Reasons for leaving
Published: Tue, 06/21/16
Secondly, today's post is a bit political in the sense that I am talking about Britain's EU referendum coming up this Thursday, I promise it is as political as I will ever get in these posts. You might find it interesting as a brief analysis of this issue. It is just my point of view and it probably comes over as rather naive and hopeful, I was aiming for idealistic and optimistic. Anyway, here it is:
Why I am voting leave
At last I think I get the popular reasons for voting leave or voting remain.
Leave, so that we get free of the bureaucratic nightmare and coming tyranny of the ever expanding EU.
Remain, so that our own governments are restrained by the benign forces of the EU. Otherwise the Tories will take us back to Victorian levels of exploitation, discrimination and inequality.
Mix a lot of dubious predictions about the future into the argument (I wish I could call it debate) and it is no wonder the referendum has become so divisive.
I have looked forward to this referendum for a long time. I was always going to vote leave and I am going to do just that on Thursday. That is my choice because I don’t believe that the EU should exist at all.
Why does it exist in its present form? Two world wars so damaged Europe that some kind of organisation to bring countries back together and enable reconstruction seemed like a good idea. Once the Soviet Union collapsed and the countries that languished under communism were cut loose it was inevitable that they too would need help to recover their prosperity.
The EU is not another form of fascist occupation of Europe, neither is it a communist successor to the Soviet Union. However the EU does exist as part of continuum of ideology and international organisation which comes out of two world wars, goes back to at least the French revolution and is a reaction to both fascism and communism. Many of the perceived problems of the EU such as high levels of Eastern European immigration to the UK are legacies of communism. Problems such as wars seem to be created by one ideology and then people are expected to submit to another ideology to prevent the original problem happening again. It doesn’t take much knowledge of history to make you wonder what is actually going on.
I am voting leave because I believe that countries should be collectives of people with similar language and culture. Those people should choose who rules them and makes their laws by consensus. Then those countries should trade and interact with other countries in a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation. The use of force should always be limited to maintenance of order and defence of boundaries when diplomacy fails.
I don’t believe that we need organisations such as the EU, the UN, NATO, the IMF or central banks of any kind. Even the USA is an aberration, only existing in its current form because of the horrific civil war in the 1860s which forcibly maintained the union.
We have had at least two centuries of conflict and strife in the world brought about by ideological conflicts imposed on us by, well who exactly? We are told that we have to live under the EU, NATO etc etc because they keep the peace. But forces belonging to NATO have destroyed countries in the Middle East giving rise to the refugee crisis which is causing EU countries so much soul searching now.
So why vote leave on Thursday? Because I believe that I will be taking a small step towards healing the past and moving towards the kind of world we could be living in. The EU is a continuation of an international ideology which limits the human spirit rather than allowing it to flourish. The EU is a relatively benign expression of this ideology compared with some that we have seen in the past 100 years but it still has no reason to exist.
Your vote too will only a tiny step, it probably won’t achieve the goal of Britain leaving the EU. Even if we do, the EU itself will not disappear overnight and neither will the other organisations I have listed. But we will show that we believe in freedom and self-determination. I want to see my country be an example to the rest of the world of peaceful cooperation without needing ideology imposed from outside.
Please don’t vote out of hate or anger or frustration. Vote for hope of a better world which puts the legacy of imposed ideology behind us. We don’t need the EU and neither does anyone else, lets start the process of letting it fade away by voting leave.
regards
Graham