Vote No to little england in the Pointless Plebiscite

On Thursday the UK will finally go to the polls for the "objectively pointless referendum with no direct legal consequences.  Twice as pointless, in a way, if a thing can logically be as twice as pointless." It could also be called the pointless plebiscite - as that is what they were called when Adolf Hiter held a few back in the 1930s. The quote above is from an excellent post from the Jack of Kent blog that sets out the problems with this plebiscite and plebiscites in general.

It is only happening due to a political fix by Our Dave Cameron to appease the little englander wing of his party and to try and counter the rise of UKRIP, but it has just led to a disgraceful campaign in which politicians and the media have managed to sink to a new low.

A constant refrain is that "the people" keep wanting facts, but getting actual facts about what will happen with a Brexit is impossible. What is clear is that "the vast majority of economists believe we'd be worse off out the EU, both in the short and long term".

We are supposed to be a representative democracy and so Joe Public would be best advised to consider the representative of both sides.

On the leave side you have Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gnome,  Chris Grayling and all the other current swivel-eyed cabinet members plus some former failed swivel-eyed ministers like Liam "Adam Werritty" Fox, Owen "wellies" Patterson, Iain "Universal Credit" Duncan Smith, plus John Redwood, briefly a Welsh Secretary, but also the most swivel-eyed of the swivel-eyed and Eddie the Eagle.....then internationally with have Donald Trump, Marie Le Pen and Rupert "When I go into Downing St they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice." Murdoch.

And for Remain, we have Our Dave the PM, The Leader of the Opposition, the less incompetent and less swivel-eyed cabinet members, with the one exception of Jeremy Hunt. Along with all former Prime Ministers, an estimated 70% of all our elected representatives and Jeremy Clarkson....but internationally there is President Obama, Chancellor Merkel, Hilary Clinton and the leaders of every major democracy, which excludes President Putin and, I think it is safe to assume he would be happy to see a weaker EU and a less united Europe.

The SNP also want to remain, even though a leave vote would probably be a massive boost to their chances of leaving the UK. It shows that they would prefer to be in the EU within the UK than be independent within the EU but have a little england next door, as they no doubt think it would be an economic disaster for all. They also support proper representation at Westminster, despite the fact it would mean they would have far fewer MPs. Both these positions should convince any English person with any degree of sense that there is nothing to fear from the SNP being part of a Westminster government.

Curious George Osborne has also admitted that the Eurozone is now growing faster than the US and even (yes even) the UK, and the worst you can say about the Remain campaign is that Our Dave and Curious George have presented expert opinion as fact, as they probably think the plebs can not compute anything vaguely complex or nuanced.

As for the disunited leave campaigns, you have the Nigel Farage poster and a Daily Mail front page that somehow manage to confuse asylum seekers from brutal civil wars, with fellow EU citizens coming to live in the UK.

Then from the official Leave campaign there was a fake voter registration page that signed people up to their mailing list.

And then on the day after the murder of Jo Cox the leaflet below headed “Official Information on the Referendum Vote” came through my letterbox. Inside it repeats the lie three times that “The EU costs us 350m per week”. In a recent poll 47% believed it and 39% did not...

On the back, at the bottom is the Vote Leave Logo, but they have also helpfully highlighted Syria and Iraq. I can't think why....

They have also been threatened with legal action by some major companies for using their logos on other leaflets.

They also blame the EU and immigration for the housing crisis, lack of school places, low wages and the under-funding of the NHS, but the real culprit is the Westminster system. If we vote to leave, then they would be the biggest gang in the playground with all the power of an elected dictatorship, but representing no more than two out of ten of all UK citizens entitled to register to vote.

Representative democracy requires fair representation with checks and balances and the EU has become an important check on the all too powerful and unrepresentative Westminster. If we vote Remain will we still be living in a semi-democratic, semi-detached member of the EU but that would be far better than a little england with a gangster democracy.

As Jack of Kent says "here’s a radical suggestion: let’s return to being a parliamentary democracy", but what we really need is a truly representative democracy in a fully devolved federal United Kingdom. For this to happen the Labour party needs to realise that we need not just a Labour government, but a progressive alliance to formulate a new constitutional settlement, otherwise they just remain part of the problem.