What Are We Going To Do Now?

PREVIOUSLY ON BRITISH POLITICS: David Cameron promised a Referendum to buy time with his Eurosceptic backbenchers and to take the wind out of UKIP's sails. He thought he'd be in Coalition with the Lib Dems and they would block it. He also thought he'd easily win. But he ran a negative, patrician, but honest campaign and didn't bank on his opponents lying and fanning the flames of vicious racism. His opponents, on the other hand, did not expect to win. Neither side prepared for this result and no one is doing anything.

So what are we going to do now?

There are so many problems. The Referendum has revealed - and exacerbated - some deep faultlines in our country: between the old and the young, between graduates and non-graduates, between the rich and the poor, between the urban and the rural, between Scotland and England, between London and the regions, between racists and anti-racists. There are so many divisions here, it is almost impossible to say which is most fundamental. Is it having a degree that tends to make you more pro-EU? Or is it having an above-average income? Which causes which? (Do middle class people go to university or do graduates tend to end up in middle class jobs?) The Referendum was meant to end a debate; instead, it's torn it open.

And our political leaders are silent. They don't know what to do. Cameron seems to want to wash his hands of it. George Osborne, as he does at moments of crisis, has gone to ground. Gove and Boris have no intention of grabbing the wheel. It is a dangerous thing when democratic leadership falls silent.

In that silence, Farage has been doing the rounds, seizing his moment to press an extreme - and I mean extreme - right-wing agenda. In his first major statement after the result, he claimed it was 'a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people', thus casting the 48% as unreal, peculiar, and indecent. He has advocated the full privatisation of the NHS. In the past he has advocated relaxing gun laws. His 'Breaking Point' poster was a clear, intentional dog whistle to the neo-fascist right that your time has come. No leading politician has made such statements since Enoch Powell and he had the decency to argue his case. And let's remember, Farage is not even an MP - he has tried to get into Parliament on seven separate occasions and the voters have rejected him every time.

Comparisons with the Nazis are overdone, but Godwin's Law should not make us hesitate fatally in seeing him for what he is: a would-be fascist leader of Britain. Gove and Hannah and Johnson and IDS have already distanced themselves from Farage, but will that be enough? You let him drive your train, boys, and it's still moving.

Daniel Hannan MEP was quick to backtrack on the claims made by the Farage wing of the Leave camp that Brexit would mean an end to immigration. He was immediately met by fury: from the Remainers who saw this as yet more lies and hypocrisy from the cynical Brexiteers; and from some Leave voters who believed that in voting to leave the EU, they were voting to cut or end immigration. In the aftermath of the result, horrifying stories have been circulating of immigrants being abused in the street and told they are being sent home; signs were left outside primary schools in Huntingon saying 'No More Polish Vermin'; in Newcastle yesterday, a revived faction of the National Front (remember them?) unfurled a sign reading 'STOP IMMIGRATION. START REPATRIATION'.

Rewriting History

In response Leave and Remain are both trying to rewrite history. The Remain camp have been flocking to a petition calling for the Referendum to be re-run on the basis that it didn't hit 60%. Too late, guys. We may not like the result, but that's the result, and it would be outrageous to change the rules after it's been run. In fact the petition was set up at the end of May, which was too late even then, but Remainers are only signing it out of magical thinking. (And anyway, seriously? You want to go through all this again?) The Referendum can't be annulled and should not be annulled.

But the Leave camp are trying to retroactively rewrite the Referendum rules too. Some of the Brexiteers are demanding that the process to begin withdrawal starts immediately. But actually, hold on. The Referendum is not legally binding. It is - and this is important - effectively a vast, formal, state-run opinion poll. It is an expression of the public's opinion. If the Brexit camp wanted it to be binding, they should have made that case before. Neither side can retrospectively change the rules just because they don't suit them.

In fact, they're both right in hindsight. It would have made things clearer if the result were binding, but to make that result seem just, a higher threshold should have been set before it triggered EU withdrawal. But here we are.

Now, you may think that even if the Referendum is not legally binding, it is politically binding. So no Parliament cannot just ignore the Referendum as David Lammy has suggested. To do so would lead to rioting and uproar and push a substantial amount of the population even further towards the arms of the far right. It would also be, more important, morally wrong. It would be a monstrous thing if the Government or Parliament simply ignored it. In that sense, I agree with all who say the Government must accept the result.

But what is the result?

It's that 51.9% voted to leave and 48.1% voted to stay.

In other words, the Referendum has taken the view of the people and the view of the people is split. In this sense, it is surely wrong to say, as David Cameron did in Downing Street on Friday morning that 'the British people have made a very clear decision'. They have made anything but. And don't take my word for it: in May this year, Nigel Farage himself said that a 52% victory for Remain would not end it; it would need a two-thirds majority to put the matter to bed. 'The people have spoken', said Bill Clinton after the 2000 Presidential Election, 'but it's going to take a while to figure out what they've said'.

A Referendum is not like a General Election either. In a General Election, even in our very imperfect first-past-the-post system, there is a degree of proportionality. We elect a Parliament which usually reflects a range of views and out of that Parliament comes a Government (which reflects one strong strand of voter preference). The Government is scrutinised and, sometimes, held in check by Parliament. There is no such thing here.

