Should I Stay Or Should I go? -The British Referendum on European Union

So now we have a date for the referendum. And the prospect of almost 4 months of wall to wall chatter on the subject, very little of which will be anything other than scare tactics as we had in the Scottish Independence referendum. Don't get me wrong, the politics of fear will come from both sides of the argument, or should that be non-argument, since the actual issues won't get heard among the shouting. On one side, the 'In' Campaign, we will have rolled out the fear of economic collapse and being left isolated in terms of security if we leave the EU; on the other, the 'Out', we will have fear of unlimited migration and fear of not retaining any useful sovereignty as all laws will emanate from Brussels if we remain in the EU.  And as to that last point, the anti-EU media in the UK have for years being waging a constant campaign to plant in the minds of the British, the 'outrageous' iniquities foisted upon them by the EU ('file under "you couldn't make it up"') such as Caribbean bananas being too curved to meet EU stipulations or bottled water not allowed to proclaim that it leads to re-hydration. For them the Brexit campaign didn't just start on Monday, but ever since the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992.

The entry into the arena of one Boris Johnson finally seemed to fire the starting gun on the campaigning, because it apparently lends a heavyweight political figure to oppose the stance of David Cameron who wants the UK to remain within the EU. The whole debate has become skewed to discuss the political machinations of the Conservative Party, because Cameron has already stated this will be his last term as Prime Minister and the fight to replace him has superceded the actual issue of EU membership. Which is doubly a pity as Boris Johnson really isn't worth a nation's attention, UNLESS he does become Prime Minister. Currently he is stepping down form being a rather poor Mayor of London, holds no power in Cabinet other than a token position and his amiable fop schtick does not play well north of London and the Home Counties, because Northerners are gruff sort of folk who won't wear his bumbling buffoonery. The number of gaffes and insults Boris has committed to communities of a Northern persuasion begins to require more than two hands to keep a tally of. I'm with the North on this one (channeling my Mother's Northern heritage I think I can pull it off with sincerity). If Boris Johnson does end up becoming Prime Minister, then the whole of the UK is a collective fool falling for his cuddly Uncle act.

I'm going to put my cards on the table now. I ardently hope we stay in the EU. But my reasons are as usual, wildly removed from most you will hear bandied about. My view is one of the long-term, motivated by both idealism and (non-parochial) ideology. I've written before (and here) about how a good deal of Britain's problems lie from its heritage and persistent belief that we are still a significant country on the world stages of economy and diplomacy. That the 'Great' in Great Britain is still justified. But I'd go deeper than that, I think many of the world's problems are ascribable to nation-states and nationalism. Therefore anything that brings us together in greater unions and breaks down nationalistic barriers is a good thing to my mind. The UK complaint about the EU being a political union as well as an economic one is actually the best argument for it, although the British will never see it that way. And yes, we are a long way off still from any full-scale political union, as witnessed by the EU's inability to act coherently on issues such as Ukraine, Syria and the migrant crisis. So I accept this is a very idealistic stance for me to take. You won't see anyone in the campaign calling for the UK to move towards more political union with the rest of Europe. We are an island nation and welcome that separation of the waters. More's the pity.

The thing is also that whichever side I plump for, would put my support behind things I am fundamentally opposed to. For example, if the UK did leave, then the City Of London would lose its central status as being the European financial nexus between Hong Kong in the East and New York in the West. The UK financial industry would be crippled as Europe repatriated everything probably to Frankfurt. Now the idealist in me would welcome that, as our reliance on capital and high finance since the 1980s has ushered in corrupt practises, corporate tax evasion, environmental exploitation and huge differentials between rich and poor. Yet I am also aware that without the wealth generated by the City of London, this country would be even worse off since it is one of the few wealth-generating services we have now we are bereft of a serious manufacturing base. Also I would be fundamentally against Turkey being admitted to the EU because of its poor human rights record and lack of true arts and media freedoms, I cannot believe it meets the entry requirements in these realms. But the morally corrupt equation is that Turkey's compliance is needed to deal with the migration crisis to the East of it and what we have that Turkey so badly craves is membership in the EU. It's also probably fair to say that certain other entry standards would see existing members fall short of meeting; Greece with regard to the economy, Hungary with regard to protected freedoms of minority groups and Polish press and media freedom, not least its current proposed legislation to outlaw holocaust denial where attributed to the Germans, but to not only permit such denial for any Polish atrocities, but to criminalise such claims.

