I have never belonged to a political party. Well, almost never. I joined the Labour Party for a short while, with the explicit intention of electing Jeremy Corbyn. I believed – and still do – that his policies were what the country needs at present. (It was the only time in my life where my vote has had any meaningful effect. Afterwards, my membership lapsed, as I felt the job was done, and the Party should not be further influenced by arrivistes).

For what it’s worth, I still think that move was successful. For all Corbyn’s subsequent disappointments, he has succeeded in shifting the national agenda to the Left. He put properly social-democratic policies back into the public arena. That may be his legacy.

But after the initial shock of last week’s election result, I have a problem. I have inadvertently found myself not disagreeing with a few of the things Boris Johnson has now said. I am entirely aware of the great likelihood that much of it is hot air, perhaps even intentionally so. I am not about to start trusting the man one iota. But more than that, as I said above, I am not and never will be, dogmatically partisan.

My political decisions derive purely from aligning my wishes and beliefs for my country with a party that says it will deliver them. It has never been a perfect fit; that’s life. Normally I have been best accommodated by the left-of-centre parties. But if another part of the political spectrum starts making noises that I agree with, why should I dismiss them purely on tribal grounds? Not doing so is surely the mark of a modern, independent-minded voter, and of politics working properly. A bigger failure was the tradition of voting tribally, according to generations of family loyalty, with one party sanctified and the others condemned purely as a matter of ritual.

In the last days, Johnson has reportedly said:

• The Conservative Party needs to change for good. Err, yes.
• The government’s newly-elected northern MPs need to “deliver” for their constituencies. Err, yes.
• That those northern votes are probably only loaned to the Conservatives. Err, yes.
• That he has “got the message” on the NHS and will enshrine higher spending in Law. Err, yes.
• That he will invest in rail transport and other infrastructure. Err, yes.
• That we need to come together as a nation. Err, yes.
• That we will shake up the Civil Service. Err, yes – with reservations over how and why.

It’s hardly a full manifesto-worth of agreement, and once again, I concede that what he says and what he does may well be very different things – but he would hardly be the first politician for whom that was true. Yet if what I perceive as the ‘right’ decisions are made for the country, does it really matter very much who makes them? Isn’t that the whole point of representational politics?

I have read much about the poor state of British government. There are plenty of authoritative, independent writers such as Anthony King who advocated a major overhaul of the Civil Service years ago. Its upper echelons have possibly been a major obstacle to change in Britain for too long. There was a reason so many politicians loved Sir Humphrey Appleby: they recognised the accuracy of the character. For all that Appleby has a point (below) surely the prospect of dismantling such pillars of the establishment ought to appeal to the Left?

There are clearly big risks – not that the nation now has much choice but run with them. Regrettably, matters such as electoral reform are probably once again out of the question for the time being: Johnson hardly has the incentive to look at it.

And then there is the matter of Brexit. On this, I am resolutely and implacably opposed to Johnson’s past direction of travel. It is a defining matter;  even alone it ensures that I will never actually vote Conservative.

But that does not imply there is nothing to be done. It pays to listen to your opponents. The much-despised Dominic Cummings is no fool, and he may have a point when he claims that the Remain movement inadvertently hardened the likely outcome by making compromise more difficult. Johnson is now largely free of the need to pander to Nigel Farage and his own hard-liners too, if he so chooses. There is some evidence to suggest that he is not a hard Brexiter by instinct. As a teacher, I know there are times when you have to put your foot down, to over-state your case.

There have been a few other noises from Conservative MPs about recognising the depth of feeling of pro-Europeans. That itself is progress. Sometimes, in order to achieve (some of) your objectives, it is also necessary to give some ground in order to allow your opponent to come towards a mid-point. So there is perhaps still a slim chance that Brexit will be soft, which while still objectionable, is less so than the other type. 

An underlying tenet of the Remain campaign is presumably that it values European ways of doing things. When it comes to politics, the ‘European Way’ involves talking to your opponents, trying to find consensus and compromise, metaphorically holding your nose – and working with them where possible. That approach was also defended by the Left over Corbyn’s contact with various rebel groups.

By contrast, the stubborn tribalism seen in the Brexit conflict – which involved a bunker mentality on both sides – did nothing more than perpetuate the traditionally confrontational nature of British politics. It is all too evident where that has now led. For all that pro-Europeans portray themselves as compassionate, reasonable people, there has been a lot of talk that does not really fit that description, even if it didn’t quite plumb the depths of the Brexiters. No matter how much they feel they were forced into this, the ‘big’ thing to do now is to play a part in the reconciliation process. It will not be easy – but that is the European approach. The Far Right, in particular thrives on uncompromising attitudes from others; this somehow needs to be defused rather than stoked.

There is a need to start looking for places, no matter how slim, where agreement can be found. Perhaps the starting point is the relative consensus about the fundamental problems facing this country, irrespective of their attributed causes.

Pro-Europeans do not need to set aside their views; indeed they need to argue for them all the more strongly in future. Part of the European movement’s failure has been the absence of challenge to forty years of misinformation; that needs to change. But there is now a need to engage with the opposition in the hope that at least a tolerable compromise can be reached. Has Johnson just hinted at willingness?

