For most of this campaign, the remain case has been based more on fact than passion. As a former civil servant with close on four decades of experience, I could see the case for blowing Brexit away with a barrage of irrefutable facts. But in the last week of the campaign that alone will not do. Voters need to know that supporters of remaining in the EU care passionately at least as much as our opponents.
Why? Because the out campaign has played fast and loose with the facts and created doubt in peoples’ minds about evidence of all kinds. If there are ten expert voices saying stay and one saying go, that means both sides’ arguments are equally valid. Or invalid, because out has many fewer facts on its side and is therefore happy to confuse rather than clarify.
Had I used evidence in this way as a civil servant briefing Brexit ministers past and present, they would have kicked me out of their offices. But in the out campaign normal rules of finance, economics and policy simply don’t apply. £350million a week can be net or gross according to taste and be infinitely divisible to support whatever undeliverable commitment is being touted.
But economics is not my specialist subject. Security, defence and intelligence are. And I am appalled by the way in which huge decisions for the UK – as well as Europe and the entire western world – are being misrepresented. Passionately so. I don’t care about being labelled as part of a ‘project fear’ because I am truly afraid about the direction we could be taking, more so than at any time in my career.
Whether in defeating terrorism, deterring Russia, protecting our borders, countering organised crime or helping to deal with humanitarian crises, I can see no instance where the UK would be better off outside the EU.
These are all strategic threats for us but also for the rest of Europe. They are complex, cross national boundaries and threaten our people increasingly from cyber-space. We are a big country with widespread interests but we are not as powerful as some of our current and potential enemies, and there is no drawbridge we can close to shut out the rest of the world.
The EU is not the only or even the most important element in the web of security, defence and intelligence networks through which we deal with these threats. If the referendum was about NATO I would be even more passionate. But the diversity of multinational organisations is part of the point. There has never been a single model suitable for working with all like-minded countries and while we rely on the US for key aspects of our security that will remain the case.
Teamwork is essential. Just look at your TV every night and convince yourself that tackling our enemies would be improved by doing less together with our closest friends and neighbours.
In this horribly real world, the idea that a bunch of faceless EU bureaucrats have secret designs on our intelligence agencies and plans for a European army which pose a greater threat to our safety than ISIL, Putin or internet pornographers is groundless paranoia. But it is not absurd to suggest that if we leave the EU the rest of its members would have to do more together to fill the gap we would leave as Europe’s most effective armed forces and intelligence machinery. Nor, sadly, could we replicate quickly or easily the cooperation we have today with the rest of the EU in sending home thousands of terrorist suspects and criminals, or controlling migrant access through our most vulnerable frontier at Calais. Both problems will continue whatever the result of the Referendum.
Brexit leaders seem to have small power mentality at odds with the UK’s traditional relationship with the world. Whether deliberately or not, their success would result in our abdicating a leadership role not just in the EU but globally. Cuddling up to the US is not an option because hard-nosed Washington power-brokers are not sentimental about special relationships and these days value the UK primarily for our influence in Europe. Neither is there a viable Commonwealth alternative based on shared interests. Without the strength in numbers provided by the EU we would over time join the ranks of countries with little or no say in what happens to them or their interests.
You cannot ring fence retreat from influence to a single organisation. We have played a major role in building the international community by arguing our case from the inside. Our friends look to us to shape decisions and stand up for our values. Some EU partners have and continue to disagree with us, but none want us to leave. Nor do the Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians or Chinese. They agree that the world would be a worse, less stable and poorer place with a diminished and insular UK playing at splendid isolation from the international side-lines.
History never repeats itself. Nor can anyone be confident about forecasting the future no matter what the evidence. But a vote for Brexit is worse than a punt in the dark.
Our other problems would not go away but our ability to deal with them would diminish. We would therefore be less secure in a more dangerous world, and with less say in our future, not more. We would risk taking back not power – but impotence. In my view, held passionately, to ignore these risks would be national folly.
The author is a former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee
Edited by Victor Sebestyen
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