On my return journey from a successful transition audit to ISO 14001:2015 in Central London, I picked up a copy of the Evening Standard, which is not only a good read on a train journey but sometimes has some thought-provoking articles.
So after getting past the main headlines: “Premier League puts the boot into Brexit” and various other articles from the usual financial and immigration perspective, I noticed an article linking the current Euro 2016 football championship held in France with the EU Referendum, which is an interesting and new spin on the hype leading up to the final voting day (23 June 2016) in three days time.
Euros victory over Slovakia “may boost vote to drop EU” written by the Deputy Political Editor covered a recent BMG Research survey for the Evening Standard, which showed that 11% of persons surveyed would be more likely to vote for Britain to remain in the EU, should England do well in the Euro Championship.
Additionally, most surveyed saying that it would “influence” their decision with 22% considering that they are more likely to vote for the UK to leave the EU, if England fail to make an impact in France.
So on the basis of the draw with Slovakia with England in second place in their Group behind fellow countrymen from Wales, which occurred five hours after a picked up the paper and read the article, I am not sure where the socio-political piece leaves the important vote on Thursday.
For me the feel-good factor (or otherwise) will not sway my decision.
Evidence from my personal experience of working on EU projects, the wealth of fundamentally, environmentally-centric Directives and Regulations that have benefited the UK and European environment together with the prospect of being outside the EU with not even a 1/28 vote (call that faceless bureaucracy) yet still needing to apply the legislation and pay for the privilege does not bear much thought.
I hope tomorrow to put together the key research into the benefits of our EU membership on the environmental scene for you to take into account for your vote but don’t be too swayed by the England teams’ performance, the vote is too important for that.