The EU referendum should not just be about business

Jonathan Lindsell, 13 October 2015

The major EU remain and leave campaigns are now running. Last week saw the launch of Vote Leave, the pro-exit organisation that unites Business for Britain, Labour for Britain and Conservatives for Britain. This follows Leave.EU, the campaign funded by major Ukip donor Arron Banks. On Monday the cross-party pro-EU campaign began with the announcement that Stuart Rose, retail magnate and Conservative peer, would lead Britain Stronger In Europe.

The early mood music from both sides has been distinctly business oriented. The pro-EU launch video is a montage of business leaders explaining their support for EU membership. They included the founder of Innocent drinks, Virgin’s Richard Branson, Apprentice star Karren Brady, and the boss of EasyJet. At the end of the video, a lone student’s voice was the only non-business contribution.

Rose’s stance has already been criticised as elitist after he dismissed concern over high migration as ‘a red herring’. He told the BBC, ‘I don’t think that the people who have come into the UK over the last couple of years have [in] any way been detrimental to the UK.’ Given the public concern over migration, this feels flat. Stronger In mustered representatives from the army, police, daytime television and one trade union, but launch footage felt very much like the establishment on parade.

Meanwhile Vote Leave’s first video showed St Thomas’ Hospital, which faces parliament across the Thames, dissolving into notes and blowing away. A voiceover accompanied the images of this money arching across a digital map to European capitals, eerily reminiscent of military missiles simulations. The narrator explored the EU’s gross cost and compared it to those of schools, roads, regional airports.

Finally, Leave.EU’s section ‘Our Ambassadors’ lists six businessmen, all successful in finance aside Toby Blackwell from the established bookshop family. Their vision is in the same vein as their rivals’: ‘Imagine having £1,000 more to spend each year’ commands an early line. Leave.EU proudly claims to be outside the Westminster bubble, but still comes across as elite and lacking self-awareness.

Of course, businesses are vital for our jobs and for overall growth – but they are not the only area of EU contention. When it comes to the economic benefits of the EU, many voters will be bewildered or dismayed at the level of jargon and outright competing claims. Both sides say they represent the facts, the truth – how could most people tell?

This business focus leaves space for other issues and campaigners. Where are the leftwing outers like Owen Jones, who rejected Stronger In’s leaders as ‘poverty-paying corporate titans’? Where are the everyday inners?

Later today the Lords debate amendments to the referendum bill, including the extension of the franchise to 16-17 year olds. It is important for young people to have a say in the question that will define Britain’s constitutional settlement, governance and legal supremacy – but it is even more vital for these issues to be actually discussed and debated, not lost behind competing piles of counted beans.