I watched a recording of Andrew Neil’s interview with UKIP leader Nigel Farage, for the BBC last Friday night. I thought I would be bored by all the little-isolationist-islander arguments, and instead I found myself engaged by the way Neil handled Farage, and by how interesting his arguments were.
It was a fascinating juxtaposition: Farage stood for the appeal to emotions, and lost the thread of his reasoning when crunched down to facts. Neil stood for rationality and common sense. And instead of coming across as an interview, it took on shades of a debate between two opposing factions. I found myself rooting for the interviewer in much the same way you might take sides with somebody in a debate. “Yes, you tell him!” “Let’s see him wriggle out of that one now.” “He’s smart, appealing to the emotions of people who don’t think too hard, but I don’t like it, because manipulating people like that is really devious.” “What on earth is he saying?” And so on.
Then something odd happened. Around halfway through the 30-minute piece, I found myself picking up on some subtext to everything Nigel Farage was saying and the way that he said it, leaving me with the distinct impression that he didn’t really believe what he said and that the main reason he wants the Leave vote to win the referendum on the 23rd, and Britain to pull out of the European Union, is because he’s set himself some kind of personal challenge. And to hell with what happens next. Farage’s arguments lacked passion and conviction. He came across as a smart Alec using those same sorts of arguments, and the same kind of tone, as the sort of people who find themselves among like-minded individuals in a bar, pub or at a dinner-party.
It was all very shallow, oh-we’ll-sort-it-out-never-you-mind. In short, what I call ‘back to front’ reasoning: where you first make your decision or choice based largely on emotion and irrationality, and then try to find the arguments to justify it. Andrew Neil, as the interviewer, sounded genuinely convinced (and worried about the fall-out should the Leave vote win), with his facts and arguments than Farage did with his. That’s probably because people who support the Stay vote – and Neil came across as somebody who does – will have rationalised their position before deciding on it. Staying in the European Union, like joining it in the first place, is a rational choice and not an emotive one, and that is reflected in the choices of those who vote in related referendums.
What did emerge clearly through Farage’s words is that this is primarily about ending the free movement of other EU citizens, while deciding exactly who to allow in, and returning Britain to some earlier bucolic age which exists only in people’s rose-tinted imaginations, fiction and television programmes like The Last of the Summer Wine. It’s like when people remember some Maltese golden age and choose to forget or blot out the people living 20 to a room, sleeping five to a bed or on piles of straw, living without bathrooms and never leaving their ‘quaint’ village for their entire lives, not even to take a look at the sea five miles away. Certainly, the island was a lot more attractive, towns and villages were much more aesthetic than they are now, but life was ghastly, and no amount of romanticising it will change that. People might not have felt, particularly, that it was ghastly then – but if forced to return to living like that, and giving up all they have now, they would sink into depression.
Andrew Neil pointed out to Nigel Farage that net migration to Britain last year from outside the European Union was higher than that from other EU member states: 188,000 non-EU citizens compared to 184,000 EU citizens. The non-EU will carry on, he said, as clearly EU membership is not the reason they are there. “Not with the right government,” Farage replied. What sort of reply is that? It makes no sense. The point here is that 82 per cent of those immigrants from other EU member states are working, and the remaining 18 per cent are studying and/or dependent (as children or spouses) on those members of the family who are in work. And if they are working, it means that Britain needs them. They are not ‘taking jobs from British people’.
We can compare the situation to Malta, where net (legal) immigration has sky-rocketed over the last few years. If we suddenly closed the doors to free movement of EU citizens, we wouldn’t only have a problem with our own people who want to work elsewhere in the European Union, but a massive problem in the job market. Employers would not be able to fill job vacancies, and they would go where they can do that. To stop this happening, the government would have to push up the number of work permits, and other immigrants would have to be brought in to fill them instead. So they might as well be the same ones.
Then there is the tariff argument, which is compelling. Britain will have to pay GBP9 billion more a year in tariffs if it pulls out of the EU. That’s a shocking amount. Pulling out will also mean, he said – quoting remarks that had made the news earlier – that 80 per cent of British manufacturing will have to be wound down. There was more in this vein and Farage answered the facts with emotion-based talk. His band stands an excellent chance of winning the referendum because emotion seems to be the main driving force here. As somebody pointed out the other day, the Leave camp is more fashionable and more vociferous than the voice of reason. And we all know now, through experience, how very dangerous that can be.
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