I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote in the EU referendum. If I vote to leave I will be joining a ramshackle bunch of characters including Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and George Galloway. Shouting with them from the sidelines, as Andrew Raunsley points out in today’s Observer (see link (1) below), are Marine le Pen and Vladimir Putin. And if the No camp wins we might even end up with Boris Johnson as prime minister.

All that is nearly enough to send me into the Yes camp!

But I’m also horrified by the supporters of continued membership who, one way or another, have got us where we are today. Raunsley’s list includes

“the chancellor, foreign secretary and home secretary, most of the rest of the cabinet, the great majority of senior figures from the opposition parties, the bulk of big business and the trade unions, the governor of the Bank of England, the president of the United States and the leader of every European country that anyone might conceivably have heard of.”

That’s almost enough to send me into the No camp!

However, it’s not about lists of clowns, bankers, politicians, or other Very Important People. It is, as Tony Benn always insisted, about “the issues”. Take, for instance, the question of workers’ rights. Would it be better for workers’ rights if we stayed in or if we left?

Let me suggest one argument for staying in. Many unions are saying that workers’ rights will be better protected if we stay in. But I notice the biggest French union, the CGT, says that the latest “reforms” of the Code du Travail announced by the French government will take France back to the 19th century (see link (2) below). And this in a France firmly entrenched in the EU. This game of “reforms” is the game all governments want to play, and no country’s workers are safe, and this suggests that there are no automatic guarantees of workers’ rights in the EU and that whether we’re in or out we’ll have to defend the rights we fought for. M. Martinez is calling on French trade unionists to do that now in France. So the argument for staying in to protect workers’ rights doesn’t seem to be a particularly strong one.

Unless, of course, we add M. Martinez’s element of workers taking action to defend their rights. Then, if we stayed in, it would be easier to join them and any others across the EU doing the same. Wouldn’t Brexit leave British workers weaker against Cameron, and other workers in Europe weaker against their own governments? I think solidarity is better than isolation. And perhaps solidarity across the EU could change it to the advantage of workers beyond the wildest dreams that Cameron has of changing it to the advantage of his rich, arrogant, corporate buddies.

That’s my first thought, anyway. More to come as the campaigning goes on.

(1) Andrew Raunsley’s article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/eu-refendum-tory-party-uk-at-stake

(2) Article in Libération: http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/02/19/martinez-le-nouveau-code-du-travail-un-retour-au-xixe-siecle_1434633