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| What defines England in the age of Brexit? Its self-pity | What defines England in the age of Brexit? Its self-pity |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| I wish you’d stop talking about ‘the English’,” my wife, who is English, said. “There are all kinds of English people. We aren’t all Jacob Rees‑Mogg. I resent the idea that we can all be lumped together, that we’re all in some way to blame.” Of course, she was right. Only recently have I begun to talk about “the English”. I’ve lived in England for getting on for 50 years – admittedly in London, the country’s least representative place – and most people I know and like are English; none of them is Jacob Rees-Mogg. The crisis has brought on this bad habit. Among Brexit’s several causes, the most prominent is English nationalism, and it is easy, though mistaken, to proceed from that abstraction to the more concrete idea of the people who believe in it, and label them “the English”. The Irish writer Fintan O’Toole does it in Heroic Failure, his new book on Brexit, and he apologises for his lapse in the introduction. The phrase “the English”, O’Toole writes, isn’t meant to describe a “complex, contradictory and deeply divided people”, but merely attempts “to explore a mentality … the strange sense of imaginary oppression that underlies Brexit”. | I wish you’d stop talking about ‘the English’,” my wife, who is English, said. “There are all kinds of English people. We aren’t all Jacob Rees‑Mogg. I resent the idea that we can all be lumped together, that we’re all in some way to blame.” Of course, she was right. Only recently have I begun to talk about “the English”. I’ve lived in England for getting on for 50 years – admittedly in London, the country’s least representative place – and most people I know and like are English; none of them is Jacob Rees-Mogg. The crisis has brought on this bad habit. Among Brexit’s several causes, the most prominent is English nationalism, and it is easy, though mistaken, to proceed from that abstraction to the more concrete idea of the people who believe in it, and label them “the English”. The Irish writer Fintan O’Toole does it in Heroic Failure, his new book on Brexit, and he apologises for his lapse in the introduction. The phrase “the English”, O’Toole writes, isn’t meant to describe a “complex, contradictory and deeply divided people”, but merely attempts “to explore a mentality … the strange sense of imaginary oppression that underlies Brexit”. |
| The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit | Fintan O'Toole | The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit | Fintan O'Toole |
| How does a nation begin to understand itself? Who supplies the understanding? In the past, some societies that had just been released from colonialism, and still to develop strong traditions of writing and publishing, often took their analyses and insights from elsewhere. For example, a visitor to India in the 1960s – even more so to Pakistan – would struggle to find a good modern account of the country that was written by anyone who lived there. He relied instead on visiting writers such as VS Naipaul and Geoffrey Moorhouse, whose judgments were often contested in the countries they described as flawed or superficial, but who nevertheless affected how locals, as well as visitors, saw the place. | How does a nation begin to understand itself? Who supplies the understanding? In the past, some societies that had just been released from colonialism, and still to develop strong traditions of writing and publishing, often took their analyses and insights from elsewhere. For example, a visitor to India in the 1960s – even more so to Pakistan – would struggle to find a good modern account of the country that was written by anyone who lived there. He relied instead on visiting writers such as VS Naipaul and Geoffrey Moorhouse, whose judgments were often contested in the countries they described as flawed or superficial, but who nevertheless affected how locals, as well as visitors, saw the place. |
| Famously, Naipaul observed the ordinary sight of public defecation. “Indians defecate everywhere,” he wrote, in a rhythm that echoed Winston Churchill’s most famous speech. “They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover.” And yet the squatting figures (“as eternal and emblematic as Rodin’s thinker”) never appeared in novels, feature films or documentaries. Naipaul felt that to an Indian eye they were invisible, but perhaps the truth was that they were accepted as inevitable – as a fact of impoverished life. Fifty years later, a far richer India began a huge expansion of public lavatories that suggested they had not been quite so invisible after all. Naipaul belonged to the particularly English tradition of the literary traveller, who felt the whole world outside England was available for their diagnosis and never