The National Narrative of
Brexit
By Mel Cooper
So, at last we know why we are leaving the EU. Theresa May
spelled it out in Florence with great clarity. It is because we are not really
European at all. We have never felt European and by implication we have never
been European. Being European is simply not part of our national narrative!
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| Alone in the Dark |
After all, how little Europe has to do with us. No wonder we
were able to sell out Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 on the spurious
suggestion that we would have peace in our time. No wonder, even then, we were
far more interested in keeping refugees and immigrants out than we now admit to
ourselves. (Check the history!)
But, of course, we have always stood alone, alone. Forget
those damned Polish interloping pilots during World War II. Forget the
Americans who came over by droves, the Free French or the troops from Canada
and Australia and New Zealand and India who fought side by side with us in two
world wars. Forget Lend Lease and loans and other help from Roosevelt the Lying
Dutchman? By this logic, of course. we should have made peace with Hitler in
1940; and we probably would have too, if it hadn’t been for that silver tongued
Churchill character who no doubt got it from his gifts of persuasion,
belligerence and anti-Nazi sentiments from his American mother. What kind of
true Brit is that? And she was descended from one Johann Jakob Astor, a German
parvenu!
I suppose that it is too late to send back that descendant
of a long line of German immigrants, the Queen? Think of all those damned
intermarriages with continentals, especially the children of Queen Victoria! What
about our Queen’s consort, Phil the Greek? Does the Huguenot blood in our DNA
cause you many problems?
Theresa May might as well have blamed the World Jewish
Conspiracy, because that kind of thinking is the route to theories of race
purity. That way lies the very thing that everyone supposedly fought against in
World War II. That way lies isolationism, lack of vision, lack of co-operation.
Once there was a programme called Little Britain on the TV. It was a satire. Today, Theresa May has
given it permission to become Reality TV.
So there we have it. The Little Britain Bean-brains are
taking over the country. They are listening to evil intellectual dwarfs like
Nigel Farage. I was hesitant to think that Brexiteers were fools. I felt they
simply had delusions about a gold age of the British past that never really
existed and wanted to turn back the clock to resurrect a world that is
virtually impossible in our modern, global times.
It turns out that if Theresa May is an exemplar of their
attitudes, they may be worse than fools. They are delusional and they are a
small distance away from being racial purity neo-cons. I fear that Theresa May
has pointed out the truth. We are leaving the EU not for any sane or sound
reasons, not because of our democratic ideals, but simply because Europe has
never been part of the national narrative of Mrs May or people like her.
Well ,the thinking is meretricious. The UK has achieved many
wonderful things of which we can be proud, has had many wonderful heroes and
innovators, has produced some amazing art and it has a fascinating, complex
history. But all the way back to the Norman invasion, at the very least, it has
always been linked with Europe despite preferring at several points in its
history to live in denial of that fact. Otherwise why would the Balance of
Power in Europe have been such an obsession, such a problem?
And so today I am furious on the one hand; insulted on the
other (I have grandparents who fled tyrannies in Russia and Poland and others
who came from Austria and Germany; and I grew up as a Canadian; but none of
this counts as part of the national narrative of my adopted country). Because I
adopted this country I am rather miffed that it clearly now does not really want
to adopt me or three million other immigrants who build lives and careers here,
contribute to the country financially and culturally, and arrived because they
loved what they thought to be the British qualities of tolerance, respect for
law and open-mindedness. But, because it is not part of our narrative, Theresa
May and her like are closing not just their minds but the collective mind of
this country. That is, you should pardon a foreign phrase, our zeitgeist. And that is precisely what
the 52% voted for, whether they thought it through and realized it or not. That is what Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson
encouraged – all that we could claw back the ten billion a year that actually
amounts to one whole percent of what the government of the UK has to spend
annually. One whole percent that is going to solve all our problems because we
no longer give it to the EU to gain access to many things that no one is thinking
about and which we are throwing away.
So Theresa May, in my opinion, is buying into and also
selling us a narrative that is spurious, intellectually suspect and potentially
not only divisive and isolationist but ultimately could develop into something
quite evil. Her narrative suggests strongly that we no longer with to see
ourselves as part of a splendid experiment that may have many flaws but that
is, at its heart, a dream worth pursuing. We are not interested in such idealism.
Were we ever? Of course not. I have just been told by our Prime Minister that
it is not part of our national narrative, remember? We are not European, we
have never been European, the last 44 years or so doesn’t mean a damned thing.
And that makes me very, very sad.
Well, I have a problem because I do actually feel that I am
European; and that being European is not mutually exclusive with being British.
So I and everyone like me have just been insulted by the Brexiteer National
Narrative. Hundreds of years of history and involvement of all kinds with
Europe are simply being wiped away and denied. The perspective puts on the
blinkers. Did we not fight the War of the Spanish Succession all by ourselves;
or win at Waterloo with no help from anyone? Have we never been in a coalition
with anyone on the continent? What about our dead who are buried in Flanders
fields? Why are they there? What about that Cold War we went through together
with Western Europe; or the creation of NATO; or the fact that the UK was
gagging to get into the Common Market once upon a time and has prospered along
with the EU? Forget it! It is not part of our national narrative. And we should
start thinking now about leaving the United Nations which has been declared Not
Fit for Purpose by some. I mean, come on; we are Britain and we can go it alone
so why do we need to put up with this messy, altruistic body in New York?
For me, it is not just that Theresa May has given herself
away in an unthinking moment and made a blinkered and relatively stupid
statement. It is also, frankly, that her thinking is dangerous. Meanwhile she
seems sincerely to believe that Europe is now required to give us a better deal
than it ever gave anyone else for trade and commerce and so forth. Well, here
is a bit of news for Theresa May, who clearly has been paying very little
attention these past few decades. You may recall, if she does not, that the EU
let us stay out of the Schengen Agreement; it let us keep the pound and not
join the Euro. Need I go on? And we always had, by the way, the ability to
control our borders and have people register and so forth; our governments
simply chose not to.
Yes, there are flaws and problems with the EU. Yes, these
need urgent attention and solving (which they are certainly not getting while
we blunder about trying to Brexit from the EU). But being British, the problems and flaws of
the EU have nothing to do with us, Mate. We just should walk away instead of
putting in the hard graft. That’s the True Brit way!
It’s all their problem because it is simply not part of our
national narrative to want to liberate Europe from the tyrannies and
stupidities of the past and lend our weight to making all of Europe so
prosperous and even friendly that we not only do not fight each other any more
but actually can stand together in the face of the physical and political
calamities that seem to be escalating on a daily basis at the moment. This is a
great time to find out that being European is not a part of our national
narrative. We should be looking as a group of nations to be helping Greece and
Spain and Italy figure out ways to become more prosperous because that is for
the good of all of us. But hey, not us! We are simply going to cut loose and
sail across the Atlantic and anchor somewhere just off Long Island Sound. We
can do that. We can do anything. Because we are British!
Even if we get to vote on the final deal, the whole national
narrative of Brexit is entirely venal. There are moral issues that are far more
important than any of the trade deals that might be coming our way but no one
is discussing those issues. And meantime there is a parliament that is supposed
to be looking after our best interests that is playing dead in the face of one
of the greatest potential acts of self-harm that this country has ever known.
Because we are, after all, not European and Europe is not part of our national
narrative.
So let us by all means leave the EU. We deserve whatever
that will do to us.
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