To treat the Referendum as having a 'winner' is to misunderstand what the Referendum is. It's an opinion poll - a very important one, for sure, but still an opinion poll. And opinion polls don't have 'winners'. This Referendum has told us what the people have said and to treat it as a winner-takes-all competition is a mistake, and would be to ignore what the people have said. It would be as profoundly undemocratic to rush out of Europe on the basis of this Referendum as it would be to ignore it.

Accepting the result

So the Government must accept the result. And that means acknowledging that more people in this country voted the leave the EU than voted to Remain. But it also means that almost half the voters do not want to leave. How can the Government act on that?

Well, they've started. David Cameron, very wisely (or possibly very lazily), has decided not to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which sets out the mechanism for leaving the EU. He has said that it is for his successor to do so and, surely, he was right to say this. He would have been embarking on negotiations that everyone knows he did not want; the Brexiteers would have suspected his motives (was he not pushing for a good enough deal so as to prove his predictions right?); the Remainers would be on his back asking him to slow down (why is he rushing into leaving anyway?); and in the background the jostling for his position would continue unabated.

But until Article 50 is evoked, we are not leaving the EU. We now have three months to see what effect the Referendum will have: will we see signs of tipping into recession? Will the implications of losing EU regional funding become clearer? Will we see a brain drain? Capital flight? Will the impossibility/undesirability of ending immigration become obvious? Will Scotland move decisively towards independence? Will the Northern Ireland Peace Process begin seriously to fall apart?

And how will Europe react? Will we find that there is room for manoeuvre with our EU membership? Is some kind of associate membership possible? Are new kinds of concessions possible that would form a kind of compromise? It was striking that, even in the 48 hours after the Referendum result, the EU's leaders went from insisting that Britain start withdrawal immediately to saying perhaps there is no need to do anything hasty.

Who will press the button?

Because literally nothing happens until Article 50 is evoked. As the legal expert - and, incidentally, lifelong Eurosceptic - David Allen Green observed on Friday evening: 'If the Article 50 was not sent today, the very day after the Leave result, there is a strong chance it will never be sent.' Because as soon as we notify the EU of our intention to leave the clock starts ticking and, pretty much whatever we do, two years later, we're out.

So who would press that button? It's an entirely practical question. David Cameron isn't going to. Boris Johnson, who will probably be the next Tory leader (though a Stop Boris campaign has already started in Tory ranks), almost certainly doesn't actually want to leave. Farage has no power to do it; nor does Hannan. Gove doesn't seem a plausible Tory leader. Iain Duncan Smith wasn't a plausible leader. Theresa May won't want to pull out. Unless, somehow, the mood of the country is clearly expressed on all sides that we should be leaving the EU, such that our Prime Minister is forced to do it, literally, there is no one who will press that button. And if no one presses it, we are not going to leave the EU.

My risky prediction? In October, Boris takes over; back room negotiations have been continuing with Europe and it becomes clear that we will not get a deal that is in our interests; Boris says that if it comes down to a choice between in the European single market and being outside it, he feels, reluctantly, we should be in it, but he has won a few (face-saving) concessions and on that basis he will call a General Election and fight to remain in. UKIP will win a lot of seats (30-40), mostly at the expense of Labour. But the House of Commons will have a new mandate for staying in. And Article 50 is never invoked. In six months' time, it would be difficult to say the Referendum still has the authority of a mandate. With every day that passes, we look more likely to stay.

As David Allen Green has put it, invoking, of course, Waiting for Godot:

One single good thing has come out of this: we will never have another referendum in my lifetime.

How BoJo Saved Blighty

Well cripes, it was quite an adventure. Where to start? Ah yes, I remember now: one day, jolly, pudgy, mop-haired BoJo was on his way to a meeting of the Big Blue Gang when he had an idea. 'I know,' he thought, 'let's not use the big playground any more!' That sounded like a jolly good lark and his friend 'Mental' Micky agreed and so they went here and and they went there standing on boxes and saying things to persuade people. BoJo enjoyed talking to people because they all cheered him and called him a legend and said 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down' which made him feel warm and happy.

But then they had a vote of all the children and they voted to leave the big playground. BoJo was confused.  That wasn't the plan at all. The plan was just to go here and to go there and to stand on boxes and have people cheer him and say 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down' not actually do the actual thing he was actually asking them to do. 'Cripes,' thought BoJo. 'Does no one understand rhetoric any more? What happened to a classical education? O tempora, o mores,' he mused.

But old friend, 'Stinky' Dave, who BoJo thought was a bit of a dur, decided to give up being Captain of the Big Blue Gang and BoJo thought, 'hullo, I'd like to do that' because, quick as a flash, he realised it had opportunities for going here and going there and standing on boxes and have people cheer him and say 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down'. So when some of the gang came to him and asked him to be the next Captain, he said 'rather!' and he said it very loud and people laughed.

It took quite a long time for 'Stinky' Dave to pack up his things and in the meantime other gangs got bored and they stopped swapping conkers with the Big Blues and rarely, if ever, came to play. And life got a bit boring and people couldn't afford stickers for their albums or sweets for their pockets or coloured laces for their shoes. And the children got a bit nervous and thought maybe the big playground wasn't so bad after all.

