Brexit debate short on facts, high on emotion

By some accident of history, I find myself able to vote in the UK Brexit referendum. I am ambivalent. Do I stay or do I go?

I want facts; but every source of information in our digital world is owned by someone with their own version of the truth. Who can you trust? As a geology graduate, I’m in favour of fracking – or maybe not. The veracity of advice, whether on geology, restaurants, travel or a smartwatch purchase, is pretty dubious.

At least as an economist, I can go back to the raw data and weigh, filter, sort, and calculate for myself. It is quite clear that both sides are telling porkies (pork pies = lies); the “Leave” side more emotional than the “Remain”. So, for most, the referendum will be decided not by research and rational thought, but with the gut – justified by deliberate, soundbitten half-truths. Are you a post-Empire codger with a view of how great Britain used to be; or a wild-eyed compromiser exploiting a future world?

I voted for Britain to remain within the EU – the first time, a long 41 years ago. The economic union, helped by Margaret Thatcher’s reforms, has been wildly successful, driven by competition and upgrading. European regional financial aid has transformed infrastructure in places like the Wales that I visited this week. But at what price?

Sticky fingers abound where money is transferred and battles against profligacy and inefficiency are

inevitable; think FIFA or the Olympic Committee. A whole European Commission under former European President Jacques Santer resigned en-masse in 1999 because of audit improprieties.

And having a supranational entity making regulations on health, safety, quality, and the movement of people to find work, can compromise national sovereignty. The European Courts are used to extending lost immigration issues that a sovereign judiciary could quash in an instant.

I don’t appreciate a bunch of hairy foreigners developing remote, foreign, pettifogging and nitpicking rules for my behaviour. They are irritating but they are not sovereignty-busting. The majority of them would have been enacted anyway.