There is a strong possibility that I am being too optimistic, born from nothing more than temporary relief at the removal of uncertainty. Fundamental beliefs need to be protected. Extreme caution will be very necessary. But I think we should not be too hasty to condemn developments that have not yet happened, which may be born more of fear and disillusionment than clear thinking – and we should also be ready to endorse positive actions if and when they do occur – even if they are a compromise on our ideal situation – and even – perhaps especially? – when they come from our opponents.

In this, I think the EU itself has been a model institution: willing beyond the call of duty to engage with a withdrawing UK despite its regret at the situation, standing firm on its own fundamental position – and seeking a workable compromise.

That is the modern European way.

Back in 2015, at the end of a more innocent age, Tim Marshall wrote a book called Prisoners of Geography. In it, he argued that the principal governing force behind human activity is not, as we choose to think, free will – but the geographical configuration of the planet on which we live.

Geopolitics is not a widely-discussed subject – at least not explicitly so, though according to Marshall, much of what happens in the world is underpinned by it. This is no less true of the 2019 British General Election result, which saw a right-wing nationalist party returned with an increased majority – and the issue that underlay it: Brexit.

Pro-European Britons, particularly on the Left, may be reeling under what they see as the denial of the self-evident truth of the modern world, namely the U.K.’s future as a social-democratic member of the E.U. It was very attractive to a certain sort of well-travelled, often-educated Briton for whom the EU had increasingly felt like home – me included.

But our dream of the place we earnestly believe that Britain needs to be is, and always has been, compromised by those pesky geopolitics. The 2019 election has just shown this once again: our worldview is simply not persuasive enough to carry a decisively large percentage of the wider British public with it. The tough fact is, the U.K. is marginal to the European land mass, and it has always had split loyalties as a result; EU membership was simply not important enough to many enough for the issue to carry the election. And that’s without considering Britain’s history, which has left it with a deluded sense of its own importance. For centuries, British policy was to divide the continent in order to prevent an anti-British alliance (which itself may have been more neurosis than real threat – but it worked). What has really changed? But maritime nations are no longer strategically pivotal; instead, they have become marginal. The British seem not to have noticed.

The Interrail generation has always ‘read’ the U.K. from its proximity to the continent. We travelled widely; we formed international friendships; we eagerly grasped every shred of evidence that the U.K. was gradually becoming more like the rest of the Europe that we saw and admired. It was not a delusion: particularly in the last twenty years, since the internet turbocharged communications, there has indeed been convergence, some visible, some less so. Eurosceptics glued to their TVs during the Champions’ League know not what they do. Eurostar altered perceptions too – albeit mostly for those living in the South East. The fact that the British economy shed its post-war difficulties was probably also due to integration with a larger entity – that effect has repeatedly been observed elsewhere. In pure trading terms, the ‘economies of scale’ count. But we ignored the fact that they don’t work socially, culturally – and perhaps geopolitically. In reality, Britons as a whole are little more ‘Europeanised’ than they ever were.

If you want to understand Britain in those terms, don’t look at the continent; look at Ireland. For in doing so, we hold a more realistic mirror to our own place vis-à-vis the rest of Europe, and perhaps gain a better understanding of the true nature of our own country. Simply put, continentals perceive the U.K. in something like the way the British perceive Ireland.

I can’t claim to know Ireland intimately, though I have travelled over much of its southern half – and through my love of its music, I have repeatedly rubbed up against its people, both music-friends who live there, and Irish friends in the U.K. Playing ‘their’ music may have provided something of a cultural pass-partout that other Brits have not had. For my purposes here, I will also plead guilty to doubtful wisdom of blurring the political and geographical uses of the term ‘Ireland’, because we are really talking about a combination of the two.

To an even greater extent than the U.K., Ireland is not a modern European country. True, if you drive around the Dublin ring-road, you will see light industrial estates similar to those on the outskirts of Rouen or Ghent. True, if you take the empty new toll motorways to the west, you could easily believe that you were on a western-French autoroute on which they have been conspicuously modelled. True, in central Dublin, you can use the tram as you can in Strasbourg or Basel. But it doesn’t take long to realise that these things are symbols of desire, a statement of what the modern Ireland wants to be, not what it yet wholly is; that is still visible down the side-streets. Outside these bubbles, much of Ireland still struggles with its location on the periphery of Europe, where the land is often poor, and where the population, while youthful and rising, is low enough to make wider development problematic. You can see it in the difficulty that the Irish have had with developing their infrastructure: the place simply isn’t big or populated enough to compete successfully with a whole continent, now that continents matter more than seaways. Without the EU funds, it might not have happened at all.

