem to do nothing but complain about how all pervasive the EU is yet at the same time entertain the delusion that we can tear up treaties and replace it all with a trade deal by teatime. Boris Johnson actually thinks like that. Assuming he thinks at all. Both the man and the argument have no depth at all. 

Worse still, I don't think Leavers fully comprehend what they are proposing. We've been at it so long that euroscepticism is just a reflex. A habit. In the minds of most eurosceptics we are simply asking for self-government once more. That was the nature of this request at one point but forty years down the line what we are actually demanding is a full blown revolution. 

As much as we are talking about a major reshaping of European politics we are now looking at a complete reordering of domestic politics and a transformation of UK governance. There is no going back to how things were because something now only work on a collaborative basis and some areas of EU activity didn't even exist in 1975. In some cases there is absolutely zero value in repatriating policy. 

In some respects the europhiles are right in that total sovereignty is a pipedream and is not going to happen. But what they propose is virtually none at all which is equally intolerable. Working out what we keep and what we choose to continue cooperation on will be the subject of very long and difficult debates. That obviously points to a phased withdrawal from the EU and it means that we will continue to pay for those areas of cooperation we maintain. And since we are likely going to take years to achieve this it is only good sense that we retain the single market for the time being. 

The kneejerk reaction against this is that if we choose a departure lounge or limbo process that we will get stuck there. Maybe, maybe not. that really depends on us and our domestic politics. The point being though, is that we will have the choice whether to diverge or not. I personally don't see a problem. In the EEA we'd have domestic control of key policy areas, we'd have an emergency brake on freedom of movement and we'd pay less into the EU budget. As a starter for ten that's a big improvement. The fact that the EU no longer makes its own regulation makes the influence argument redundant. We'd get our vote at the top tables back. 

The fact is that we will only diverge as far as domestic politics demands. There seems to be a perception that we can just win the referendum and return to the fields to live out our lives in a free country. But it doesn't work like that. To evolve out of the EU gravitational field will require persistent pressure and continued political engagement. 

George Osborne rightly remarks that Brexit will be a preoccupation of government for many years to come. There will be many political battles to fight after Brexit and a great many subsequent debates the establishment has been ducking for quite some time. We are looking to solve a cultural deadlock as well as a political one. That is why Brexit necessarily revitalises political discourse. For me, that's a prime motivator. I don't think I can stomach much more of our political discourse in its current configuration. 

There is a political naivety in euroscepticism in believing that leaving the EU is just a matter of signing a quick trade deal. That is why Vote Leave is running such a catastrophically inept campaign and it's why Brexit the Movie is utter rubbish. They don't comprehend the gravity of what they are asking which is why they have been so negligent in not setting out a plan. 

The problem for us is that rather a lot of MPs very much have grasped the complexity of Brexit and the consequences - and in calling the likes of Banks and Cummings to select committee they are wanting answers to two questions. Why and how. As it happens our dismal lot can't muster convincing answers to either question so we have Helen Goodman and Rachel Reeves reporting that the Leavers are a band of morons with demented ideas and I really don't blame them for coming away with that impression. It's just a pity parliament has zero intention of calling any expert witnesses.

And while such a non-entity of a committee is normally ignored, all eyes have been on it just recently. Journalists and opinion formers are looking closely to see if we have a legitimate grievance, but more importantly an alternative that won't result in one of the biggest political and economic calamities since the war. Certainly you wouldn't be in a rush to commit economic suicide and from listening to Cummings and Banks you would very much get the impression it was exactly that.

There's no official campaign position because we can't agree on one - even though reality suggests a staged withdrawal. The main reason why they would never publicly back the Flexit plan is obviously that it maintains the two things that their campaign is built around ending: it maintains Freedom of Movement of People, and it maintains more than half of the payments to the EU. That's the antithesis of their slogans.

And from their slogans we can deduce one of two things. They have forgotten the essence of why we want to leave or that they take voters for fools. Or both. If we are doing this just to prevent cheap polish plumbers and to save a few quid then it's not worth doing. But rather it speaks to their own ineptitude. To their minds Flexcit is "over-intellectualising" and it's not a message they can sell. They assume because they cannot sell it that it cannot be sold at all. Yet what we propose in Flexcit is paradoxical. It is revolutionary yet remarkably pedestrian. It's reasonable, progressive and safe and it doesn't burn the remainers the way that the aggressive Mr Cummings wants to.

In that regard, we had something we could use to get round the hesitation and prove that Brexit is safe. Cummings on the other hand wants Brexit to be hostile and does not care for the risks. Such is misanthropy and nihilism. And in the end you cannot get people to vote for misanthropy and nihilism. 

But underpinning it is primarily the motivation to control immigration. That is in the main thanks to Farage and his insistence that EU freedom of movement is open borders. It is the one thing standing in the way of having any kind of rational approach. It is also the wilful refusal to accept that Brexit is complex and will require compromise.

In saying Brexit is not so straightforward I have made many enemies within the Leave camp. We have seen all kinds of elaborate delusions cooked up to deny the reality and to disprove the notion that Brexit is complex, but in the end it is an exercise in self-deception and denialism. And that is the eurosceptic paradox again. The EU is a complex bureaucracy when it suits the narrative but when it comes to Brexit we can have it all wrapped up over a warm beer and a sandwich.

It is that anti-intellectualism that defines Farage, Ukip and euroscepticism as a whole and that is why euroscepticism has a track record of failure. It will be able to add a 2016 referendum defeat to its CV very soon. And while there is no movement more deserving of failure I find it ultimately heartbreaking. Years of effort and millions of pounds have been put into our cause all for it to be shredded by the obstinacy, lies, and ignorance of Farage, Cummings, Elliott and Banks at the last hurdle.

It's all the more depressing because that revolution is exactly what we need, we know how to do it, it's the right time to do it, and nothing is going to get better until we do it. The case for Brexit has never been stronger - but ultimately our dismal bunch would rather moan about regulation of kettles and foreigners. 