The EU is not a perfect community by any means. But I think it's worth persevering with and seeking to help it realise its ultimate dream, even if that goes against the beliefs of the vast amount of my fellow Brits. If we do vote to pull out, apart from the instability of the two years to extricate our institutions and laws from those of the EU, it will precipitate constitutional crisis here as the Scots will certainly demand another independence referendum to follow on quickly, because they will vote to a man and woman to stay within the EU and therefore see themselves as wholly unrepresented by the rest of the UK's decision to pull out. And this leads to a final consideration. How often do we have these 'once in a generation referendums'? This would be the second referendum on Scottish independence in less than 5 years. If we vote to come out of the EU, it's unlikely we'll ever hold (or be allowed by the EU to hold) another referendum, to rejoin. But if we vote to stay in, how long before the anti-EU brigade agitate for another chance to decide the question? In the meantime, the media will continue to spew out reports of having to straighten our bananas...

I Vow To Thee My Country - That You Got It Badly Wrong

There's no doubting that the situation in Syria is immensely complicated. Two ex-members of the military who are Conservative MPs voted against their Party and opposed a bombing campaign of Syria. An ex-member of the military who is a Labour MP opposed his Party line and voted in favour of bombing. Perhaps the most telling individual vote was that of the Chair of the Parliamentary select committee on Foreign Affairs, Conservative MP John Baron, voted against bombing (as he did in the vote on bombing Libya).

You'd hope your delegated political representatives would have some handle on the intricacies. But in the recent day long Parliamentary debate and vote, the level of political and strategic analysis was in short supply, replaced by moral and emotional pleas on one side or the other. Or the debate was partly hijacked by the Prime Minister's rather inflammatory assertion that to vote against the proposed campaign equated you to a terrorist sympathiser and consequent demands by outraged MPs for him to apologise for such a statement.

But I'm going to try and pick the emotions and moral outrage out of the debate and offer some crystal clear rebuttals to the arguments made in favour of bombing Syria. Of course readers may not agree with either these arguments or the position to oppose bombing and that's fine. But I hope to show that that the points offered during that debate are not enough to clinch any argument.

                             


The main argument was that bombing Syria increases the security on Britain's streets. Actually it does the very opposite. Those in Syria are not the threat to us here at home. Rather it is from UK citizens already living here. You may say that such homegrown terror is co-ordinated from Syria. But it doesn't have to be. Recently a fourteen year old boy from Blackburn was jailed for mentoring a would-be terrorist in Australia. The nature of global communications means you don't actually need a command and control centre to co-ordinate your terror campaign. Of the Paris terrorists, no more than two had returned from Syria. To fight for ISIS's cause does not entail seeing service or training in Iraq or Syria. There will not be ISIS fighters coming back from Syria at this point in time to perpetrate a terrorist act on British soil. If any potential UK terrorists have seen service there, they are already back in the UK (and you have to ask questions of our intelligence service as to how they have been able to sneak back in).

So the terror threat remains ever-present. Why therefore do I say that the vote for bombing makes the UK less secure? Look at the way Islamic terror operates. They cannot sustain a campaign against any single country. So there have been individual attacks in Canada, Australia, France, Lebanon, Turkey. And of course the Russian airliner shot down in Egypt, a very rapid response to Russian bombs falling on ISIS areas. In the case of the Western targets, each time their participation in the air war against Islamic State is cited as the reason. Terrorists want to send a message and with only one chance to do so (such is the nature of suicide missions) they have to stage what they see as a spectacular. By voting to bomb Syria, the UK has just placed itself in line for a similar response from ISIS and it supporters. Britain will need to be taught a lesson is the logic. Or the logic or reprisal. Terror acts in the UK have always been a possibility, but with this vote I believe it has now become an inevitability. Not just me either, for only today UK intelligence services report that the vote has increased the likelihood we would become a target. Have they only just realised that? Or did they they know this all the time but fail to inform the Prime Minister? Or maybe he just ignored that advice.

Ah but we are already fighting the Islamic State by bombing Iraq were some of the arguments advanced during the debate. For the sake of a few hundred yards across a border that ISIS has abolished what is the difference? Well seems to me you can't have it both ways, if you want to deny the legitimacy of ISIS and re-establish the territorial legitimacy of both Iraq and Syria, then you have to continue to recognise the integrity of those borders.

The next argument was that France has asked for us to step up to the plate and assist them in the light of the atrocities in Paris. Added to that is that the UN basically gave a green light to go to war on ISIS. The argument is advanced that we in Britain must not only support our friends and allies, but we cannot allow others to do the job of protecting us while we stand to the side doing nothing. And yet that is exactly what we and the whole of the West has been doing by allowing the Kurds to bear the entire burden of facing ISIS on the ground. Since ISIS' dramatic expansion of territory, we have apparently been perfectly happy to have others provide our protection and security, so that argument just does not hold water. Now there are perfectly strong reasons why Western troops should not be committed to Syria and Iraq, since that will just escalate everything in the region and provide a rallying call to the ISIS cause. But don't then posit that we take care of our own security.