You can also find it in the mindset. I don’t for a moment wish to indulge in typical English condescension towards a country whose culture is, in many ways stronger and more productive than my own – but it still has a largely nostalgic, provincial mentality. The modernity that I described strikes me as a somewhat contrived denial of a historico-geo-political reality that is still uncomfortably close to the surface. This is an island where religion has only quite recently lost a significant grip – and allowed the ‘permissiveness’ of modern internationalism seen in otherwise-universal matters such as abortion and same-sex partnerships – and where it is still seen as novel – even if proudly so – for the Premier to be non-white and gay.

It is a nation that still venerates its past – as seen in the enduring presence of traditional music – even though its actual practice is a minority interest in a nation that is prouder of having produced the likes of U2. But Irish exports still overwhelmingly play on traditional images of Ireland. It still takes little for bitter-sweet nostalgia for the island’s troubled past to come pouring out. While the small towns with their multitude of independent businesses may look picturesque, they are still demographically and economically precarious – often dated, and hardly an expression of modern Europe. They are resolutely inward-looking: while Irish hospitality is everything it is reputed to be, the communities feel introspective; the warm welcome is that extended to strangers, not the familiarity of fellow-locals.

Even the shiny buildings in Dublin’s docklands have been built using cash that had be attracted by an aggressive policy of ultra-low corporation tax, which is a distinctly un-European approach. When we first visited around fifteen years ago, much of the South resolutely failed the Cappucino Test: our tongue-in-cheek measure of how cosmopolitan a place actually is. On more than one occasion, the advertised cappuccino turned out to be filter-coffee topped with aerosol cream… and while things have definitely improved since, in our experience, it is still not certain that a decent vegetarian meal will always be available.

But above all, Ireland is a long way from the continent. Not necessarily in terms of kilometres – but because those kilometres are mostly water, in people’s minds they expand ad infinitum. You can only get in and out by ship or aircraft, as used to be the case in the UK too. The sheer practical fact of Ireland’s physical isolation alone is sufficient to explain most of the above – and indeed the admirable determination of the Irish that it will be otherwise. But you only have to arrive via the docks at Dublin or Waterford to be reminded that pretty much every expression of modern, cosmopolitan Ireland has to be imported.

While the practical, economic benefits for Ireland of belonging to a much larger economic unit are most visible, I can also sympathise entirely with Ireland’s Europeanism  on another level: as a peripheral lump of rock on the edge of both a large continent and a larger ocean, it actually has more to prove – including to itself – than those countries closer to the core of Europe, where it happens much more easily and naturally. It is not alone; it is a known cultural phenomenon that peripheral areas identify more strongly with their cultural cores than those cores do with themselves. (We see the same with the Ulster Unionists vis à vis the UK). In the case of Eire, there is also a strong imperative to define the modern nation in opposition to its historic master (on which it is nonetheless heavily reliant) – namely the UK.

At the same time, it is these peripheral areas that experience conflicted identities. The characteristics I have described above are not unique to Ireland; many outlying parts of Europe, from Scandinavia to Southern Italy, have difficulty in identifying unreservedly with the core European identity. In fact, we should not claim that Europe is only about that core identity: it is a dispersed and disparate place – but for all that, there clearly is a core, built around France, Germany and Benelux. While it has not been an entirely smooth journey, at least the Irish have had the sense to understand that their best future lies in a partnership with that core, in a way that many British still refuse to do – and they are getting on with it.

I do hope that Irish readers understand this is not criticism of their country. The key point is this: the British have historically tended to look down on the Irish as provincial, disorganised and poor. They have seen Ireland as a country riven by backward-looking sectarian tribalism and hamstrung by poor geography. Those geographical realities have indeed done more to shape the Irish state – and still do – than the modern Irish might be comfortable admitting.

But as I said at the outset, we British can learn a lot from Ireland. Our problem with the EU is that in relation to the continent, we are just the same. Jean-Claude Juncker quipped that “everyone understands English – but no one understands England”. It is truer than he realises – in much the same way as the English don’t really understand the Irish. They are islanders, they are ‘other’; their different geopolitics gives them a fundamentally different mindset as a result. Continentals – being continental – tend to underestimate it. Equally, no post-joining attempt was made at European state-building in the UK, because it was never understood to be important.

Like the Irish, we British are still essentially islanders, also more primitive, more tribal and more inward-looking than we care to admit, no matter what the aspirations of a minority. Insular cultures tend to be conservative, and they are habitually suspicious of ‘foreign’ influences. In some ways, our closer proximity to the continent only exacerbates the problem, amplifying the inequalities between the South East and the rest and making the identity-dilemma all the sharper. What’s more, while the Irish share with many continental countries, relative youth as a nation – and traumatic events in their recent past that has forced them to think hard and positively about the kind of nation they want to be – the UK was able to wallow in post-War triumphalism and ignore such issues – until now, when hard choices belatedly need to be made.

The recent election has simply showed this all over again: when the chips were down, the British voted for More of The Same. Very little has really changed. The prospect of a European future was sloughed off in favour of the usual insular, inward-looking delusion of purely national greatness that always prevails. Sadly for we pro-Europeans, this is the true nature of the British people. De Gaulle spotted it when he vetoed the UK applications to join in the 1960s. Little has really changed – because the fundamental geography that gives rise it never does. Such delusions can only come from un-connected living on an island, permanently decoupled from the greater tides of humanity that have shaped modern continental co-operation. Until the next ice age, when sea level falls and the land-bridge returns, it will be ever thus.