Brexit the Movie - as crap as we expected

I've been scathing about Vote Leave. I've been scathing about Leave.EU and I have been ultra critical of Ukip. I have done so with just cause and the consequences of their ineptitude should be self-evident by now. The lack of a Brexit plan in the public eye means we're fighting a losing battle for economic credibility.

It was all too predictable though, that the warnings would be ignored, and everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. The only surprise in this is that Boris Johnson has been more fatuous than even I expected.

This is why Brexit the Movie was so vital to get right. I very much did not want to have to pour scorn on it. It is roughly what I expected though. A piece of entertainment to keep the home crowd happy - and it still leaves the question of how we leave hanging in the balance and open to speculation. It is not the asset we might have hoped for. Just the usual talking heads.

Further to this, it is absolutely everything we didn't want to see. A whinge about the EU underpinned by libertarian fantasies of mass deregulation. The suggestion in itself implies a divergence from what are now global standards and barely makes a mention of what is happening in the real world. As bad as that is, it's a missed opportunity to break the debate out of its narrow cul-de-sac and give the debate some fresh energy. Instead we get all the classic decades old eurosceptic tropes.

Production wise you can't fault it. If you wanted a glossy package that really does represent the mainstream of eurosceptics then this is it. I think of it more as the state of the art epitaph of the cause as we know it. A marker in time that will show historians why we couldn't win.

What we need to demonstrate is that there is not only a better alternative to the EU, but also a safe path to accomplishing it. It must also stand up to the test of intellectual credibility. Brexit the Movie fails on all counts.

We get vague aspirational sentiments about trading with the rest of the world along with kipperish references to the establishment - but nothing that could tempt the swing voter that the risk is worth it. We suspected it would be this way but we were told it would be something different. Martin Durkin lied to us.

Yes, Mr Osborne. You'll have to do your jobs.

George Osborne has said of Brexit re-negotiations: "If we leave EU, House of Commons is going to be doing nothing else for many, many years".

He's right. The government will have to govern. It's going to take years to undo the damage. We are going to take years rebuilding our domestic expertise and design new policy. The whole Whitehall establishment will have to be re-ordered and redesigned. The Foreign Office will have to get busy doing what they should have been doing for the last forty years.

We are going to have to have serious debates about fisheries management. We are going to have to rethink our rural policy. We are going to have to take a very close look at our energy policy. We will need a serious debate about foreign aid, immigration and trade. We are going to have to rethink the way we do nearly everything. Leaving the EU means rebuilding our capacity for self-government and we will have to muddle through that process, kicking out the failures as we go.

What it does mean is that we are not bound by EU directives and targets which means we are free to innovate in policy making - which means we may actually see some change because ministers are then responsible. The buck stops with them rather than idly shrugging their shoulders and saying "the EU made me do it".

It will mean MPs don't get the time to make pettifogging incursions on our personal choices or debate the content of children's lunchboxes. Nor will they be free to have enquiries about Boaty McBoatface in select committees. They will have to get to grips with serious issues and behave like adults. And they are going to have to account for themselves when they get it wrong. So yes Mr Osborne. You and your ilk are going to have to do your jobs. That's what you're all afraid of, isn't it?

Choose life. Choose Brexit.

Better In is one of my favourite parody accounts on Twitter but is rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the real deal. The above tweet to me encapsulates the absurdity of the whole Brexit debate.

In many respects its an own goal by the Leave camp in making this an economic issue. It never has been an economic question. The EU is entirely a political project and the question is one of whether we wish to remain a supplicant of a supreme government for Europe. This is why we needed a plan in the early days to stop it being a boring debate about vague economic metrics, with either side getting into an ever more futile bidding war with arcane statistics that nobody can believe.

As it happens, whatever Gove might say, even if we wanted to go all the way out in one hit, it's just not a practical or achievable ambition. There is so much to the EU that it would take years even to chart the subjects for debate. The debate about tariffs and trade doesn't even begin to give depth to the Brexit debate.

To put it in the most basic terms, a sudden withdrawal and cancellation of all EU cooperation would be suicidal. If you need to amputate an infected limb you do it with care. You're not going to improve matters hacking at it with a chainsaw. Whether hard liners like it or not, we are going to have to evolve our way out of the EU and the referendum is just a mandate to pull the integration lever into reverse.

What we will see at the end of Brexit negotiations is just an acknowledgement that Britain is no longer under EU control but for the time being things stay as they are while we design our respective replacement policies. We won't see any noteworthy moves for a decade at least.

To treat Brexit as an entirely binary proposition is a complete misreading of what will occur. As yet I have not read a single Brexit assessment that takes account of what will actually happen in reality not have I seen one that takes account of the trends in global regulatory harmonisation and the opportunities it presents for the UK. Moreover, these economists cannot say whether the EU will achieve any of its trade deals currently in progress or what the ramifications of them are.

As ridiculous as it is to try and predict what will happen in fifteen years, you wouldn't get close to an accurate estimation without having considered all of the variables and every one of these bogus projections is obsessed with little Europe, paying no attention to what is going on elsewhere.

They key arguments they underline is that Brexit will cause uncertainty. Well of course it will. Big changes disrupt projections based on the status quo. So they are not saying the EU is beneficial. They are just saying they don't want big changes. This is not because the status quo is ideal for them, it's just that the status quo is what they have geared their business models to. And that's what business must always do - adapt to meet the conditions or die.

What they are saying to us is that it is we who must adapt to the status quo and arrange our lives and our politics for their convenience. That's not how democracy works though. It's not our job to serve them. And that's what Brexit is really about. Reminding them who is in the service of whom.

It is not a question of numbers on a screen. It is a matter of our lives and how we choose to be governed. And that's why Brexit will make us better off in the long run. We are always better off when government is acting on behalf of its own people and arranged to suit the needs of the public. At present, the government is working in the service of a political dogma - that of EU supranationalism. The EU is entirely concerned with one agenda only - the accumulation of power.

