EU referendum: Britain's 'day of reckoning' draws closer

British Prime Minister David Cameron faces a potentially career-defining poll on Thursday that may seal his fate as leader, as voters decide whether to leave or remain in the EU.

MENA

4 min read

The New Arab

20 June, 2016

Bremain

British leaders have stepped up their efforts to urge voters to stay in the European Union as Thursday's referendum on its membership of the economic and political bloc nears.

A vote for Britain to leave the EU – or 'Brexit' as it has been termed – would be an "irreversible" move that would leave the country only able to rejoin on unacceptable terms, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond warned on Monday.

"The message we are trying to get across to the British people is that this is an irreversible decision – if they decide to leave, there will be no going back," Hammond said as he arrived for a meeting with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg.

"Britain could never rejoin the EU at a later date except on terms that would be unacceptable – membership of the euro, membership of (the) Schengen (passport-free zone) and so on," he continued.

The most recent opinion polls have shown voters once more swinging behind the 'Remain' camp, after a strong showing by Brexit supporters in the previous two weeks.

Hammond said "the referendum battle is a close fight. It will be a very tight result either way."

Britain and the EU in facts and figures

Britain's contribution to the EU budget
'Leave' campaigners claim it is £350 million ($510 million, 455 million euros) a week. But that is a gross figure that does not include the rebate famously won by prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984.

In 2015, Britain contributed an estimated £17.8 billion to the EU budget, or £12.9 billion after the rebate, according to a parliamentary briefing paper.

Brussels subsidies
Britain receives some £6 billion of subsidies, notably to the agriculture and scientific research industries. 'Remain' campaigners say this support would go if Britain pulled out, while 'Leave' campaigners say British money would be better spent directly by the government.

EU immigration
Immigration from the EU is proving to be one of the key battlegrounds of the campaign. The total number of EU migrants living in Britain doubled between 2004 and 2015 to three million people, according to the Migration Observatory of Oxford University.

The pro-Brexit Justice Secretary Michael Gove claims that if Britain stays in the EU, more than five million immigrants may arrive over the next 15 years, putting "unsustainable" pressure on the health and education systems. The projection assumes Turkey, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro join the EU by 2020.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who supports Turkish accession, says it would be decades before there was the prospect of this happening.
Meanwhile Britons are also on the move and settled around Europe.
According to United Nations figures, 1.3 million Britons lived in the rest of the EU in 2013, of which 300,000 live in Spain, 250,000 in Ireland and 200,000 in France.

Trade
The EU as a whole is by far Britain's biggest trading partner. In 2015, 44 percent of Britain's exports went to other EU states, from which it imported 53 percent of its goods, according to government figures.
'Remain' supporters say this underlines the importance of staying in the single market, while 'Leave' backers say EU exports to Britain mean Brussels will have an interest in negotiating favourable trade terms in case of a Brexit.

A bitter battle

The remain camp has been buttressed by the official support of both Prime Minister David Cameron and opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn.

However despite this cross-party agreement, the battle for Britain's future has been one of the fiercest bouts British politics has seen in recent times.

Following the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox on Thursday – a committed internationalist and supporter of humanitarian causes – some British media outlets have related her brutal death to anti-immigrant sentiment, due to her suspected killer's far-right links.

In turn, the 'Remain' campaign's return to the lead following Cox's death has also been related to a rejection of the racism and xenophobia that the late lawmaker stood against – emphasising the importance issues like refugees and immigration have played in Britain's EU referendum.

Cox's murder brought the EU referendum campaigning to a brief halt, until Sunday when politicians resumed the debate.

Make or break for Cameron

Cameron leads a party bitterly divided between 'Remainers' and staunch Eurosceptics, including former London mayor Boris Johnson.

It is widely speculated that if the British public were to back a vote for Brexit on Thursday, the British PM would have to step aside and be replaced by Johnson.

If Britain does become the first state ever to withdraw from the bloc, Cameron's epitaph will be sealed after six years in power.

"He's put himself front and centre of the 'Remain' campaign, and to have lost the campaign would be a massive blow to his credibility," said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told AFP.

"We probably would, within a few days or weeks, see him signal his intention to go as soon as a leadership contest could be conducted."