Most of us as quite literally too far away to see what we are missing.

One of the few beneficial effects of the Brexit experience has been the long-overdue social debate that it has sparked. People now seem willing to engage in meaningful discussion about the nature and state of this country, where previously there seemed to be relatively little interest. It has also been one of the more positive impacts of social media that such debate is now possible. In the past couple of years, I have had numerous productive discussions about the current position in the U.K. and what arguably needs to change within it. Resources have been shared, thinking has moved on.

In particular, people seem to have woken up to the fact the Britain is not some kind of nirvana, that “everywhere else is worse”, as was implicit in the everyday British mindset for so long. There is real discussion going on about other societal models, and how some other countries manage to find success in fields where this country repeatedly and persistently fails. There is at last some recognition of the insular smugness of that traditional British worldview, which has blinded so many for so long – and even an emergent acceptance that in our conservatism, we have turned into a rather unimaginative stodgy nation, afraid of change, who are very often being run rings around by the flair of more creative, innovative places and peoples elsewhere.

I think, though, that the British have yet to achieve a more objective understanding of their country’s natural and geographical situation that would allow them to address some of its enduring structural and attitudinal problems.

And too many still seem to think that higher standards “can’t be done here”. In a way, the  absence of ambition which that betrays is the single greatest indictment of the place we have now reached. 

But tomorrow, it looks as though the large part of the population that remains dead to such debate will vote to allow the old Establishment to put the cork back in the bottle, to ignore the debate, to re-assert the old ways, the old privileges, all the things that have caused the problem in the first place – perhaps for another generation. For too many, the old habits and mindset are so established, so innate, that their only reaction to challenge is to turn their back on it, and cling to what they know: a dull delusion of “Britishness”.

Quite how one can cut through to the fearful, the small-minded, the inward-looking, who it seems can only imagine the future as more of the same flawed past – while simultaneously showing a respect for their right to differ that they don’t often show in return – I really don’t know. As I said in my last post, real cultural change is extremely hard to bring about, and if they won’t engage in constructive debate, I am not sure how we can even begin.

Part of the problem is that they don’t want to: conservatism is by definition about continuity – about resisting change – and tends to be the preserve of those who feel they have little need to shape a different, more positive future – or little power to do so. In some countries, it defends a system that tends to work; in the case of the U.K. there is a stack of global comparators that suggest the opposite.

The resultant neglect is shocking; the stresses of Brexit have laid bare the extent to which the Establishment is prepared to neglect the nation that is notionally in its charge, in order to preserve its own primacy in the pecking-order. All it has really learned in a century is the need to make a few more quasi-democratic noises to keep the masses quiet. In reality, it still feels it can ignore a petition with over six million signatures, and even the constitutional conventions that it largely evolved, when it so chooses. Meanwhile, many of the rest continue to labour under a set of social assumptions and values with the same provenance, which are more widely seen as inappropriate for modern societies, but which are so embedded here as to be almost unconscious. Britain’s enduring preoccupation with status and social class, for example, only really shows how little progress there has been in removing its influence.

In reality, British conservatism seems to mean allowing only those changes that benefit existing privilege, thus perpetuating the problems which have led the country to its present moment of reckoning. The entire message is about a return to the past. Too often, even necessary change (not least the embracing of a more realistic view of Britain’s place in the world) has been rejected because it threatened the status quo. This, I suspect, is the real reason underlying conservatives’ antipathy for the EU: in its ideals at least, it is just too egalitarian  and future-orientated for them.

This country is paying the price for its complacency: a complacency started – and encouraged – by those historic elites, but in which the wider population is now complicit. We took too much on trust. We believed the assurances that everything was already for the best. We tolerated the neglect of necessary change in our national processes; in some cases we even voted to endorse it. We claimed powerlessness when things deteriorated.

If those of the conservative establishment were the sincere democrats and believers in “freedom” that they claim, they would long ago have enacted change. They could have started with the electoral system. They could have willingly examined alternative models and venues for our political institutions. They could have tackled private education and other wealth-perpetuated privilege. They could have devolved power to the regions. They would not have dragged their heels on environmental legislation to the point that the EU had to prosecute. And they could have accepted that their neo-liberal economic experiment has not worked for most of the population. Instead, they often enhanced it. So long as the system worked for them, they just didn’t care about the wider failings – and they still don’t. “Compassionate conservatism” has been revealed for the contradiction and lie that it is.

If the powers of conservatism are allowed to reassert themselves, this is precisely how they will carry on. None of the essential changes will happen. I’m not sure how it can be stopped; traditionally, it seems to take a revolution to topple embedded elites – but I think we need to be very careful what we wish for in that respect: such things rarely run according to plan. And I suppose that democracy needs to include the right of turkeys to vote for Christmas, though it should surely accommodate the rights of others not to be dragged down against their will, too.

There must be another way to ensure that the productive debate of the last three years does not just wither.