By leaving the EU we are departing from that political orthodoxy to say that our government must primarily serve the people. In that we will be making big changes to policy over time and it is the job of business to rise to those challenges. They will be listened to and heeded but not obeyed. They have no right to be obeyed. In this, some of those businesses will struggle to survive. Others will rise to the opportunity. That is really what capitalism is about - reinvention and revolution, letting bad ideas fail.

By maintaining the present paradigm we are saying no change. What that means is no change to the trends either. And the trend is ever more corporatisation of public services, power flowing away from the people and ordinary people becoming ever more voiceless and consequently disengaged. And that's really what our rulers want. The less engaged we are the less democracy will interfere with their plans. That is why China, India, America and the EU want us to stay in. They want fewer people in the room when the deals are struck.

The fact is though, because of the enormity of Brexit, the pace of change will be glacial at first. No greater than that which business must already adapt to. They are welcome to voice their views but at this point they have become activists in adding to the torrent of misinformation. It is at this point they become malign and unwelcome. Bogus projections on the basis of flawed models may carry prestige but they are little more than propaganda.

What we do know is that there will be a period of uncertainty but it will be shortlived. After the referendum, the government will be keen to reassure and the truth will finally come out that Brexit doesn't mean the sky falls in. There may be a short and marginal recession, but most people will be hard pressed to notice. The question we must each weigh up is whether it is worth that disruption.

To my mind, Brexit means a future where the UK is back in charge of its own destiny, free to make policies best suited to global developments and free from dogmatic restraints that prevent us making necessary democratic reforms. If that is the outcome and there is a price to pay then I will gladly pay that price. Mainly because Brexit is not about being a few quid better off. It's about the future and the Britain we hand to the next generation. Do we want Britain to be a prosperous independent nation or a supplicant of a failing bureaucracy hamstrung by its own inertia.

And I think people know this. That is why the lead campaigns are so utterly contemptible in reducing it to an economic question. I am not by any means a rich man and I may be a bit worse off financially for a time if we leave, but nothing could be further from my mind as I write this. There are very real adult considerations here that transcend our "what's in it for me" culture.

And we have all made those decisions. I'm sure every one of us at some point has quit a well compensated job for a better life quality or to change direction. I have. And that's what this vote is about. Sometimes you have to make a tough choice with complications just in the knowledge that it's the right thing to do and the right time to do it. None of us knows what the future will be or even if our gambles in life will pay off. But in that regard staying in the EU is like staying in that desk job you hate, watching the clock, counting every hour til Friday as it saps you of your vitality, curiosity and energy.

As it happens, I have made some poor choices in my own life, as indeed voters also make poor choices. And there are consequences. And we live with them. But that is what adults do and without that freedom of choice, there is nothing left but stagnation and a slow march toward death. Choose life. Choose Brexit.

The remain camp are in deep denial

The supposed advantage of being in the EU is that we have more resources to tackle problems by working together. But then resources is something the EU has never been short of. What is at question is the effectiveness of the response and the decision making process.

When we look at the EUs aid and humanitarian efforts we see it firehosing money at international NGOs and as with Turkey, there is always money in the kitty for a bribe here and there for political expedience - but we are still not seeing an effective resolution to various problems. For all the soft power the EU supposedly wields a civil war still rages in Ukraine. Meanwhile we can look forward to another summer of bodies washing up on Europe's shores.

We see condemnation of Hungary for building a wall along the borders, but that in itself is an act in response to the EU's failure to take action. We see Greece facing the double whammy of economic reform while little is done to assist with their influx of refugees.

For years we saw fish stocks decimated while nothing was done. There were too many special interests at lay standing in the way of even having a debate let alone reforming the system. The reforms we got were a decade late and still more an attempt at making the problems invisible rather than resolving them. Whenever we get a crisis we see that crisis fester until it is an emergency.

Then when it comes to trade we find that same dynamic exists. We have seen years invested in several bilateral deals between the EU and the US and India, only for them to stall and fall flat. Masses of investment that never pays off. Everything takes forever and nobody can reach agreement. Is this really how things should be run?

In almost every crisis we see the effects of EU inaction and each time the EU refrain is that things would work better if only more power were in the hands of the few. Tyrants have always said this. And yet strangely we continue to believe them.

As much as the EU's design makes an effective response improbable, it is also a political stasis field. While everyone's prosperity is pegged to what EU diplomats can achieve the pace of growth is begged to the slowest ship in the convoy. It's like trying to take off with the brake parachute deployed.

As much as Britain could be out there getting the best for us, Spain could just as easily be seeking greater harmonisation with Spanish speaking South America. But while the EU holds all the cards nobody gets what they need and nothing happens in good time. EU member states do not have the freedom to come together without going through the EU middleman - and whatever it is, to coin a phrase, we go to the back of the queue.

In a world where we need consultative policies and rapid response the insistence that what must apply to one must apply to all is not only bonehead and suicidal, it is also redundant. With the world now working through the WTO to harmonise regulations and standards, nations are better off seeking harmonisation with their strongest trading partners on a sector by sector basis. Sometimes that may mean working with Europe - sometimes not. But while we are in the EU we don't have that choice.

Nobody in the Brexit camp that I know of wants to end intergovernmental cooperation, especially not with Europe. What we are saying is that the rigid and inflexible EU is an inhibitor that holds all of us back. As a system the EU has never worked properly, never will and is not fit for purpose in a world of multilateralism.

Yet still, after forty years of procrastination, delay and self-deception we are still told that we are stronger in. They say "we know it's not perfect but we should stay in and help reform it" despite the fact repeated attempts have failed. The very construct of the EU is designed to resist reform. It is the ultimate in denialism. They know it doesn't work and for entirely dogmatic reasons they ignore the stark reality that it does not want to reform.

The EU has never been about trade or economics. It is entirely a political experiment based on the flawed idea that nations deprived of democracy cannot go to war. It is a bankrupt idea. As a rule liberal democracies don't go to war with eachother. As a post war mechanism it may have had some influence in getting us here but to continue with the post-war settlement without evolving out of it is insanity.

