EU Referendum (part 1)

Written and posted from my phone in bed this morning. Apologies for the spelling, grammar and lack of proof reading, I hope it makes more sense than either side of the debate so far.

Totally unimpressed by the EU debate thus far I decided to attend a meeting arranged and chaired by my local MP (Luke Hall, Conservative, Thornbury and Yate), where the leave and remain arguments would be presented by experts from the two campaigns.
Our experts for the evening were:
For Leave, David Campbell Bannerman (DCB), Tory MEP for the East of England, a former deputy leader of UKIP who defected when he lost the leadership race to Farage. On the surface fairly affable but soon exposed the usual deeply patronising personality disorder typical of politicians who first decide what is right and then look for evidence to justify their position while ignoring or attempting to debunk mountains of evidence that undermines it.
And for Remain, Robert (dullness personified) Buckland QC, Conservative MP for Swindon South and the current Government’s Solicitor-General, who failed to say anything vaguely interesting or enlightening in the whole debate other than a few gentle put downs when Campbell Bannerman or his supporters enthusiasm for their case caused them to assert untrue facts as evidence.
What did I learn from this experience? Absolutely nothing, the debate replicated the national media coverage, albeit without much of Cameron’s doom and gloom nonsense scaremongering. Campbell Bannerman was able to salve the consciences of the committed leavers, and those who remain undecided will be so unenthused that they’ll probably not bother voting. I did want to intervene a couple of times when an unchallenged Campbell Bannerman condemned EU interference in our farmers sovereign right to poison the wider environment with fertiliser and pesticides, and forcing the UK to abandon coal fired electricity generation for spurious long term environment concerns, but these were not items for debate as it seemed everyone on the top table agreed with him.
So my pre-submitted questions about what a post Brexit England will look like remain unanswered. Clearly the Leavers won’t have the funds to do all the talked of budget redistribution – protect the steel industry, bail out the NHS, support farming, etc – and no clarification on the intrinsic conflict between lower prices promised by free marketeer leavers, and supporting British industry of the little England protectionist majority of their supporters.
In reality the NHS remains totally screwed by appalling dogmatic neoliberal policy decisions over the last decade, and neither side of the Conservative party have any intention to repair it. The steel industry was sacrificed by wider UK insistence on a free market, tariff free EU that again both sides of the Tory party agree with. Both sides also agree that clean beaches, rivers and other environmental improvements forced on us by EU targets were interference in UK sovereignty and we should have the right to mess up our children’s futures, and that coach and lorry drivers shouldn’t be forced to take breaks or only work for a maximum 48 hour week. The spurious border security arguments will continue to ignore the fact that we don’t have enough people in place to actually police vulnerable bits of our coastline, and the migration numbers won’t go down on a points based system while our education system continues to fail to produce individuals with the skills required by employers and indigenous workers don’t want low paid seasonal employment picking fruit and veg on our farms.
In other words this referendum probably won’t change many of the things people care about, but does risk making the British people poorer for generations to come – I’ve probably decided to vote Remain.