What does Brexit tell us about "ourselves"?

It is perhaps a bit too soon to expect good analyses about what Brexit means – whether “about” the UK (in the sense of the socio-historical significance of the referendum for our understanding of the country) - let alone “for”  in the sense of future consequences for) it and the wider Europe. But a few publications have started to appear which, at the very least, offer interesting relief from the grunting and death throes of the political monster which Brexit has become – and this post will direct you to these.

My blog tells me that Brexit forms the 4^th most frequent subject of my posts (which suggests that it is perhaps about time I brought them together in one of my little E-books - with some retrospective comments).

What was said 3 years ago

I well remember making a few posts almost 3 years ago - in the weeks before the referendum when it seemed fairly obvious we were leaving. One in particular tried to give a sense of the debate – and identified one article which seemed to give the best sense of the factors at work 

More than 50 years after the observation by the US secretary of state Dean Acheson, there is still too much lingering truth about Britain losing an empire and not finding a role. The more reluctant our embrace of our Europeanness, the more exceptionalist colonial-era British habits of thought and culture linger on, still subtly influencing the way parts of this country think about defence, hierarchy, schooling, foreigners – and Britishness.

We are paying the price of our media. British journalism thinks of itself as uniquely excellent. It is more illuminating to think of it as uniquely awful. Few European countries have newspapers that are as partisan, misleading and confrontational as some of the overmighty titles in this country. The possibility of Brexit could only have happened because of the British press. But Brexit may also happen because of the infantilised and destructively coarse level of debate on social media too.

We are not a democratic republic, with shared values, rights and institutions, a common culture and an appropriate modesty about our place in our region and the world. Ours remains a post-feudal state on to which various democratic constraints have been bolted through history. We therefore lack a shared culture, a settled civic sense, a proper second chamber, symmetrical devolution, effective local democracy and, until the human rights act, a clear and enforceable code of citizens’ rights – which of course the anti-Europeans wish to abolish. 

And we are paying the price of the failure of each of our political parties. The Tories remain trapped by an English-cum-British exceptionalism and a historically aberrant disdain for Europe.
Labour, trapped in its own industrial-era past, has never fully embraced the reformist potential of its place in British politics and government, and it shies away from any difficult question about the modern world, especially under the backward-looking Corbyn.
The eclipse of the Liberal Democrats and the marginality of the Greens deprive the debate of positive, modern pro-European voices

Why is Britain Eurosceptic?

That excerpt rightly refers to role of the English media in developing a Euroscepticism which was in 1975 limited essentially to the Labour party’s left (although strongly expressed with figures such as Tony Benn and Peter Shore) and to the more traditional right of the Conservatives. All British newspapers save one supported in 1975 the country remaining in a European Union which the country had joined just 2 years earlier (the one exception was the tiny Communist newspaper “Morning Star”). It was a very different story in 2016 – by which time the UK had been hectored by an anti-European press for some 30 years!

Vernon Bogdanor is a highly respected UK constitution academic who gives us the detail of that first referendum here – and offers a useful analysis of the growth of British Euroscepticism (both video and transcript). Margaret Thatcher won her famous Rebate (worth an annual 4 billion pounds) at the Fontainbleau summit of 1984. But it was this parliamentary speech of Thatcher’s of 1990 which, according to Bogdanor and others, was probably the catalyst for the Euroscepticism. It was certainly the signal for the patience of Conservative MPs to snap with at least the autocratic style of Maggie’s leadership and she was, a few days later, unceremoniously dumped by the party – to make way for John Major. 
And it was at this point that I left the UK - able to follow the growth of euroscepticism only from afar......

One of the questions I’ve never seen explored is why the British media has since the 1990s been so consistently anti-european. This article makes the important point that the exploration of such a question requires us to distinguish newspaper owners and editors according to the extent of freedom they allow. Rupert Murdoch, for example, stands at one extreme for the extent of the editorial power he exerts on his editors…..

What does it tell us about “ourselves”?

With a narrow 52-48% split in the final vote, the Brexiteers are, of course, in a minority of voting citizens – which makes you wonder why no one seemed to have thought in 2015 of taking a leaf out of Labour backbencher George Cunningham’s book and insisting on a “threshold” of 40% of voters.

The country – as we have always known – is divided by such things as age, income, class and geography. And advertisers have become increasingly sophisticated in the way they cut and splice us into “market segments” – using terms such as strivers, copers, survivors, believers, achievers etc. Even charities now adopt this approach – as you can see from three reports issued a decade ago which were superb examples of just how clever manipulative tools are getting….– Common Cause (2010);  Finding Frames (2010); and Keith Grint’s Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions (2008)

So, 17 days before the UK is due to slide into the Atlantic Ocean, let me offer half a dozen or so good reads which offer some relief from the unrelenting dirge of Brexit….

1.      In January the London Review of Books gave us a fascinating sense of What European say when they talk about Brexit which allowed 15 correspondents to sketch some national histories and contemporary concerns in some of the main countries. Pity there weren’t more such treatments during the referendum campaign!

