WHATEVER happens on October 31st, Brexit has already given us one, incalculable benefit. For a long time, I have tried to avoid writing about the ongoing horror show. It is a subject that has long ceased to be interesting to me, or to the majority of people in this country. Nor is it one on which I have anything particularly passionate or original to say. What little I have had to say on the matter – that Brexiteers are delusional and that their project is a poor solution to genuine problems – I have already said. And this is a topic on which less is more. As one foreign writer quipped, the perpetual, daily deluge of analysis and commentary offered by Radio 4, the print media and British Twitter never amounts to knowledge. Technical jargon is introduced and abandoned without moving the debate or imparting any real understanding. What is essentially the world’s longest and most histrionic process story trundles on, a wobbling titan of tedium, impervious to our ignorance and our despair. At present, we look likely to exit the European Union on Halloween without a formal agreement; an outcome representing the most extreme possible interpretation of the 2016 vote, short of actual armed insurrection against our European overlords. Sober experts – economists, business leaders, academics, trade union officials and the like – foretell our doom. Perhaps they are right. The sorry line, so heavily leaned on by climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers and the associated rag-bag of cranks and science-liars, that “the experts have been wrong before and could be wrong now” is the very cheapest of cheap coin, but it’s not totally worthless. It’s not without cause that public opinion has come to despise the warnings of economic prophets, our modern priestly class. My own hunch is that Brexit will change almost nothing that anyone who voted for it cares about. Mass immigration will continue; traditional jobs, communities and ways of life will continue to melt away, or mutate; and the broadly mutinous outlook of the general public – their deep discontent with, and suspicion of, politics and government – will remain essentially unaddressed. In a pathetically naff and British way, everything will continue as it was, only shabbier, slower and more inept. Who really knows? For my purpose here, it does not matter.
And this upside I speak of? The elusive Brexit benefit? In short: the campaign for Brexit and the efforts to implement it represent the first victory in decades of British politics of principled arguments over economic ones. I emphasise: I do not like the principled arguments for Brexit; I do not agree with them; but I recognise them for what they are. Millions of people who voted for Leave in 2016 consciously decided that something was more important to them than growing the economy. Overwhelmingly, the issues that most motivated Leave voters were non-economic ones: appeals to national identity, to democratic sovereignty, to cultural distinctiveness and so on. It may not be obvious why this is a good thing: economic growth and personal enrichment are understandable and comparatively harmless motivations, at least compared to atavistic anxieties around identity, nation or race. As much is true. But ours is a society in which public discourse has been so degraded that we seem almost incapable of talking about anything other than money. Consider: when was the last time you heard someone on television or on the radio making a case for social mobility or for better representation of women and ethnic minorities on company boards without talking about spurious studies “proving” that diversity makes companies more ruthlessly effective? (And thereby, it is implied, somehow making us all richer).
“Spurious” is perhaps unfair. Such studies may or may not be accurate. It certainly seems plausible that a business run by a committee of chortlingly posh male clones might make stupid decisions. It’s also completely beside the point. We expect institutions to hire and promote women and ethnic minorities and working class people because it’s morally wrong to discriminate and exclude them, not because we somehow think it will make everyone richer. So why can’t we say as much? Why must we pretend everything is about money? Do you imagine – if a shock study came out, “proving” that companies run by all-white, all-male, all-privately educated directors outperformed more diverse companies – do you imagine that for even a moment, we would think it might be OK for companies to start hiring exclusively from Harrow? Of course not! Our real concern is a moral one. And yet we put forwards mercenary arguments that are inferior to the moral ones they replace.
Recall the referendum on Scottish Independence. Neither campaign really had the courage of their convictions. Even the nationalists, for all their rhetoric, did not dare be honest about what they really believed; to say what the real case for Scottish independence was (and is): that the point of Scottish independence is independence. There is nothing else there; nothing save an appeal to Scottish national identity. There is no “economic” case; no “democratic”* case; no “internationalist” case; no “left wing” case. Nor is there anything wrong with that. All modern states, including the UK, are organised around a (largely fictitious) concept of nationhood. But in 21st century Britain, every issue must be hacked and mutilated until it fits the “what does this mean for your wallet?” format. And so that debate was dominated by tedious squabbling about the currency, oil revenues and the whisky trade; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the arguments for caution and pragmatism won the day. This is what makes Brexit different, and even exciting.
To be sure, appeals to tribe and nation – to fear of immigrants and outsiders, and to distrust of the governing elite – speak not to the most noble of human sentiments. But the European referendum also posed the profound question of democratic legitimacy. Who rules? By what right do they rule, and by what means can they be removed? Unlike the Scottish referendum, where arguments about democracy were a cover for arguments about national identity rather than democracy per se, the EU represents a genuine case of unelected deciders wielding real power. Perhaps this unsanctioned power is overstated by campaigners for Brexit. I am not sufficiently versed in the arcane workings of the European Union to assess precisely to what extent British democratic sovereignty is constrained by our membership. Nor does it really matter (in the context of this essay, anyway). We can quibble about how powerful EU institutions are in formulating legislation and policy, but the point – that the EU wields power in Britain that is not meaningfully democratically legitimated – is basically true, even if we don’t think this point is the knockout punch that some Brexiteers do. That this argument was made by mainstream politicians, and that people were effectively willing to risk economic consequences for its sake, is astonishing and hopeful.