‘Culture’ is a creature whose DNA is quicksilver. Trying to define, let alone analyse it is like wrestling with shadows. One is forced into generalisation, simply because there is no other way to approach the collective thoughts, beliefs and behaviours of millions of people. Neither, in one’s pursuit of objectivity, is one able to escape one’s own cultural position; this is all the worse if one is scrutinising one’s native culture. No matter how one tries, it is impossible to be certain that one really has achieved the detachment needed for objectivity. There is no escape.

Some argue that there is no such thing as culture in the sense I mean it, just the behaviour of individuals and groups that coalesce and divide like shoals of fish. And yet it is hard not to feel that national culture or identity does exist: a deep, underlying commonality in the way people in a certain place tend to perceive and react to the world. But reaching an objective appraisal of it is almost impossible.

It should by now be clear that I am not referring to matters of art, literature and so on. To me, culture is a matter of mindset, which at varying levels gives rise to the ways in which people think and behave. The more conventional meaning refers to the means by which a particular mindset finds creative expression.

An irony of European integration has perhaps been that the differing cultures of that continent have become more of an issue rather than less. Being charitable, perhaps it is simply that we are more exposed to both the similarities and differences now than in the past; that creates the possibility to celebrate them – but it is also undoubtedly what has given rise to the problem of Brexit – and the various other nationalist resurgences being seen across the continent.

I am always bemused by the enduring British use of the word ‘international’- as in ‘St Pancras International’ and even ‘Aberdeen International’ (Airport). The use of the word suggests a glamorised perception of ‘abroad’ that I don’t think I have seen anywhere else – as though the mere use of the word can bestow cachet on a concrete bunker near Dyce. In a similar vein, a few days ago, I spotted a couple of neighbours whom I know to be hard Brexiteers cooing over some ‘continental’ biscuits in a local store – without any apparent awareness of the irony. (I thought such things went out in the Seventies…) Often, the very same people who despise the EU (and by extension, perhaps all continentals) are happy to visit (German-derived) Christmas markets, take their holidays in Spain, and splurge on the Champions’ League or Six Nations on TV without once sensing the contradictions in their behaviour.

My friend Manu lives in Lyon. He recently brought his eleven-year-old daughter to the UK with the express intention of exposing her to a new culture, one in whose language she is already pretty proficient. She engaged very well – though she did repeatedly complain of how cold she was on a mild British autumn day: that’s conditioning again. And Manu, despite being an Anglophile, was still stumped by the string-pull on British bathroom lights – something to which we British never give a second thought, yet the rest of Europe seems to think is deeply, neurotically bizarre. That is the level at which cultural conditioning and normalisation works: the small things that are so ingrained that it does not even occur to us that they might not be the same everywhere. Indeed, the very act of Manu’s visit struck me as a manifestation of such cultural differences: I wonder to how many mainstream British families it would even occur to undertake such a trip. Ours is a culture that is still fundamentally insular, inward-looking and overwhelmingly self-referential. Brexit has shown the limitations of such a position – and yet still we persist, almost as if we can’t help it.

The most telling aspects of a culture are those that it exhibits despite itself: the deep values, attitudes and behaviours that are so far below the radar that they escape our modern (supposed) self-knowingness. And when one starts to examine those things, what one finds can be far more disconcerting that a pretentiously-named box of biscuits.

All those ardent pro-European Brits may feel that they represent an outward-looking, cosmopolitan nation – but I suspect they are actually just another expression of precisely the opposite. The very fact that we are so insistent about such things at a conscious level might suggest we are less sure they are present at an unconscious one. For many on the modern continent, internationalism is simply a matter of day-to-day practicality, largely devoid of the romantic sentimentalism that underpins the British version. For them, crossing borders is often little more than a necessity. British ardour for other countries, on the other hand, is arguably more an expression of frustration at, or rejection of, the limitations of our own – a truth let slip a few days ago in a discussion I witnessed on pro-Remain social media, where there was agreement that pre-2016, few had given much thought at all to a European perspective. Even today, for many British, the continent is just the nearest place to go on holiday with decent weather. So be it – but the real problem is that most don’t seem to be aware of the inherent limitations of that view.

The deepest irony of the continental biscuits, of course, is that they are probably nothing like what one would really find on the continent – and that is before we even get to the point that there is no such culture as ‘continental’ on a land-mass made up of a kaleidoscope of some fifty different countries. And sadly, as with chocolate (and most things), the British re-interpretation is often a pale and insipid caricature. What those biscuits really betray is not knowingness, but ignorance.

So much for an outward-looking view: much of the current Europhilia is actually little more than an expression of normal human loss-aversion. If it were not, we would by now be experiencing more than polite marches and distribution of leaflets in its defence, even as the participants see the protests in Hong Kong on the TV nightly. What we are seeing is not really British “natural reserve”: it is the behaviour of people who have been systematically politically suppressed by their ruling classes, excluded from the real political process to the extent that we no longer believe we can make a difference, or that Change can come. In this country “Government” is something that is done to us, not by us. And it is so normal to us that we don’t even notice.