So the day came when BoJo got to be Captain. It was a lovely day, he got to stand on a box and people cheered and most of them said 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down', except Nasty Nigel who was busy having a piss in the Big Playground.

BoJo saw that people weren't happy. They weren't cheering as loud as they did before. In fact he thought he heard some people booing. And BoJo didn't like that one little bit! So he got his chums together and together they had a plan, which BoJo didn't like, because he thought plans for for girls, but 'Mental' Micky made him promise and he thought, why not? Sounds like a lark.

'When we said we don't like the Big Playground,' said BoJo standing on a box the next day, 'we meant that it's a bit far away and it smells funny -' (Nasty Nigel smiled a shy smile at this.) '- and sometimes we have to play by other people's rules and children from other gangs get to play in our tree house which is weird'. People cheered and agreed.

'But I'll tell you something else about the Big Playground: some of the other children are quite funny when you get to know them and it's a very good place to swap conkers - and I LOVE swapping conkers!' said BoJo. And people cheered and agreed except Nasty Nigel, who needed a wee.

'So let's make this all above board and clear,' he said, 'It doesn't feel quite right at the moment and I think maybe we want to stay in the Big Playground after all, so let's have a vote for Best Gang. If you think the Big Blue Gang is best vote for us and we'll stay in. If you really want to leave the Big Playground, vote for Nasty Nigel and his Little Wee Gang.' Everybody laughed, because it was actually called the Wee Little Gang.

And the children were relieved and they voted and the Big Blue Gang did well and Nasty Nigel's Wee Little Gang didn't do quite so well and everyone stayed in the Big Playground after all butNasty Nigel was made to clean it up first.

And BoJo went here and he went there and he stood of boxes and people cheered and they all agreed 'good old BoJo, he won't let us down'. And BoJo didn't really understand what he'd done but he liked the cheers and that, my friends, is how BoJo saved Blighty.

More McCartney

Paul McCartney's just brought out a new solo-career-spanning compilation, called Pure McCartney. It's available in all sorts of formats but the best is the 4-CD, 67-track 'deluxe' edition. (Links to Spotify and Apple Music.) I spent a week dipping in and out of it and then listening to the whole thing through and it's just a wonderful collection. You will know lots of the songs, of course, but there's plenty that you probably won't. It ranges right across the work though it's strongest in periods up to Tug of War and then from Flaming Pie onwards, which is right and proper.

The thing about Macca is that he's in a peculiar position, having probably the most beloved back catalogue of any musician currently living. He could play a four-hour concert and not just fill it with songs you've heard, not just songs you know, or know well, but songs you love, that you could stand up and sing along with the whole way through - and you'd still come out grumbling that he didn't play half a dozen of your favourites.

So inevitably, some of the grumblers got to review the collection and complain about what wasn't on there. And what's wrong with that? I'd like to know. 'Cos here I go again.

This is my Disc 5 of Pure McCartney. A few quite well-known songs that I was surprised not to see on his collection and then a bunch of slightly less well-known songs and a few 'deep cuts'. I've put nothing from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard because actually I think it's worth just buying the whole thing and listening to it on repeat.

I've added YouTube links to the individual songs, but here's everything on single playlist:

• Spotify link:
• Apple Music (missing 'Old Siam, Sir' because Apple don't have it. No idea why.)

1. A Love for You (Jon Kelly Mix) (from Ram [Special Edition])

Recorded (very muddily) during the Ram sessions, it was remixed ready for a Wings out-takes album in 1981, until someone realised that in 1981 no one really wanted a Wings out-takes album. Then it ended up in a movie and finally got released on the expanded special edition of Ram. Catchy as hell - well of course it is, it's a McCartney song - and Paul does his Elvis impression on it, which always makes me happy.

2. Ever Present Past (from Memory Almost Full)

Nearly forty years later, it's a lyric which muses on how hard it is for the 65-year-old McCartney to quite believe he did all those things when he was young. But he muses in an absurdly, effortlessly hook-filled song that twinkles with the energy of a twentysomething. And the video, in which multiple digital supermodels dance in unison with his own sweetly amateurish moves, is particularly lovely.

3. Mamunia (from Band on the Run)

From Band on the Run, the first solo album to really get good reviews (though, in truth, most of them had been pretty good already), this is a lovely melody. Paul is often derided for his relentless optimism, because happiness is something we obviously have in abundance and can afford to mock, and here the verse is another vaguely environmental suggestion that we take the rain and turn it into love. The multipart vocals at 3'20" onwards are totes adorbs.

4. Spirits of Ancient Egypt (from Venus and Mars)

To be as stupidly gifted as Paul McCartney means that he seems unstoppably, throughout his life, to see a new instrument or hear a new type of music and think, I'd like a go at that. It's why I find his embrace of horrible horrible 1980s studio technology (try the song 'Press' on Press to Play) forgivable. He's not trying to make himself sound young; he's just excited by what he can do with sequencers... And here he turns his hand to a kind of psychedelic swamp blues, and finds opportunities in it for exuberant pop.

