Be informed

Here in the UK at the moment, we are being fed a daily diet of EU in-or-out gruel. Two camps vying for our vote in the referendum on 23 June. Cannot wait. The out side are particularly interesting because for neither camp is it about values – the values of sharing the planet, trading to stop us fighting against one another and protecting human rights.

So, in the red corner are the fascists who believe that immigration is at the heart of the country’s problems and exit would first of all stop all of the Poles, Romanians, etc. coming and taking our jobs, houses, schools, etc., but also make it easier for the country to stop the middle-eastern refugees from entering because the borders can again be controlled. Having just crossed a border today at Gatwick Airport, I cannot see that the border could be better ‘protected’ from the latter category. Frankly.

In the blue corner we find the renegade Tory ministers who are interested in being big fish in a small pool (England) rather than small fish in a big pool (Europe). Apparently, we make better laws than other Europeans. We are better at negotiating trade deals than Europeans, something to do with our imperial history. We could negotiate the necessary trade deals with key markets in the time it takes to say Xi Jinping or Donald Trump. And of course, these countries need the British market because they sell more things to us than we do to them – as if that was a good thing.

Leading this intellectually cat-brained movement is Boris Johnson (right), the selfless Mayor of London. Johnson claims, of course,
that he did a lot of soul searching before opting for Brexit. He did not really want to oppose his own prime minister. But he just had to. He is not doing it as a springboard to being prime minister when a wounded David Cameron gives up after being found to be on the wrong side. No.

Choices, choices.

Pic: Boris Johnson, Mayor of London twitter