Who told us that we are “reserved”? Mostly those who made us that way: the same people who tell us that strong governments are preferable to consensual ones, and that a more inclusive electoral system really isn’t needed. The problem, once again, is that many seem to accept this as self-evident natural truth rather than a deliberate narrative which is open to challenge. “Representative democracy”, long-trumpeted as a good thing, is nothing more than a misnomer for a system that takes away any real say and places it in the hands of people who are all too often anything but representative. Which is just what they want.

If Brexit has revealed anything, it is the depth of ignorance still prevalent in this country about both the wider world and the workings of our own country. It is as though the reach of modern media has done little to dent the unconscious of the nation. We are in the throes of a general election campaign which owes its existence almost entirely to Brexit – and yet it has taken very little to deflect general public’s attention away from that issue and back to the traditional domestic battlegrounds of health, education and taxation. How convenient. It is also a means of addressing Brexit that, unlike the original vote, will deny millions of people in safe seats any meaningful influence on the outcome. How convenient.

That Brexit also seems to have exposed the chronic deficiencies in our social and political model seems still to be passing a substantial proportion of the population by. It is said that when the doors are opened, captive animals often cower at the back of their cages, preferring the captivity they know to the intimidating freedom they have been offered. That is the situation here: we know things are wrong, but collectively we seem to prefer the wrongness we know to the risk involved in making long-overdue reforms.

There is sufficient awareness of social models such as the Scandinavian one, for this country’s deficiencies not to be accepted as inevitable – and yet they widely are. The better standards of many continental countries are seen (and envied) by many, and yet they still believe the lie that “it can’t be done here”. The view is reinforced by the ingrained cultural belief that the patriotic British Way is still best – despite the manifold and growing evidence to the contrary. In the end, we prefer to grumble – and do nothing. Therein lies the hideous difficulty involved in genuinely changing a tired culture.

The electorate seems literally unable to make itself vote for a path to a more emancipated, egalitarian society in Britain. It clings to the handed-down view of a State which is a direct descendant of a domineering, imperialist power – which gives threatening names to agencies such as the Border FORCE, and which seems to believe that a resentful, punitive approach to the needs of its citizens is appropriate for all but a privileged few. It clings to a hierarchical view of society that is simply much less evident elsewhere – and thence to the notion that politics is about personal advantage rather than collective compromise.

The most terrible aspect of all is the prospect that our ruling institutions are still wedded to an authoritarian model whose main job is to keep “the masses” in their place while empowering certain influential individuals – and mouthing just sufficient platitudes about ‘Democracy’ to keep it so. Methinks they do protest too much: even today, when this system is perhaps broken beyond repair, it refuses to countenance an alternative.

Its success lies, as always, in portraying all the alternatives as worse: the depiction a consensus-seeking leader of the opposition as lily-livered, or a “Communist” as though that label is absolute damnation rather than merely an (inaccurate) description of an alternative political position.

This – rather than any particular set of values – is where the system is seriously imperilled: the point where people stop seeing the status quo as the relative position that it is, and starting thinking of it in terms of absolute truth is a serious threat to democracy. It then doesn’t take much – as seems already to be happening in the UK – for incumbent powers to convince the electorate that there really is no alternative.

This is why Jeremy Corbyn – for all his imperfections – has not made more headway. British culture simply can’t cope with an anti-hero like him, no matter how genuine he may be, and no matter how beneficial his policies might actually be for the health of the nation. He has refused to be made into the kind of leader the British think they want. His neutral position on Brexit, for example, seems entirely reasonable given the conflicts that he faces – and yet a mature “judgement of Solomon” type position is all too easily portrayed as weakness rather than maturity. Consensus-seeking depicted as a policy vacuum by the proponents of hard power. Yet ironically, consensus-seeking is precisely the way most continental politics work – and they are not in the mess that we are.

As I said at the start, cultures are complex and ill-defined things. Deliberate change is extremely difficult to effect – but from a long perspective, it is equally indisputable that cultures do change. Whether this is by evolution or revolution is another matter – but as with all organisms, those that are unable to adapt tend to die. At the point when societies and their cultures stop believing that another way is possible, stop being prepared even to speculate that the ‘farmer’ who feeds them might not after all be their best friend, then like Christmas turkeys, they are only headed for one destination.

The calling of a General Election, far from being a courageous decision, marks just another failure of our political system to govern the country effectively. No matter how strenuously it is denied, this election will become a de facto referendum on Brexit – but far from resolving the issue, it virtually guarantees to lock the resentments of the issue permanently into the national psyche.

Rightly or wrongly, the original referendum in 2016 asked people to express their individual preferences for remaining in or leaving the EU; the resolution of the resultant deadlock in 2019 (for, short of another hung parliament, that it will be) will not allow people to do that, because it will utterly obscure the will of those individuals behind the many imperfections of our electoral system.

The most obvious criticism is that a single issue is being addressed using a mechanism more suited to the multi-issue matter of who governs the country for the next five years. While Brexit will clearly be a major factor in that, there is simply no neat correlation between people’s views on it and their other priorities and opinions.