5. Old Siam Sir (from Back to the Egg)

Back to the Egg kind of killed off Wings. It got dreadful reviews and, no, it's not my favourite record though as ever there are gems. What's weird about the record - and you can hear it on this - is that it is both trying to be Led Zeppelin (this song has shades of 'Kashmir'; and listen to the way the drum sounds too) and the Sex Pistols (by which I mean, more attack, freshness, aggression ; and listen to him do a kind of Jimmy Pursey on the word 'Walthamstow' at around 3'34"). That's not a circle that needed squaring in 1979 and it didn't quite come off but the mist having settled on that particular battlefield, I think this does fine, rocking hard but with enough swagger to pull it off.

6. Looking for Changes (from Off the Ground)

What you don't associate McCartney with is political content. Though in fact there was 'Give Ireland Back to the Irish' and even, in 1968, 'Back to the USSR' was a fairly daring joke. This is off his probably least-loved record (oh no, wait, there's one worse, I'll get to that) and it's his animal rights song. It starts with some violent threats against animal experimenters but, because it's Paul McCartney, on the Oasis-y 'know what I mean' moment it becomes more upbeat and positive and the song drives on through with a kind of 90s clatter which we're now maybe far enough from to not wince at. It's way better than 'Meat is Murder', I reckon.

7. You Want Her Too (from Flowers in the Dirt)

A duet with Elvis Costello, who brings some welcome bitter perversity to a song of male bonding over a shared sexual partner who is clearly no good for either of them. Costello was a great choice in some ways, obviously bringing a kind of Lennon-like caustic savagery and readiness to 'go there' lyrically where Paul might pull back. This one builds something quite epic out of the nastiness and it's fun to hear Paul called 'stupid' in his own song. The Vegas showband ending makes you realise it's a kind of ratpack duet for the 1980s.

8. Daytime Nighttime Suffering (b-side to 'Goodnight Tonight')

Apparently Paul invited the rest of Wings to write the b-side to their next single but then, the next morning, turned up with this and the contest was over. Who wants to be in a songwriting competition with Paul McCartney? This is a plea to a woman in a crap relationship to throw over her terrible boyfriend and come to Paul instead, but somehow he makes it sound generous and loving rather than creepy and manipulative.

9. Take It Away (from Tug of War)

This is the only one I was genuinely surprised not to see on Pure McCartney, one of my very favourites of his solo stuff. George Martin's the producer which helps - when McCartney does solo albums he sometimes plays all the instruments himself and that can lead to a slightly sterile feeling of someone playing along to a tape (there's a slight feel of that in 'Ever Present Past', I think). The arrangement is quite AOR/MOR but with a drive and cheerfulness that overwhelms that. The lyric is effortless and the tune sits so happily in there, just not a thing wrong.

10. Keep Under Cover (from Pipes of Peace)

From a pretty patchy record, this has a George Martin string arrangement that propels it gloriously throughout with a great crunchy up-and-down bass line that almost rivals Paul's own bass line on 'All My Loving'. I wince at the 'what use is art if it hurts your head?' line but then remember Paul has always been rather fond of head-hurting art, to the extent of getting The Beatles to record 'Carnival of Light', a 15-minute sound collage to be played at a psychedelic Roundhouse event in 1967 that makes 'Revolution #9' sound like 'From Me To You'. Again the song is actually about feeling abandoned and alone in the absence of a loved one but it turns again into something joyous.

11. Little Lamb Dragonfly (from Red Rose Speedway)

This is an adorable, wistful children's song. Inevitably this means people have scorned it, because what is a Beatle doing writing children's songs? And when I say 'people' I mean 'idiots'. See also the Frog Chorus.

12. Some People Never Know (from Wildlife)

Wildlife is a funny old record. It was recorded at enormous speed, apparently inspired by rumours that Bob Dylan had started going into the studio and recording his songs in one take. The whole record took two weeks to record (though that's 14 times longer than it took the first Beatles album). It got slammed when it came out; not quite 'what is this shit?' but pretty close. So people haven't really listened to it since, assuming it's a disaster. And they are so wrong. It's a beautiful collection and fits into that late-60s/early-70s thing where bands started living on farms and recording rootsy, folky albums. This is a classic McCartney affirmation of love. Without bitterness, he laments hardly believing it that 'some people get sleep at night time / Believing that love is a lie'. This sounds to me like Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and in fact if they don't get back together and record it, I shall be livid.

13. Only Love Remains (from Press to Play)

The production does get in the way of this album, but here's a piano ballad which the production doesn't ruin. And god it's lovely; a soaring and heartfelt and beautiful. He's been writing about love for nearly 60 years and to me there's something defiant and serious about that persistent affirmation of love. One thing that fascinates me is the way he doesn't seem quite to know how to deal with having been in The Beatles; half the time he's trying to puncture things a bit ('they were just a good little band') and at other times he's weirdly desperate to ensure people think they were unfailingly good (hence his constant campaign to have the Magical Mystery Tour TV movie revalued). At one point, maybe in that Beatles Anthology, he reflects that one thing he's glad about is that the Beatles pretty much only sung about love and peace. I mean, that isn't true, but over the years, it amounts to a credo for Paul and it's not the worst legacy to leave.

