Since the Brexit vote, the British feel more European than ever
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Version 0 of 1. It would be an irony more bitter than delicious, but could Brexit be having an unexpected effect on the people of Britain – turning us, finally, and despite everything, into good Europeans? The question arises because of a curious shift underway since the referendum last June. For many years, the intellectual bedrock of the Eurosceptic case was that there was no such thing as a European demos, no European nation underpinning what Eurosceptics believed was an emerging European super-state. The notion of a United States of America made sense because Americans were a true people, sharing a language and sense of common destiny. But a United States of Europe was absurd because Europeans did not see themselves as bound together in the same way. By way of illustration, Eurosceptics would point to the absence of a shared political conversation in Europe, clear evidence that we did not see ourselves as part of a larger whole. In Britain, Eurosceptics would cite a political class that was more deeply aware of events across the Atlantic than across the Channel, with the average Westminster type more able to name the governor of Indiana than, say, the prime minister of Holland. But look what’s happened since 23 June 2016. Today, the Dutch go to the polls, an event that would previously have passed with not much more than a brief mention on the inside pages. This time, however, the same pundits and prognosticators who last year obsessed over Trump v Clinton have directed some of that same energy to the battle of Wilders v Rutte, trading polling data on social media and arguing about the meaning of the latest move by the rival candidates. The interest is even greater in the French contest, with the previously unknown Emmanuel Macron now an instant topic of British political chatter. Those who once revelled in their specialist knowledge of the Iowa caucuses now feel obliged to grasp the finer points of France’s two-round electoral system. The same people are just as intensely aware that looming over the horizon is the German election, and the possibility that Angela Merkel, the de facto leader of Europe – and perhaps, in the age of Trump, the leader of the free world – could be dethroned. The connection between this new-found interest in our continental neighbours and Brexit is not mysterious. Even the most hardened Eurosceptic understands that the political makeup of the major EU powers now matters to Britain a great deal, for these are the people Theresa May will face across the table when she negotiates the UK’s exit from the EU. The difference between Merkel and Martin Schulz in Berlin, or between Macron and Marine Le Pen in Paris, could have a fateful impact on Britain’s prospects. But the interest goes deeper. Brexit and Trump’s election seemed to herald a new wave of nationalist populism: the fortunes of Wilders and Le Pen will help us decide whether that tide has been stemmed or threatens to submerge all of Europe and the west. For liberals, especially, the frantic checking of Dutch and French poll numbers is a sign of anxiety – a doctor taking the temperature of a fevered patient. The result has been a sense that Europe does, after all, share a common destiny – that what happens there has a direct bearing on what happens here. And it’s not just panicked remainers who feel this way. The paradox is that, in this respect at least, the most ardent leavers are themselves thinking as Europeans. Witness Nigel Farage’s interview with Le Pen on his LBC radio show on Monday, welcoming her as a comrade in their shared project of wrecking the EU. For Farage, it’s always been clear that Brexit alone was not enough: his mission is Europe-wide. So tonight and in the coming days, there will be Brits contemplating the different permutations of the next Dutch coalition, just as they try to assess what impact the wavering stance of former French PM Manuel Valls could have on Macron. Meanwhile, the BBC Today programme devotes its lead slot to an expose of the dreadful conditions endured by Romanian truck drivers working for a Swedish company, delivering goods to Denmark. Maybe there is something like a European demos after all. It’s just we had to leave it to see it. |