More important, however, is that the votes of millions of people will count for nothing. I live in a very safe Conservative seat, and the chances of a change of MP are minimal. With a Conservative majority of 18,646, the likelihood of this constituency representing my wish to remain is nil. The same is, of course, true for Leavers who live in safe Remain-represented seats.

Therefore my views on Brexit (which are as far from my M.P.’s as they can possibly be, given that she is the Home Secretary) will have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the issue, simply because I am unfortunate enough to live in an area where the majority of people think differently. My M.P. has not even seen fit to reply to my correspondence on the matter. While I have little choice but to accept this in more normal politics, in this situation, it is intolerable.

Frankly, it will not even be worth my turning out to vote in the issue that is perhaps the most critical political event of my lifetime. The resentment that this will cause – particularly if the UK does then depart the EU – will, I’m afraid, remain in my memory forever. The same will be true wherever people don’t see their personal wishes honoured on an issue that was opened on the basis that every single vote counted and carried equal weight.

The U.K.’s First-past-the-post electoral system often returns governments that are only supported by the largest minority, not the majority. This will probably happen again, and is also in itself inconsistent with the ‘simple majority’ requirement of the original referendum. Instead of addressing the issue, all this does is to lower the bar. And if there is a hung parliament, it will solve nothing.

Parliament has been criticised for failing to represent the British people over Brexit. I don’t agree: if one considers the electorate as a whole, the stalemate of the past three years has accurately reflected the state of the nation. But it has utterly failed to find the collective courage to resolve the problem in the only way that has even a slim chance of setting the issue properly to rest. What’s more, this decision has once again been made not on the grounds of the national interest, so much as what has proved politically expeditious for a government of dubious real legitimacy.

While I am a firm Remainer, my objections are not about losing in 2016 per se. They are about the failure of that event to produce a trustworthy answer, with clearly-explained choices, a sensible winning margin and an honest campaign run by both sides. (When one considers that in theory the national destiny could have been tipped by even one vote, it becomes clear how unsafe the simple majority position was).

All I want is to see a ‘fair fight’ between the two sides, which would yield a result that I could accept as being properly democratic, and compliant with international norms for such referenda. In such circumstances I would, no matter how reluctantly, accept the result if it were to Leave. I would like to believe that Leavers would say the same in reverse, though their behaviour in the past period hardly gives much confidence. That, however, should not be a consideration in the fair resolution of the matter.

The Brexit referendum was an act of direct, individual democracy; the only appropriate resolution for the matter is another. Unfortunately, the decrepit system that got us into this mess seems to have learned nothing.

January 2020 update:

My petition to the European Parliament is still available for signing, and is still considered to be ‘live’. If you wish to sign, I suggest using this link to the website which contains details of how to do so. Due to EP procedures, it requires a little determination to sign, hence I have provided a help page. Alternatively, you can go straight to the EP petition page here. 

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On 2nd October I travelled to Brussels to hear my petition debated by the European Parliament petitions committee (PETI).

On occasions like this, the anxiety still jangles away unpleasantly in the background, but I managed to get myself to Brussels (and find a decent lunch!) I walked the mile to the Parliament, and despite a forecast of fine weather, this being Belgium, it rained on me…

I arrived in good time, and was met by members of the EP secretariat, who got me rapidly through security and into the chamber, which was in the form of a mini-hemicycle. I had expected to be sat somewhere towards the rear – but no: petitioners are seated on the floor of the chamber, along with MEPs and Commission representatives. Luckily I was familiar with most of the technology from my visits to the EP in Strasbourg.

Despite running early when I arrived, the debate did fall behind time – mostly because of the arrival of some of the EP ‘big guns’, notably Guy Verhofstadt (Lead on Brexit) and Antonio Tajani (former President of EP). Verhofstadt is never one to be brief, and he was still going well after the time petitioners were due to be heard.

As the time I had been given for my contribution came and went, I began to wonder whether I would get my chance before needing to head back to Midi to catch my Eurostar. In the event, my ‘caretaker’ managed to get my speech brought forward and I eventually spoke at about 17h20.

I got a round of applause, and as I was leaving the building, one of the British MEPs rushed out and congratulated me on my speech. So it seemed to go down well.

I have included the text of my speech below the photos.

Having watched, and taught, EU affairs for many years, this was a great experience. I can only say that anyone who doubts the value of European co-operation should watch the webcasts of such proceedings.

While this is admittedly a committee rather than the main chamber, proceedings are calm, unassuming and tinged with good humour. Those present seem to have few pretensions, and it is perhaps worth looking up the background a few of them, such as:

• Dolors Montserrat (Chair)
• Jude Kirton-Darling
• Claude Moraes
• Irina Von Wiese
• Christian Allard

When I arrived, the discussion was about how to extent animal welfare controls to laboratory animals and to curb the eating of songbirds in Cyprus. A significant issue. It is hugely varied. It was quite humbling and hugely enthusing to sit amongst such people from all over Europe and be heard and to hear their responses.

