As this tumultuous (or horrible, nasty, revolting, angry, hateful, absorbing, glorious – pick your adjective) UK exercise in referendum democracy nears the end, what about the way the two broad camps have presented themselves?

Leave

The Leave tendency has struggled to explain exactly what it wants instead of EU membership, and what it thinks will happen if we vote Brexit. If there is to be pain, how much pain and for how long?

On the first point, Leavers have been divided. Some seem to imagine the UK as a teeming independent Hong Kong-like free trade zone, trading everywhere without further ado. One bumper Act of Parliament to abolish the UK’s EU treaty obligations and at a stroke we’re free!

Others say that that is just not realistic (long list of prosaic reasons) and that even if we want to get there it has to be done in stages, with continuing membership of the EU Single Market via the EEA option the sane but big first step.

How much pain? No-one knows, as that depends in large part on how world markets and our EU partners respond to a Leave vote immediately and in the weeks/months to come.

Will EU partners be ‘pragmatic’ and move reasonably quickly to cut a tough deal? Or will they be ‘vindictive’ and try to ‘punish’ the UK to try to fend off ‘reform contagion’? Or maybe they’ll try being vindictive but then be pragmatic? Will the UK decision prompt wider market instability that threatens the wobbly Eurozone and its fat weak banks, and takes everyone into very choppy if not ruinous waters?

These and other imponderables (Russia) have left Leave struggling to answer the simple human question: “Look – I don’t like the EU much myself, but isn’t this all just too risky?”

Leave have replied by exuding breezy optimism where possible, and by arguing up what they present as the existing risks of staying on a sinking EU ship. Look at the costs of the Eurozone crisis on different countries: see the disaster that has befallen Italy/Spain/Greece in the past decade, as compared to the UK. (Of course this also shows that being in the EU might not be doing us much if any harm.)

Plus, of course, Leave have thrown open the Migration issue: only by voting Leave can the UK stop mass migration (or at least hope to do so)! We are at breaking-point.

There’s no doubt that this deliberately plays on (and thereby plays up) whatever racist feelings are out there. But votes are votes. It works because it addresses the real feelings of ‘ordinary people’ that their concerns about jobs and services are being ignored. Hence a stream of anguished articles from the Metropolitan Left in general and Labour stalwarts in particular who suddenly find themselves reviled and ignored. See this. And this. Help! The working-classes are revolting!

The Labour Party is now scrambling to find a position on EU migration. But there isn’t one that is compatible with the Single Market. Sorry.

All this shows up the wider failing of the Labour Party in this campaign. Namely that hasn’t been in it. Having elected a sssssneaky Gollumish leader in Jeremy Corbyn whose own views on the UK’s membership are at best, ahem, lukewarm trending towards absolute zero, Labour decided to sit back and enjoy top Conservatives smashing each other so that Labour would stroll atop the ensuing electoral rubble. But that has left the way open for traditional Labour voters to draw their own conclusions, many of which are that there are just TOO MANY IMMIGRANTS supported by TOO MANY LEFTIST TOFFS. Maybe one result of this whole exercise will be the long overdue collapse of Labour as a serious organised force. Good. Serves you right for lying.

The killing of Jo Cox MP has (of course) opened a new front for Remain to play the Risk card again: “Look, we warned you that the Leave side was risky and reckless, maybe even dangerous and mad – NOW see what’s happened”. Leave are hooting back that Remain are cynically exploiting a human tragedy. Ugly.

Remain

The basic problem for Remain is that almost no-one arguing the Remain case actually much likes the EU. There’s no passion or enthusiasm. The dull, lugubrious, passive-defensive message runs something like this: “Look, the EU has plenty of failings, but we’re not quitters – far better to stay in it and press for the changes we want!”

There’s no serious weight in the UK behind the moral and philosophical (almost existential) case for European integration that to our bafflement many of our continental European friends do take seriously. Plus there is in fact no way to get any serious changes we want in the way the EU runs without Treaty changes, and maybe/probably not even then.