Nations prevented from getting what they need - to be told "wait your turn" each time will grow weary and impatient. We will see increasingly unilateral acts taken while the EU looks on and does nothing. Poland is doing exactly that.

The question is whether we can afford to remain in this political choke-hold. Without rapid and democratic resolutions to problems, problems will fester and grow septic. It is no coincidence that far right movements are popping up all over Europe. The EU is creating the very conditions it was designed to prevent.

They say the Britain should be outward-looking and internationalist and no Brexiteer would dispute that. Nor would they deny the importance of collaboration and cooperation. But the EU represents none of those things. It stifles cooperation, it controls the terms of collaboration and causes delays that make effective resolution more difficult.

And while it suits the narcissism of europhiles to believe that their experiment represents those values we start seeing the basics unfold and good governance starts to break down. Governments are increasingly constrained by bad rules dreamed up in the last century. And of course it's never the fault of the EU is it? That's the beauty of directives. It means having control but never taking responsibility.

The truth is the EU is already redundant. It is superseded by several global agreements and will increasingly find it is an anachronism. Instead of breaking down barriers we will see the EU creating more as it fights for relevance. Their vanity and hubris prevents them from seeing what their dream has become. And we will pay for their arrogance. We will lose out by not being at the global top tables and we will fall behind as we wait for the EU to complete that perfect deal that never comes.

While Britain is gradually erased from the top tables and unable to break out of stagnation, the EU will start to break. The single market will disintegrate as member states take ever more legal and moral shortcuts and Britain will be subsidising the competition while we still adhere to the rules. We may actually be the very last member state who will implement the rules we agree to. By then the EU will be as irrelevant as the Commonwealth is now. An empty shell that we maintain largely for the gratification of our euro-elites so they can pretend their empire still functions.

The time has come to admit that the EU is a failed experiment. It is time to break with the past and make room for a new global system of cooperation and trade. It is time to let Europe be as good as it can be without the dead weight of supranationalism. We have two choices. Stagnation and decline or democracy and growth. If we continue to indulge the delusions and vanity of our politicians we will pay a heavy price. Their denialism will destroy Europe and demolish Britain's prosperity. We can't go on listening to their lies.

Newsnight

The left are getting their knickers in a twist over vacuous Beeboid, Laura Kuenssberg, and "BBC bias". It is wholly imaginary. What they are noticing is not bias or even bias by omission. What they are noticing is the absence of any kind of sophistication in their political analysis. All you get from the BBC on any given subject is thin gruel dressed up as news.

They have lost the capacity for serious reporting. The industry is run by children for children. Some time ago they decided that stuffy BBC reporters talking about adult things on an adult level was exclusive and elitist and somehow excluded the plebs, because, y'know, the plebs out in the shires are thick. Now the assumption is that everything has to be dumbed down because these people genuinely believe they are the cream of the crop and that everyone is at least as thick as they are.

It became more important to have vacuous bimbos of both sexes flashing pearly white teeth against a backdrop of primary colours so you wouldn't notice the 6am transition from news to the Teletubbies. The idea that it should serve a social function and inform people is just one of those backward ideas all those old white men decided in years past. And when television was opened up to commercial channels, somehow the BBC decided it was their job to compete in the race to the bottom, mainly to see who could get there first. Attracting audiences became their only mission.

At some point they decided that Noel's House Party was roughly the right format for morning news and ever since the model has nosedived enough to make Mr Blobby pranks look like cerebral news content.

As to whether there is anything sinister going on, I sincerely doubt it. You see, to be biased toward a particular outcome you first have to believe in something. You only go to the trouble of hijacking the media if you have a message you want to promote. These people don't. They are all interchangeable. Hacks penning for the Torygraph are just as likely to go work for the Guardian or Newsnight. It's a closed loop with its own narratives - and to assume they would deliberately leave out more sophisticated arguments is to assume they are capable of even understanding them. To them, all is trivia.

It's not about what happened or what is likely to happen. Everything is measured against their narrative on the basis of what they consider important. But because they live in a bubble they simply don't possess the necessary faculties to identify that which is important. Adult journalism is a lost art.

They have some self awareness, noting that there are editorial pressures to follow every bandwagon, never being given the time to add depth to anything, seeking only to fill airtime in a rolling twenty four hour news cycle, but the reason it doesn't change is because they don't want it to. The lifestyle suits their vanity. It will only improve when we solve the core problem.

While we could demand that the BBC restore its content to a more sober format, demanding depth rather than volume, it would be a waste of time. You are asking the impossible. Like asking a dolphin to ride a bicycle. Dolphins are superficially smart creatures who can comprehend certain concepts and may even understand how to ride a bicycle, perhaps even comprehending the gravitational forces in play, but a dolphin is simply not physically equipped to climb out of the water and get pedalling, even if the bicycle has stabilisers.

What the industry needs is creative destruction. It cannot reinvent itself same as government can never reform itself. So we need to fix the ultimate problem. You. You are the problem because you keep indulging in it, you keep watching it, listening to it and making impossible demands of it.

There is no such thing as unbiased media. The only way you can get close is to do what the BBC has done - strip it of any vitality, curiosity and civic duty. This is what you wanted so this is what you've got.

More to the point, if the public do not behave like adults, they cannot expect their media to treat them as such. The moment you decided to depend on the BBC for information was the open invite for them to treat you like cattle. And when you think about it, it's no less than you deserve.

The EU's dogmatism is dangerous for Europe

When the PM says Brexit may mean war he is cheapening the debate. As it happens, I think war is already on the way, I don't think we can avoid it, and I don't think Britain being part of the EU will prevent it. Quite the reverse.

I don't see Turkey as a happy country. I see it turning ever more oppressive until there is either a civil war or an even more authoritarian regime. Either way it is going to see an upsurge of refugees headed for Greece and subsequently up to Europe. Possibly Syrians, possibly Kurds. That won't end well.

