Like St Augustine, I cannot but start this blog on Brexit with a confession. I was one of those who strongly supported the entrance of Malta into the EU and never expected that, a decade later, I would start sympathising with those individuals in the UK who will be voting for Brexit. In truth, modern Europe has been hijacked by lobbyists who are only interested either to protect their interest or ram down our throats moral principles that are not necessarily shared by all Europeans. For years and years, the European Union has waged an undeclared war against our Christian heritage, to be more precise, against Catholicism.

Now, we are starting to feel the reactionary movement. This movement is coming from a country that for centuries epitomized the anti-Catholic and popish stand. However, we too in Malta have started realizing that we can end up victims of these lobby groups. Our band clubs, whose activity is mostly related to Catholic traditions, were denied a European prize. All the local MEPs, including Alfred Sant, who in the sixties wrote novels to ridicule Malta’s culture, supported this nomination.

My reaction would be that had our MEPs nominated a gay, lesbian or trans or Muslim for that matter, Malta would have been lauded for being progressive in its diversity agenda. However, nominating lay associations working in promoting local catholic traditions equates to bigotry in Brussels.

I am nauseated by all this hypocrisy. Today, the sixties generation is the one that produced bureaucrats who want to ram this anti-Christian campaign down our throats. They are promoting pseudo-Communist or pseudo-Liberal ideals. The result is that the extreme right is rising everywhere and the British, rightly so, do not feel at home in this new Europe.

Ironically, some of the most prominent personalities in the UK who had been waging campaigns after campaigns on the Christian heritage of Europeare today the front-liners to keep the UK in the EU. I hope that the Brits say “enough is enough” to all this farce. I am fed up with this dictatorship of relativism where democracy only holds if you agree with the principles that certain lobbies want to implement, with the support of European money, without being accountable to anyone.

We are being led by a new form of dictatorship. At least, past dictators, like Stalin, did not amass riches for his children, as our modern pocket-dictators are doing. In this climate, idealism is destined to increase. Individualism is going up too, including in Malta. This is an indication that our democratic system is indeep waters because of the abuse perpetrated by the same clique of politicians that are the true recipients of the system.

If European politicians think that they can correct the situation by enacting laws to control social media, they are making agrave mistake. This will only increase the anger and frustration that many citizens in Europe are feeling towards the EU. Worse, they will help to portray the parties nurturing an extreme agenda as the sole saviours from this type of new oppression.

Europe has now walked away from the ideals of De Gaulleand the other founding fathers of the European Union. De Gaulle was a staunch opponent of Britain joining the EU. Perhaps, the most committed UK politician to the European Union was the Conservative Sir Edward Heath (1916-2005). Soon the Conservative love with the EU (or as it was told at the time, European Economic Community) waned when Margaret Thatcher took the leadership of the Conservative Party. She preferreda close relationship with America rather than with Europe. But Heath and Thatcher shared a common element.

Both came from a non-privileged background. They had to build their own political career. This is an important demographic component, which cannot be ignored in the current debate. Demography did not figure in Thatcher’s discourse against the European Union. Thatcher believed in Alan Greenspan’s economic ideals that the economy and the private sector can solve,on their own, allsociety’s social ills and auto-correct government failures.

For Thatcher, Europe appeared too much to the left to be to her liking. At the same time, one cannot deny that Thatcher also used the question of the EEC, in particular during election time, to gain the support of disgruntled Conservative voters. It should be remembered that she was not on the best of terms with Heath, whom she had replaced as the Conservative Leader.

David Cameron has a totally different family story. As someone studying the effects of demography and family history on politics, I cannot but notice that David Cameron and his wife come from well-to-do families. One may argue that this is a private matter. It only assumes importance in demography when it comes to analyse their actions.

Building their careers was not as difficult as for Thatcher and Heath. This is why they lack sensitivity towards the poor. Thatcher may appear against Europe but she was not. She may appear to have been against the workers but she wasnot. Due to his background, I don’t believe that Cameron can really feel and understand the pinch that neo-liberalism is leaving on those without a guaranteed income. This explains why certain voters in the UK will be voting for Brexit. This is why health benefits have suddenly become a major part of this referendum debate. This is why migrants are seen as a threat in the UK, even if, most of the UK migrants have nothing to do with Europe or Syria, but are either from ex-British colonies, like India and Pakistan or well-offArab countries. This is why the brutal assassination of the Labour MP Jo. Cox continues to reveal the absurdity of relativism: she was not assassinated by a Muslim or a migrant but by a British ultra.

Nonetheless, the Conservatives have lost the plot and are less credible in the UK especially about issues concerningNHS. This is why Cameron is less susceptible towards claims of foreign EU workers getting benefits in the UK, and other issues related to migration in the UK. While these are fundamental issues and, in my opinion, migration is the real solution to Europe’s demographic problem, which Europe itself has created as part of its ideological war, Cameron does not have the diction or the passion to convince the electorate about the importance of these issues.

I don’t think that the issue of the benefits to EU workers is purely related to migration but forms part of a wider economic thought linked to the widespread Economic reforms that the Conservative Government wants to introduce, which are not necessarily good for those at the lower end of the political spectrum. Normally, the majority of migrants, irrespective of their land of origins fall within this stratum.

Like Thatcher, Cameron too spoke about the EU for political purposes but went a step further and played the referendum card. I still remember an important exponent of the Nationalist Party insisting, that this was just a political ploy, and that the Conservatives will not go to a referendum. I hope now that he has changed his ideas. It only goes to confirm the short sightedness of some of our leading politicians.

Whether the Brexit will be a success or not, is no longer a matter of importance. Irrespective of the result, Europe cannot remain with its head in the sand. For sure, this vote is another nail in the coffin for those who believe in the Enlightenment. It has served its purpose, even if, one has to state that it has landed Europe into two world wars and produced the worse massacresin the history of mankind.