Britain: The EU's Very Odd One Out

Since the Brexit vote last June, I have become an avid viewer of BBC’s Question Time.   Though the electorate voted to leave the European Union by 52 to 48 per cent, the mood of the audience in nearly every programme would make you think that margin was more like 70-30. Perhaps the Brexit supporters are just louder (as victors usually tend to be) but there is a palpable sense of anger and frustration when the odd person expresses doubts about the divorce proceedings.

                I am fascinated by the angry Brexit supporters. For a lot of English people, it seems the EU is like a giant piñata or a star-festooned punchbag.  If you’re feeling angry with your lot, you can take it out on the EU, that unelected heap of bureaucrats who add red tape to everything and impinge on your rights as the subject of a sovereign nation. I saw one audience member having a conniption about the straight bananas she saw in her grocery – bananas that had been straightened by the Brussels busybodies, of course.  In another edition, a man said that even though he had married a woman from Russia, he would always regard her as a foreigner.  A German woman who said she is already struggling with the number of forms she has to fill in to extend her stay in Britain was jeered by some members of the audience. These are the extremists but they do represent the far end of what appears to be a general sense of antipathy to all things EU.

                It is also remarkable to see formerly pro-remain MPs now talking up Brexit as a route to a wonderful global future for Britain and bending over backwards to appease the extremist wing of the Conservative Party and UKIP.  It is exactly the opposite of what David Cameron intended when he called the referendum.  They berate those they call ‘remoaners’ and repeat the ‘we cannot ignore the will of the people’ mantra to hoots of delight from the angry ones in the audience.

                I also find the Brexit story engrossing because of the contrast it marks between Britain and Ireland. There are times when it feels as though the two islands are almost the same – the language, the clothes, the fevered interest in English football, the shared taste in television, music, food, the common views on so many social issues.  But when it comes to the EU, we part company. With the glaring exception of the troika’s iron fist earlier this decade, the EU has been near-constant ‘good news’ story for Ireland and for years those ‘partly funded by the EU billboard’ were everywhere, a pleasing reminder that we were being looked after by kindly neighbours. 

                Maybe Charles de Gaulle was right when he twice vetoed the U.K.’s entry into the common market in 1963 and 1967, accusing Britain of a ‘deep-seated hostility’ towards European construction.  He said London showed ‘a lack of interest’ in the Common Market and would require a ‘radical transformation’ before joining the EEC. ‘England in effect is insular,’ he said in 1963, ‘she is maritime, she is linked through her interactions, her markets and her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has, in all her doings, very marked and very original habits and traditions.’

            To my mind, the great difference between Britain and just about all of the twenty-seven other members of the European Union has to do with their original motivation for joining the E.U. In 1973, Britain’s economy was in a parlous state but in contrast to the rest of Europe, the U.K. had had a relatively good twentieth-century. A winner of two world wars, Britain was one of the few countries that hadn’t been invaded by an aggressive neighbour. As destructive as the second world war had been on towns and cities across the country, British people were generally able to look back with pride on the period from 1939 to 1945.  For the British governments of the 1960s and 1970s, joining the EEC was seen primarily as a move that would be economically advantageous.

            The motivation to establish and then join the common market on the continent was also partly due to economics. But there were other, deeper factors at work. The original six members all carried horrific memories of invasion, brutality and collusion and the sound of jackboots marching down the streets of villages was still ringing in the ears of the people of each state.  Recent history was the nightmare from which people wanted to escape. Jean Monnet and Robert Schumann’s vision of a union of people rather than of states seemed like an attractive alternative to constant paranoia.

            That wish to escape was also fundamental to post-fascist countries such like Greece, Spain and Portugal’s request to join in the 1970s and 1980s and post-soviet countries in eastern Europe in the 1990s. While recognising the economic benefits of membership, Ireland also saw Brussels as a place where they could stand on the same platform as a neighbour that had dominated them but which was now ostensibly an equal partner.  And of course, it would help to dissolve the border with Northern Ireland.   

                  Of course, Britain didn’t ‘get’ the European project; of course it balked at the notion of 'ever growing union'. With its happy memories of imperial and military dominance and successful defiance of the swastika, it entered the EEC looking to improve its trading prospects, while other states entered looking to escape the past and in some cases, to escape themselves. Still though, it does make for good telly.