An open letter to voters in the EU Referendum

Dearest voters,

Most of you don’t know me, which makes this whole letter scenario rather odd on all accounts, but I will persevere nonetheless.

As the 23rd of June looms on the horizon and everyone who is registered will be asked to vote for the UK to either stay in the European Union or to leave it, I thought I would write to you.

The European Union was forged out of the destruction of the First and Second World Wars in the interest of peace, unity and economic prosperity. It is these underlying principles which you seek to protect by voting remain.

At the Brexit camp, many people will be telling you that to leave the EU is to safeguard the British spirit and identity; I would argue to the contrary. You only have to look at British Propaganda Posters from World War Two, to see what British values emerge as fundamental in times of crisis:

Source: www.businessinsider.com

For me, dear voters, these posters don’t speak of running and hiding when the going gets tough, but rather more a spirit of pulling together and staying put even in the face of hardship.

To leave the EU is to sprint thoughtlessly into the unknown, without truly knowing the implications for our economy or our relations with 28 of our closest neighbours. Of course, we can hypothesise over these figures, but they remain hypothetical nonetheless.

Not only am I against the leave campaign as a matter of principle, but I am also greatly concerned about how the Brexit camp are running things. The tagline that leaving the EU would strengthen the NHS, is ludicrous on several levels. Brexit suggests that if we leave, the £350 million which Britain pays to be part of the EU each week (which is in fact £276m after the rebate) will instead be invested back into the NHS.

In the first place, the pioneers of Brexit (including Boris Johnson, who will most likely succeed as new Tory leader, should we leave) don’t believe in a free NHS, with Johnson being quoted as saying, “If people have to pay for them [NHS services], they will value them more.”

Not to mention that the NHS is pretty bound up with our EU membership in terms of the large proportion of EU migrants working in the NHS.

We have no frame of reference as to what leaving the EU will hold, it is very easy for the Brexit camp to embellish the facts and invent unlikely scenarios in which working people’s rights can be safeguarded outside of the EU.

Boris is dead-set on becoming the next Tory leader, so do remember that much of his fervour surrounding Brexit is fuelled by his own political ambition and not by the rationality of his cause.

I would like to ask you voters to please cast your minds back to the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014, back then the now-Brexit figurehead Boris Johnson was the preaching the ‘Better Together’ arguments he now refutes.

Johnson muses over the impact of Scottish Independence in an article he wrote for the Telegraph:

I mean that we will be zombies, walking dead, because a fundamental part of our identity will have been killed. We will all have lost a way of thinking about ourselves, a way of explaining ourselves to the world. We are on the verge of trashing our global name and brand in an act of self-mutilation that will leave our international rivals stunned, gleeful and discreetly scornful.

Read the full (and now highly ironical) article here.

Interestingly enough, this quote could just as well be used to invisage the fate of the UK should we leave EU.

I understand that most of you are scared, but at least we are scared within a regulating system that strives to protect our interests, not strung out and floating; frightened and alone. Although we are a geographical island, let us not be an ideological one.

Wolfgang Tillmans’ Vote Remain poster series

The Brexit camp is relying on a ‘grass is greener’ mentality, simply crossing their fingers and hoping everything will work out. I don’t know about you, voters, but I’m not willing to risk the fate of the nation just because Nigel Farage says it’s a good idea.

Nothing is certain once we leave. These promises made by Brexit are mere guess-work and what is lost is lost forever.

Wolfgang Tillmans’ Vote Remain poster series

I am not saying that the European Union is a perfect system from which every participant reaps everything they sought to gain. Quite the opposite, as with most things in life, the EU rests on a certain degree of compromise.

What I am saying, however, is that if a system is broken, it’s far easier to fix it from within than from without.

Before you draw the cross on your ballot paper, I urge you to think of how much of your life will be negatively impacted should we leave the EU: our NHS, free travel within Europe, international relations and the economy, to name but a few. Before you head to the ballot box, please bear this letter in mind and question the figures being spewed out by the Brexit camp.

In order for Britain to become a world player, the answer isn’t to cut ties, but to build bridges.

In times like this, I often ask myself ‘What would Donald Trump do?’ and if the answer is vote leave, then that’s perhaps the best and most convincing argument for remain.

In the spirit of unity and lovingly yours,

A concerned world citizen and vote remain supporter.