Meanwhile I see Greece eventually being quarantined from the Eurozone. It will be treated as an economic leper colony and will be hung out to dry to deal with the refugee problems. Nobody will lift a finger and Germany has spent its political capital taking on the refugees they already have.

I also don't see Poland as a healthy country. We could see civil strife there too. By rushing into the EU pressing ahead with massive economic and social reforms a lot of people have been disenfranchised and pushed out. Going from one power bloc to another they have never really had the chance at self-determination - and consequently nothing has been resolved by democratic means. As much as their regulatory order has been imposed on them, so has their social order, when clearly not everybody is ready for what we might call liberal Western values.

I also see the Balkan states looking elsewhere. They will sign agreements with the EU but to them, they will be mere ink on a page. When economic assistance doesn't come, they will look toward Russia. Serbia already has. As to Ukraine, who knows? The idea that peace is underpinned by the EU is a europhile fantasy. When war comes, the EU will be powerless to stop it, just as Yugoslavia was powerless to prevent the breakup.

Moreover, because the EU will insist on a common unified position, they will find a consensus impossible to reach. I can't see Germany wanting to be involved militarily in Eastern Europe - nor do I see them being especially welcome. And so it's easy to guess what the response will be - delay, procrastination and self-deception.

There will be summits, which will set up multiple working groups which devolve into silos. To report in 18 months. That is the EU's idea of urgent action. They will fiddle as Rome burns and everywhere else along with it. I don't know exactly what will start it all off, but I do know Britain's membership of the EU will be irrelevant. It will fall to Britain to act under a NATO banner. Because it always does.

But this is why Britain needs to leave the EU. If we look beyond the parochialism of the Brexit debate and the empty rhetoric of europhiles, we see a Europe that is hugely fragmented. We're not the only member state with a vibrant eurosceptic movement. If the EU has a mandate at all it is wafer thin, and it most certainly does not have a mandate to press ahead with its holy grail of federalism.

What Europe needs now more than ever is a multilateral platform for communication and cooperation, but one that exists to facilitate better relations and stimulate mutual assistance rather than pressing an alienating agenda upon members. Unless the EU can break away from its dogmatic idealism we will see it break up entirely. And that really will mean war.

What we need is a reformed EU. And by reformed, I don't mean the tedious tinkering of David Cameron. It needs a total reform of its institutions and a fundamental shift in its philosophy. Unless it can ditch the dead-end supranationalism it can only fall to pieces.

But this is not going to happen unless the UK leaves the EU. The only thing that will prompt such reform is an existential shock to the system. Brexit will galvanise other anti-EU movements within the EU. It will prompt an urgent Europe wide discussion on the future of the EU. One which is at least a decade late.

The EU has only ever had one consideration: the advancement of its own supranationalist agenda. The EU chooses to remain wedded to the symbolism of the European Union at all costs, even the destruction of the Union itself. It will not step out of its comatose fantasy to face the facts in which it is now deeply immersed.

Europe is changing. Allegiances are shifting, populations are moving and borders are being redrawn. On on the global level the EU is struggling for relevance as it is replaced and superseded by global accords and conventions. We need to ask if there is any longer room for the federalist idea and whether its inherent inflexibility and hostility to reform means there is any longer a place for it.

The idea of a European superstate is one that remains largely in tatters. The Euro is as far as it can ever go. Enlargement is less about adding new members as it is putting neighbours on a leash. As an entity it is fighting for survival. As long as it remains wedded to supranationalism - depriving members of democracy, and freedom to pursue their own trade interests, everybody is stuck in a stalemate. That's not going to address the fractious issues within Europe, nor will the pretence of unity. If anything, we are storing up greater problems for the future.

If we stay in the EU it will be seen as a mandate for business as usual at a time when it is hated more than ever. We will see a perpetuation of the same mentality where nothing is ever done until crisis becomes emergency - until member states are forced to take unilateral action. And when that happens, in order to preserve the delusion, nothing will be done. That's why there are walls in Eastern Europe and that is why they will stay.

For too long we have indulged the EU in its narcissistic fantasies, but we are approaching crunch point where we need real action. That is not going to come from the EU. While we perpetuate the myth that the EU underpins peace we will find ourselves unprepared and poorly equipped for war.

To my mind the most dangerous delusion of all is that we are safe so long as we continue to delegate our foreign policy to the EU and dismantle our capacity to wield soft and hard power. It is a hubristic denialism to pretend things can carry on as normal and to say that the EU can and will reform to meet the challenges of the new century is the worst kind of self-deception because it ignores forty years of evidence.

If Britain does not show leadership by leaving the EU we will leave the post-war settlement in tact - a solution designed in haste by old men scarred by events of the last century. We cannot afford to be held hostage to the ideas of those men when the world is a totally different place and wildly different from the one they ever imagined.

The notion that Europe could avoid war by turning their backs on democracy was an intellectually bankrupt idea then and it is equally so now. That we have avoided war for seventy years is not because of the EU. It is because that order was underpinned by cold war battle lines. Now we see those lines are fluid, and the old order has gone.

Now the threats are more fluid, closer to home and harder to predict. The best response to that is more democracy, not less. Nations unable to innovate and design their own responses to stresses are nations that will tear themselves apart. It's no coincidence that Scotland is flexing for independence. And if the UK is struggling to hold together, take a look at the ethnic battle lines in Eastern and Southern Europe. If you still think the EU can hold that together then I have a bridge to sell you.

Thanks, but no

Mayors are a bad idea. Having them promotes the idea that one person should be in charge. And by creating such a position, powers will gravitate to that position and away from the people and those they elect for their district. And when that singular person is given powers they will inevitably buy into the misapprehension that they have a mandate to impose their stupid ideas and faulty moralising on to an otherwise functioning city that got on perfectly well without.

