EURO 2016

You Got This One Wrong, Boris

Last night two leaflets came through my door from the Vote Leave campaign. One is headed “Thursday is Polling Day. Your street is one of the most likely to Vote Leave in the country”. Well, sorry to break the bad news, Boris, but no it isn’t. You see, when I go to the polling station on Thursday and the poll clerk looks up my address, he will find just one name in my street, mine. I remember that the Conservatives at the last General Election tried some targeted leaflets with a similar idea, so presumably some research has told them that people are more likely to vote if they believe that their vote will make a material difference, and that their neighbours are thinking the same. Well, you don’t need research to tell you that people vote more enthusiastically if they think it matters, but doing the same as your neighbours? I’m not sure about that. And frankly, I’m not sure they’re right anyway. I seriously doubt whether anyone has actually surveyed the Warwick Estate to see whether the residents favour Brexit, and so this must be based on some sort of extrapolation. I suspect that the logic is that some research has suggested that the poorer you are the more likely you are to vote Leave, and since we are one of the most deprived wards in London someone at Vote Leave has assumed that means we will support them. The flaw in the logic is that there are multiple factors, and their research represents findings about white British people, who are quite thin on the ground here. We have a lot of residents who weren’t born in the UK, and most of them will not vote enthusiastically for Brexit, especially when it is represented by posters of queues of migrants represented as a threat, whom they regard with empathy.

…And Statistics

The research does seem to show that the less well-educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Leave. It’s worth pointing out that lots of our local residents have degrees and professional qualifications that are simply not recognised here, which may deceive the statisticians. No statisticians are deceived by the notorious “£350 million a week” claim, though, and I am staggered that Vote Leave continue to use it. It is simply a lie. The leaflet states “We send the EU £350 million a week” which Vote Leave know is not true, and which has been exposed as an untruth. Sure, we send a lot of money to the EU, but that figure is simply a lie. And as for the next line, “Let’s fund our NHS instead”, that’s simply shameless, as Farage would happily dismantle the NHS altogether, while Gove and Johnson have been part of a government that has persistently undermined the NHS, and has had the chance to fund it better but has chosen not to do so. The leaflet also bears the inflammatory map showing the “accession” countries that are applying to join the EU at some indeterminate point with the untrue claim that they are “joining soon”. No they aren’t. I’ve been to Albania, and to suppose that they will be ready to join the EU in thirty years would be optimistic. And it is perfectly clear that Turkey has no chance of joining until the division of Cyprus is resolved, which seems unlikely in our lifetimes. If you think the bureaucrats will fudge that one, think again; it cannot happen. It will be vetoed. But not only is this untruth promulgated, but alongside it is the map, with the accession countries coloured red, and Syria and Iraq coloured orange, with no explanation whatever, just prompting the thought in your mind that  they are somehow connected. This is shameful, using the plight of those countries to provoke xenophobia and fear.

Ourselves Alone, or not

Brexit thrives (like ISIS and Donald Trump) on crude identity politics, promoting the idea that we each have just one essential identity that overrides all others. You don’t have to have studied Social Identity Theory to see that this is nonsense; in real life we all have multiple identities which we use or privilege at particular moments. Well, on the Warwick Estate you can see this demonstrated. If you take a walk along Senior Street just now, during Euro 2016, you’ll find plenty of flats with flags draped from their windows, but several flats have both an England flag and an Ireland one. I know some of the families concerned and I can quite understand; both identities are meaningful for them. It would have horrified Michael Collins and the other leaders of the Easter Rising, but it shows how far we have come in a century.