It's a tale of two diddies as far as I'm concerned. I have a desire to see both campaigns lose, and the champions of both viewpoints be utterly destroyed in the fullness of public view - especially after witnessing Bob Geldof and Nigel Farage making such massive twats of themselves at the Battle of the Thames - but it's not even a
strong desire.
Since this referendum features a binary question my favoured result of both sides getting a massive and thorough skelping is not possible.
We all have to make a choice. Here goes.
I see it as being England's referendum really, and not my own personal business in the way that the Scottish ref was. It's hard for me to get truly invested in the arguments here. Immigration is a political issue in Scotland, of course, but it still carries nowhere near the same emotional or political weight that it does in England (or Wales apparently). Likewise the calls for sovereignty and self-government - despite appearances to the contrary - are not
quite so persuasive up here. Most of us long ago became used to not quite having access to the full range of tools that self-government affords a sovereign nation. That's not something that England has ever really had to face up to (until now).
It's instructive to watch both sides lying and manipulating "facts" shamelessly to suit their cause, from a position of relative detachment, because you get to see how these apparently chaotic democratic shitshows are relentlessly (yet not always predictably or one-sidedly) shaped. On the other hand I wouldn't worry too much over the suspension of campaigning following the death of Jo Cox, because no one from either side has said anything worthwhile or interesting since the campaigns began anyway.
I hope no one will mind if I recycle a comment I made a while back about the EU vote (on a football forum, just like Slimmouse's one quoted above) here. It was a weighing up of pros and cons.
A couple of years back I would've been definite pro-EU - might even have campaigned to stay in it. I like the European Working Time Directive and the employment rights (and others) that are enshrined in the EC Human Rights Act. The more vociferous clowns on the dodgy-right of the Tory party (Fox, Gove, Patel) really would like to "emulate Singapore" and make us all "work like the Chinese", and it troubles them that laws preventing this have been 'imposed upon us from Brussels'. Well, it doesn't trouble me.
I don't ever want to see the "Britannia Unchained" mob getting fully off the chain, and some aspects of EU law act as a break on their free-market wank fantasies. On the other hand, the EU makes the privatization of most utilities mandatory, and is itself heavily neoliberal in outlook... then there's the prospect of TTIP.
But the right wing of the Tories, and it's Atlantic Bridge subset, would enthusiastically sign us up to TTIP anyway - EU or not - so that's kind of a non-issue.
The Common Fisheries Policy is a problem. It has to be said, though, that the UK Government (Heath, then Thatcher) are more to blame for it's long-standing unfairness to Scotland than the EU is.
The treatment of Greece by the EU has been horrifying, but it's not just been Greece - Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and others have all had their democracy interfered with and their dignity trampled. The IMF would've been no kinder in the old days, though, and the Germans also have valid cause for complaint as they see their tax money thrown at a supranational political project to which few of them have any real emotional attachment, but it's still a fucking disgrace, and one which the EU top dogs clearly regret not a jot.
On Ukraine, the EU acted like the political wing of NATO, in my view, and that's not a role I want to see it playing, especially not now that it is making real progress in developing it's own military structures.
The EU Parliament unavoidably gives a bigger voice and a certain amount of legitimization to extremist and far-right parties who are (mostly) considered jokes in their own homelands. I suppose I can't complain about that though, since it is a rare example of the EU suffering from an excess of democracy rather than a lack of it. And a Brexit vote will inevitably be seen as an endorsement of far-right views anyway, domestically - lock the doors, build a wall, send them back, treat Liam Fox like a legitimate politician, etc.
I'm not a fan of the Tory Establishment, and they seem worryingly fond of the EU - in their actions rather than their words. Heath begged embarassingly at the door of the EEC for nearly a decade, asking for entry, and Thatcher signed the Single European Act to create the political union, while Major signed Maastricht and led us disastrously into the ERM. Most of the big steps towards greater EU integration have taken place under Tory governments. That's a puzzler, is it not?
I like the idea of the EU, but it is the reality that we'd be entering into "ever closer union" with. I'm left with the question of what I think is more dangerous for Scotland - being part of a potential European superstate with all it's current failings and lopsidedness, with it's limited good points and glaring bad points, or being part of an "unfettered" UK under a rampantly Atlanticist Tory government for the foreseeable.
I consider the UK to be by far the greater and more immediate threat to our interests, but that doesn't make the EU any more attractive.
It's difficult, but my opinions have definitely changed over the last few years, moving more and more towards an Out vote.
The above comment illustrates very succintly why nobody likes me on my football forum.
I'm wavering on those views now anyway. The official Out campaign is so blatantly atrocious in it's attitudes - that Breaking Point ad, among other things - and staffed by such egregious arseholes (Liam Fox, Gove, Johnson, Patel, etc.) that I'm not sure I could bring myself to vote for it even if they threatened to deport me otherwise.