Bullshit Diary

[steepholm]

I really don't know at this point how I'm going to vote in the EU Referendum. I am floating in the not-so-blue water between the two sides, waiting for one or both of them to throw me a lifeline in the form of great, evidence-based arguments. Hopefully that will happen over the next few months. (Meanwhile my dauhter is fuming that the vote will take place just a couple of weeks before her 18th birthday, thus denying her a say.)

Meanwhile, there are already a lot of bullshit arguments floating about in these same waters, and since I don't yet know my own mind and so am not in a position to try persuading anyone, I thought the most useful thing I could do was to perform some turd triage by listing some of the arguments that won't do a thing to persuade me, either because they're non sequiturs, rely on emotional manipulation (usually attempts to scare people, or to appeal to some nebulous past or future utopia), or because they involve questionable premises. Here are some I've heard so far:

The existence of the EU is what has prevented a third European war in the past 70 years. (I think NATO and the Iron Curtain had rather more to do with it.)

Immigrants are coming en masse to claim benefits. (I've seen no evidence that this is happening on any significant scale. The free movement of people is one of the things most likely to make me vote for the EU, in fact.)

Britain has bad weather, which would be improved by continued EU membership. (I don't know if that's what Emma Thompson was trying to suggest, but it's the best I can do. Climate change may do the job anyway.)

The vote is to decide whether Britain stays part of Europe, and hence of European culture. (The EU and Europe are not the same thing.)

You don't want to vote the same way as [insert name of bogeyperson here], do you? (I have bogeypeople on both sides, though admittedly many more on the Leave side, but this is in any case a weird sort of ad hominem argument at one remove.)

We will definitely get favourable terms for trade with the EU should we leave. (I can see a number of reasons why this might not be the case. It's certainly not something we can be confident of.)

We will definitely get atrocious terms for trade with the EU should we leave. (See above.)

British Indian forces in the Second World War fought and died for "the European project". (Just no.)

This may be a continuing series...

Comments

[cmcmck]

I lived there (the mainland) for some years so in beyond question.

I don't want to live on a squitty island run by a lot of genteely fascist little Englanders and with red and white poles and wire between here and my husband's home country..........

[steepholm]

No more would I, but I don't think of Britain as a squitty island any more than I think of Italy as a squitty peninsula. And it's far from clear to me that a post-EU UK would be more fascistic than the pre-EU UK was, or that travel between the UK and the Continent would become difficult. I'm afraid that wire and poles are coming in any case, though, for reasons that have nothing to do with Brexit.

[steepholm]

Oh, but now I think of it you're husband is Scottish, right? So you're worried that an out vote might be the precursor to Scotland deciding to leave the UK? That's certainly a consideration - though I don't think it can be the decisive one for me. This referendum is about the UK's relationship with the EU: it's not a proxy Scottish independence referendum, and if the latter ever comes to pass I won't have a say in any case, so think it would be harsh to be held responsible for the result of it.

[legionseagle]

Me, I'm voting Yes for bureaucracy and red tape. It appears to me that while the institutions of the EEA are an opaque and Byzantine mess full of of private fiefdoms, there is, at bottom, a commitment both that things such as the purity of bivalve molluscs and the use of intumescent fire-retardant paint on buildings above a certain height and the use and transfer of personal data should be regulated in the public good. And since the free market is demonstrably bad at regulating such things and since the approach that this country would take absent to EU retarding brake would be to go all out for free market and hang the public, I'm voting yes because I see the alternative as us being in like Flint.

[steepholm]

Well, I have some sympathy with that point of view, though I wish the EU would take more seriously the principle of subsidiarity within that context.

Whether a post-EU UK would become a free-market free-for-all would depend very much on the UK voters, as it should. I'm not convinced the free-marketeers would have it all their own way, but that remains to be seen. (Or rather, it doesn't - because I'm pretty sure the vote will be to Stay.)

[toujours_nigel]

British Indians did what now?

[steepholm]

Not even British Indians - Indian Indians fighting for the British Empire in WWII.