Jumping in to the cause of our allies is hugely problematical as well. Since the collapse of Communism, NATO s no longer facing a united bloc of foes. I would argue that it has ceased to be of use, rather it increases the likelihood of war and conflict rather than head it off. An attack on one NATO country is deemed an attack on them all. If Francoise Hollande had called for NATO to attack ISIS for bombing Paris, we would have been duty bound. I find it significant that he didn't quite go that far, because he knew what it implied. You can argue that although Russia has been stripped of its former allies of the Eastern Bloc, it still remains a threat to the West as Putin continues to provoke by his actions. Yet NATO proved incapable of preventing Putin's actions in Ukraine, partly prompted by Ukraine's stated desire to turn away from Russia in favour of the EU and NATO. But the key to the NATO argument is the behaviour of NATO member Turkey. Turkey is following its own agenda in the region. It shot down a Russian fighter. Whether it was correct in law or not, if Turkey had declared itself under attack from Russia, again we would all have been duty bound to jump in and escalate hostilities well beyond the local militias and terrorist groups. Again you may argue that it was only the threat of NATO doing just this that prevented Russia from reacting more strongly to the downing of its fighter. And that may be true, but with Turkey being a loose canon, who is to say that it won't do something else that this time provokes irresistible response from Putin? Turkey also has been aiding ISIS fighters by providing sanctuary across its border and is almost certainly involved in ISIS's trade in oil and other assets that funds their State and continued military activities. Not a very united front or consistency of action on display from NATO here.

David Cameron asserted that there are some 70,000 anti-Assad rebels who could be used to fight ISIS on the ground. This is an utterly absurd notion and frankly a most worrying one if our Prime Minister has the level of understanding to believe this is gospel. Take a look of a map of the various forces in Syria courtesy of BBC


The rebel forces are nowhere near ISIS strongholds except in a couple of areas near Damascus. Plus they are solely concerned with fighting Assad's forces. They are not going to give up that primary aim to turn they efforts against ISIS, unless you first remove Assad and that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. Also of those 70,000 troops, how many are Jihadists and Islamists? Do you really think the fighters of the Al-Nusra Front are people we want to be dealing with? They are extremists too. I'm curious whether there is any thinking about rewarding the Kurds with an independent Kurdistan as they have been calling and in some cases battling for for years prior to this particular conflict? How would that be received in Turkey I wonder? Turkey regards its Kurds as more of a threat to the state than ISIS

Which leads on to the wider question, of just what is the long-term vision for the area? We have been fed a few clues, that it wouldn't include Assad, that the Islamic State would be dismantled. And what territorial borders would be established? As with so many of the states created out of former Ottoman colonies, the borders created for the likes of Syria and Iraq are somewhat arbitrary and don't reflect the various tribal and ethnic divisions of the populations there. Also there are scant traditions of democracy in the region, so again, how does one go about establishing such a thing from so low a base? Hasn't worked in Libya, is clinging on by its fingertips in Afghanistan... Destroying the Caliphate, which seems to be the one thing all the allies have agreed on, will not remove the threat of islamic terrorism. Instead it will spread it like a virus. As said earlier, they do not need a command and control centre in a specified territorial space. After the insurgency in Iraq was supposedly put down, the insurgents just slipped away and returned to blend in with their fellow citizens until ISIS collected them altogether into a new menacing force. The same is likely to happen again. Also IS is just as much an idea, an aspiration as it is a territorial reality. If I can resort to a crassly inappropriate phrase, it is a genie free from its bottle never to be recaptured. A Caliphate functioning under Sharia law will remain an aspiration for many Muslims and next time it could be in Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia or Yemen. ISIS are currently making great strides in Afghanistan. In Libya. The place does not matter. It will not fade away if this one in Syria and Iraq is destroyed.

So:
1) Bombing Syria makes us less secure here in the UK not more
2) This is not about an abnegation of the responsibility to protect ourselves and relying on others
3) Formal military alliances make it more likely to draw us into full war rather than less
4) There are no 70,000 Syrians on the ground who can take on ISIS
5) There is no plan of what to do if and when ISIS falls
6) The Caliphate as an idea is here to stay and will remain a recruiting tool to the flag beyond the destruction of the Islamic State itself