Nice day for a knifing

These are intersting times indeed.

It was just about 1pm and I was finishing my voluntary shift as porter at the oratory when I looked at the news on my mobile phone, and beheld the latest sensation - Boris Johnson has been knifed
( metaphorically) by Michael Gove. The story reads like "The Knifer Knifed" - though I am not sure if it is a Restoration comedy or one of John Webster's dark plays.

The Revolution is already devouring its own.

Now to those of my readers who may be surprised even more than I was by this I would merely point out the question of where did Mr Gove and Mr Johnson hone their political skills ... why the Oxford Union - as it itself always says 'where else' - and OUCA ( Oxford University Conservative Association ). You can always tell an Oxford Man ( and the response is " But not very much").

These are proving extrordinary days - no day without a shock or sensation.

Brexit - a German view

This morning I received the following e-mail from an Anglophile German friend. With his permission I am reproducing it:

" This morning I have read an article in which the Shakespearian quality of David Cameron's fall was assessed: a man who wanted to tighten a union and who ended up destroying two.

But arguably the more tragic characters are Johnson and Gove. They have now won a victory after which their troops might turn against them once they realise that the NHS will not receive 350 million pounds a week from tomorrow onwards and immigrants keep coming to the British shores. I also fail to see whom they want to build this independent Britain with as they have alienated a good deal of the elites (the sneered-at experts, the belittled leaders of pro-EU parties and lobby groups, British industry) they now need to move forward.

The most puzzling fact, however, is that the British nationalists of the UKIP kind have spectacularly scuttled the Unions of 1707 and 1801 by moving into unchartered waters where the Scottish and the Northern Irish will be very reluctant to follow. After the closely fought Scotland Referendum two years ago in which the pro-Union camp rightly played the card of Scotland in the UK meaning a Scotland in the EU and thus within a reasonably safe economic environment, the 'nationalists' should have known that they could not come back only two years later and take this very economic security (to the extent that the EU does provide it) away. I have never been a friend of Nicola Sturgeon, but I can see why she now makes a move towards a new independence referendum, and I see why Sinn Fein feel they have a point when they clamour to have a unification referendum in the six counties.
To boot, Gibraltar is also facing quite some problems now. Surely this was forseeable, but apparently Johnson, Farage, etc. did not want to take these constitutional problems into account. To me, it appears that they have not the shred of a plan where they want to take the country after
having cut it loose from the EU.

I truly feel despondent about the situation. It is a small consolation that yesterday evening, at a birthday party of a colleague of mine, the soccer results seemed to be more important than Brexit."

To which the Clever Boy will merely add that he agrees with every word of it.

Living in interesting times

Well, what a turn of events!

I retired to bed at about midnight and lay in the dark listening to the Referendum results come in on Radio 4 through the night.

As was predicted weeks ago Gibralter was first to declare and for interests very much her own, very positively for Remain.

Then the tremors started in Sunderland and they continuerd to spread. As the political earthquake spread my mind moved from thinking "Surely not but just possibly" to amazement and then bemusement as dawn rose outside my bedroom window and the dawn chorus was that of Brexit.

I nodded off to sleep and then awoke to hear the distinctive tones of Mr Cameron announcing his resignation. Now that is one definitely good thing to come out of this. Good riddance. He has certainly earned his place in history with Referendum written on his heart, and one of the most spectacular downfalls of any modern Prime Minister. This was his Suez. He has indeed fallen like Lucifer through his over-confidence and misguided policy.

When I went out into the city mid-morning it was still with asense of bemusement at what had happened overnight. The first friend I met and I shared this sensation, of having expected a narrow Remain victory and finding that as a nation we face a rather different and very unclear future.
 
Am I surprised? Yes I think so, but I would add that I did sense yesterday, however vaguely, that we were perhaps sitting on the edge of the unknown.

In terms of recent history this is the equivalent in shock and momentousness of the events of November 1989 and the fall of Communism in central and eastern Europe, or the final collapse of the USSR in August 1991. What this result portends is not clear.

It was not until this evening that my mood turned from bemusement to dull anger at what has happened, and at a move to uncertainty and the unwise abandonment not of a stagnating but tiresone EU but rather of a vision of Europe asa great and civilising force.

