On Brexit

Somewhat to my surprise having torn myself away from the 24/7 raging dumpster fire that's American politics at the moment, it turns out that an ocean away there's another electoral sink hole taking place back home.

I mean, come on Britain, I turn my back for a few years and half the country seem to have lost their minds and started roaming the country bellowing Churchillian rhetoric about sticking it to Johnny Foreigner and flexing their biceps in the vague direction of Brussels.

Politics!

Until the last week I've been fairly sanguine that people probably weren't stupid enough to actually consider Brexit (a term, incidentally, that doesn't really do justice to the national economic suicide pact that withdrawing from a common market with our biggest trading partner would represent). I should have known better of course. The portents were all there; the birth of a two headed cow in Dorset. The fire wreathed comet in the night sky over Leeds. And, of course, the fact that in my inherent belief in the decency of the British people, I had somehow ended up on the same side as David Cameron.

Admittedly, we're there for different reasons. After all, it's his fault that we face what he's described as some sort of apocalyptic choice. There would be no referendum at all if it weren't for his pre-electoral courting of the Eurosceptic vote, a promise that I can guarantee he made with absolutely zero consideration of the fact that people might vote the wrong way on this. For future reference, if one side of a decision actually is such a cataclysmic disaster, it's probably not a good idea to give people an option to choose it.

Cameron's hope here, it seems, has been that Britain's instinctive complacency would prevent us from withdrawing out of a (reasonable) fear of the unknown. It's unsurprising then that so much of the argument from both sides has been doom-mongering of the potential consequences for and against Brexit, with very little in the way of actual reasoning about how Britain actually benefits from being a part of the EU, beyond the fact that without it the entire nation would probably slide beneath the ocean.

That kind of makes sense in a way though, because frankly any conversation that you could try to have about the EU fairly quickly runs into the insurmountable obstacle that nobody knows what it is that the EU does. I say that with such certainty because, as luck would have it, I graduated with a degree in International Politics, studied the EU and still couldn't tell you with any accuracy exactly how it works.

I used to think that was simply a side effect of the colossal scale of the European project; half a billion people in twenty eight countries casting a lazy triangle from Portugal, to Finland and down to Cyprus.

But, that's kind of the problem. Because having moved to America it's quickly become clear that while they're also ruled by an unaccountable, oligarchic Government, a bureaucractic erection on the body politic, they at least know what their Government does and how it works. Maybe not perfectly, but they can probably tell you who the President is. And what the branches of the Government are. Maybe even tell you about a few laws that the government has passed, or what the aims of the parties up for election are.

Now; can you honestly say, that having sat through the entire Brexit campaign, you know the answers to any of these about the EU? Let's start with an easy one: who is the President of the EU?

Got it?

Well, jokes on you, sucker, because you were wrong. You see, there's not actually any such thing as the EU President. Or perhaps more accurately, there's four; Jean-Claude Junckler (President of the Eureopean commission) Donald Tusk (President of the European Council), Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament), and ... err... The Netherlands (President of the Council of the European Union). I guess by that point they just though, 'Why not give it to an entire nation?'. Really we're lucky that they stopped there and didn't just devolve power to Europe's pot plants, or anyone named Steve.

Literally every single one of these men are the EU President

All of this would seem like so much fuel to the Brexit fire, and yet I don't think I've heard, at any point, the argument that the problem with the EU is the lack of transparency. Instead the arguments seem to boil down to not really liking current levels of immigration (which wouldn't actually be solved by withdrawing from the EU), disliking the amount of money we send to the EU, and a weird assertion that the EU itself is somehow fundamentally anti-democratic when compared to the UK.

This, for me, is the most bizarre of the Brexit arguments. Sure, there's great appeal to the argument that we're no longer able to control our own country since some sweaty palmed German or French bureaucrat has unilaterally decided to ban British measurements, or outlaw fish, or whatever fantasy was last pulled out of the void.

But putting aside for a moment that we get to elect representatives to the European Parliament every 5 years (and that our representatives have the worst record of attendance in the Union, in part because we repeatedly elected people who don't think the EU should exist), we're leveling the charges of the EU lacking democratic foundations while being profoundly undemocratic ourselves.

Our head of state is a 90 year old product of centuries of selective breeding to ensure we have someone whose face you can stick on currency and stamps. Meanwhile, the House of Lords, or to give it its full and ridiculous title, 'The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament Assembled' is literally full to overflowing with 800 apppointed peers, selected for their services in giving money to politicians.

Of course, just in case you were concerned, we do have an elected lower house, which is currently run by a party which won just 36% of the 66% of the population who bothered to turn out to vote, so there's that.

In fact, the Government is so democratic that when the population overwhelmingly decided that we should name our new research vessel Boaty McBoatface, and yes, I realise that I'm late to this party, they immediately rejected it in favour of RRS Sir David Attenborough, because screw the voting public.

Look. Sir David is wonderful. Frankly, I think we should be naming more things after Sir David Attenborough. If the decision was made to rename every street after him, even, it would only be his just desserts for the incredible work he has done, and I would put up with the inconvenience of having to try and arrange to meet someone on the corner of Sir David Attenborough Drive and Sir David Attenborough Road, only to find out that they're actually at Sir David Attenborough Street and Sir David Attenborough Walk, you know, up by Sir David Attenborough Crescent, at the intersection of Sir David Attenborough Boulevard and Sir David Attenborough Lane.

Sir David Attenborough and one of 500 animals named after him; Sir David Attenborough Lemur

It's a testament to how loved He is that the Government were able to effectively use him as a flak shield for their decision not to accept the results of Votey McVoteface. Using his name is like invoking some strange, unknown God. It has a special power to it. Who is going to argue against Sir David Attenborough? Who would begrudge him a ship. Nobody, that's who, which is convenient for when you want to jettison the poor choice that the people made.

So look out for us to remain in the EU tomorrow, or, if the results go poorly, for us to instead end up part of the Sir David Attenborough EU.

At this point, all I know is that whatever choice we make we really need to get better at understanding what exactly it is that Europe does, and why it's worth us being a part of it for the foreseeable future. Leave or Remain, we at the very least ought to be able to name some of its functions, beyond stealing our money, propping up Greece, and swamping our shore with baguettes and paella.