Worse still, we then get into US style identity politics whereby things like colour and faith, which are simply not an issue, become entirely central to the debate. For some reason it is a big deal that the London mayor is of Muslim heritage and that the Bristol man is black. Could anything matter less?

Because we focus on individuals and not outcomes we end up knowing more about their family lives than their ideas. And really that's what the media wants rather than what we need. I'd quite like to know what London intends to do about its runway capacity problem yet for some reason I know the mayor's dad was a bus driver. Like I could give a tinker's damn?

And then there's this faulty idea that our cities need leaders. Where do we need leading to exactly? And we know how this works in reality because there is the American experience to draw from. What it means is arranging everything not for the advancement of the city but to hold power within the tribe for its own sake - buying off key interest groups with public funding. Rather than being an enhancement of democracy it is the precise opposite of democracy. It's electoral cronyism.

Moreover, the last thing we want to do is entrench a hierarchical system. We elect people for our own districts to serve us. If the city has a higher office which can overrule the most local representative, without seeking collaboration or cooperation we might as well ditch the idea of councils entirely.

The fact we have them at all is another landmark on the road to our democratic endarkenment. Our morons think the answer to our political ennui is to have more empty voting rituals, and the more votes we have the more democratic we are. Yet all we achieve is establishing yet more expensive tiers of government which do little to improve anything - but create yet more busywork for nonjobbers who produce nothing, making yet more decisions which are none of their business, further entrenching political disengagement and disillusionment. They just don't seem to get that whatever the problem is, the answer is never "more politicians".

It takes a village...

Toby Young has admitted that running a school was “harder than he thought” in a huge climbdown ahead of his departure as CEO of a flagship Free School. The Tory columnist and broadcaster said he had been “arrogant” to presume schools could improve just by having high expectations and said he regrets criticising teachers, state schools and local education authorities.

Predictably, teachers are viewing this as a vindication. I don't think it is. All it proves is that a bubble dwelling Toryboy hasn't got the stamina to apply himself to anything in the real world - which shouldn't come as any surprise to anybody. The principle of autonomous schools is still an entirely valid one and has more potential to give kids a real education rather than shunting them through a micromanaged box ticking cultural concentration camp administered by council pinheads.

I don't have that much sympathy for teachers either. They constantly complain of red tape and all the unpaid hours they put in, but like so many people they confuse activity with productivity.

So much of what I see given to children as education is pre-prepared coursework none of which makes any particular demands of children. Not being involved on a day to day level I can't say exactly what is wrong but I do see the finished product quite often and I am less than impressed.

I am often staggered by the inherent lack of curiosity in young adults. It's evidenced by the lazy complaints we hear that the government is not giving them the information they need to be able to make an informed choice. As a society we have somehow raised people to expect that it is the role of the government to provide them with everything even down to doing their thinking for them. Knowledge of civics is absolutely feeble. They have a head full of rights but no idea what their part of the bargain is.

It suggests to me that kids are spoonfed with what they need to pass an exam but not inspired to keep learning and lack the skills to learn. I'm often surprised how lacking people are in basic research skills. We have a population of intellectually incurious people.

In that regard, I think it's because we have failed to make real demands of children. Toby Young was right about that. Kids need to be drilled in the rituals of learning. Process and repetition. They also need to be given responsibilities of their own. It's not surprising we have adults now who cannot manage their own affairs.

How you reform the system is a different question though. The Free Schools idea is not a bad one, but it's the destination, not the solution. Simply starting up that kind of school is not going to work because there are key elements missing.

In some respects we place far too much emphasis on the schools. You can send your kid to a sinkhole and it won't matter if the parents do their job right. You can still produce an achieving and curious person if they are given the proper environment and the right discipline. In order to have schools that do their job you also need parents that do their job. And since the parents themselves are the product of this system that produces incurious idle zombies with no real lust for knowledge, you can't really make too many demands of schools.

First and foremost I would stop looking for the magic bullet. No single system is ever going to produce uniform results. Uniformly bad maybe, but there is no single solution. Moreover, teaching faces more challenges than ever before. We're dealing with a Netflix generation where attention spans are short. Kids are technology addled and massively overindulged. I can't say for certain what the solution is not that. That is for the teachers to work out. But I know it will take more than tinkering with the management model or the system of administration to get real results.

The schools are only one link in a long chain. I don't expect we will fix schools until we fix the adults. I suspect that we have failing schools because of a system wide failure to get citizens engaged and taking responsibility for governance. Schools are bad for the same reason people don't vote. Whatever the job is, people demand the right to delegate it to someone else.

The model of Free Schools, based on civic particpation can only work if you have civic minded people in the habit of contributing - and that is not going to work until we fix our democracy. Until we start seeing government as something we own and are responsible for rather than a service provider, we cannot expect anything to function well. A social contract only works if both parties do their bit.

Forced to look inwards

There was a time when it made sense to build a common area for trade, harmonising regulations and getting rid of barriers. It still makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that area ending that the borders of the European Economic Area. The rest of the world is broadly in agreement that things work better if we're all working to the same standards and regulatory conventions. That is we see new ratifications of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement and that is why we see Sudan and New Zealand signing up to Codex Alimentarius.

It makes sense for all nations to come together in various forums to discuss the barriers and difficulties and agreeing compromises or identifying areas where common cooperation would be beneficial to all. We can also identify opportunities where a little investment would open up new markets. A road, an airport, a new port between us costs little, but the potential advantages for all are huge.

What doesn't make sense is a powerbroker sitting in the middle of it deciding how a bloc of twenty eight nations must vote. Nor does it make sense for that bloc to then adopt common agreements then modify them so they are different from the world standard. As much as that limits trade growth it also goes against the founding principles of the EU. If common rules were a good idea in 1975 then they're a good idea now.

And if it mattered for Britain to be in at the top table in 1975 to help shape those rules then it follows, since we are seeing the globalisation of regulation that we should break with the past and join the new single market. And this is what Brexit is really about.