This shows at the highest level on both sides of the political divide. Jeremy Corbyn’s role in the Remain campaign has been anonymous if not duplicitous. David Cameron has raced around the country making the Remain case, but he in turn has been hampered by his many years of coyly playing with Eurosceptic positions. Above all, this:

The contrast between this calm, sensible case for eventual Brexit and his ever-wilder warnings about it has not gone unnoticed by the UK masses:

Remain have stretched every sinew to try to show that a Leave vote is unwise/dangerous/costly, but even their best worst numbers do not show anything like disaster, only that for a few years the UK might not do quite as well as it would do by staying put.

Plus, as already described, Remain have literally no clear answer on migration. Nor do Leave, but insofar as millions of people don’t like the status quo Remain get blamed for defending it and looking useless.

Overall Message and Tone

As loyal readers here know, it’s not what you say – it’s what they hear.

The Remain campaign have aimed (with broad success) to corner the market in common sense steady-as-she-goes decency. Yet they somehow also exude drabness, pessimism and fatalism. There’s not much we can do about migration or the EU or anything else these days, but hey, let’s not rock the boat. 

They also have no convincing answers to charges of serfishness and the huge role of Brussels in so much UK policy-making. Yes, most of the UK’s problems come from stupid things done in Westminster, but all sorts of other stupidities are layered on top of those, and we can’t affect them or even block them. Most countries in the world are NOT EU MEMBERS and seem to get on well enough. Why can’t we do the same?

Above all, they project inconsistency and untrustworthiness. No-one including most of his own Party can understand why David Cameron is flailing around on behalf of the EU in the way he does. He proclaims that Britain is Great, but not so great that it can’t have a different independent relationship with its integration-obsessed EU partners? Something not quite right here. These people don’t really believe what they’re saying.

By contrast the Leave campaigners try to project optimism: Yes we can. They may be nutty or reckless, but there’s no doubting their sincerity. They definitely believe in what they say.

This is not to say that Leave are, ahem, honest. Take the now infamous Leave core claim that the UK sends the EU £350 million a week, money that could be spent on hospitals and other good stuff. Here’s the Guardian painstakingly explaining why that is misleading/wrong/lies:

The real problem is the word “send”, which Vote Leave seems to have difficulty understanding. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the verb means to “cause to go or be taken to a particular destination; arrange for the delivery of”.

Assuming we accept that definition, then it is simply and very demonstrably not true to say that Britain “sends” £350m a week to the EU. That amount of money does not leave (and has never left) Britain each week, nor does it arrive in Brussels.

The sum of £350m a week is based on the Treasury’s estimation of the gross amount the UK contributed to the EU last year, which was £17.8bn, or £342m a week.

This annual figure is purely hypothetical, however, because since Margaret Thatcher negotiated Britain’s rebate in 1984, the UK has been required to pay significantly less than the 1% of national GDP that member states are normally expected to pay into the EU’s collective budget.

The same Treasury figures clearly show Britain’s EU budget rebate last year was £4.9bn. Deduct that from £17.8bn and you get £12.9bn – or £248m a week.

It turns out that by sticking to its utterly tendentious claim, Leave has done a crafty job in framing the issue in its favour. Voters see clever experts attacking the number who ending up conceding that even if the weekly UK contribution to the EU is not colossal, it is nonetheless enormous!

Finally, the Leave powerplay on migration is about as cynical and (perhaps) dangerously divisive as can be. But it works ONLY because many millions of voters feel frustrated and ignored – that’s the real problem, even if the Islingtonista progressive classes don’t want to think about that as they scheme to ‘build society’ and press the ‘humanitarian’ case for letting in ever more migrants/refugees/asylum seekers.

Conclusion?

Remain: dull, insincere, fatalistic, passive, defensive, weak, pessimistic

Leave: lively, sincerely insincere, active, reckless, confident, optimistic

I report. You decide.