2.     Modern historians can generally be relied on these days to contribute a fresh perspective on stale topics and “Contemporary European History” produced this month a promising edition on Brexit, with short (4 page) contributions from various European historians - which I expected to throw some new light on the issue. But, despite a nice intro here, I was ultimately disappointed.

3.     One of our best geographers (who writes brilliantly on justice issues) – Danny Dorling – has also just produced “Rule Britannia – Brexit and the end of empire” which certainly challenges some of the current conventional wisdom about voting patterns (he argues that it was the middle-class southern counites “wot done it” – rather than the excluded working class). The book is an easy read and strong on graphics and contempt for the younger generation of privileged and moneyed people who continue to form the English ruling class. Despite its title, a couple of opening chapters and extensive endnotes, it does not pretend to give a real historical perspective – whether of a social history sort or “what’s wrong with Britain” type. You can see him present the book here – although his northern accent is not easy for a foreigner

4.     Finn O’Toole is an Irish outsider who has just published Heroic Failure; Brexit and the politics of pain and it’s interesting to see how he expresses the factors in the referendum outcome

     “the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class”.

5.     James Meek is a Scottish novelist who has taken in recent years to writing long and fascinating journalistic articles on privatized utilities (collected in “Private Island – why Britain now belongs to someone else”) and his latest book Dreams of Leaving and Remembering seems a bit too self-indulgent with the language – going on at great length about metaphors and story-telling..

6. The issue of the narratives countries use in the search for identity had raised its head in Nov 2016 in a colloquium organized by the British Academy on European Union and Disunion

updates; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/bitain-brexit-crisis-public-schools

http://www.scottishreview.net/JohnLloyd472a.html

Identity Politics

How has it come to pass that the world is divided these days on the issue of identity and political correctness?? Is it the insidious result of the American “culture wars” – which can be traced back  to 1968; Of an American left targeting Universities to help develop “identity politics”? Or simply the results of the polarising effect of the social media…..?

Whatever the precise origin, Brexit and the election of Trump have helped divide the world into two groups - “cosmopolitans” and “left-behinds” – with the former favouring open borders and a libertarian agenda; and the latter a more traditional one which has only recently found expression…

Except that this ignores a significant middle group which doesn’t fit such a Manichean perspective….and I readily confess to being a fully paid-up member of these “mugwumps” who don’t take up predictable positions - and are as a result considered unreliable – with “their mugs on one side of the fence and their wumps on the other”!

Take “human rights” as an example….I still remember my reaction when a young Kyrgz woman quoted some recondite UN declaration at me - viz to launch into an explanation that such rights were the results of long and bitterly-fought struggles eg for trade union let alone gender rights – and would not be enforced by simple diktat…from thousands of kilometres away. But she seemed to expect the magic waving of a wand……gain without pain…

And when feminism became active in the UK in the 1980s, I was responsible for a new “social strategy” which was trying to assert the rights of the unemployed and low-paid - and I confess that I had then little sympathy for what I felt were the interests of well-paid women pushing for an end to the “glass-ceiling”.… The issue, I felt, was simply one of priorities in what is, after all, always a crowded agenda for political attention….

With its referendum on the constitutional definition of a family, Romania provides another recent example. This grass-roots initiative would have restricted the definition of a family unit to that between a man and a woman (thereby denying that definition to single mothers!). This did not prevent three and a half million voters from voting yes but this was (at 21%) below the required 30% threshold. Many who supported the amendment argued that social values were offended by same-sex marriage and that it was unrealistic to expect villagers suddenly to accept that such behaviour was normal….     

Francis Fukuyama’s latest book - Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment - reminds us of the dual aspect of identity - individual and social….the first being our own sense of who we are ( very much to the fore in this narcissistic age), the latter being the sense of group differentiation. It is an issue which has clearly been eating away at Fukuyama for some time – evidence this powerful 2007 article Identity, immigration and liberal democracy which is very good on the contrast between US assimilation v European multiculturalism…

From the excerpts, his new book seems a good overview of how fundamentally politics has changed from being a fight between labour and capital to being a contest over identity and belonging…. 

While the economic inequalities arising from the last fifty or so years of globalization are a major factor explaining contemporary politics, economic grievances become much more acute when they are attached to feelings of indignity and disrespect. Indeed, much of what we understand to be economic motivation actually reflects not a straightforward desire for wealth and resources, but the fact that money is perceived to be a marker of status and buys respect.

Modern economic theory is built around the assumption that human beings are rational individuals who all want to maximize their “utility”—that is, their material well-being—and that politics is simply an extension of that maximizing behaviour. However, if we are ever to properly interpret the behaviour of real human beings in the contemporary world, we have to expand our understanding of human motivation beyond this simple economic model that so dominates much of our discourse.
No one contests that human beings are capable of rational behaviour, or that they are self-interested individuals who seek greater wealth and resources.

