Read on Twitter
Having been a strong advocate of Britain’s membership of the EU all my life and of closer integration in our relationship, it feels disingenuous not to comment on the passing of this dark moment in our history. Feel free to ignore this thread, I just have to say something.
Much as I would dearly love to pretend that Brexit hadn’t happened, to wake up and find it was a hideous nightmare, the reality is that for now we have withdrawn from an active role in Europe with the severe political, social, cultural and economic consequences of this action.
I dearly hope that we will restore our star to the European flag one day, though I accept that this will take a political generation and in fairness our former partners may never trust us again having negotiated in such bad faith. Perhaps de Gaulle was right all along.
In the meantime, our agenda must be to rebuild the supranational relationships that we will depend upon to kick start our economy, protect our people, save our planet and participate in ensuring the rule of law applies across the globe.
For this seems to me to be the greatest folly of our behaviour. Just at the point where we see nation states are failing their people, we have doubled down on the concept.
Neither big enough to make a difference nor small enough to care about the daliy lives of its citizens, the nation state seems to me an increasingly moribund concept.
The negative impact of powerful global forces from tech’ monoliths to climate change are far better delt with by groups of nations. And delivering a better a quality of life, from education to cycle lanes, far better facilitated by regional and local government.
There are just not that many things that nation states are better at, even dealing with this pandemic has been the job of devolved parliaments with Westminster reduced to a rump English institution.
If the sovereignty that the ‘leavers’ so value means simply the ever further concentration of power into the hands of a level of government ill-suited to the tasks we face I’m not sure I want any part of it.
That does not imply a lack of patriotism. Patriotism is too often conflated with nationalism by both right and left but they are different beasts. I have no love of the British state, why would I? It’s a political construct, a tier of government, both artificial and arbitrary.
What I love is the countryside found on these little islands basking in the gulf stream. It’s nature and wildlife. The industry and energy of its cities. Its culture and cultural influence. The diversity of its people and the way this is constantly changing.
Its creativity and knack of solving problems with imagination. The nature of its humour. Its belief in revolution by consent. And a million little things that mean home. These have nothing to do with nationalism or national exceptionalism.
So I never found my patriotism at odds with membership of the EU, because the EU never threatened the things I love about this place.
For people like me its impossible to see leaving the EU as anything other than an act of pure vandalism. A waste of money, resources, time, talent and energy we could be putting to better use.
Though at least our nation state will have no one else to blame for its failings as successive governments have done for 40 years. It will now have to own the impact of its actions.
