A Fascinating Insight into the In Campaign

I thought I'd share a personal insight, and one that I suspect isn't that uncommon.

While many readers may know that I love wine, I am about quality rather than quantity. I'm trying to be healthier and succeeding. With that in mind, I popped around to my neighbour with the bottle, offering a glass. My neighbours are Guardian left, to the point of it being cliché. I should also add another way I'm trying to improve myself which is to avoid politics with anyone that isn't similarly minded or likely to be persuaded. So, I just don't talk politics with them. Except this time.

On entering, I noticed my neighbour had a Stronger In badge. No real surprise, but hey, I'm not going to talk politics. Here's some wine, would you like some etc... how was the holiday etc.

Anyway, they asked my opinion, how would I vote. And we had a discussion about it. One fascinating point was that they supported the EU because of all the social and environmental law that Brussels passed that Cameron won't, because Murdoch controls him. At this point, and I don't know if it was the wine, or the general bullshit about Murdoch, but I felt the rage rising, quietened it a little and then asked why they were against the unelected Murdoch changing things, but not against the unelected Brussels.

I think this is a lot of the In support. It's that rather than fighting for elected power and winning over the electorate by argument, they see the EU as a way of bypassing them. Establishment people like the EU because they can get them to do the job instead, to bypass those grubby proles that aren't the bien pensant.

I reflected further on this matter, and how I think this is the root of Euroscepticism across Europe. Over time, what the establishment and Brussels think the EU should be about has been shifting away from the public. Euroscepticism was, in the 1980s almost non-existent. It's growth (and not just in the UK) has been about ignoring the public. Based on the nothing that David Cameron received in his renegotiation, the EU has no intention of addressing this. It is full march ahead to full integration.

So, I'm voting with absolute certainty now for one simple reason: I believe exit is inevitable. The EU will push things too far and the public will want to leave. We are going to have to bear whatever pains we are going to have to bear sometime, so it may as well be now, before we integrate still further, than later.