Vote To Leave the EU -mmmmmmm

Way back in 1975 I voted to leave the EEC but for me it was a 50 50 decision and I had not made up my mind until I entered the voting booth. My head was telling me to stay in and my heart was telling me to leave. At the time I had lots of friends from Australia and they went some way to convincing me that somehow Britain was letting them and the Commonwealth down.

When I came out of the polling booth I realised that I had made a mistake but it was too late to go back and ask for my ballot paper to be changed. I was glad that Britain voted to stay in the EU.

The nation had made an historic decision, one which should have been final. After the vote it was time to get on with our lives: Britain had made a democratic and sovereign decision to remain with our European partners. I never thought for one moment that we would be having the same arguments again.

After the EEC was formed, in 1957, Britain was left out in the economic cold, so it persuaded states such as Norway and Ireland to join EFTA or the European Free Trade Association to act as a counter balance to the EEC. The EEC, however, forged ahead economically; much more than Britain or EFTA. The British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan realised that Britain's economic future lay with the EEC and he started negotiations for Britain to Join the EEC. His ambitions were thwarted when in January 1963 General De Gaulle as president of France said "Non".

Many of the same types of people who now want to leave the EU were rather miffed by the dismissal of Britain's application by De Gaulle.  The British view then was:"why should a foreigner tell Britain what it cannot or can do?". Unfortunately,back then as now, Britain was not economically strong enough to impose its will.

Britain finally joined the EEC in 1973 under the Edward Heath government. The arguments in both the the Labour party and the Conservative party did not stop so the Labour Party prime minister, Harold Wilson, called a referendum to satisfy the demands of leave campaigners. The general population including me were quite happy to agree with the status quo and at the time there was not much popular demand for a referendum.

In 1975 the referendum was held to decide once and for all Britain's fate. I accepted that now Britain had to wholeheartedly take its place in the EU and to a certain extent it  did.

Britain has benefited enormously from its membership of the EU it has progressed both socially, economically and politically. I have benefited from marrying a European and I have worked in European Union without restriction and without any bureaucracy to deal with. The EU has also benefited. Britain helped to reform agricultural and fisheries policies and it has promoted free trade without financial and bureaucratic barriers. Britain was a sad inward looking place in the 1960's and early 1970's; we only had the Beatles to cheer about and they had broken up.

Britain is now a socially progressive and economically vibrant country. So is the EU. Both Britain and the EU have their economic difficulties. It is hubristic for "Brexiters" to claim that the UK is now so much better off than the rest of the EU. Our future in or out of the EU depends upon the success of the EU and if they fall then so will we.

If we had not joined the EU or we had left after the 1975 referendum we would probably have been forced by economics to join the EEA: just like Norway. We would have been paying into the EU coffers to achieve a free trade agreement. We would have had to accept free movement of labour and we would have had to accept that we changed our trading laws to meet EU regulations.

The modern day "Brexiter" would have had to have found other reasons to leave the EEA. And,of course, that would have been immigration. The facts of the matter are that immigration  is very difficult to control. More people come to Britain from outside the EU than from within it. We have absolute control over non-EU immigration but the numbers continue to rise. We just have to accept that Britain is going to attract many immigrants so let's get on with our lives and welcome them.

The Vote Leave economic arguments are failing, so I expect them to concentrate on the fear of immigration to achieve their aims. But the British are not fooled that easily. The benefits of free trade are not outweighed by the dis-benefits if immigration.  Immigrants more than pay their way and they have helped to keep our economy growing during hard economic times. They have skills that we cannot survive without . They keep many businesses going and they help to keep the NHS working.
Without immigrants we would be worse off. If we ask our guests  to get get visas  before they live and work in the UK then the EU will reciprocate. We do not want or need to have a "trade war" in people.

It  seems to me that many "Brexit" politicians want to be big fish in a small pond. They want to tell people what to do . They cannot achieve this in Europe so they want to leave the EU so that they are left alone to push the British around. Their promise that they will control immigration is there just to ensure that Britain will leave the EU.  This promise will be broken either because many of the "Brexiters" do not care about immigration or "real politik" economics will demand the free movement of labour between the EU and Britain.

Britain's economy is too intertwined with the EU for us to leave without pain. Likewise, we have too many people from the rest of the EU to play games with their future. Also, we should recognise that we could be playing fast and loose with the future of the many hundreds of thousands of British citizens who have freely chosen to work or live in the rest of the EU.

The best course of action is to vote to remain and let that be the end of  the referendums.