BREXIT from my Own Perspective
Since United Kingdom shockingly
voted to leave the European Union on Thursday 23rd June, many
Ugandans (used this sense to mean Ugandans who were naturally born in Uganda and
reside in Uganda) have waded into this debate some without facts. It is typical for Ugandans
to engage in current (and usually international) debates for which they have no
facts about because it endears them to those listening that they are very
knowledgeable, well informed and travelled. Our national papers don’t help either because sometimes
their Editorials make arguments based on sentiments rather than facts. When I read in the Editorial of
one of the dailies that ‘a vote for REMAIN would be a vote for the common man’
I knew then that the problem is not only the average Ugandan but possibly even those
who ought to be informed are not on top of the subject.
As a Ugandan resident in UK, I
would like to say that I understand why those who ticked LEAVE made that
choice. And rather than join the
chorus of those condemning them and calling them all sorts of names, I chose to
sympathize and vote with them.
I have keenly followed this
referendum since the congenial conservative leader and PM of these Isles called
for it. I have listened to what people have to say on radio call-in programmes,
in the newspapers, at house parties and in supermarkets. Some people have blamed him for
calling a referendum he was not sure of winning but you see that’s how
democracy in this country works. He
won a general election about a year ago on the promise that he will let the
citizens of Great Britain decide on their future relationship with EU through a
referendum. Unlike other
politicians in other parts of the world who jettison their promises once they
get to office, Dave went ahead and gave the people who voted him into office a
chance to decide. He, like many of
us probably felt that although there were many unsatisfied voices (and they
grew louder during the campaign), they were not enough to win the
referendum.
But I digress, because that is
not the reason I put pen to paper.
I will return to the subject.
To say that the common man wanted to REMAIN in the EU is complete dross. Interacting with common people, as an
ordinary Ugandan living in UK with no access to politicians and celebrities, I
could tell from day one what the common man wanted. An average man
in UK was tired and could not divorce from the EU sooner. Abantu bakoowu like we would say in Uganda. The UK common man is facing a lot of
problems in Education, Health, Social Housing etc and they blame all this on
the unlimited immigration from EU (read Eastern Europe). The truth is that no body knows for a
fact whether it is EU that has brought about the poor social services but
trouble is that even those who say that leaving EU would not guarantee a return
to the good old days have not been able to aptly convince the common man what
else may have caused the deterioration in services apart from the influx from
Europe. These are the
numbers. Figures show that in 2015
over 300,000 migrants arrived into UK, over 270,000 from EU and the rest from
outside EU. On the other
hand, 85,000 UK citizens migrated into EU nations, giving a net migration
figure of 185,000 Europeans into UK.
Under EU rules and regulations all EU national are guaranteed the same
rights in any EU member country as every citizen of that country. This issue would not be and
I bet was not a problem when you still had the eleven core countries that made
EU until 1999. It was not expected
that more than 200,000 French, German, Dutch, Danes, Portuguese, Italians,
Spanish, Finns, etc would arrive on the borders of UK in one year and truth is
that it did not happen when EU was still made of those nucleus states. That worked well for those 11 or so
countries and Euro-skepticism was not
as popular as it is becoming now.
Then some politicians in Brussels came up with this idea of expanding
the EU into what is basically a ‘superstate’. Those in favour of this big community have many arguments
but I think the most appealing one is to stop Russia and it’s unstable man
Putin. This opened the door
to many Eastern European states that are formerly communist and frankly at a much
lower level of development than the states of Western Europe. What happened next is an influx of
people from these new member states (Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic,
Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Poland, Bulgaria etc)
to western Europe but most especially UK.
Now, even if we took a more conservative average figure of 100,000 new
arrivals every year, have the UK social services been expanded to take care of
1 million people over the last 10 years? The answer is a big fat NO and that’s where the common
man’s argument against the EU and its migration kicks off. These new EU nationals that have
arrived over the last 10 years are competing for the same free Education, free
social housing, free health services. By the way, despite what the UK citizens say, the NHS is
still the best free health service I have encountered anywhere I have
lived. Of course, people will
argue that I know nothing because I only arrived the other day (just 10 years
ago).
