Coaker: Taking on Farage’s cheap populism is key to this referendum

On Tuesday, I was in Belfast to debate with Nigel Farage. An audience of over 200 hundred mainly young people came along to listen to UKIP’s leader put the case for leaving the EU, while I argued for us remaining.

Mr Farage kicked off putting his case with characteristic good humour and, as the debate developed, he touched on many of the themes we have come to expect from him: his notion of absolute sovereignty, the supposedly pernicious effect of immigration, the suffocating primacy of EU law. He even managed to resurrect long-since-defunct European Constitution before going on to raise the spectre of the United States of Europe. In the 20 or so years he has been putting forward these arguments he has honed his core script to the extent that there is almost nothing he can say that surprises.

Of course I made many familiar arguments too:  about the risk to jobs, the impact on investment and the central importance for business of access to the single market. Now I don’t think the Out Campaign have an effective answer to the questions of economic risk. Indeed, as I said last night, Nigel’s answer seems to be “don’t worry, it’ll be alright on the night” and that’s not enough.

But I wanted to make a more positive case for Europe. To win this referendum we must not be cowed by the likes of Mr Farage and his cheap populism. We have to get out of the all-too-familiar defensive posture about risks and unknown and take on the argument and go over and above the narrow economics.

Yes we can argue about jobs, growth, investment and so on. We can trade numbers and quotes till we’re blue in the face. But the public respond when we make a positive case for Europe. When we say, yes there are compromises, no we don’t think everything is perfect, but look what we can achieve when we work together.

So I took on the ridiculous notion that the best way to trade with the rest of the world is to leave the world’s biggest market. I took on his assertions about sovereignty and explained that by choosing to pool sovereignty we can pursue common goals more effectively. And I took on his dog whistle arguments about immigration, saying that immigration has overall been positive for this country and that we should be proud of the safe-haven we provide for those fleeing war and persecution.

There is not one major issue facing us in the 21^st century that will be solved by countries acting alone. As members of the European Union we are a proud, independent nation, standing alongside other member states because we achieve more together than we do alone. We should be confident in our arguments and put our case with passion.

You can watch the Big EU Debate Northern Ireland here.

Vernon Coaker is shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.