Mums On Mars: Hot Topic of The Day: The EU Referendum (Source: Post Share on Facebook)

This post was created by Lisa Maxwell, and has been shared over 2,000 on Facebook! What a great argument - well worth a read!

Lisa Maxwell

15 June ·

As a busy working mum of two young children, I've never really had the time to keep up with Politics! So I admit it has taken some effort to get my head round both sides of the most topical argument of our time: Whether Britain should Leave or Remain in the EU.

Whilst taking in both sides of the argument, I have come to feel many things. Frustration at so many misleading statements! Anger around the lack of visibility of the voice of certain leaders like the head of the Labour party! But most of all, SADNESS… that a great injustice is being done as many people don’t know what they are voting for because they have been misled by statements that pull on their hearts and emotions.

I thought I’d post my perspective, as a mum who's thinking about her children and their future, pulling on points I have discovered from others. I hope this will be helpful to others who may still be "on the fence".

Let me start with a list of high profile figures and institutions on each side. Some may surprise you!

Remain:

Former British Prime Ministers Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major (1 – see Sources below)
The Labour party (2)
Every other major UK political party leader including Nicola Sturgeon (3)
Barack Obama (4)
Hillary Clinton (5)
Angela Merkel (6)
Stephen Hawking and 83% of scientists (7)
Sir Richard Branson (8)
40 religious leaders (9)
300 leading historians (10)
The Trades Union Congress and our six largest trades unions (11)
88% of economists (12)
The National Farmers Union (13)
The Bank of England (14)
The Chief Executive of NHS England (15)
The Royal College of Midwives (16)
Multiple businesses including Ford Motor Company (17) and Rolls Royce (18)

Leave:

The Sun Newspaper
The BNP
The UKIP Party
Nigel Farage
Boris Johnson
Michael Gove
Donald Trump

What has become majorly apparent to me, has been the overwhelming consensus among leaders and experts of all kinds that Britain is stronger in Europe. Just look at that list. Look at it!

So, why then, are so many British people thinking differently to that Remain list, according to the current polls? My observation is that these are the three most common lines people are being fed, and are believing:

Line Number 1: “We shouldn’t be governed by unelected bureaucrats, we should decide our own laws and how we spend our own money!!”

So, I asked myself, what % of our laws are actually generated by the EU versus our own country?? – can you guess? It’s actually a hard number to derive, but according to the House of Commons Library Report, it’s 7% (19). Yes, only 7%!!!
The UK manages its own Budget. Manages how it spends its income, how much to spend on Health versus Education etc… Oh, and the NHS is a British institution governed solely in the UK.

I’ve also come to appreciate that it actually makes sense to share some laws, because we all breathe in the same air, share oceans, and live on the same planet. If we come together as a region to share some common laws, say on air pollution, rather than making different laws, the results are more powerful, and more easily implemented for big businesses which operate across the region. We’re also all at risk of terrorism, we can protect ourselves more effectively if we co-operate and share intelligence across the region.

Line Number 2: “We pay £350 million a week to the EU, that’s £50 million a day, £18.8 billion a year!! If we leave, the money saved could save our NHS!!”

OK - a tough one. Because on the face of things we are talking big big numbers here! So I can see why people get angry. But this is complicated. The following points are really, really important, the above statement cannot be considered in isolation:

- Those numbers are misleading because they don’t take account of the rebate the UK gets from the EU or the spending by the EU on the UK. In 2014 following the rebate and spending in the UK from the EU, we paid £5.7 billion which equates to 0.3% of UK GDP, or £100 million per week, or £14 million a day. (20). Around 36 pence per day per person.
- The 0.3% is really important – take a look at the pie chart. It is a tiny slither of the total spending in the UK, which if saved, would make no significant difference to the spending on public services, like the NHS or Education.
- The amount the UK economy benefits from investments from EU countries is £66 million a day. (Source: Office of National Statistics).
- If we leave and save that £5.7 billion a year we pay to the EU, independent economic experts believe the economic damage to the UK will more than outweigh the savings made. It is hard to predict exactly what will happen and when (might take a couple of years to feel the effects), but independent experts predict the damage to the UK to be between £20 billion to £40 billion (20). The same report predicts that the deficit which is expected to be cleared by 2019/20, will not be cleared if Brexit happens.
- Yes we are net contributors to the EU, so we get back (directly) less than we give, but isn’t it good to help poorer countries, if it leads to raising standards across Europe and avoiding wars, which the EU has avoided in Europe since the Second World War?
- Some claim we will continue to be able to access the single market in Europe if we leave, however Germany’s finance minister has made it quite clear this won’t be the case (21). Do we really want to risk rocking the boat here?

