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| The future of plucky little Britain, thriving outside the EU? |
This morning I was wandering around Oxford, musing about the political events of the last ten days. When considering how to illustrate this blog-post, I finally settled on two: (1) cheerful pretty little plant flourishing amidst the unforgiving concrete and iron of a dilapidated little street; and (2) the store window of Blackwells, which illustrates the Shakespeare season with a dressed up skeleton.
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| Or will this be the future? |
We are living in exciting times, irritatingly and aggravatingly so. A week after the referendum was held things have
not settled down. There are a lot of sore losers, and quite a few sore winners. And no one has a clue of what will happen now. No one expected this result, so no one made any plans; now everyone is shell-shocked.
My take on this situation is too extensive to distill into a single blog-post, and anyway there is enough blather & balderdash on the subject out there already. However, I do have a few observations.
To state my position upfront, like a lot of people, I wanted the UK to remain in the EU. At the same time I have long felt that the EU needs to seriously reform - perhaps Brexit is just the kick in the pants the EU needed to finally effect some real change. I just hope the UK will not have to pay too high a price for it.
That said .....
Asking for people to have another chance to vote on the subject isn't an insult to their intelligence, it is just common sense If you fed a software programme with rumour, half-truths and downright lies, you wouldn't expect sensible replies to whatever questions you put to it - garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes. Neither side of the debate was honest, partly because politicians can no more predict the future than you or I, and facts were hard to come by at that stage. The entire 'debate' was characterised by scare mongering and emotional hype, and people on both sides voted on the basis of sentiment, rather than facts and figures. Surely the sensible thing therefore would be to negotiate a deal and then, when there are actually some facts on which to base a judgement, have a referendum on that deal? After it was honestly and properly disseminated and explained?
Now of course it can be argued that all political decisions that the people are asked to make are decided on the basis of misinformation and manipulation, and indeed I believe that this is the case. A democracy only works if voters are in possession of the facts they need to make an informed choice, and if they are educated enough to properly evaluate these facts. Of course it is much cheaper and convenient for politicians to keep the people ignorant and manipulate them into making whatever decisions their political masters want them to make - but that isn't democracy. We need good state education and less biased news media, and politicians who respect their electorate, for a democracy to result in good government which benefits the people. The real value of a democracy is that every citizen has a stake in it, can make their voice heard, and therefore feel no need to riot in the streets to have their concerns addressed. Democracy is crucial to maintaining public order and social cohesion - but only if it is real, and not the sham version so many politicians try to turn it into.
The UK isn't the only European country that faces anti-European Union sentiment, for a variety of excellent reasons. The European bureaucrats, and the national politicians who appoint and support them, thought they could ignore the large portion of the population who was disadvantaged by their policies of globalisation, catering to multi-nationals, and forcing natives to compete with ever larger numbers of migrants, and the chickens are coming home to roost in quite a few EU member states.
European politicians have spent the last four decades blaming all their cock-ups, and everything bad that happens in general, on the EU, while taking the credit for everything good that the EU achieves, for themselves. Naturally enough a large part of the population believed them, and ended up with a skewed perception of the relative merits of their own politicians and the Brussels' bureaucrats. A lot of people face real problems, and in this referendum they finally felt they had the chance to do something about it. Unfortunately, because of the misinformation they have been fed for decades, they chose a solution that will most likely make things even worse for them.
The gap between rich and poor has been widening for decades, and I have been expecting some sort of revolt against it for a long time. Brexit isn't the result of UK-only issues, it is the effect of problems that confront all European countries; the UK population voted to leave because they were given the chance to do so. Other countries may well follow, or at least a large percentage of their populations will want to. Even if other countries don't follow suit, the problems will persist, and it will only be a matter of time until those affected by them rebel.
Thus & therefore .....
Instead of 'punishing Britain', or working towards an 'even closer union among the remaining EU countries', why not explore another option? Why not offer a new deal to ALL EU member countries, not just the UK? Why not explore and discuss ways of supporting native populations, reducing bureaucracy, and repatriating powers to national countries that don't need to be decided by Brussels & Strasbourg, and see whether that would enable the EU to survive into the future? Personally, I would rather have EU-light than an EU that shrinks itself out of existence. There may well come a time when the people of Europe want to be united in a single state - but they clearly don't want this now, and I can think of no reason or justification for cajoling them into an ever closer union now.
One way or another, the problems we face, especially immigration, will get worse unless Europe takes concerted action. Racism and fear of stranger-danger have increased, both in Britain and abroad, for a few years now. People who are worried about their jobs and 'want their country back' because they feel crowded out by non-natives aren't racist - but if they are put onto the 'racist naughty step' they may well end up becoming just that.
The 'Ones Up There', be they politicians, multi-nationals, international charities, scientists, or the intelligentsia, must start to take peoples' concerns seriously. The life of ordinary people has changed hugely in the last few decades, and not everyone has been able to adapt and thrive in this rapidly changing world. Many people have had their ability to be tolerant and socially generous tested to their limits, and by piling ever higher demands on them to operate outside their comfort zones the 'Ones Up There' risk a massive backlash, which can easily tip into isolationism, racism, and a general decline in tolerance and social stability.
We need an economically successful, politically cohesive, socially stable, and enlightened tolerant Europe to face the massive problems ahead - global warming, environmental pollution, shrinking global resources, mass migration, anyone? We need to stick together, because ....
.......Make no mistake, Winter is coming!
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| To quote Erich Muehsam, "Ein Totentanz zieht Schlussbilanz, und schickt euch in die Binsen, samt Kapital und Zinsen." |
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| But after Winter there always comes Spring! |