hesitated to judge as well as describe it. But England itself felt little need of the outsider’s eye. From William Cobbett through Friedrich Engels to JB Priestley and George Orwell, English or England-domiciled writers were trusted to get things right when it came to explaining the place to its inhabitants. Domesticated foreigners such as the Hungarian George Mikes and, more recently, the American Bill Bryson were enjoyed for the fond humour with which they honoured English life. “Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot‑water bottles,” as Mikes observed. His kind of book often had a cartoon on the cover of a man in a bowler hat. | Famously, Naipaul observed the ordinary sight of public defecation. “Indians defecate everywhere,” he wrote, in a rhythm that echoed Winston Churchill’s most famous speech. “They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover.” And yet the squatting figures (“as eternal and emblematic as Rodin’s thinker”) never appeared in novels, feature films or documentaries. Naipaul felt that to an Indian eye they were invisible, but perhaps the truth was that they were accepted as inevitable – as a fact of impoverished life. Fifty years later, a far richer India began a huge expansion of public lavatories that suggested they had not been quite so invisible after all. Naipaul belonged to the particularly English tradition of the literary traveller, who felt the whole world outside England was available for their diagnosis and never hesitated to judge as well as describe it. But England itself felt little need of the outsider’s eye. From William Cobbett through Friedrich Engels to JB Priestley and George Orwell, English or England-domiciled writers were trusted to get things right when it came to explaining the place to its inhabitants. Domesticated foreigners such as the Hungarian George Mikes and, more recently, the American Bill Bryson were enjoyed for the fond humour with which they honoured English life. “Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot‑water bottles,” as Mikes observed. His kind of book often had a cartoon on the cover of a man in a bowler hat. |
| There were, of course, other kinds of books about England written by visitors: throughout the 19th century, the headquarters of industrial progress and the world’s largest empire couldn’t be anything but fascinating. The German novelist TheodorFontane published several interesting studies of England and Scotland in the 1850s, while the Muslim linguist and aristocrat Mirza Abu Taleb Khan left behind a wonder-filled account of a journey to England and Ireland in 1800. In one of the earliest descriptions of Europe by an Indian, Khan wrote of steam engines, delicious viands, exquisite wines and women whose beauty and graceful dancing “delighted my imagination”. | There were, of course, other kinds of books about England written by visitors: throughout the 19th century, the headquarters of industrial progress and the world’s largest empire couldn’t be anything but fascinating. The German novelist TheodorFontane published several interesting studies of England and Scotland in the 1850s, while the Muslim linguist and aristocrat Mirza Abu Taleb Khan left behind a wonder-filled account of a journey to England and Ireland in 1800. In one of the earliest descriptions of Europe by an Indian, Khan wrote of steam engines, delicious viands, exquisite wines and women whose beauty and graceful dancing “delighted my imagination”. |
| In England, other than to scholars, these writers and books have remained largely unknown; until recently, the last edition of Khan’s travels appeared in 1814. The typical English bookshelf was filled instead with books about English counties written by travellers who began to tour them by car in the 1920s; or celebratory series such as Britain in Pictures, in which reproductions of handsome prints and paintings told the story of British seamen, British weather, British clocks and clockmakers, British insects … and so on, for several dozen volumes. England or Britain? The difference in the 1940s, when these books appeared, hardly seemed to matter. There was stability in the confusion. The need to see ourselves as others see us was a neurosis left to countries less confident and stable than ourselves. | In England, other than to scholars, these writers and books have remained largely unknown; until recently, the last edition of Khan’s travels appeared in 1814. The typical English bookshelf was filled instead with books about English counties written by travellers who began to tour them by car in the 1920s; or celebratory series such as Britain in Pictures, in which reproductions of handsome prints and paintings told the story of British seamen, British weather, British clocks and clockmakers, British insects … and so on, for several dozen volumes. England or Britain? The difference in the 1940s, when these books appeared, hardly seemed to matter. There was stability in the confusion. The need to see ourselves as others see us was a neurosis left to countries less confident and stable than ourselves. |