The European Union has in most respects reached its high water mark. To complete a genuine single market it would need certain extra powers to standardise banking and telecoms throughout. We may have free movement of people in theory but the practicalities of shifting into another tax authority are not by any means straightforward. Ironically, it is global rules that make setting up a bank account in another country more difficult than we would like.

The only way the EU could ever be what it set out to be is to have a great deal more power than it has presently. Some solutions do require a degree of unilateralism. Sometimes any decision will do just so long as it is a decision. But the EU has repeatedly demonstrated is that the inherent structure means it is incapable of making a coherent decision and instead becomes a matrix of fudges.

That is why Roy Jenkins said in 1999 “There are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe. One is to participate fully and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from the inside. The other is to recognise that Britain’s history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be other than a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member; and that it would be better, and certainly would produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly, and if possible, reasonably amicable withdrawal.”

And so by that estimation we must ask if we ever can participate fully. We can't. As much as joining the Euro is, to my mind, a practical impossibility, there would never be a mandate to do so. And so by retaining our own currency we have need of retaining our own economic governance policies, and in turn there is little scope for cooperation on tax policy. In that regard economic powers are out of reach for the EU where non-Euro members are concerned. 

Meanwhile, we have to look at the rest of Europe. While Greece has been the talking point, not least for its systemic and endemic corruption, Spain is not far off, Italy likewise and Poland is the untold story. If the Euro is to survive then it follows that the EU will need to secure more powers over economic governance. I don't see that it has much choice in the matter. The excessively cronyistic and corrupt public administration have made it so hard for the economies of Europe to recover and we are only another global shock away from another calamitous Euro crisis. 

What the EU doesn't need is that "foot-dragging and constantly complaining" member standing in the way of essential reforms. So this can only go one of two ways with Britain as a member. Either no reform is made and we see Europe stagnating, or that Britain is shunted to the sidelines, becoming part of an outer tier of the EU. I predict the latter. What that means is that the EU is no longer "at the heart of EU decision making" but at the same time its voice at the global top tables is muted. The worst of all worlds with the benefits of neither. 

So what's the alternative? Britain could leave the EU. Since we are never going to be more of a member than we are at present, we might as well formalise that arrangement. Effectively by leaving the EU and joining Efta, remaining part of the single market, we have the genuine brake on ever closer union that David Cameron pretends he has achieved. 

What that means is the EU is free to do what it needs to do and at the same time so are we. While our trade in goods with the EU may be greater than that of the rest of the world, there are a number of sectors where borders are less important where it is more important to be a participant on global forums, forging commonalities with non-EU partners without being told how to vote. 

We are told that remaining a subordinate means that we are the beneficiaries of EU trade deals, but it's starting to smell like TTIP is pining for the fjords. After several years of largely wasted effort we are seeing the inherent weaknesses of the EU's approach to trade and whatever passes as TTIP will be a shadow of its former self. 

But it's also worth remembering what such bilateral deals are for. We lend them gravitas and respectability by calling them free trade deals - but an EU-US super-bloc is not formed with free trade in mind. It is designed to head off multilateralism, sabotaging any effort to form a global market where outsiders can compete. This is very much the old guard joining forces to created a closed economy. We are being forced to look inward.

In that regard, the prospects for Britain inside the EU look even narrower. If the rhetoric of Donald Trump is anything to go by we can expect that America is less inclined to do deals with anyone let alone the EU. The only cooperation we are likely to see is in those global forums where the US is already committed. It is there we could join the USA and over a hundred other countries in developing several global markets without working under the dead hand of EU supranationalism. 

There are any number of global alliances we can join in order to kickstart global trade - and though we get mixed messages over Brexit from the big fish, perhaps Brexit is our opportunity to feed the minnows. It will require a change in our way of thinking but what we can say is that we have gone as far as we can with the ideas of the last century. More to the point, it is not written anywhere that we necessarily have to diverge from the EU. What matters is that we have a choice. 

The Brexit debate is beset by a fixation with bilateral deals between blocs and countries, but seldom do we ask what value they add. What value is a non-tariff agreement with a nation with under-developed ports and airports. While good spoil as they wait in traffic jams due to poor roads. What use is an agreement when varying standards in food hygiene and storage make trade improbable. Where is the value in in trying to conform when conformity costs more than tariffs? 

There is massive scope to liberalise and harmonise global trade, but it's not going to happen while we are down the list of EU concerns while the EU is fixated on big bang deals that never go anywhere. As long as we remain trapped in the limbo of the EU we are stuck with things as they are - with a real danger that it will be the rest of the world telling us what the rules are without ever having had a say in it. 

Local elections: Meh, whatever

I don't ever recall giving less of a toss about an election night. In order to have a participatory democracy you first need a public who understands what it is. Today I have seen some remarkably fatuous tweets about people being proud to vote as though that were the living embodiment of democracy. Every few years you get to vote for some or other moron who makes all your decisions for you and in between doesn't care what you think in the slightest. Meanwhile you go back into you undisturbed slumber thinking you've done your bit.

That is supposedly democracy and that is what the social construct is now - the idea that we pay politicians to do politics for us and we complain when they cock it up. Meanwhile, because the morons we elect do cock it up without having any public supervision, the technocrats conspire to make government more "efficient". What they mean by efficient is more convenient for them - and cheaper where necessary. And though you might wish for cheaper government it's no good if it means worse services and the savings are passed on to their cronies rather than the taxpayer.

This is why I can't get excited about local elections or voting. We are managed like cattle and ripped off but most people seem happy to go along with it. They say they want things to change but they don't. They always vote for the status quo. And so the hypocrisy is as much theirs as the politicians. How can you expect honest politicians when the public themselves are not honest and don't wish to do their bit beyond walking into a booth and scribbling a cross next to the name of some self-regarding mouthbreather who thinks his dismal little clan is less moronic than the next.