Line Number 3: “Britain no longer feels like Britain, we’re surrounded by foreigners!!! We have a massive immigration problem!!”

The fact that people are confusing the referendum with immigration rattles me the most! A few things to bear in mind:

The overwhelming majority of immigration to the UK over the last 40 years has been from outside the EU (22). However you feel about the above statement, it has nothing to do with our EU membership.
Last year, 270,000 EU citizens immigrated to the UK, and 85,000 returned to the EU. So EU net migration was around 185,000 (23). Britain has a population of £64.6 million, the impact on our overall population just isn’t very large!
EU migrants contribute more in taxes than they use in public services, as they are much more likely to be of working age (“economic migrants” – who have come to Britain to work) than the general population (24).
Tax payments by EU migrants far outweigh welfare paid to EU migrants . They make a net contribution to the UK of £20 billion a year (25)
Many UK citizens choose to become immigrants in other countries; Spain, Australia, America, China, Germany, to name but a few. We like to call ourselves “ex-pats” but in fact, we are immigrants enjoying another country’s culture, it’s public services, it’s weather! We don’t see this as a problem, we see it as exciting, yet when others wish to come here, so many see it as a problem, which saddens me.

It is true than no-one knows exactly what will happen if we leave the EU, so again, I turn to the experts here….

These are the likely effects on us all if we leave the EU:

The pound will devalue due to uncertainty about the UK’s economic future. It’s already happening around fears of Brexit (26). Since the UK imports most of its good (you may have noticed we don’t “make” or manufacture as much in this country as we used to (!), a normal basket of goods will simply cost you more, because the Pound won’t buy as much. It would also become more expensive to take holidays abroad.
Falling currency leads to higher inflation, again, normal basket of goods will cost more (26).
Panic selling of the weakening Pound may force the Bank of England to raise interest rates, so your mortgage payments will go up (26).
Unemployment will rise: a study commissioned by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has warned that leaving the EU could cost the British economy 950,000 jobs (27).
If you own a property in Europe, you will lose the tax perks of being an EU Citizen. France, for example, is notoriously tough on non-EU citizens, imposing a capital-gains tax of 49%, made up of its “impôt sur les plus values” and an added social charge. This compares to EU Citizens, who pay 19% on gains from renting or selling properties in France (28).

The question is, are you willing to risk all of the above happening? Are you willing to ignore all of those listed above in the Remain list?

I will finish on one of the quotes of the founding fathers of the EU, Sir Winston Churchill, addressing the Congress of Europe in 1948:

“A high and a solemn responsibility rests upon us here ... If we allow ourselves to be rent and disordered by pettiness and small disputes, if we fail in clarity of view or courage in action, a priceless occasion may be cast away for ever. But if we all pull together and pool the luck and the comradeship - and we shall need all the comradeship and not a little luck … then all the little children who are now growing up in this tormented world may find themselves not the victors nor the vanquished in the fleeting triumphs of one country over another in the bloody turmoil of … war, but the heirs of all the treasures of the past and the masters of all the science, the abundance and the glories of the future.”

And - against all the odds, we did it, we achieved Churchill’s vision for Europe.

Those “little children” are now retired – the first generation in a thousand years to grow up without the horror of war in Europe, enjoying a standard of living unimaginable in 1948.

All the cities, art, history, people, food and culture of this wonderful continent are open to us whenever we want to visit, to live or to work.

Hundreds of millions of European people who until only a few decades ago were ruled by dictators or communists now enjoy democracy, human rights, the rule of law and the abundance of the free market.

I think that’s worth 36 pence a day.

Let’s not live in isolation. Let’s not cut ties with Europe. Let’s drive reform from within. We are stronger together!

Mums On Mars

Friday 17 June 2016

Hot Topic of The Day: The EU Referendum (Source: Post Share on Facebook)

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