| And suddenly that has changed. The outsider has become more insightful than the insider as an analyst of how England reached its present unsteady condition, a nation that in the space of two years has managed to destroy the reputation for pragmatism and practicality that it built up over centuries. | And suddenly that has changed. The outsider has become more insightful than the insider as an analyst of how England reached its present unsteady condition, a nation that in the space of two years has managed to destroy the reputation for pragmatism and practicality that it built up over centuries. |
| In Heroic Failure, O’Toole offers a central, sexual metaphor for the fall, in which England alternately dominates and submits: “a masochistic desire to seek out humiliation combined with a grandiose sense that such humiliation was an outrage against an exceptionally fine people”. This is a little complicated, and involves England imagining itself both as an imperial power (in the world) and a colony (in the EU), and victorious (in the second world war) as well as vanquished (by the economic performance of its ravaged European neighbours in the years since). Too fanciful, perhaps, but along the way many memorable points are made. | In Heroic Failure, O’Toole offers a central, sexual metaphor for the fall, in which England alternately dominates and submits: “a masochistic desire to seek out humiliation combined with a grandiose sense that such humiliation was an outrage against an exceptionally fine people”. This is a little complicated, and involves England imagining itself both as an imperial power (in the world) and a colony (in the EU), and victorious (in the second world war) as well as vanquished (by the economic performance of its ravaged European neighbours in the years since). Too fanciful, perhaps, but along the way many memorable points are made. |
| Neville Chamberlain remains the prime minister anti-Europeans most like to invoke unfavourably: Theresa May, David Cameron and Ted Heath have all been compared to him, which of course prompts another comparison: that the EU is the equivalent of the Axis powers. Boris Johnson is only the latest in a long line to do this. “You might as well give it [sovereignty] up to Adolf Hitler, frankly,” said the Conservative minister Nicholas Ridley of the European monetary system in 1990, “… I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather have the [air-raid] shelters and the chance to fight back than simply being taken over by economics.” | Neville Chamberlain remains the prime minister anti-Europeans most like to invoke unfavourably: Theresa May, David Cameron and Ted Heath have all been compared to him, which of course prompts another comparison: that the EU is the equivalent of the Axis powers. Boris Johnson is only the latest in a long line to do this. “You might as well give it [sovereignty] up to Adolf Hitler, frankly,” said the Conservative minister Nicholas Ridley of the European monetary system in 1990, “… I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather have the [air-raid] shelters and the chance to fight back than simply being taken over by economics.” |
| Thirteen years before, Enoch Powell lamented that the laws introduced by common market membership meant the British would soon “have nothing left to die for … Patriotism is to have a nation to die for, and to be glad to die for it – all the days of one’s life.” | Thirteen years before, Enoch Powell lamented that the laws introduced by common market membership meant the British would soon “have nothing left to die for … Patriotism is to have a nation to die for, and to be glad to die for it – all the days of one’s life.” |
| O’Toole writes that the statements by Ridley and Powell take martyrdom to “new levels of self‑annihilating fantasy”, but they are also infused with the self-pity that he separately notices has made a significant contribution to England’s distress. “Of all the pleasurable emotions, self-pity is the one that most makes us want to be on our own … Brexit therefore makes sense for a nation that feels sorry for itself.” From Dublin to London: a little wisdom before nightfall. | O’Toole writes that the statements by Ridley and Powell take martyrdom to “new levels of self‑annihilating fantasy”, but they are also infused with the self-pity that he separately notices has made a significant contribution to England’s distress. “Of all the pleasurable emotions, self-pity is the one that most makes us want to be on our own … Brexit therefore makes sense for a nation that feels sorry for itself.” From Dublin to London: a little wisdom before nightfall. |
| • Ian Jack is a Guardian columnist | • Ian Jack is a Guardian columnist |
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