14. Cut Me Some Slack (with Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear) (from Sound City Real to Reel)

In which seventy-year-old McCartney jams with the surviving members of Nirvana and the thing sounds completely convincing, with Paul tearing apart his fantastic voice on a nonsense lyric. It's a kind of twenty-first-century 'Helter Skelter'.

15. Monkberry Moon Delight (from Ram)

Ram was hated when it first came out, mainly, I guess, because it wasn't The Beatles. Strange that, because, from this distance, it's his most Beatles-y record, full of day-glo psychedelia like this one, which sounds like a paean to hard drugs but is apparently about milk, wouldn't have sounded out of place if recorded in 1967. Must have been an odd feeling for McCartney, thinking but when I did this exact sort of stuff before you loved it. It's a pity because it's a stunningly good record with a handful of his greatest stuff (listen to 'Back Seat of My Car', if you haven't already: it's his 'Surf's Up'). I think Linda sounds pretty great on this too.

16. Ballroom Dancing (from Give My Regards to Broad Street)

Yep, this is probably Paul's least loved album. The soundtrack of a frankly rather awful, trite movie about Paul McCartney zooming around London recording various new versions of his old hits for no good reason which then becomes a silly story about stolen mastertapes. It seemed particularly odd that he re-recorded Ballroom Dancing, since it had only been released in its original version two years before. But actually, I think he improves it. McCartney insisted that the music performances in the movie were actually live and that gives this a bit more energy and swing than the studio version (on Tug of War) and after the instrumental break, the way the music comes charging back in with a Dave Edmunds rock 'n' roll riff at 3'10" (in the audio not the video...) is genuinely rather thrilling.

17. Driving Rain (from Driving Rain)

I find Driving Rain quite a tough record to listen to, because for much of it I just hear Paul deep in mourning for Linda. So the songs are beautiful but sometimes there's a hollowed-out just-stopped-crying quality that makes for tough listening. Especially, I guess, because McCartney is so much the person who writes about love, it's a bit heartbreaking hearing his voice cracking at its loss, although something that makes records like this and Chaos and Creation so satisfying is that, with age, that angelic sweet voice of Paul's has got a bit more weathered which becomes a better vehicle for deeper feelings. This one is the more jolly of my two choices; but don't be fooled, it's his 'Fort Da' game, just about facing his love's loss and then fantasising her return ('You come walking through my door / Like the one that I've been waiting for') but I just hear loss in it, for all its exuberance.

18. Soily (from Venus and Mars [special edition])

This is another nonsense-lyric rock jam. This version is from a Wings movie, One Hand Clapping, but that didn't get released officially (though much of it can be found on YouTube). It drives nice and hard and once again Paul is channelling Elvis. If you don't know, I bet you actual money you'll think nothing of it first time you hear it and then later today you'll find it going through your head and you'll need to hear it again.

19. See Your Sunshine (from Memory Almost Full)

It baffles me why Take That haven't already recorded a version of this; it even sounds like one of Gary Barlow's very best moments. It's light as a feather but moves sinuously through its sections, each one hookier than the last. It's perfect sunny pop of the kind that he pretty much invented fifty years ago.

20. From a Lover to a Friend (from Driving Rain)

Oh god and this one tears me up. Apparently Paul's never quite said definitively what this is about, but it sounds to me like an agonized plea to Linda for permission to love Heather, but at the same time a plea to Heather to understand that he will never stop loving Linda. It's one of his greatest songs, I think, and I'm including the Beatles stuff in that. Worth playing to anyone who thinks he is superficial. And since I seem to have started a thing of commanding bands to cover these songs, I would now like to hear the Jayhawks version of this please.

21. Somebody Who Cares (from Tug of War)

Basically, I want to cheer you up slightly after that last one, without killing the mood. And if I'm being honest, I kind of want to cheer Paul McCartney up too, so this one, which urges us to seek out the ones who love us does the trick. It's is a lovely country-ish ballad from Tug of War. Not all the lyrics feel quite right (if someone took the wheels off my car when I had somewhere to go, in fact even if I didn't have somewhere to go, it would be more than 'annoying'), but Paul's not a poet, he's a songwriter and somehow his clumsy moments seem to add to the feeling.

22. Beware My Love (from Wings at the Speed of Sound)

You remember what music journalists would say of a song that 'From a quiet acoustic opening it builds to a blazing rock finale'? Well this is kind of what they mean. I like how the song (and the title) stays ambiguous throughout: is it 'beware of my love' or 'beware, my love'? There's an alternative version of this with John Bonham drumming, but actually the pounding doesn't really help it; this version is a bit more emotional and needy. The Four Tops of course should record this.

23. Coming Up (Live in Glasgow 1979) (from McCartney II [special edition])

'Coming Up' is on the Pure McCartney collection but in the studio version. And, great though that is, I thought I'd want a live McCartney track; he's released a slightly crazy number of identical live albums but it's clear from this that by the late 70s, Wings were actually a fucking great live band. And this version, loose and groovy, is just such jubilant fun with its funk-pop-disco silliness. The Scissor Sisters actually did a good song called 'Paul McCartney' but they should cover this.

24. Tomorrow (from Wildlife)

From the underrated Wildlife, this song is again about love, about wanting the perfect loving moment never to end. I think this is a stunning song, but never see it talked about and it never ends up on the compilations or best-of lists. I would love to hear the Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris version of this, though I am now prepared to concede this is unlikely.

