EU Referendum


Brexit: they still don't get it


27/06/2021




If the term had actually existed then, I would have been called a Eurosceptic back in 1975, when we had the first referendum. I don't remember when the term came into widespread use, but it was certainly prevalent in the early 90s, when we experienced the double hit of the Single Market launch and the Maastricht Treaty.

Of one thing I am certain, though. While heavily involved in Eurosceptic politics, I cannot ever remember discussing leaving the EU as a means of returning to some glorious past. In fact, as a child growing up in the 50s and 60s, and looking at the wondrous changes that have occurred in my lifetime, the very last thing I would ever want to do is retreat into some cosy vision of the past.

There were some amongst our number, however, who did have a hankering after past glories, nurturing a rose-tinted vision of our heritage. And some held very weird ideas of what the European Union was about. The two views often went together.

In fact, one of the reasons Booker and I write The Great Deception was to demolish the myth that the EU had been created by the Nazis, and that the Community was simply a different way of securing German domination of Europe – a Fourth Reich by peaceful means, so to speak.

There were those who believed this, and Boris Johnson in his time at the Spectator had sympathy with this view. But it was never part of mainstream Eurosceptic thinking and attempts to seize the leadership of Ukip by a caucus holding that view were beaten off around the turn of the Century, whence it became an unfashionable backwater.

It there was a political construct almost totally dominated by nostalgia, though, it was the European Union. Its intellectual genesis lay in the mid-1920s, and the believe that European Unity, built round control of the sinews of war, was essential to end the perennial cycle of what was later termed "civil war" between France and Germany.

Even to this day, if you ask Europeanists why they favour the European Union, they will tell you that "keeping the peace in Europe" is the main attribute. It is the one to which they refer most often.

In my view, this is one of the reasons why the Remainers could not mount a credible defence of their obsession during the 2016 referendum campaign. In the 21st Century, maintaining a political structure in Europe, dating back to the 1920s, in order to prevent Germany from invading France (or vice versa), seemed a little dated – if not a tad irrelevant – even to the most fervent supporters of the "project".

Oddly enough, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, a far more modern structure was considered as the basis for the economic integration of Europe, in the form of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

This was an early candidate for administering the Marshal Plan finding. But was rejected by the Europhile British civil servic who saw complications in using the Commission, as Stalin's Soviet Union had a vote. It was feared (quite rightly) that this would block progress just at the time when the Cold War was emerging to dominate continental politics.

From there, much of the impetus in Germany, and certainly Adenauer – for developing the European Coal and Steel Community and then the EEC – came from a burning ambition for military re-armament (including the acquisition of nuclear weapons). Closer ties with France, in the form of Monnet's treaty structure, it was felt, would serve to reassure nervous Europeans who feared the resurgence of a powerful, independent Germany.

It is no exaggeration, therefore, to assert that the European Union is a slave of its history, a backwards-looking construct which, even to this day, is dominated by the events of the 1914-18 War, over a century ago.

And yet, for all that, this week's Observer, in the week that marks the fifth anniversary of the 2016 referendum, publishes an article by Nick Cohen headed: "Our politics of nostalgia is a sure sign of present-day decay".

This is based on the premise that, in Britain, "Both the left and right are obsessed by a lost golden age", with Cohen further asserting that, "A confident Britain would look to the future".

Building on his theme, Cohen tells us that "the belief that the past was better than the present, and the only way forward is back, can be found in the corners of any society at any time".

That much is true enough, and I acknowledge that there was a corner of Ukip that harboured that belief. "But", writes Cohen, "when nostalgia grows to dominate Britain and much of the west it is as sure a symptom of decay as the stink of dry rot".

One notes here that Cohen tucks in the phrase, "and much of the west" – which would seem to include the EU. But he does not develop this. Rather, he asserts: "Every step of Britain’s decline has been accompanied by the sound of sighs for a lost country".

Conveniently, he then confines himself to the past few weeks, citing Johnson and his new royal yacht "to display the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation", a "£200m attempt to feign 19th-century splendour that covers up the impoverishing consequences of Brexit on the UK’s real trade".

Cohen then has ministers "promoting a well-meant but equally deceitful patriotic song that declared: "We are Britain/ And we have one dream/ To unite all people/ In one great team".

This, produced a Bradford ex-copper was so toe-curlingly naff that it had any self-resecting Englishman (and woman) cringing in embarrassment, but it's sufficient grist to Cohen's mill for him to assert that, "The yearning for a united country would be less pitiable if the same ministers had not partitioned the United Kingdom by putting a trade border down the Irish Sea and were not now driving Scots into the arms of separatists, who are no slouches when it comes to myth-making themselves".

Yet, on the basis of such slender evidence, Cohen feels entitled to claim that: "The Brexit movement was, above all else, a nostalgic movement". You should have guessed it would end badly, he then asserts, "when it failed to decide what imaginary past it wished to return to and still shows no sign of settling the matter today".

"Sometimes", he writes, "it's the 1850s", when Britain was a 'great, independent maritime trading nation'. Sometimes, it is the 1950s, when we were united in “one great team” before the permissive society ruined everything. Sometimes, it is the summer of 1940, when Britain stood alone against a dangerous continental foe".

Interestingly, as regards the "summer of 1940, Pete is on Twitter complaining that the display schedule for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) for this year does not include a single appearance north of Lincoln.

That provokes from me the comment that the so-called "Battle of Britain" was largely a London and South-East show. Outside that area, I write, it barely registered. In terms of regional effect, the Night Blitz was far more significant. The BBMF is largely part of the SE nostalgia industry, which has grown up since the war.

The very concept of the Battle of Britain, exclusively as combat between Fighter Command and the Luftwaffe is largely a post-war invention – as opposed to the Battle for Britain, which was more commonly referred to in contemporary newspapers and, indeed, by Churchill himself. It is important to realise that when Churchill originally spoke of "the few" in his seminal 1940 speech, he was actually referring to Bomber Command.

And here I am, the lifelong Eurosceptic, having written a book debunking the Battle of Britain myth, yet Cohen will enlist the same myth as "proof" that "the Brexit movement was, above all else, a nostalgic movement".

As is so common amongst his kind, Cohen also commits the grave error of turning Brexit into a binary issue between "Remainers" and "Leavers". To the latter, without any attempt at exploring the nuances, he would attribute a nostalgic yearning for Britain as a "great, independent maritime trading nation", ignoring the many and varied views that stretch far beyond the limited vision of Johnson and his claque.

Should Cohen have decided to attack Johnson's limited and ineffectual vision of Brexit, he would have had us cheering from the sidelines. But his actual arguments, which attempt to tarnish us all with his version of Brexit, are trite, shallow and wide of the mark.

I suppose it is never going to be the case that Guardian or Observer columnists are ever going to "get" Brexit, any more than they even begin to understand the genesis of the European Union. But then, I guess that's why the likes of Cohen write for these papers, where his brand of ignorance has a ready market. But, informed comment it ain't.

Also published on Turbulent Times.