"Pointless, masochistic ambition"
Feb 2, 2020
THE face of Big Ben (or whatever the clock is called) is projected onto 10 Downing Street. Prime Minister Boris Johnson holds a stunt cabinet meeting in Sunderland and calls this a moment of “national renewal”. The BBC shows some old Brexiteer geezers decked out in Union Jack flags and shouting in the street. Farage then appears and says he has “enjoyed being the pantomime villain” in Brussels for all this time, as if this was all some sort of joke at the country’s expense.
Even if Brexit is not catastrophic, even if it might not even be especially transformative, it is highly unlikely to improve the lot of most of the people who voted for it. All the smoke and mirrors from Johnson and the Tory-Brexit press will do nothing to alter that.
More footage on Channel 4 News shows some more ageing Brexiteer geezers celebrating and singing Sweet Caroline, though it is unclear what the song - popular among sports crowds - has to do with Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.
In South Shields, a 74-year old bloke wearing a Union Jack-spangled cowboy hat says Britain now has its freedom and democracy back. It is still possible to get both, but it wasn’t the EU that was responsible for their absence. What Britain needs is a fundamental rewriting of its constitution and its political system. Without fresh institutions and a new constitutional settlement, there can be no renewal. The so-called “yoke” of the EU will merely be replaced by the “yoke” of Washington, the IMF and the faceless mechanisms of global capital.
Ian McEwan, writing in The Observer, says Britain has now “fulfilled the most pointless, masochistic ambition ever dreamed of in the history of these islands”. He is scathing about the political system and a “complicit” opposition that allowed all this to happen.
Certainly, the system could and should have been more resilient. The system should have also been better able to guard against soaring inequality and social exclusion. It should have allowed large swathes of the post-industrial north to have a say in their own futures. It shouldn’t have turned a bare parliamentary majority, cobbled together from two political parties and barely a third of the vote, into a justification to pursue radical austerity measures that tore the heart out of so many struggling working class communities.
McEwan debunks the notion that the EU violated our sovereignty and gave us no say in our governance, saying it was the UK’s decision to allow unlimited migration from new accession countries in East Europe. He also says it was the UK that chose maroon passports, not “patriotic” blue ones. But the Brexiteers have polluted the discussion so much over the years, and it seemed almost second nature for all of us exposed to anti-EU propagandists in the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph to portray the European Commission as a cold, faceless bulwark of pointless, unfeeling bureaucracy and red tape, imposing unnecessary rules about bananas and Jaffa Cakes and passport colours.
McEwan puts it very well here.
There is much that is historically unjust about the British state, but very little of that injustice derives from the EU. Brussels didn’t insist that we neglect the post-industrial towns of the Midlands and the north; or demand that we let wages stagnate, or permit multimillion handouts to the CEOs of failing companies, or prefer shareholder value over the social good, or run our health service, social care and Sure Start into the ground, close 600 police stations and let the fabric of our state schools decay.
And:
To cause sufficient numbers to believe that the source of all their grievances is some hostile outside element is the oldest trick in the populist handbook. As Trotsky was for Stalin, as the USA is for the mullahs of Iran and Gülen is for Erdoğan, so Brussels has served its turn.
So much of Britain seems to be lost in an absurd nationalist fantasy right now. “We can make our own laws…” Johnson is now saying he will make no concessions to Europe as they begin negotiations on a trade deal supposed to come into effect at the end of the year. And so, it begins. All the promises Johnson made during the campaign about investing in the north and protecting the health service and building thousands of homes will be dashed, and the Tory/Brexit propaganda machine will blame Brussels for refusing to cave to our absurd “cake and eat it” demands. Alas, the voting bloc supporting all this is strong and unified enough to keep this lot in power for more than a decade.
