The Case for Europe (and Against Leaving): Part 4: It's the Final Countdown
(I had planned on writing a post on immigration and something more detailed for my last post on the referendum but time has run out).
The referendum is only a couple of days away. The polls are too close for comfort so there's truly no way of knowing what the future holds. On Friday we could be heaving a starting to steer the country back on course or ploughing into uncharted waters. Only time will tell.
I wanted to use my last post to explain in simple terms why I want to stay and why I think we shouldn't leave. There's been a lot of negativity in the campaign, from both sides, and yet there are a lot of positives to being in Europe. To take one example, EU funding accounts for 16% of university funding in the UK, totalling €7 billion. You may think that this is irrelevant - that who cares if universities lose funding, they're just full of elite ivory tower-inhabiting know-it-alls who wouldn't last 5 minutes in the real world. But that money doesn't just go into the university's bank account to sit there earning interest. It pays for things. Yes, it pays those elite ivory tower-inhabiting know-it-alls, but it also pays for admin staff (like my mum). It pays for lab equipment, for high-tech specialist equipment, for office equipment. For cleaners and maintenance people. For builders and architects constructing the new department or student housing block. And for all the myriad other people who help make universities function. That money goes from the university to hundreds, if not thousands, of suppliers - international, national and local - all of whom benefit from this funding that comes from the EU.
Staying with universities, another benefit of EU membership is free movement of people between countries. This may seem a contentious statement given how much of the debate has hinged on immigration, with both sides seeming to agree that it is too high. But universities show why it is good. Researchers from the EU account for about 17% of academic staff. These people are highly qualified and bring not only expertise but collaborations with researchers at other institutions in other countries and, arguably most importantly of all, different ways of thinking. It is easy for institutions to become, well, institutionalised - insulated and unable to think outside the box. As academia is pretty much entirely about thinking 'outside the box' new blood is vital and bringing people from different backgrounds with new and creative ideas helps maintain innovation. I cannot find specific figures, but I know simply from being on the periphery of academia that it's not a one-way street. British academics move to other European countries too, sharing their expertise and ways of thinking in return. In such a way research can advance more quickly than would otherwise be possible, and with an ease that is pretty extraordinary when you think about it.
Moving away from universities to another area that is also a bone of contention in the debates: the NHS. The Leave campaign has argued that immigration is causing the NHS to stretch to breaking point and that the only way to save it is to leave the EU so we can control migration. This argument does not take into account the massive funding deficit the NHS is facing, nor the fact that immigration does not (overall) put any additional strain on the NHS. I use the caveat 'overall' because I will agree that there may be localised areas that are facing problems from increased populations due to immigration, but this is a fault with local provisioning, not migration. Given that migrants pay a lot more in than they get out (£15 billion for Eastern European migrants between 2001 and 2011) it doesn't seem fair that they shouldn't have access to services when they need them. But even more than this, some of those same migrants putting the NHS under 'strain' are the ones working in it. Fully 10% of doctors and 5% of nurses are from the EU. The NHS benefits hugely from us being in the EU, as those doctors and
nurses can move here with a minimum of fuss and, more importantly to
both them and the NHS, cost.
I don't have the knowledge or time to go into all the other benefits: there are loads of examples online, Here is a good place to start. Actually, here is even better. What I will do is end my exploration of benefits with a personal story. As those of you who know me will be aware, I went to study in Ireland a few years ago. It was the second time I've studied overseas, the first being in New Zealand. To go to NZ I had to get a visa, which cost a fair amount of money and required a lot of form filling and a few trips to the Embassy in London to get everything sorted out for reasons I won't bore you with now (though they involved my bank thinking I was trying to launder money through a university). I had to get my visa renewed every year and a medical exam every other year. To move to Ireland, I caught a plane. That was it. No paperwork, no visas, no medical, nothing. I just got my offer and moved. Simple! In my second year I got sick. I wrote about it here. I ended up being taken to hospital and in Ireland that normally means being charged a lot of money. But because of my European Health Insurance Card my treatment was free. As a member of the EU we have reciprocal agreements that mean we get access to health services under the same terms as locals (sometimes even better terms). It means that, in terms of medical expenses, when we travel to Europe we don't need to worry about travel insurance (though I'd still recommend it). That not only saves money, but gives peace of mind, which is invaluable.
Now, you may have heard that all the money that we're currently paying to the EU will be put back into the UK. It will pay for the NHS, for schools and universities and so on. It will pay for everything we can't currently afford because of the extortionate amount we're paying to the EU. Well, there's two problems here. The first is that we're not paying an 'extortionate amount'. We pay 0.37% of the budget to Europe. That's less than is spent on VAT exemptions (0.57%)! For that we get all the benefits I've listed above and many, many more. The second problem, and one that is more fundamental, is that all those pledges made on how this 0.37% will be redistributed has led to it being slightly overspent. Some brave soul totted up the figures and found that the Leave campaign has actually spent the savings 10 times over. In other words they're making promises that can never be met. And that's even assuming you trust people who have previously said that the NHS should be privatised to increase its funding.
While I want to stay positive, I find it difficult. As I've noted in a previous post, the economy has already been affected. The FTSE lost £100 billion in just four days due to Brexit fears. Even as far away as Australia AU$26 billion has been lost as a result of the referendum. There's a lot of talk about what will happen if we do vote to leave and I've seen a lot of people saying that we don't need to invoke Article 50 until we're ready, and in the meantime informal negotiations can take place. To which I say, we have lost over £100 billion just at the prospect of us leaving the EU. Is prolonging the uncertainty really what we want to do? That money was lost because companies don't know if it's safe to invest in the UK because of the uncertain future. The longer we are in limbo the worse things will get. The best thing we could do is negotiate our exit as quickly as possible. The only problem is that there's no benefit to the rest of the European Union helping us out. In fact they're likely to play hardball with us. After all, they have the stronger negotiating position and they're not idiots. For our part, we're going to be negotiating our exit while also renegotiating trade deals with pretty much every country in the world. That's a lot of negotiators. Where will they come from? And we'll be doing this while we have a government in crisis, possibly with the PM resigning and Boris being crowned king the new PM with someone like Gove as deputy. Just the thought of that would be enough to plunge any sane person into despair without the added problems of us descending into recession.
Ok. Even though there is so much more to say this is far too long already and I do want to end on a positive note. So here goes. . .
The foundations of the EU were constructed in the aftermath of the Second World War in the hopes that we would end the cycles of violence the 20th century had seen up until that point. And it worked. Nations that had been fighting for centuries came together to co-operate, allow open trade and movement of people. The EU is bureaucratic, but that's a feature not a fault. It means we're working with a leveled playing field and it stops one country from trying to undercut another. It's not perfect by any means. Countries and people try and game the system, but they'll do that whatever the system. In the EU, the UK is a big fish in a small pond. We are one of the biggest members in terms of the number of MEPs and the amount we pay in and get out. As such we have a huge amount of influence. If we leave, we won't be the 'plucky little country that could'. We will be an insignificant backwater with trade negotiations a low priority for most countries. We will go from punching massively above our weight in terms of influence - not just in Europe but globally - to a punchline of a joke. The Referendum is not just a referendum on Europe but on how we see ourselves. Do we want to be a key player in global politics, a beacon for trade, investment and innovation, or do we want to rest on our laurels and let the world go sailing by while we dream of empires past?
We have a choice on Thursday. I know which one I'm making - for the economy, for the travel, for the diversity, for the shared ideals and aims - I vote REMAIN.
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