PETI hears several petitions at a time, grouped by themes. There were other representations from groups concerned about ex-pat rights and refugees after Brexit – but none other about the position of ‘regular’ British citizens. I am still left with the sense that while there is a lot of concern, no one really knows what to do about us. The Commission position is still that EU citizenship is a product of citizenship of a member-state and it would take a treaty change to alter that. Hence British citizens lose their rights if we leave. But they did not completely rule out a treaty change – huge though that would be – and there were a number of calls from MEPs for European citizenship to assume an identity independent from national ones. That would be contentious.

It is worth noting that PETI does not count numbers of signatures before admitting a petition. I was worried that mine only had a few hundred signatures – but there was one heard earlier in the session that had only THREE. It is the strength of the case that counts. And the ability to sit in a hearing and present one’s case is of course, conspicuous by its absence from the procedures in Westminster. While sitting there, I could not help but think that it will be an utter tragedy if Britons’ voices cease to be heard at the end of this month, or indeed at any point.

The meeting was web-cast and is available here.

• Beginning at 15h57’50”
• My speech is at 17h21’25”
• There is a Commission response to my points from one of Michel Barnier’s team at 17h47’47”
• Important point at 17:55’55” Where the representative says that the EC is not giving up on the existing Withdrawal Agreement despite what BJ says.
• There is debate from the Committee at 17:57’50 and an important (but probably little-known point) about the cost of passports at 18h03’52. (Why does a British passport cost nearly FIVE TIMES the EU average for people claiming naturalisation?)
• The section ends at around 18h14′.

Text of my speech:

Thank you for admitting my petition, and for giving me the opportunity to address you today.

Should Brexit happen, British citizens will in effect be stripped of their European citizenship. For many, this will be against their deeply-held wishes, and represents in effect the oppression of that group by its own government, similar in style if not degree, to events that often provoke moral outrage when they happen elsewhere in the world.

While accommodation will have to be found for nationals living in each other’s countries, pro-European Britons remaining resident in the UK will be the most disadvantaged group. Our rights and abilities to function in the rest of the EU risk being severely curtailed after Brexit.

As can be seen from the outpouring of pro-EU feeling in the UK, this is a greatly significant matter for many millions of us. It represents the theft of a deeply-important part of our identities by our own government and our peers. Our lives will be not only practically but culturally and emotionally diminished as a result. I have seen and experienced at first hand the deep anguish that this is causing.

Particularly for us islanders, whose history and geography have always set us slightly apart from the European mainstream, this is extremely important. It matters greatly to us that we can look our fellow Europeans straight in the eye and say “we are part of this project too”.

When it comes to resolving this issue, it is noticeable that our own administrations have had nothing whatsoever of substance to say to us for the past three years. We have become invisible; the daily rhetoric about the “will of the people” makes absolutely no reference to our wishes. As one commentator put it, “We are being written out of our own futures”. In short, the British government simply does not know what to do about us, and it is all too evident that the new UK administration cares even less than the last one did.

It is also very clear that Britons who are in favour of Brexit care not one iota for our welfare. They see this as a zero-sum victory for their views, and the likely consequences of this are not encouraging. I live in the constituency of the Home Secretary, and have stood on the streets of that constituency, experiencing the hatred of some Brexiters towards Remainers.

Guy Verhofstadt has argued that the lives of ordinary Europeans should not be harmed by Brexit. Whatever the political future, geographically and culturally speaking, Britons are still Europeans – and the lives of European-thinking Britons will be harmed by the actions of a minority of our fellows. I argue that the wider European community should not be prepared to let this happen, and should do whatever it can to mitigate the impact.

I maintain that should Brexit happen, and the U.K. becomes in effect just another external country from the EU’s perspective, it will be no business whatsoever of the UK government, what recognition and treatment the EU chooses to dispense to people within the territories of its own member-states.

I therefore call upon the EU to create a status – perhaps “associate citizen” – that would recognise this unique group of disadvantaged former EU citizens and provide them with as many as possible of their former rights whenever they are within EU27 countries. My petition sets out a number of possible dimensions of this. I suggest that this need not compromise any other citizenship arrangements either in the EU or the UK, and I urge the EU to act, unilaterally if necessary, to implement it.

I realise that there would be costs to doing this, and therefore it would be reasonable for those to be at least in part recovered. An application charge (and perhaps other checks) could also test the genuineness of the application – but I would urge you to implement any such system in a way that does not exclude those on low incomes. The EU has a great record on promoting equality and will surely recognise the importance of this. Again, I submit that such procedures would be nothing whatsoever to do with the UK government.

As someone who has been engaged for many years in European education in the UK, I urge you seriously to consider such moves, not least because they will help preserve a European consciousness in the UK during the dark times outside the EU. Should Brexit happen, providing this identity-option would be very significant in terms of reconciling British Europeans to an unenviable situation, and helping to heal the rift in our society – as something similar through the Good Friday Agreement has helped resolve such issues in Northern Ireland. An act of faith such as this can only encourage the U.K. to rejoin in due course.