I will therefore illustrate this
point using housing because I have particular interest in and more familiar
with it. If Woking Council where I
live was being faced with a demand of an average of 100 social housing units in
the 90s (or just before the Eastern Europeans started arriving), this number
must have definitely gone up two fold over the years but has the Council been
able to put up 2000 units over the last ten years, the answer is NO. So what happens in that case? A UK
citizen who was previously waiting for 6 months to get free or social housing
now has to wait twice as long or even longer, some claim that they end up
giving up on those houses after waiting for 5 years. Remember that the majority of Eastern Europeans arriving are
basically economic migrants and they are also not going to go into renting
private properties because they cant afford, so it is fair to say that the
demand for social housing has naturally increased. However, this is not the only effect on housing. Not all Eastern Europeans that arrive
are poor. Some have got money and
they have capacity to buy properties. UK is one of the few countries in Europe
where owning a residential property is an important status symbol. I have read that in other parts of
Europe, people live through their entire lives without owning a residential
property. This demand for private
properties has led to the prices to go up and citizens argue that it is now
harder than ever for young people fresh out of universities to get onto the
property ladder, because they simply cant afford to pay mortgages using their
salaries. Remember that the
salaries are not that handsome any more because there is plenty of labour,
again brought about Eastern Europeans.
This same situation is happening in other areas like Education, Health,
Social Care, which I will not even bother to go into because I am not that well
versed with it. This alone
explains that the person who claimed that a vote for remaining in the EU was
for the common man and that those who supported EXIT are the elite few who are
bent on grabbing power does not have their facts right. On the contrary, the elite and political establishment are
the ones who wanted to further their agenda to make more money (sell more stuff
to a wider market while paying less for labour because it is now aplenty) as
the common goods to the poor people continue to deteriorate. The voting pattern quite clearly
demonstrates that. While all the
big cities (Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and London) where the elites,
celebrities and political establishment would normally live voted for remain, all
of us outside those cities voted for EXIT.
Now to those Ugandans who argue
that as Ugandan I am better off with UK in the EU and that I should have voted
for REMAIN. I do not only fail to
understand their argument, I fail to see their reason. Apart from trying to keep up
appearances, they cannot possibly justify to me why as a Ugandan it is
important for me that the UK stays in EU.
I will become a little
selfish here. Before the arrival
of Europeans, Ugandans could easily get those menial jobs that the same
Editorial argued are now taken up by Eastern Europeans. Remittances to this banana republic
from people doing those jobs in the diaspora contributed about US$200M to the
national coffers the last time I saw those figures. A substantial bit of that comes from the Ugandans living in
UK. It has never been harder for a
Ugandan living in UK to get a job let alone those menial jobs. My question then is, do I as a Ugandan
want to stop a growth of those remittances by supporting other people to take
up the jobs that my countrymen would have taken up or not.
There has been some argument
about trade deals probably being better and easier to make with UK than EU as a
block. I wont even go into that
subject because I neither understand it very well nor have the facts to make a
sustained case but on the face of it, it appears correct. Some people have argued that under EU
we were able to get more developmental aid than we will ever get under UK
alone. I am not one of those who enjoy
seeing our economy sustained by support or aid be it from EU or UK, so I don’t
care very much who gives us more or less.
My opinion therefore is that any
Ugandan who chooses to wade into this debate should do so only because whatever
side they choose brings an added advantage to Uganda. For a Ugandan to sit in Kampala and argue that UK should
have voted to remain in the EU because it is what the common man wants is expose
sheer ignorance while those who argue that it was good for things like globalisation,
climate change, stopping wars and the fight against terrorism, frankly are just
showing off.
Undeniably, there are some
disadvantages that will come with UK exiting from the EU but that is mainly for
Ugandans who invest in International Stock Markets and those who remit money to
Uganda from UK right now. That
disadvantage is for the short term and once all the panic and hysteric reaction
to the market calms down, like I know it will. We will get back to where we should be.
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