25. Check My Machine (b-side to 'Waterfalls')

Consider this a bonus track. A 'Her Majesty' or something. I want to end on this because there's always been this utterly weird side to McCartney. Sometimes it's wilfulness that heads him off into rather sentimental areas, but sometimes he just pursues fascinating strange ideas, which are in their way as odd as mainstream pop ever gets. This is both a peculiar experiment with studio technology and a fascinatingly catchy earworm.

If you're thinking of voting Leave...

So we're about to make a huge decision about the future of the country. Why are we making it? Not because it's democratic to ask the British people. We get asked every few years at a General Election where we balance our attitudes on Europe with our concern for health, education, economic and foreign policy, etc. That's how our democracy works and generally it works okay. We don't cherry pick our policies because that is the route to complete confusion - we know that if we had referendums on taxation and on welfare, we'd get votes for American tax rates and Swedish welfare, but you can't have both. That's why we have the party system and general elections.

No, we're in this horrible campaign because David Cameron faced the twin attack of a UKIP threat at the polls and grumbling discontent from his Eurosceptic backbenchers. So he kicked the can down the road by promising a referendum in the next parliament, probably assuming he'd be in coalition with the Lib Dems again and wouldn't have to do it. But here we are.

You may be thinking of voting Leave. Please don't. Here's some - I hope - reasoned, evidence-based argument why you should vote Remain. I've picked three areas that seem to be flashpoints; there are other important issues where I think the argument for remain is also strong (the environment, security, peace, worker rights), but this blogpost is long enough as it is. I'm talking about immigration, the economy, and sovereignty - with then a comment on the people in charge of the campaign.

Immigration

It’s certainly true that immigration from EU countries has increased substantially over the last decade. There have been around two million EU migrants to Britain since 2004. But then quite a few UK citizens migrate to other EU countries: in 2015, while 270,000 EU migrants entered the UK, 85,000 UK citizens moved away.

But anyway, what’s wrong with migration? Migrants help the economy. A study by the UCL Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration shows that the net contribution of EU migrants to public finances is over £20bn, that they contribute more in taxes that they claim in benefits (migrants from the ‘original’ 15 countries contribute 64% more in taxes than they claim in benefits and migrants from the new accession countries, who are typically younger, contribute 12% more). In fact EU migrants are less dependent on benefits and tax credits that native UK citizens – 43% less so.

But, you might say, that’s because they have pushed UK natives into unemployment by undercutting wages. In fact, The Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE found no evidence to say that migration created unemployment, drove down wages, or pushed up the benefits bill. In fact they found that EU migrants were on average significantly better educated than UK natives – 43% for EU immigrants against 23% for UK natives. And notice: they were educated abroad, thus saving the UK significant amounts of money (UCL calculated that saving as £6.8bn).

There are probably three causes of the misconception:

1. The Lump of Labour Fallacy: this is a common-sense but false idea that there is a finite pool of jobs, therefore if more people come in and compete, they must drive down wages or drive up unemployment. In fact immigrants earn money and then spend money, creating new jobs elsewhere in the job chain and thus enlarging GDP and the pool of jobs.
2. The global financial crisis. The bulk of EU immigration has happened over the last 10 years and at the same time unemployment has risen and wages for a long time stagnated or went down. It may seem obvious that there's a connection but no, there isn't. Employment and wages collapsed because we went in to recession. And if A&E or class sizes have been hit, it's because of government cuts, not because of migration. There are undoubtedly some very specific industries in a few very specific areas where migrants have undercut UK workers. But the answer to this is to unionise and raise the minimum wage, not to keep migrants out. On the whole, migrants (a) do jobs that UK natives don’t want to do (b) do jobs that British people can’t do (they are better – and differently – educated).
3. Press hostility. The press has been unremittingly hostile to migrants and tell us constantly things that, as we’ve seen, are untrue. Of course, we’re not so gullible are we? But look at these maps.

Image: Laurence Dodds, Raziye Akkoc, Matthew Goodwin & Rob Ford (c) Telegraph 2015

On the left it shows where immigrants are most populous in England and Wales. On the right is shows where people are planning to vote UKIP (and UKIP voters are the group that put immigration highest on their list of political priorities). You’ll notice that generally where migration is high, UKIP voters are low, and vice versa. In North Norfolk, where there are very few immigrants, if any, they’re mad for UKIP. In London and the South East where the vast majority of immigrants live, UKIP are nowhere. What this tells us, surely, is that people who have no direct experience of immigration believe that it’s a problem because they have heard it’s a problem – and those lurid headlines are the most prominent source of this misinformation.

The last thing to say is that if we do leave the EU, what do you think is going to happen? First, unless we literally become a fascist state, we’re not going to deport those EU citizens (unless you fancy seeing the reciprocal uprooting of pensioners from their Spanish and French retirement homes). Second, if we Brexit and then try to get access to the European Economic Area (EEA), that will certainly come with strings attached – and one of those will be free movement for EU citizens. Third, we want immigration anyway; it sustains some of our key industries (the NHS and so on). To block immigration would be an act of terrible self-harm.