Vote Early, Vote Often

I voted twice in the European Referendum today. Lest anyone thinks I did something illegal I should immediately add that it was all perfectly legal as I exercised the second vote as proxy on behalf of a friend who is away and was too late to register for a postal vote.

The first time was on my own behalf and at my newly constituted local Polling Station, very close to where I live. There were few people about when I went in about 9.30, although I was slightly surprised to find a teller outside enquiring how one had voted. This I understood was on behalf of a money trader who was hoping to make money on the rise or fall of the pound. The majority - and there were not that many on the talley - were for Remain.

In the city there were a few enthusiasts for Remain to be seen about the place but people seemed generally concerned with their day to day affairs.

Mid-afternoon I journeyed up to Cutteslowe to vote for my friend at the Community Centre - a voyage of discovery in itself to a suburb I had not hitherto visited. The air was damp and rain appeared to be in the offing, and the Polling Station almost deserted apart from the staff. I produced my power of proxy, voted and made my way back to the bus stop for the return to the city centre. Although I gather that turnout is up I got the impression of little excitement or interest. A few houses had Remain posters, one was impressively decked out in ones for UKIP and Brexit.

I came back to the city centre, went to Mass and have now had supper. The mood seems quiet and lacklustre, but I went home a little earlier than usual to follow the results. We shall, inevitably,  see what the results bring...

Referendum ruminations

So we are on the eve of the Ruropean Referendum. Here are afew of my thoughts about the campaign and the iisues at hand.

The debate has been sterile, a combat of verbal trench warfare made up of claim and counterclaim, precious little wit, still less insight. There has been a highly selective use of facts and statistics by both sides, a lot of heat, precious little light. 

The whole exercis has been divisive, probably changed few minds but has consolidated opinions and prejudices. It has not been edifying to watch.

Although I sympathise with some aspects of the Brexit case - notably certain aspects of the argument about sovereignty- I cannot feel enthused or motivated to support it. Every treaty entered into by a state limits its sovereignty to some extent. Not a few Brexiters strike me as odd to put it mildly. I agree with aclose friend that we cannot see why anybody really rates Boris Johnson for anything at all other than self-publicity

The Remain camp look tired and jaded, the same old political establishment urging us to trust them. I would have expected people to remind the electorate why the EEC/EU was set up - to promote peace and cooperation amongst the states of Europe after two devastating destructive wars. Economics were utilised to bind nations together for a wider and higher purpose. Yet we have not heard this argument at all. Instead we have just had self-centred inward looking argument about how much more we could spend on the NHS - which always swallows whatever money is available and demands more.  

I have little love for the EU and its institutions and its self-aggrandisement since the Maastricht Treaty - for which the excellent case for a UK referendum ( "Thus far, but no further" )was dodged by John Major - but neither as a historian do I like or trust the Little Englander/ Empire-Commonwealth nostalia/ Atlanticist notions behind Brexit. For Heaven's sake Calais is twenty miles from Dover - not two hundred or two thousand. All the crucuial decisions in our history have been shaped intimately by Europe and its realities - political, military, cultural, intellectual, spiritual - and we cannot avoid that fact even if we try to deny it. And thinking of Calais, let us not imagine that refugeesand wannabe immigrants there will disappear if we metaphorically pull up the drawbridge in the Straits of Dover. 

As a country we face an unsure future whatever the result, and it is still unclear what that will be. I can envisage three possibilities - a 60/40 clear win by Remain ( not that likely but possible) , the more likely 52/48 Remain victory which will leave a lot of people feeling cheated, and mean the Prime Minister will have to put much more pressure on a complaicent EU to give more to stave off a third Referendum, or a 52/48 Brexit victory - which will lead to a very uncertain situation indeed.

I do not know what will happen, but it has been the working out of a crass policy. Did the Prime Minister not learn from his near-miss in Scotland of the folly of a referendum on so complex an issue? Apparently not, as we face national uncertainty, and indeed about our very existence as  country, once again.

What would Edmund Burke think about the debate on Europe?

It occurred to me to wonder what Edmund Burke might think about the approaching referendum on membership of the European Union.

