EU shares nothing with Stalin
S Steatham has no need to apologise for any lack of clarity (Letters, Oct 21). If anything, I was at fault for not making clear the precise nature of my disagreement with him/her: the attribution to Remain voters of a belief that Leave voters are stupid. There is no doubt that there is a correlation between level of education and voting in the referendum, with pro-Leave newspapers reporting that more highly educated voters had voted Remain. However, level of education is not the same as level of intelligence. As a Remain voter (albeit a reluctant one), I have certainly never ventured the opinion that Leave voters are stupid. As a boring, evidence-loving old pedant, I’m aware of no data to demonstrate whether or not either Leave or Remain voters are stupid. Interestingly enough, Professor Richard Dawkins – not usually noted for false modesty about his intellectual achievements – has argued that the referendum should not have been held because he was quite unqualified to vote on a complex issue outside his area of academic expertise. Lack of knowledge is not the same as stupidity.
On Steatham’s perceptive observation in an earlier letter that Leave voters were more likely than Remainers to set out a view of where the EU was going, my remarks in my response were rather heavily edited. I would say, however, that I just don’t recognise his/her picture of a wish to “dominate” the UK, or of a federal Europe akin to the former USSR. More importantly, I don’t think his/her dystopian view would be shared by people of those countries which have actually been “dominated”. Among those are three EU members once dominated by the UK to the extent that people fighting for freedom from British rule were hanged – Malta, Cyprus and the Irish Republic. They are not very likely to sympathise with the UK in seeking a deal to leave the EU. Similarly, those countries which have joined the EU after decades of Stalinist rule – three of them actually as part of the Soviet Union itself – don’t seem to share this grim vision. Indeed, the most powerful politician in Europe, Angela Merkel grew up in the former East Germany, and would be unimpressed with the notion that the EU is somehow a replica of Stalin’s empire.
Alan T Harrison
Walsall