Economy

It;s not disputed by the Brexit camp that we do a lot of business with Europe. In fact according to the Government's Pink Book, we do about 45% of our trade with the EU. The question is what would happen if we leave?

We currently have no tariff barriers on trade with Europe on goods or services and we benefit from the free movement of people across the continent. If we left, would we be able to negotiate the same deal?

No - and here's why.

1. About 44% of our exports go the EU. About 3% of the EU's exports go to us. That puts us as a huge disadvantage in any negotiation. We need them much more than they need us.
2. We would just have pissed off the EU. Not a good starting point to try to get mates' rates.
3. Even if we managed to charm them, it's not in the EU's interests to give us a great deal. If we can get just the same access to the EEA outside the EU, won't every other country ask for the same deal? Right-wingers like Marine Le Pen of France's far-right Front National hope Brexit will lead to a cascade of countries trying to break up the EU.
4. There are precedents - but they're not much good for us. Canada has a trade deal with the EU, but, as the BBC Reality Check points out, it mainly covers goods, not services - and 80% of Britain's business is in services. Norway is outside the EU and negotiated access to the single market but, as the former Norwegian foreign minister says, they have to contribute to the EU, accept all its regulations, and freedom of movement (they are, in other words, within the Schengen agreement, which currently, Britain is not) - and yet they don't have a seat at the table, no vote on any of these matters.

We would face tariff barriers to our biggest trading partner - who are on our doorstep. That would put the cost of business up by, who knows, 3%? 5%? On the Today Programme this morning a Brexit economist suggested that this would be fine because the pound would probably drop a bit on Brexit. Um, yes, that would be fine for exporters if the pound dropped exactly the same as the new tariff barriers. But it would be doubly terrible for importers and people who go on European holidays and anyone caught up in the recession that pretty much every single reputable economic body says would be the result.

If you are concerned for the vitality of the British economy, vote Remain.

Sovereignty

It is true that the EU is a fairly cumbersome organisation, although this is easy to overstate. There is a lot of talk about unelected bureaucrats, running the EU. We have 393,000 civil servants in the UK. To run the whole of the EU, there are 55,000 (less than 1/7th the number).

But probably the Brexiteers are talking about the European Commission, which is the body that proposes legislation. The EU Commissioners are not elected, it's true. But they are proposed by elected governments of all member states. Every EU Commissioner is there because an elected government proposed her or him.

And then the European Commission only proposes legislation. That legislation is then voted on by the European Parliament whose 751 members are elected by the populations of member states (and 73 of those MEPs are British). Elections to the European Parliament are proportional - so actually much more democratically representative than the UK parliament. This is why there is only 1 UKIP MP in Britain (i.e. 0.2% of the MPS, despite gaining 12.7% of the national vote), while in the European parliament election UKIP got a little over 26% of the vote and has just under a third of the UK's MEPs. Of course, it's true that British people tend not to turn out to vote in these elections (hence UKIP's disproportionately large showing), but that's us not stepping up to the democratic plate, not the EU being undemocratic.

And then the major legislation that comes out of the European Parliament has to be ratified by all the national parliaments. It's laborious, yes; but undemocratic? No.

(And let's not talk about the House of Lords.)

More broadly though, what does sovereignty mean to the Brexiteers? What power do they think we can get back by leaving? We have pooled some of our sovereignty in the EU. And that's surely a good thing. It makes sense to make legislation at the lowest, most local level - and no lower. Is it really a good idea for every European nation to separately waste time coming up with their own regulations to make sure that electrical goods are safe or that fruit is free of dangerous pesticides? Particularly when we trade these goods with each other? It's much better to do these things at an intergovernmental, supranational level. Pooling sovereignty saves time.

And pooled sovereignty is still sovereignty. The UK has a lot of pooled sovereignty within it. We are four separate nations who have pooled sovereignty. But in fact we are multiple regions who have pooled sovereignty too. It's not an attack on the sovereignty of Peterborough that it has the same number of votes in parliament as Chorley. Nor is it a failure of sovereignty if Peterborough is sometimes on the losing side of a parliamentary vote, something that Leave don't seem to understand. We do some things better in bigger units.

More broadly, sovereignty doesn't mean what it meant when the sovereign made us, um, sovereign. One of the results of globalization has been that there are huge global corporations - utterly undemocratic, entirely unelected - whose internal economies dwarf those of most countries. In 2014, of the top 100 economies in the world 63 were corporations and only 37 were nation-states. These corporations want things that are not necessarily in our best interests: they want to drive down wages, reduce regulation, health and safety standards, workers rights, the length of your holiday, your maternity pay and so on. They have the clout to do this. We will not be better at resisting that pressure if we step away from the EU; we will more prey to these rapacious corporations, not less.

It's corporate power that is more damaging to our sovereignty than a bunch of EU regulations. If you want to preserve sovereignty, vote remain.

The Brexiteers

I'm not someone who believes that you should be swayed by personalities in this debate. If I were convinced of the argument for Brexit, it wouldn't give me a moment's pause to learn that David Beckham or J. K. Rowling or Stephen Hawking are on the Remain side. But it's not just a matter of personality to note that Brexit has attracted the support of Donald Trump and Geert Wilders andVladimir Putin. These are not people, I would suggest, who have your or my interests at heart.

