The right choice is to remain

It is perhaps not too dramatic to suggest that the British people today stand at a fork in the road of the United Kingdom’s history. By the end of this week, a referendum will have decided – for the foreseeable future – Britain’s place in the European Union, which in turn will effectively determine what kind of country ours is to be.

Given the significance of Thursday’s poll, it is vital above all else that those who are entitled to vote take up the chance to do so. In the last two decades, there has been considerable disengagement from political processes. In all of the last four general elections, turnout has been below 70 per cent; membership of mainstream political parties is dwindling. This week provides a rare opportunity for voters to determine a matter of policy, not of party; dislike of politicians can be no excuse for not taking part on this occasion.

Indeed, the only justification for not voting ought to be that an individual simply cannot decide whether they favour remaining in the EU, or leaving. And to be fair, the tendentious nature of much of the debate over recent weeks may well have left many people in two minds. For those who have sought guidance from politicians – on both sides of the campaign – there must be a sense of bewilderment at the degree of mud-slinging and the paucity of facts. Sections of the media have been just as guilty.

To a degree it was inevitable that emotion and rhetoric would come to the fore. After all, the Leave option is a step into the unknown – the Brexiteers assure us it would turn Britain into a veritable paradise; the Remain camp suggest it would be a step on the road to hell. But the truth is, nobody can know for sure, which is why the spectacle of claim and counter-claim has been so unremitting and, arguably, so inconclusive. The Independent has sought to answer dispassionately the big EU questions, and to highlight the known unknowns.

Still, on what is – or perhaps ought to be – the key issue, the economy, there is a broad acceptance that a departure from the European Union would be damaging for Britain. The Farages, Goves and Johnsons of this world argue that any potential short-term economic pain would be a worthwhile price for imagined economic gain in the long run, and the return of sovereignty. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of economists believe that Brexit would both cause significant upheaval in the short term and that long-term recovery can’t be regarded as a given – and indeed it should not be. The International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Institute for Fiscal Studies have all sounded the alarm vis-à-vis a vote to leave.

On the question of trade, the Brexit camp maintains it is perfectly possible to make advantageous bilateral deals with other countries. That is true in principle, but in practice scale matters. By being part of a European trading bloc, the UK can meet the likes of India and China – and the USA for that matter – on a reasonably equal footing. For all the romance attached to good old Blighty going it alone, the notion that we would be able to hold the whip hand against the world’s major economies on our own is hard to take seriously. Likewise, the idea that important multinational businesses will not move their HQs from London may prove to be naive.

That having been said, while this referendum ought to be decided by economic considerations, it is clear that immigration is at the top of the agenda for many voters. And not without some justification.

It is fair to say that large-scale immigration can be problematic. Membership of the EU and the principle of free movement have not allowed for a planned and controllable system of immigration. It makes planning difficult – including for education, healthcare and welfare systems. But immigrants have been a boon for many employers and have enriched Britain culturally in many ways. Moreover, the link between “controlling” immigration and better security is a fallacy. Migration from other EU countries does not, in and of itself, make Britain vulnerable to being attacked by those (of whatever mind set) who would strike at modern, Western values. And being inside the EU gives us access to data-sharing capabilities which would have to be renegotiated in the event that we depart.

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On the broader point about the EU being a force for stability, the Prime Minister was mocked for raising the spectre of global war. But at the crux of his comments was an important truth: that the EU has played a role in helping to keep Europe peaceful – not by virtue of any military might but by encouraging the development of genuine European fraternity. Why withdraw from that brotherhood as the world becomes ever more dangerous?

Over the coming days The Independent will examine these key issues (the economy, security, immigration, identity) in more detail. But it is clear now that the best choice on Thursday must be a vote to remain inside the EU. The institution is not without its flaws of course – there is bureaucratic inefficiency and the maintenance of Strasbourg as the official seat of the European Parliament is wastefully expensive. But membership of the EU benefits our economy, boosts global security and aids our connectivity with the rest of Europe. The Independent has always stood for progressive liberalism, for open-minded internationalism and if there were ever a time to stand up decisively for those values, it is now.

Brexiteers have taken great delight in claiming again and again that any warning about the risks of leaving the EU is just another example of “project fear”. Those who urge a vote to remain are dismissed as part of some sort of plot to keep Britons subjugated by Brussels. This is post-truth politics at its absolute worst.

There is also a stunning paradox about the Brexit side attacking Remainers in this way, because ultimately it is fear which is the key driver behind their own campaign. The goblins they tell us we should run from come in the form of “faceless bureaucrats” in EU institutions; they come in the form of “uncontrolled” immigrants; they come in the form of “crazy” European judges. In the Brexiteers’ vision, the world is a frightening place and one from which anxious Britain should retreat, returning somehow to a version of the UK circa 1952 that actually never existed in the first place.

This timid, insular vision is not one we can share. A vote to remain in the EU is not a vote of cowardice but of confidence; it is not a vote to cede control but to get things done collaboratively in a globalised world. At a time when democracy everywhere is in retreat, the big divide in politics is not between competing ideologies, but two dispositions towards the fact of globalisation: open or closed. In this battle between globalists and nativists, we stand with the former. A vote to stay in the EU is not a vote for the past, but for an enlightened future.