That is actually why we will end up staying in the EU. Because we don't have a participatory democracy, there is an understandable view that it's better if the officials are left in charge and the politicians sidelined to perpetuate the illusion of democracy. On the evidence in front of us, it's actually the least worst arrangement. For sure the corporates are making their own regulation without any democratic oversight but at least it's motivated by a useful social function. Trade.

But the problem with that view is that it's a total abandonment of democracy or even the prospect of it. That may work in the short to mid term, but when all the power is in the hands of the few and beyond the reach of the people, we will, one way or another, live to regret waiving the one chance we had to turn it around. This is why I am so fixated with the EU referendum. It's the last time in a long time where my vote will mean anything. After that, people will have to learn the hard way why we needed to leave the EU - and the price they will pay to get democracy will be far higher than whatever Brexit may cost.

EU: Not even good for trade

The UK Chamber of Shipping accordingly has a keen interest both in the functioning of the Internal Market and in the facilitation of trade between the EU and the rest of the world and has participated in the Joint Customs Consultative Committee for the last 40 years. The government asked them if they thought that that the EU strikes the right balance between regulating imports and exports and facilitating international trade. This is what they said.

We take this question to apply only to trade with countries outside the EU, as the legal concepts of import and export do not apply to movements of goods within the internal market. The answer is “no”, for two main reasons. Firstly, the EU generally exhibits a readiness (and often an enthusiasm) to regulate, heedless of the cost to international trade.

The requirement to report incoming imports to Customs prior to arrival in the EU, which took effect in 2011, for example, was imposed without any regard to the compliance cost to the trade. Nor were the “benefits” ever set out in anything other than the most superficial terms. The plain purpose for introducing the regime was to match a similar requirement that had been imposed (similarly without regard to cost) in the USA. 

Similarly, in 2006 (through Regulation 1013/2006), the EU created an entire regime of controls on exports of waste – including plastics and paper for recycling, which comprise a significant volume of UK exports. This regime operates in parallel with, but entirely separately from, the general regime of Customs controls of exports, leading to incompatible processes and duplicate compliance costs for shipping lines and other businesses affected. Trade facilitation was completely disregarded.

Secondly and more generally, the EU model for regulating imports and exports relies on a transaction-based control model – ie an individual declaration for every consignment – which may suit trucks crossing the EU’s eastern frontier but is unhelpful in the context of carriage by sea, where a single ship carries many thousands of containers.

Moreover, alongside the requirement for electronic declarations, the EU control model also prescribes an “accompanying document” (for Transit and Export purposes, and with a similar arrangement for excise) which must travel with the goods in order to serve as a basis for customs controls during the journey. Again, this may suit road haulage but is entirely inappropriate for carriage by sea (where mid-journey inspections do not happen and documents travel separately), but the EU insists upon it, regardless of its obvious faults and excessive cost. 

To my mind this rather lends weight to to the suggestion that global regulation for the free movement of goods is overtaking the need for the EU and rather than facilitating better trade with the rest of the world it is a major obstacle to to it. It seems to me that the notion that we have free movement of goods is something of an empty sentiment and we are at a disadvantage by way of being an island and conducting much of our trade by sea.

Not for the first time do I conclude that the EU has little interest in bringing down barriers to the rest of the world or even streamlining and harmonising its own procedures and processes. It seems we are now in the position of having to comply with unnecessary regulation which in the main is a duplication of effort and runs counter to the global harmonisation agenda. We are seeing a global single market emerging and we are held back from full participation.

The irony is that in 1975, the europhiles said we needed to be in the common market so that we would have a say in the rules. Yet now it is becoming clear that we do not have a say in these global rules but that 1975 logic no longer applies. In 1975 there was a fear that we would be left behind and dictated to. Now it would appear that's what they wanted all along. It was always about little Europe.

I would also venture that the EU will not seek to remedy its voracious appetite for regulatory barriers. Should it ever cooperate with the global harmonisation agenda it would reveal what we have known all along. There is no need for the EU - and no reason for us to remain in it.

The big debate

I represented the leave side in a debate at Bath Spa University last night. An interesting experience on several counts. In so many ways, the online campaign is less about why we should leave as how we leave, so when stepping out into the real world, condensing the case for leaving is no easy task. It's sometimes easy to lose sight of why we're doing this.

When tasked with making the case it's difficult to know where to start without falling back on tired mantras which no longer hold true. The EU issue is not by any means one dimensional. There are many prisms through which to look at it. There is no dumbing it down. There is no simplifying it.

At best you can only hope to explain it in the hope that the reasons for leaving become self evident. But that is no easy task either when the foundations you're building on are so weak. As much as public knowledge of the EU is thin, the desire to find out is also weak.

I was asked by one of the students what the benefits are for the average student who doesn't give much thought to politics. And that has been the hallmark of this entire campaign. People throughout tend only to be interested insofar is it affects them in a material sense. Talking about the need for democracy is wholly futile, not least when most of the public have an anaemic understanding of what democracy is and how government works.

That makes any serious debate next to impossible. This is a battle of concepts more than anything. Multilateralism versus supranationalism, democracy versus managerialism, past versus the future. And that is why I expect to lose the referendum.

It is apparent to me that we do not have the raw material for a participatory democracy. For that to happen we first need a public that wants to participate. People don't want to be bothered by such questions. They want to live their insular selfish lives and will only vote insofar as something has a practical impact on their own lives. For anything else they are only too happy to abdicate their responsibilities as citizens.

As depressing as that is from the man in the street, it is even more depressing to hear from students. The staggering lack of knowledge on display is matched only back the lack of inherent curiosity and the willingness to trust in information spoonfed to them. It prompts me to ask why we even bother having universities still.

As much as I tried to boil it down to one or two basic concepts, I found the democracy argument does not resonate. As a people we are out of the habit of owning the decisions we make. It seems to me that the next generation will have to discover the hard way what democracy is and why it's something worth having.

For the time being, the question on nearly everyone's lips is "what's in it for me?" - and if that's the question they want me to answer - and "democracy" isn't enough of an incentive then the whole exercise is entirely pointless.