Leave / Remain
We have remained quiet on the big issue facing Brits tomorrow. However, as the moment approaches and the arguments on both sides get nastier and more threatening in tone, it’s hard not to say something – even if the opinions of a bunch of musicians have no particular significance.
Yes, from a purely selfish point of view, Remain is 100% in our personal interest. The existence of the EU is why it is so easy for us to regularly tour across Europe without the need for carnets and work permits (the reason we are unlikely to tour in the US in the near future) and stacks of expensive paperwork. Leave would make this all harder and more complicated for us, and for all similar musicians and artists crossing the Channel in either direction.
But that’s not our point. It seems that the referendum in the UK has become simply an opportunity to ‘stick it’ to the status quo and there are many, many good reasons to want to do this. And the more people at the top of society, from politicians to successful business people, ‘the good and the great’, tell us to vote Remain, the more likely people are to want to take the opportunity to say ‘**** you’. The Remain camp’s tactics have been all based on economic threats, but since the 1980s, and certainly since 2008, people have been entitled to believe that ‘economic benefits’ are entirely skewed towards those people that already have everything and are not, in any sense, shared by us all – so what difference will it make? When one ‘shock’ headline suggests that house prices would fall dramatically in case of Brexit, it’s hard not to think of anything that wouldn’t actually be better for the UK. We can see a good case for Leave, which is based on justified criticism of the EU, on the idea of promoting local economies over global, corporate interests and on true humanist, democratic, internationalist principles.
But that is not what is driving the Brexit campaign; the people screaming loudest for Leave terrify us; the little Englanders, the ‘get rid of EU regulation that holds back business interests’ brigade, the fascistic tendency to want to go back to a wholly invented past, and in some quarters the overt racism and sheer nastiness. And this fear is shared by millions of people across the Continent who want a different, better Europe for themselves too. We believe that we are better standing together with them. The real troubles that plague Britain, chronic underinvestment, the flow of money and resources from public into private hands, mind-boggling levels of inequality and the squeeze on public services are not the fault of immigration or the EU, but the choices of our own governments since the 1980s.
The murder of Jo Cox was not directly related to the EU debate, or the rise of Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen, or the threat of terrorism or any particular event but is difficult to disassociate it from the general tide of hatred sweeping the globe, not to see an echo of the 1930s in the rise of religious fundamentalists and right wing demagogues everywhere, feeding on and stirring up divisions between people where such divisions are normally, at worst, the minor irritations of people’s every day lives. Are we bored of peace? Have we forgotten what tribal conflict and war is actually like? There may be some logical principles in Brexit but it’s loudest and most powerful backers, who will be most empowered by a Leave victory and most in a position to benefit, have a ruthless and entirely right wing agenda.
We are reminded of a German comedian who, answering the question as to whether Britain is really part of Europe, simply said ‘buy a f****** map’.
NMA
