DON’T RISK OUR BRIGHT FUTURE BY TAKING A GIANT LEAP IN THE DARK
ON Thursday, I will be voting to keep Scotland and the United Kingdom on the right track. I’ll be voting to ensure a brighter future for generations to come. I will be voting for us to remain within the European Union.
I’m sure I’m not the only person in Scotland who feels a keen sense of déjà vu as we approach referendum day.
As with the independence referendum in 2014, the stakes are incredibly high. As with then, we are bombarded with claim and counter-claim and a welter of statistics from both sides. And, as with two years ago, we’re being asked to engage both head and heart as we weigh up the best choice for ourselves, our family, our communities and our country.
I understand why, as they weigh all this up, many people are thinking of voting to leave the European Union on Thursday. No one disputes that the EU is flawed. No one can claim that the euro has been a success. And I know many people feel there is nothing more the EU deserves than a firm smack on the nose in the form of an Out vote.
But the question we have to answer on Thursday isn’t whether we love the European Union or not. Nor is it a question of national identity: we will still be Scottish and British on Friday no matter how we vote. Quite simply, this is what is best for Britain and what is best for the next generation coming behind us who don’t have a vote but whose lives will be dramatically changed by our decision.
And, for me, the supposed gains of Brexit do not even come close to matching the clear and present advantages we gain from remaining within the EU.
Central to that is the access we get to Europe’s single market of 500million people by means of being a member of the EU. It is the world’s biggest free trade area – right on our doorstep.
Nobody disputes the fact that, if we leave, we would have to renegotiate trade deals to get back into European markets.
And the only two things we know about this renegotiation is that it would take time – potentially a decade – and that the terms would be worse than the ones we have right now.
WHAT does this mean in the real world? One of the Leave campaign’s own has set it out in very clear terms: their chief economist Patrick Minford declared it ‘would mostly eliminate manufacturing’.
Or take the admission of Michael Gove, one of the leaders of the Out campaign. ‘I can’t guarantee every person currently in work in their current job will keep their job,’ he said recently. That, however, seems a price he is willing to pay.
As even the Leave campaign seems to recognise, cutting ourselves off from the very market where we send half our exports would be an unprecedented act of economic self-harm.
It would be a conscious decision to make Britain poorer. And it would hurt the poorest the most.
Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage would be OK; the wealthy are always able to fall back on their pension pots and savings. It would be ordinary workers who would suffer: the easyJet air hostess who could lose her job because, after Brexit, the airline would be priced out from flying within Europe; the dad on the factory floor at one of our many car-makers whose job disappears because Europe has slapped a new tariff on Britishmade motors; the single mum on a zero-hours contract whose job is extinguished to cut costs.
It is all deeply ironic: the Out campaign likes to think of itself as standing up for ordinary people against the ‘establishment’. Yet if successful, Brexit will hit those ordinary people hard, while leaving the ‘elites’ untouched.
Already I can hear the complaint from the Out camp – it’s all scaremongering, they claim. This is utter nonsense. The fact is that nine out of ten economists agree that the economy will suffer if we vote to leave the EU on Thursday.
The fact is that the Governor of the Bank of England says we will pay a penalty. The fact is that the vast majority of firms – large and small – all agree that it’s better to stay put. You don’t need to understand a complex economic algorithm to work this one out: simple common sense tells you that if you make it harder to get goods to market, we end up poorer.
Indeed, I think this point is understood better here in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK. Going back to the independence referendum, many of us remember Alex Salmond promising free unicorns for all if only we voted to separate from the United Kingdom. We can all still recall him shouting at the pro-UK camp for ‘scaremongering’ over the cost of independence.
We all now know that far from spreading fear, we were in fact telling it as it was. The oil revenue assumptions made by Mr Salmond were criminally optimistic. Had we voted to leave the UK, Scotland would right now be an economic basket case.
You may not know the exact impact of Brexit on our economy but still know enough to know it won’t be good.
And in the puffed-up protests of Mr Farage and Boris Johnson, in their complaints about ‘Project Fear’, and in the blithe assertions that ‘everything will be fine, don’t you worry your little head’, I recognise the brazen chauvinistic style of Mr Salmond – this time repeated for a UK audience.
The basic point is this: of course if we left the EU, our European markets wouldn’t suddenly disappear. Of course Scottish companies would still be able to sell into Brussels and Mumbai, Rome and Hong Kong. But the question is whether leaving the EU will help or hinder them in doing so. And, unavoidably, the answer comes back: it will make matters worse.
Given that, is it really worth leaving the European Union just because we don’t like its institutions? I don’t believe so. And that’s particularly the case when I know that, within the EU, Britain can continue to lead the calls for reform to make the EU work better.
To go back to the independence referendum again, I want the best of both worlds. I want us to remain a proud independent UK with our own currency, our own armed forces, our own nuclear deterrent, and our own identity. And I want us in the single market and in the EU so we can continue to lead the case for reform in the EU.
IDON’T want to withdraw ourselves from a club that makes us all better off, only to regret it years later and be unable to get back in. Soon it will be time to choose. I ask people to take a long hard look at the case for Brexit.
Has it answered all of your questions? Do you know how it will affect the United Kingdom in six months’ time? Six years’ time? In a decade? I don’t believe it has. And if you don’t know – my advice is don’t go.
Our nation has had more than its fair share of turmoil in recent years. We in Scotland have seen how constitutional turmoil can disrupt lives and can threaten the very future of our national fabric.
On Thursday, a Remain vote means we can leave that uncertainty behind. Let’s not leap into the unknown; let’s secure a stronger future for our families – and keep Britain on track.