I’ve been trying to think of what would make Tory MPs
bring down a Conservative Government. What would make them contemplate making
Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister? Well it’s August. This is supposed to be the
silly season. Perhaps alternatively Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin
et al have all been out in the midday sun. Are we to see them foaming at the
mouth if Britain leaves the UK without a deal? But there is unlikely to be much
sun in late October.
I think part of the explanation is that the long
Remainer rearguard has like many battles meant that the purpose for fighting
has been lost. We’re here, because we’re here. Soldiers who have fought together
will go on fighting even when the cause has been lost and when the reason for fighting
in the first place has been forgotten.
All the Tory arch Remainers were willing to stand for
Parliament on a manifesto that said, “no deal is better than a bad deal”. I
doubt any of them could have imagined then a scenario where they would prefer Corbyn
to leaving the EU. But somehow what was once grudging acceptance that the UK
would leave the EU has become something else.
The Tory Remainers started merely trying to obstruct
Brexit and hoping to limit what they saw as the Brexit damage. Their aim was
merely to make leaving the EU resemble as closely as possible remaining in the
EU. But as the rearguard continued, they began to think that victory was in
fact possible. They could overturn the result. We could stay in the EU.
This is what it is about now. No Tory would
contemplate voting for Corbyn merely to water down Brexit, nor indeed to stop a
“no deal” departure. The prize now is to stop Brexit completely. Since Theresa
May’s deal was rejected the choice has always been no deal or no Brexit. Grieve
et al would only be willing to ruin their careers for the prize of staying in
the EU. They would do so for nothing else.
But why? What has stirred up all the passions in
Britain about the EU? The only comparison I can think of is with the Scottish
independence referendum. The long campaign. The moment when independence supporters
thought they were going to win and the despair of losing created modern
Scottish nationalism. It turned it from being a fringe movement of cranks and
obsessives to something that was capable of destroying Scottish Labour and
winning nearly all the seats at Westminster.
Something similar has happened in the UK. There was no
such thing as a Remainer movement five years ago. Most people were fairly indifferent
about the EU. You either thought it was a necessary evil or you hoped but didn’t
expect ever to be able to leave. Few people were particularly enthusiastic
about EU membership, but a good pragmatic argument could be made for staying. I
didn’t expect Leave to win the EU referendum even while campaigning for us to
do so. I would have met a Remain vote with a mixture of disappointment and relief.
I think it was the shock of losing that changed the Remainers.
Calm indifference and pragmatism changed overnight into Euronationalism. They
were absolutely certain that they had won. They planned to be conciliatory to the
rather foolish Brits who had been so dull as to think Britain could ever go it
alone. Then at some point in the early hours of a June night in 2016, the
Remainers whole world view was shaken. They had lost and they reacted with a
fury that was unfamiliar even to those of us who had gone through the aftermath
of the Scottish independence referendum.
There are three forms of nationalism, but the word
itself is horribly misunderstood and used in very imprecise ways. Donald Trump
is sometimes called an American nationalist. But this is just a way of saying that
his America first message is excessively patriotic, selfish and right-wing.
This is the sense in which “nationalist” means something like fascist.
Unfortunately, this sense of the word is unhelpful. It’s the equivalent of
saying “boo”. The other two senses of the word “nationalist” describe political
goals that are perfectly respectable and help our understanding of history.
The secession form of nationalism is at the heart of
Scottish nationalism, while the unification form of nationalism is seen in 19th
century German history. There is nothing morally deplorable in either seeking
to leave a nation state or seeking to form one from formerly independent
states. Virtually every European state is made up of parts that used to be
independent. Likewise, many European states at some point seceded from larger
ones.
I have been reading about German unification lately,
because it is the best way to understand what is going on in the EU. In 1866
blind King George V led the independent Kingdom of Hanover. His army fought the
battle of Langensalza and defeated the Prussians in front of him, but it made
no difference because his army was surrounded and soon after it surrendered.
After that there was no more independent Kingdom of Hanover. The process of
German unification was relentless and once you were on the path to “ever closer
union” there was no getting off it.
Britain won an unexpected battle again EU nationalism
when we won the vote in 2016. But the Euronationalists are relentless and the
forces under their control are far more powerful than those available to Moltke
and Bismarck. The issue now is whether having won a tactical victory we go down
to a strategic defeat three years later.
Euronationalism was awakened in Britain by the 2016 Remain
defeat. Suddenly there were EU flags on the street and a love for the EU that
had never existed before. But it is rather like that 19th century
German nationalism which was expressed by people in places like Hanover and Saxony.
They thought that they could express support for Pan Germanism while retaining
their independence. German nationalism gave them a Zollverein or customs union,
but Germany was far less unified in 1866 than the EU is today. Five years later
by 1871 there was only really Germany. Whether
they wanted to or not the member states had been subsumed. Hanover had become
Wessex, Saxony had become Burgundy. I doubt even Germans now know that in 1866
they both took on the might of Prussia.
What is perverse about British Euronationalism is that
while Eurofederalism is a goal held by some Remainer fanatics, if you asked the
British electorate whether they wanted the UK to join the Euro, Schengen and
accept our place in a United States of Europe sometime in the next 5-10 years,
it is obvious that the vast majority of the electorate would reject Euronationalism.
The problem we have is that the Remainer elite still
want to portray British membership of the EU as simply a matter of trade and
economic pragmatism. They tell us we must avoid at all costs an economically damaging
“no deal”, but they would want to avoid it even if the price were a United States
of Europe with the UK unable to escape ever. In fact, that is the price of the
Remain rearguard succeeding.
The blind King of Hanover could not see until too late
that he would be subsumed and his country forgotten. But he was of course, neither
form of nationalist. He just wanted to maintain the territorial integrity of
his kingdom. When we fight against either Euronationalism or Scottish
nationalism this is exactly what we are doing. We want neither to be divided
nor subsumed. Let us then be clear about what the next few months are about. If
we lose the battle to leave the EU this time, we won’t get another chance.