But why grant such importance to principled arguments? Yes, one might concede, it’s nice to have public debate framed in terms that aren’t exclusively economic, but it turns out the alternative to bland managerialism is angry populism, and I know which I prefer. This is a reasonable objection. And yet, one need only step back, and consider: what is the point of politics?Are the ferocious battles in our Parliament and the toil and labour of our public servants merely a mighty effort to add a few points to our GDP? As if GDP mattered! The mindless pursuit of economic growth in our politics is the political symptom of the mindless pursuit of wealth in our private lives. And we chase money despite knowing that it is pointless; despite knowing that wealth, beyond a basic level of comfort and security, does not fill the hole that gapes in every human heart. The pursuit of wealth stems from the lack of meaning in our lives and our societies: we chase money because it is the obvious and easy thing to do. We have built a civilisation that has many great human and scientific achievements, but is simultaneously destroying our natural world and imprisoning us in a joyless cycle of unceasing toil and consumption: consumption for consumption’s sake, without end, purpose or real satisfaction. The great unravelling, over the past few centuries, of the customary bonds of community, tradition, family and faith represents both a great emancipation for the individual, and an existential challenge to our civilization.
The condition of the emancipated human is one of extreme liberty and intense isolation. The bonds that held them in their place have fallen away. They are free, but rootless. The same institutions that imposed order and control on lives of men and women also put earth beneath their feet. Existential troubles rarely haunt one who is given a place and a task, however minor, and who is barred from seeking or aspiring to anything else. This observation has been made countless times before. The famous psychotherapist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) famously went so far as to suggest that the search for meaning was the most profound cause of mental disorder in modern man. The high statistics on loneliness, purposelessness and isolation in modern societies, including Britain, are well-publicised, as is the rising tide of mental illness (mostly anxiety and depression). Perhaps these phenomena fit together. The neuroticism of our present politics – the collapse, everywhere, of the established democratic parties and the old consensus, and the rise of paranoid, authoritarian nationalists – lags the neuroticism of our societies. The Great Recession only accelerated our descent into madness by putting even the pursuit of wealth, as flimsy a purpose as it is, firmly out of reach for millions. It is in this context that the retreat of liberalism and the triumph of nationalism worldwide must be understood. In promising meaning and protection and community, nationalism appears as a rope to the drowning man. And this impulse – the hunger for a simple order, for control, for a world that makes sense, for common values and a shared identity – is innate to mankind, and the natural refuge of the isolated man.
It is also illusory. Nationalist politicians and their shibboleths – Brexit, Scottish independence or Trump’s wall – cannot reimpose the old certainties, in so far as they ever existed. They cannot even attempt to do so without sacrificing the fruits of emancipation. Only by turning the wheel backwards, by waging aggressive war against civilization itself, could emancipation be undone and the old ways restored. (General Franco’s unspeakable regime in Spain was of this type, as was Al-Baghdadi’s brief and bloody tyranny in the Levant.) I leave aside the question of whether a project of this kind would be possible, as it should be obvious that it is a prize not worth having, and with a price too monstrous to contemplate. In truth, ultimate meaning is not something the state can give, and it is misguided to seek meaning from it. It is the responsibility of us all, as individuals, to find a worthwhile purpose to our one, pitifully short life. It does not follow, however, that we do not suffer from allowing our public debate to be emptied of everything but the counting of coins. Our politics can, and has before, been about matters of deep urgency to the human cause: the abolition of slavery; the fight for democracy and universal suffrage; the extension of education to the masses; the holy war against fascism and National Socialism; and the dismembering of the apparatus of racial, sexual and class oppression. Politics (like art, work, family, faith and philosophy) can impart meaning to an otherwise empty life, but only if the individual makes the cause their own. It cannot be stamped on their soul by an identitarian state, but must speak with its own voice to their better nature, and incense or inspire them enough to galvanize them out of passivity. The cause of reaction – of nation, religion and hierarchy – has always been powerful. It promises the certainty and security of a lost, half-imagined childhood. But it has generated, in opposition, an eloquent and passionate voice for its antithesis. People speak of internationalism, of European solidarity and of the abolition of borders in a way that would have been unthinkable in the sensible and managerial country that was pre-referendum Britain. And even the Brexiteers have had their moments, when they have spoken of restoring democracy and seeking a more international outlook for Britain. This is a society talking, and thinking, about more than coffee and mobile phones.
This is the upside that has gone un-noticed: that we are, at last, talking about something other than economics. The return of actual moral controversy to our public debate hints at the possibility of a genuine political awakening – one that will expand and transform the minds of those who participate. Even if the starting place for many in this debate is one of reaction – of anger, nationalistic fervour or simple fear – they are at least in the debate. And in so far as it might permit us to talk about what really matters, rather than what might or might not make us a bit richer, Brexit should be celebrated.
Nathan
Tuesday August 13th, 2019
Cambridge
*The so-called “democratic” case is in fact a national identity argument in disguise. The argument goes like this: “Scotland is often outvoted by the rest of the UK (e.g. on Brexit) and this is undemocratic. If Scotland were independent, she would always get what she voted for.” The argument falls apart when you consider that, for example, Lanarkshire won’t always get what it votes for in an independent Scotland, just as Scotland doesn’t always get what it votes for in the UK. Why is it undemocratic for Scotland to be outvoted but not undemocratic for Lanarkshire to suffer the same? Because Scotland is a nation, and is therefore entitled to sovereignty, whereas Lanarkshire is merely an area, and cannot complain if it is outvoted by other areas. But of course, to a British nationalist, for Scotland to occasionally be outvoted is no more a democratic outrage than it is for Yorkshire. (These responses only work for as long as no-one in Lanarkshire, or Yorkshire, decides that, in fact, they are a nation. Either way, the point is the claim of nationhood, without which the outrage of being outvoted in a bigger democracy loses all moral weight). The contrast with Brexit, of course, is that the most powerful EU bodies (such as the Commission and the Council of Ministers) are not elected at all.
Behemoth 