Brexit & Sri Lanka: Some Thoughts From Trinidad
By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –June 23, 2016
Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
Brexit as Separatism
Brexit, a portmanteau word combining Britain and Exit, is about tomorrow Thursday’s plebiscite in Britain over whether Britain should stay in or exit the European Union. As a student in the early 1970s I remember Conservative British PM Edward Heath convincingly speaking on BBC news (which often preceded movies in Sri Lanka) about the advantages of membership in what was then the Common Market. A plebiscite in 1975 after joining won a 65% approval to stay.
Exclusivity Versus Internationalism
Those were the days of reduced racial tension and I could as a Commonwealth student vote in British elections. Even while a student, however, that right was withdrawn under Conservative Margaret Thatcher who also doubled my tuition fees as a foreign student. Today with asylum and other residence seekers pouring into Europe, the tolerance for other peoples is long gone and the cry for exiting the EU, is really a cry against racial (non-White) immigration and for absolute sovereignty.
According to a poll in The Times (21 June) there is a near 20% lead among working class and unemployed workers to leave and a 20+% lead to stay among upper-middle class voters. Among postgraduate qualified Britons, the lead to stay is nearly 40% and even more among the less racist 18-29 year old segment. The lead among the liberal Guardian readers is nearly 90% while the lead to exit among The Sun readers is 40%. It is instructive of the people who read The Sun that it carried topless models on its infamous Page 3 for 45 years until a campaign stopped the practice in January 2015. What the educated and the cultured want is clear – an internationalist outlook.
Strength in Numbers
A lesson is that the educated segments know that there is strength for a nation in numbers. With white folk not producing enough children to sustain their population levels, Britain soon will not have people buying their own goods to sustain economic growth. Despite Donald Trump, the thinkers in the US, Canada and even the EU know that unless population levels rise, there will not be enough people to drive economic growth. Having decided that the required population growth can come only from immigration, the US and Canada have tailored their immigration policies to welcome immigrants who can contribute – students who come for degree studies who are then given pathways to immigration and skilled immigrants; while those with PhDs and publications are allowed to apply independently without a sponsor for residence. Having decided that they need more people, they wisely choose who such people shall be.
This is why David Cameron, Britain’s Conservative PM, is in affix. As The New York Times explains (21 June), “In 2013, besieged by the increasingly assertive anti-European Union wing of his own Conservative Party, Mr. Cameron made a promise intended to keep a short-term peace among the Tories before the 2015 general election: If re-elected, he would hold an in-or-out referendum on continued British membership in the bloc. But what seemed then like a relatively low-risk ploy to deal with a short-term political problem has metastasized into an issue that could badly damage Britain’s economy, influence the country’s direction for generations — and determine Mr. Cameron’s political fate.”