Edmund Burke, 1729-1797

Image: blogs.telegraph.co.uk

For all his claims to be a Whig, rather than the Tory many might assume him to be, or indeed because he was Whiggish, he would , I suspect have doubtless not been keen on referenda. His Reflections upon the Revolution in France would suggest grave doubts about such popularism.

On the other hand he might have considered the British capable of making a suitable decision within the bounds laid down by the Constitution he celebrated in his penetrating critique of the mounting disaster in France - and he was writing as early as 1790 remember.

As a politician who believed in reform as it was needed he might endorse the Prime Minister's package of changes. He might also endorse, either as a Europhile or as a Eurosceptic, the idea of continuing reform of the EU. Too often today is has rigidities which inhibit change - hence the limits to what the Prime Minister has been offered - or, as in regard of the Euro-crisis and the flood of refugees displays the sort of panic Burke scorned when he looked at France and its financial and electoral expedients in 1789-90.

Here for reflection are three quotations from Burke which are food for thought, and by that I mean serious thought, in the present discussions:

" Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

"A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation." 

 "... the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."

Europe

So it's Referendum time again, and the national discussion has already started, and manifested itself  amongst friends at church and in the Oxford Union.

First thing's first - I do not believe in referenda. To say an electorate can make a more or less irrevocable decision on a particular day and enforce that on succeeding generations is very undemocratic. Such constitutional referenda are very different from the direct democracy of Swiss confederal or cantonal votes or Californians propositions. The logic of the binding referendum could extend to saying " Well you elected a Parliament once - why should you change it every five years? " Sorry, we know the line about many newer nations and "Free elections - once ", and referenda are somewhat in that category. Furthermore they are open to manipulation and also to people voting not on the issue on the ballot paper but on something related or possibly vaguely influencing them. by implication there is not going to be a re-run. Yes, I know this one is in a way, but there have been no re-runs of the referenda which abolished the Italian monarchy in 1946 ( and widely recognised as highly dubious to say the very least) or the Greek monarchy in 1974 ( and strictly against the provision sof the 1952 Constitution)

I have always tended to be somewhat Eurosceptic, and certainly sceptical as to the way the EEC and EU were and are run, and I was very much against Eurofederalism. I recall the line of a friend who now works as an advisor in Downing Street to those he suspected to be unsound on such points, "Are you a Eurofederast?", in the Oxford Union in the late 1990s.

That all said I appreciate the vision, based on a common heritage and the notion of Christendom, or even of the post-1815 Congress system of Europe acting in concert.

That and the state of the world today inclines me to vote to remain within the EU. 

In some ways the situation is similar to that of the high medieval church - if the Euro was its Unam Sanctam, then was the Euro crisis its Anagni?  ( I assume all readers appreciate those references...)

The Prime Minister does look to have failed to get very much in his negotiations that makes a significant change, and thos eof his Cabinet who say they back his line but without enthusiasm for the EU are, I suspect, about right.

We hear talk of possible new domestic legislation on sovereignty, but that pass was sold in the 1972 Act of Accession; it may well be too late now to do anything about that on an individual basis within the EU

There seems to me to have been a serious and continuing failure to build up alliances within the EU and to have worked for an evolving process of reform and decentralisation. Being the Awkward Man of Europe has not helped the UK's image, and failing to respond as positively as we should have done to the post-1989 situation in central Europe was a major mistake. We should have played a founding part in the process, not, as Churchill and Eden seem to have thought, telling Europe to unite as though the landmass twenty miles from Dover had nothing to do with us. Fog in the Channel does not cut Europe off.

Some European commentators see what is being offered as bad if the EU then get others doing the same, and worse if it leads to a break-up, initiated by a Brexit.

So my instinct is to stay - not least because it is a cold world out there, and we should huddle with our friends. There is also the crucial question regarding Scotland, and the threat of the ris eof seperatism there if they vote to remain and the English vote to leave and take the rest of the UK out of the EU. That is, of course, the fault of having the 2014 Scottish referendum.

Those who urge one to vote Leave need to show what positive alternative they can offer that is not merely a romantic return to the 1950s and the remains of Imperial Preference or that will make us too close to Uncle Sam.

The whole thing makes the political future uncertain in many ways whatever result. Could this do for the Conservatives what Tarriff Reform did in 1903-5?And a final thought harking back once again to the 1950s - is this going to be David Cameron's Suez?