 But human psychology is much more complex than the rather simpleminded economic model suggests. Before we can understand contemporary identity politics, we need to step back and develop a deeper and richer understanding of human motivation and behaviour. We need, in other words, a better theory of the human soul.

I’m aware that this post has wandered a bit……starting with an (obvious) assertion about polarisation….with a defence of those who seek a more nuanced or “balanced” view… Some confession about past prejudices duly followed….and also a recent Romanian example ..…I then came across the Fukuyama book which clearly warranted inclusion....

Until now the conclusion read that - 

Grassroots pressure rarely leads to significant change – not at least on its own.……But neither do the imposition of national or international norms – which produces a push-back if not angry resentment  Social change generally comes from a combination of both.

A July post had explained that the pincer theory of change had been my default theory since the 1980s (although it later gave way to one called “windows of opportunity”)

In those days, it was clearly possible for some elite “insiders” to work together with activists to change things. The collapse in trust now seems to make such alliances impossible?

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst.. are full of passionate intensity”.

WB Yeats

Reading List

Identity, immigration and liberal democracy; F Fukuyama (2007) very good on the contrast between US assimilation v European multiculturalism…

New Yorker Review of Fukuyama book – Identity  

a rather fatuous review – but useful for getting you to read more..

podcast with Fukuyama

The political theory of recognition – the case of the white working class (article)
The Once and future liberal - after identity politics; Mark Lilla (2017)

The Limits of Identity – ethnicity, conflict and politics; article by Richard Jenkins (2000)

identity politics and the left Hobsbawm 1980s

Identity

I’ve always had great difficulty answering the simple question “What do you do?” “Student” was easy but, after graduation, I had a quick succession of jobs in what could be called generally the “planning” field - and “planner” is as vague a term as “manager” and enjoyed a rather limited vogue.
In 1968 I joined a polytechnic and was also elected to a town council – so “lecturer” was as good a description as what I did as any.

Using my voice was what I was paid for – whether to transmit information or opinions. I read widely – so “reader” was also a pertinent word. I became heavily involved in community development – managing to straddle the worlds of community action and political bureaucracy (for 20 years I was the Secretary of ruling Labour groups in municipal and regional Councils and also a sponsor of community action) and figured in a book about “reticulists” (networkers) – but imagine putting that word in a passport application!

For a few years I was Director of a so-called “Research Unit” which was more like a Think Tank in its proselytising workshops and publications celebrating the new rationalism of corporate management and community development. At age 43 my default activity became full-time (regional) politics – with a leader role but of a rather maverick nature who never aspired to the top job but was content to be at the interstices of bureaucracy, politics and academia. I remember my reception at an OECD function in central Sweden as someone with a proclivity to challenge.

All this paved the way for the “consultancy” which I have apparently practised for the past 20 years in Central Europe and Central Asia. But “consultant” is not only a vague but a (rightly) increasingly insulting term – so I was tempted for a period to enter the word “writer” on my Visa application forms since this was as good a description of what I actually did as any.

At one stage indeed, my despairing secretary in the Region had actually given me the nickname “Paperback writer”. Except that this was seen by many border guards in central Asia as a threatening activity! Robert Reich’s “symbolic analyst” briefly tempted – but was perhaps too close to the term “spy”!
When I did the Belbin test on team roles to which I was subjecting my teams, I had expected to come out as a leader – but was not altogether surprised to discover that my stronger role was a “resource person” – someone who surfed information and knowledge widely and shared it. What some people saw as the utopian streak in my writing gave me the idea of using the term “poet” at the airport guiches – but I have a poor memory for verse.

This morning, as I looked around at the various artefacts in the house, a new label came to me – “collector”! I collect beautiful objects – not only books and paintings but pottery, pens, pencils, laquered cases, miniatures, carpets, Uzbek wall-hangings, Kyrgyz and Iranian table coverings, glassware, terrace cotta figurines, plates, Chinese screens, wooden carvings et al. Of very little - except sentimental - value I hasten to add!

But, of course, I have these things simply because I have been an “explorer” – first of ideas (desperately searching for the holy grail) and then of countries – in the 1980s Western Europe, the 1990s central Europe – finally central Asia and beyond.

Some 25 years ago, when I was going through some difficult times, my sister-in-law tried to help me by encouraging me to explore the various roles I had – father,son, husband, politician, writer, activist etc. I didn’t understand what she was driving at. Now I do! Lecturer, reticulist, politician, maverick, leader, writer, explorer, consultant, resource person, collector – I have indeed played all these roles (and more too intimate for this blog!).

Makes me wonder what tombstone I should have carved for myself in the marvellous Sapanta cemetery in Maramures where people are remembered humourously in verse and pictures for their work or way they died!!

And it was TS Eliot who wrote that

old men ought to be explorers

Daniela tells me that TV is full today of the funeral obsequies of Adrian Panescu (see yesterday's blog). Particularly sickening in the light of the recent loss of Ion Olteanu.
As I've been blogging here for more than a year, I thought it would be useful to start looking at what I was chuntering on about a year ago.