But still, bad people can coincidentally have good ideas, so that's not a decisive argument. What is more serious and disheartening has been the nature of the debate. It's been the most depressing political debate I can remember, and that's even before the murder of Jo Cox by an ultra-right-wing activist.

I'm not blaming the Leave side for this, not wholly. The most prominent Remainers have exaggerated the reliability of their predictions, for example George Osborne's ridiculous claim that he can know the state of a post-Brexit economy in 2030, when each of his predictions for the following quarter have proved wrong. We can be pretty sure there would be a very serious recession if we vote to leave, but how the economy would respond after that is almost impossible to say. Cameron has unfortunately often employed the relentless negativity of Project Fear rather than promoting any positive vision of the EU. I said this four months ago and the tone hasn't changed. (It's almost like they don't read my blog.) I've been disappointed at how reluctant and half-hearted Jeremy Corbyn has been on the Labour side (at least until recently); he's not an instinctive European and it shows. The case for migration, for harmonization, for pooling sovereignty, for the cultural and intellectual benefits that flow from our EU membership, these cases have not been made. The top Remainers have focused narrowly on the economy, making it sound like a matter of selfish national calculation rather than a vision of unity and cooperation.

But, Christ alive, the Brexiteers. The Remainers have exaggerated, played on our fears, and basically been a bit hopeless. The Brexiteers have lied and lied and lied again. The tabloids have whipped up visceral hatreds against immigrants, supported by Nigel Farage, a man, who, let's not forget, was described by one of his own schoolteachers as a 'racist' and a 'fascist' and who used to sing 'Hitler-Youth songs'; who referred only a few years ago to black people as 'niggers' and 'nig-nogs'; who said he would be concerned if a group of Romanians moved in next door; who complained about hearing people speak foreign languages on the train; who argued that HIV+ foreigners should be denied NHS treatment; who declared that migration put British women at greater risk of rape; and who, a week ago, unveiled a poster of dark-skinned people warning of immigration that even his fellow Brexiteers described as being like 1930s Nazi propaganda; and when Jo Cox was murdered on the same day, he called it 'unfortunate timing' and sought to portray himself as the 'victim'. He is a disgusting man.

But his fellow Brexit campaigners, even as they distance themselves from him, still whip up fears about immigration - fears that they don't remotely believe. I don't think Michael Gove is worried about immigration but he thinks the only way Leave can win is jumping on the racist bandwagon, and so this intelligent, educated man pokes the fire.

And does Boris Johnson believe that Britain sends £350m a week to the EU? No, he doesn't. He knows better than that. He knows that - once you subtract the rebate and the money that comes straight back to us in the form of agricultural support, regional aid, and more - the figure is less than half of that. The point has been made time and time again (for instance here, here, here, here, here, and here), but Boris refuses to back down, will not change the slogan on his bus (left) continues to make this claim, and why? Because the lie is working.

Does the Leave campaign really think Turkey is joining the EU? Their poster (right) says so, but it's not true. Does Boris Johnson really believe Brexit will help LGBT rights? Probably not, since it wouldn't. Does the Daily Express really believe the EU has banned curved cucumbers or says bottled water can't be advertised as helping hydration? It seems unlikely, since these things aren't the case. Does Nigel Farage really think that 5000 Islamist terrorists, disguised as migrants, have entered Europe via the Greek Islands in the last 18 months? Surely not, since he made it up.

And so it goes on.

The worst of it is that the Leave camp seem often unswayed by argument or evidence. A poll for YouGov found that, for example, the views of academics were trusted by 68% of Remain voters but only 26% of Leave voters. The Bank of England was trusted by 61% of Remain, but 19% of Leave. Heads of reputable charities had the trust of 58% of Remain and 21% of Leave. This is why, less than a week away from the Referendum, after months of campaigning, the UK public is massively misinformed about the EU.

What this means is that quite likely I shouldn't have bothered write any of this. Why give evidence when people think common sense is better, even over matters of fact?

Look, here's the thing. I'm not naive. I know we take decisions and form our opinions in a network of other prior beliefs, and attitudes, and social practices. As a metropolitan, left-wing, university professor and arts professional I am pretty likely to vote Remain. (The Times Higher found that 88.5% of university staff backed Remain; the Creative Industries Federation found that 96% of its members backed Remain; Londoners are polling 51% to Remain against 34% to Leave). But in fact, my view has shifted. Last year, when the EU was punishing Greece and bypassing its own referendum, I seriously contemplated voting Leave.

Because we have to change our minds. Yes we make decisions based on other opinions we have; we don't like holding opinions that contradict each other. But sometimes the decision is so important, it's the other views that must change, if the arguments are compelling enough. This is one of those decisions.

I also think this is the far-right's attempt at a grab for power. It's an unholy alliance of extremist neoliberals who want to unravel worker rights, dismantle the welfare state, further liberate business and complete the Thatcherite revolution with the far-right racists who believe they can turn Britain back into the whites-only paradise it never was and never should be, let by the lounge-bar nudge-nudge racist Nigel Farage.

If you've read this far, I'll be very surprised but very grateful. For all the reasons I've given above, please consider seriously voting Remain on Thursday.