I have spent the week reading cogent and well-argued writing from friends and colleagues that I respect about why we should leave the EU. Some of them are so compelling that they have caused me to question my own instinctively pro-European views. As all the best debates do, this one looks set to force people to transform feelings into logical positions. I hope that those who would like us to leave the EU in June will read this article with interest and use it to challenge and crystalise their own views too.
My first point is really an observation. For a generation, the UK’s political class has wrestled with this issue and failed to either gauge or represent the will of the people. Whether for or against our membership of the EU, I think David Cameron should get the credit he deserves for taking on the incredibly complex diplomatic challenge of re-negotiating the terms of our membership and then having the courage to present those new terms to the British people in a referendum.
My second point is that I think the UK would be fine outside the EU. Actually, more than fine. In the short term, I can see the increased independence and flexibility benefit us – much as being outside of the Euro but on the edge of the Euro zone benefits us today. I don’t happen to think it will be a leap in the dark, I don’t worry about our ability to secure our borders or cooperate with European security forces. I have no doubt that we will stay within a single trading block and, while we may lose a few company HQs, I suspect that the economy will flourish under our own stewardship.
So far so good for leaving but, of course, so far we have engaged in the argument from a deeply parochial UK-centric perspective. And it is this parochialism that I dislike. I don’t like the idea of us sitting on the edge of an international community – benefiting by proxy but not contributing. It strikes me as wholly un-British to allow others to do the heavy lifting and being happy to sit in the shadow of other peoples’ union while slyly doing deals on the quiet that push our national interest and destabilises that of our neighbours. I am proud to be British, I am proud of our place in the world and I want our country and our values to shape the future. It is for those reasons that I will not just vote to stay within the EU, but I will campaign with heart and soul for it too.
The truth is that I feel the value of the EU is not to “Us” – the UK, but to “Us” – the world. Our challenges are increasingly international. Climate change, religious intolerance, destruction of the global commons, fair taxation of multinational companies, global movements of people; these are all issues that no single state can solve. However, they are all issues that can be solved with cooperation and collaboration.
The same is also true of our great opportunities. Sustained space travel, the pooling of human knowledge and talent, an end to poverty and hunger, the defeat of disease; these are all aims that should no longer be the preserve of dreamers. They are real and they are close, but they require global human cooperation.
I know, I can hear the wails already; I’ve just connected the painful grey bureaucracy of Brussels to the end of world hunger. A leap? Yes, but really not an unreasonable one. Does the EU present a solution to Global Climate Change? No. Does it present a forum that allows for greater international cooperation that might lead to a solution to Global Climate Change? Yes.
The easiest way to illustrate this point to look at the EU’s much-hated fisheries policy. Our fish stocks do not respect national boundaries so the policy to manage how they are fished must be international. Because getting policy right is hard, the EU has got the policy wrong for many years. However, importantly, an international policy does exist and all countries are compelled to follow it. Over time and with research, this policy is improving as it its implementation. One day soon it will be right and it will be implemented fairly. When that happens, we will have a sustainable marine eco-system protected for our children and grandchildren in a way that independent national governments would never have achieved.
This level of international cooperation must mean a loss of sovereignty. Of course it must. Compelling nations to act in the global interest necessarily requires some compulsion and therefore a loss of sovereignty. It’s a trade that will feel uncomfortable when, as Michael Gove highlighted, we are not allowed to decide how close to heathland we build houses or set our own VAT rate. But it is a trade I strongly believe we should make in return for supporting global governance that protects our commons, drives cooperation and holds increasingly global private interests to account.
That then is my generic argument for exchanging sovereignty for international policy. It feels painful to give power away, and it feels frustrating when that new power gets policy wrong but the ability to pool of sovereignty and adapt policy on an international level is a fair one because it’s the only way we will meet the challenges and grasp the opportunities of our global age.
So, if you’re with me on the benefits of pooling sovereignty, you’re probably struggling to reconcile the ideal with the reality of European government. Is it as bloated, corrupt, pedantic and bureaucratic as The Daily Mail will have us believe? Probably not – but I imagine that it is pretty bloated, corrupt, pedantic and bureaucratic. Governments are. All of them are. Governments are formed by the soaring rhetoric of magnificent leaders and delivered by the petty mindedness of creeping bureaucrats.
Think of the greatness imagined and articulated by the founding fathers of the US, or by Winston Churchill in Britain’s darkest hour, or by Ghandi in India. Each one of those great visions is made real every day by magistrates fining transgressors, pen-pushers stamping forms and lawyers dissecting clauses. Delivering democratic dreams isn’t pretty but it is done every day in your local council, or in Westminster, Brussels or Strasbourg by uninteresting people in dreary offices. This is not an argument against ruthlessly improving efficiency and accountability within the EU – or any public body – it is just an argument against expecting a utopian administration. The machinery of the EU is, like all machinery of government, unlovely. Let’s work together to keep improving it.
So if we need global cooperation, and if the EU (despite its faults) is the best vehicle for cooperation in our part of the world, how does the UK best support it?
I happen to think that the strongest argument for the UK to leave the EU is that it paves the way for its core members to come together as a group of states in ever-closer union. However, after much soul-searching, my view is that it is the breadth rather than the depth of the union that really matters. The Eurozone looks set to come together under a single fiscal and political regime which is fine. However, that nascent nation has the best chance of success if it is supported by a phalanx of formally cooperating nations like the UK that give it breadth and stability. In this way, this great international alliance can, as one, negotiate with the US or with China as an equal partner. It can also, as one, face-down threats from rogue states or global terrorism as a compelling, powerful and united voice.
All of this ties together in a simple single argument. The UK will be fine outside of the EU but the world will be poorer. In an age of global challenges, there is a creeping nationalism happening across continents today that must be reversed. Whether the SNP demonising Westminster, the left’s nostalgia for protectionism, or Donald Trump’s obsession with building walls, there is an easy appeal to hiding behind borders and letting the world crack-on. These shrinking horizons must all be challenged.
I will be campaigning for us to remain within the EU because the world needs our generation to cooperate across borders. Like most public bodies, the EU is ugly, clumsy and imperfect. But it is what our part of the world has created over two generations; it is real, it is established and through the trade-offs between collective action and national sovereignty (which all international agreements demand), it is making things happen.
There is a compelling line that leaving it will free us to be more international but it cannot be true that casting aside 60 years of cooperation will be a step-forward for internationalism. Continuing to build it together is infinitely preferable to leaving and starting again.
The choice can be framed in what we tell our grandchildren about this referendum. Do we tell them that in an age of global issues ranging from climate change to fair taxes for multi-national companies, we voted to walk away from the great supranational project of our time because we wanted what was most comfortable for our generation and for our country? Or do we tell them that we stuck with it, we made it work and we’re handing it on to them with a clear vision for how humans can cooperate beyond history, language, culture and borders?
I know which side of that conversation I want to be on, I hope you’ll join me there.
