Tower and Town, November 2016

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Why I Voted Leave

Apart from having one local suggest the headmaster should sack me and some of my pupils accuse me of betraying their future career prospects, I have suffered no regrets or misgivings for voting OUT in the recent EU referendum. As a life-long student of Politics as well as a teacher of the subject, I have been fortunate in having had the opportunity to explore the intricacies of the EU as well as to visit all the institutions repeatedly as a tour guide. It was this intimate knowledge which forged my decision and which underpins the confidence I feel that we have made the right decision to leave a doomed and flawed project.

I have seen firsthand the lack of democratic accountability and bureaucratic waste endemic in all of the EU institutions. Two years ago I took a group of students to the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg where we were treated to a lavish lunch and presentation. The convivial mood turned sour when a pupil asked how it was that the ECA had not been able to sign off the EU budget since 1994 as its spending remained " affected by error". In other words lots of taxpayers money had disappeared and was unaccounted for.

Few readers of this piece will know who their MEPs are for the South West, what they do or can do for you, and what powers they actually have. MEPs have no real democratic mandate (the average turnout for European elections is 34%) and do not actually have the power to originate legislation even though they are the only representatives of all the EU institutions who are elected! When I took pupils around both Parliaments in Brussels or Strasbourg (yes we have two - a complete waste of money) they were at first stunned and then bemused that NO debates occur in either chamber. Each political block, arranged by its ideological leanings, is given a timed allocation to make a statement. The outcome of this process is prodigious amounts of legislation and directives we are bound to implement.

I therefore fundamentally believe people's loyalties lie intrinsically closer to home. Democracy is more effective the more local it is. The EU is just too remote. Recent attempts to encourage people to get involved and to propose legislation by petition with the so called "European citizen's initiative" has also fallen flat.

Perhaps it's the economic arguments which carry the most relevance to people's allegiances although both sides of this debate can throw out convincing economic stats to support their case. In my experience most people are not that economically literate and fundamentally want whichever outcome promotes greater prosperity and a better way of life for them. Everyone knows the EU is now being comprehensively outperformed by the developing economies as well as by the US. In my opinion, the EU has become an anachronism like the old Soviet Union and as any student of history knows, no big, bureaucratic unions survive. Free trade deals devoid of cumbersome red tape and smothering political integration will release us to prosper.

Of course it will take time to see the benefits of Brexit but we will end up negotiating with countries like India, Australia and other commonwealth countries and ultimately we WILL be better off.

Divisive as this referendum has been, I do wholeheartedly believe that one day all those who voted OUT will be vindicated and that my students, most of whom believe I betrayed them, will actually be reaping the benefits. I hope I'm around to say "I told you so"!

Matt Gow
Head of Politics
Marlborough College

Matt Gow