Brexit Again
I last (and for that matter first) wrote about the EU referendum in late April, when I declined to speculate on the eventual outcome. But now I will: as the weeks have progressed, so momentum has shifted towards the Brexiteers, who now seem likely to clinch a narrow victory when the votes begin to be counted after the polling stations close on 23 June.
The reason for this is not hard to see: like it or not (and I don't, because of its racist and xenophobic undertones), the Brexiteers' message is a positive-sounding one: departure from the EU will give the UK control of its frontiers and thus control of immigration. The Remainers, however, have chosen to foreground an economic version of the project fear deployed against Scottish independence two years ago -- a drumbeat of negativity which, it is becoming ever clearer, has failed to engage with the public at large. As The Guardian's Larry Elliott points out, the messages of fear are coming from the very organisations -- the IMF, the OECD, the Bank of England and the Treasury -- that not only failed to spot the financial crash of 2008 but in the months leading up to it were still forecasting robust growth for the world economy. Since they couldn't get that right, why should any trust be invested in the lurid claims they're making now?
However, I suspect that the chief reason for the Remainers' relentless focus on messages of economic negativity is that they haven't anything else in their arsenal. As I suggested in the previous piece, British politicians of almost all ideological stripes have never demonstrated much enthusiasm for the EU, presenting it instead as something to be endured rather than embraced -- with the result that they now find it difficult to draw on any of the positive things the EU has done for Britain. They could have been promoting the cleaner beaches and controls on air pollution for which the EU is responsible, or protection for wildlife and wildlife habitats, or maternity pay and paternity leave, or guaranteed minimum periods of paid holiday entitlement, or rules on food labelling and cosmetics testing, and could have been talking up their possible loss in the event of decision to leave the EU; but no. Instead we have econometric drivel that hardly anyone understands, still less cares about. As Larry Elliott puts it, "What if the blizzard of statistics and the trade theory is just going straight over the heads of voters? What if the public is not especially interested in whether GDP per household will be 6% lower in 2030 after Brexit than it would be if the UK stays in the EU and finds the concept meaningless? ... Voters are influenced by the economy but not by abstract statistics, such as mean or median GDP per head. They know when they last got a pay rise and how much it was. They know what it was like the last time they had to take a family member to an A&E department. They know how much it costs to buy a house in their neighbourhood and whether it is possible for their children to get a foot on the property ladder. When Bobby Kennedy said that GDP measures everything except that which is worthwhile, he was absolutely right."
The reason for this is not hard to see: like it or not (and I don't, because of its racist and xenophobic undertones), the Brexiteers' message is a positive-sounding one: departure from the EU will give the UK control of its frontiers and thus control of immigration. The Remainers, however, have chosen to foreground an economic version of the project fear deployed against Scottish independence two years ago -- a drumbeat of negativity which, it is becoming ever clearer, has failed to engage with the public at large. As The Guardian's Larry Elliott points out, the messages of fear are coming from the very organisations -- the IMF, the OECD, the Bank of England and the Treasury -- that not only failed to spot the financial crash of 2008 but in the months leading up to it were still forecasting robust growth for the world economy. Since they couldn't get that right, why should any trust be invested in the lurid claims they're making now?
However, I suspect that the chief reason for the Remainers' relentless focus on messages of economic negativity is that they haven't anything else in their arsenal. As I suggested in the previous piece, British politicians of almost all ideological stripes have never demonstrated much enthusiasm for the EU, presenting it instead as something to be endured rather than embraced -- with the result that they now find it difficult to draw on any of the positive things the EU has done for Britain. They could have been promoting the cleaner beaches and controls on air pollution for which the EU is responsible, or protection for wildlife and wildlife habitats, or maternity pay and paternity leave, or guaranteed minimum periods of paid holiday entitlement, or rules on food labelling and cosmetics testing, and could have been talking up their possible loss in the event of decision to leave the EU; but no. Instead we have econometric drivel that hardly anyone understands, still less cares about. As Larry Elliott puts it, "What if the blizzard of statistics and the trade theory is just going straight over the heads of voters? What if the public is not especially interested in whether GDP per household will be 6% lower in 2030 after Brexit than it would be if the UK stays in the EU and finds the concept meaningless? ... Voters are influenced by the economy but not by abstract statistics, such as mean or median GDP per head. They know when they last got a pay rise and how much it was. They know what it was like the last time they had to take a family member to an A&E department. They know how much it costs to buy a house in their neighbourhood and whether it is possible for their children to get a foot on the property ladder. When Bobby Kennedy said that GDP measures everything except that which is worthwhile, he was absolutely right."