- \n
- Residents of Ashford, in Leave-voting Kent, awoke to news<\/a> this month that a giant lorry park is to be built on their doorstep, on what has up to now been quiet farmland \u2013 to accommodate freight traffic delayed by new border controls at Channel ports, as the benefits of frictionless trade are signed away. (The estimated cost, of 400 million additional customs declarations, is reckoned at \u00a315bn per year).<\/li>\n
- The EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) will no longer be available to Britons, it was announced<\/a> \u2013 obliging them to obtain expensive medical insurance when travelling, along with copious documentation to take pets abroad, or even drive their cars \u2018on the continent\u2019.<\/li>\n
- Farmers<\/a> converged on London, driving their tractors through Westminster\u2019s Parliament Square, in protest at ministers\u2019 opposition to standards for growing crops or rearing livestock being written into any new trade deals. Huge surpluses of hormone-fed beef and genetically modified corn sit on American docksides, waiting to flood the British market once it is dislodged from those pesky EU rules.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Meanwhile, negotiators for Boris Johnson\u2019s government have reneged on the Political Declaration that accompanied the Withdrawal Agreement \u2013 signed just months ago \u2013 on social, environmental and consumer safeguards: the so-called Level Playing Field provisions. The direction of travel is clear \u2013 towards the wholesale removal of any and all barriers to the ever-faster accumulation of wealth by the rentier portions of British capitalism.<\/p>\n
It would be simplistic to depict Brexit as a conspiracy. Rather, it calls to mind Michel Foucault\u2019s influential concept of power, as the name we give to \u201cthe complex strategic situation in society\u201d. There is, he cautions, no \u201cheadquarters that presides over its rationality\u201d, although at the same time \u201cthere is no power that is exercised without a set of aims and objectives\u201d. The hedge fund billionaires<\/a> who backed Johnson\u2019s bid for the Tory leadership, while holding short positions calculated to pay out in the event of a no-deal outcome, may, in turn, exemplify Foucault\u2019s remark (in the same passage of the classic History of Sexuality<\/em>) about the \u201clocal cynicism of power\u201d.<\/p>\n
No, the true genius of Brexit has been to convince people that politics is \u2018about\u2019 something other than their interests, or matching concepts of social justice: fairness in the distribution of risks and rewards, for example, with implications for jobs and living standards. The complex strategic situation in British society contains abundant toxic myths, to be invoked and exploited to draw people into voting away their rights and against their interests. (Britain \u2018stood alone\u2019 in the war; the empire was a \u2018civilising\u2019 influence). So, typical statements from Leavers tend to be tightly wrapped in layers of hardened discourse, requiring a long explanation to unravel them (and, as Ronald Reagan once observed, if in politics you have to explain something, you\u2019re losing).<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, the lady I met walking her dog at Haworth (home to the Bronte Parsonage Museum), while reporting<\/a> from the marginal Keighley constituency at last December\u2019s General Election. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be told what to do by Europeans\u201d, she informed me. Leave aside that the British ARE Europeans, and that Britain, as a member state, was almost invariably on the winning side in discussions over the scope of EU rules. \u201cWe\u2019ll be better off on our own\u201d, another voter said, especially since, he went on, \u201cwe\u2019re the greatest trading nation since the Venetians\u201d. Trading? On one\u2019s own? Interesting concept\u2026 of course, in any trading arrangement, there has to be an agreement; that inevitably contains rules, and rules have to be enforced where necessary. The real questions, as correctly identified by countless informed commentaries, are which rules apply, and who makes them? US demands for a post-Brexit deal will be swallowed whole, by a desperate Britain \u2013 to be digested, no doubt, along with lavish helpings of chlorine-washed chicken.<\/p>\n
The unholy alliance, between Little Englander mythology and parasitical profiteering, should be recognised in Brussels as the strategic enemy it always was, to be weakened by all necessary means. Economic heft should be drained away from the City of London \u2013 as the EU\u2019s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, seems to have realised<\/a>, warning that Britain\u2019s financial services industry \u201ccannot keep the benefits of the single market without the obligations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Scots evince a progressive, civic brand of nationalism, evidently more compatible with EU membership than the glorious-isolationist drivel of its English counterpart. The European Commission should work out how to deem the fiscal position of an independent Scotland as compatible with the Copenhagen criteria for membership: then reward their strong Remain vote, in the 2016 referendum, by tailoring an attractive, post-Coronavirus package to smooth the way. Wales, which voted Leave but rapidly changed its mind<\/a>, could follow. How long it might take for the two portions of the island of Ireland to unite, under the golden-starred blue flag, is moot: but it could begin to feel like the next logical step.<\/p>\n
Brexit can count Presidents Trump and Putin among its biggest fans \u2013 seen, as it is, as a development that weakens Britain and the EU at the same time. Without London\u2019s influence, however, the EU can switch course, more towards the French side of its old debate between \u201cwidening\u201d and \u201cdeepening\u201d. The \u20ac500bn Coronavirus recovery fund, proposed by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, may represent the beginning of a new chapter, in which Europe begins to cohere as a fiscal entity rather than a mere monetary one. Meanwhile, Macron is blocking<\/a> the accession plans of Albania and North Macedonia, arguing that \u2013 before admitting new members \u2013 the EU needs more powers to ensure it can uphold standards in existing ones. Poland, for instance, should not be allowed to backslide from the rule of law.<\/p>\n
Deeper EU integration would be a welcome by-product of Britain\u2019s exit, and perhaps an example of Lewis Coser\u2019s theory of the social functions of conflict. Polling evidence<\/a> from member states shows a union growing in popularity. Voters across the continent look at the UK and dislike what they see: they can now unite against a common enemy. In a world ravaged by authoritarian populism, and the massive loosening<\/a> of restraints \u2013 on exploitation and extraction of all kinds \u2013 that has been smuggled in with it, the EU, for all its frustrations and shortcomings, represents an important strand of hope. Von Richthofen\u2019s vision remains viable. Perhaps, in time, even the English will come to share it.<\/p>\n
________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Jake-Lynch-picture-2007-234x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nJake Lynch is a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Coventry University for 2019-20, after which he will return to the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. His debut novel, <\/em>Blood on the Stone: An Oxford Detective Story of the 17th<\/sup> Century, is published by Unbound Books. Jake has spent 20 years developing and researching Peace Journalism, in theory and practice. He is the author of seven books and over 50 refereed articles and book chapters. His work in this field was recognised with the award of the 2017 Luxembourg Peace Prize, by the Schengen Peace Foundation. He served for two years as Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association, having organised its biennial global conference in Sydney, in 2010. Before taking up an academic post, Jake enjoyed a 17-year career in journalism, with spells as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, for <\/em>Sky News, and the Sydney Correspondent for the <\/em>Independent newspaper, culminating in a role as an on-screen presenter for <\/em>BBC World Television News. Lynch is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and advisor for TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>. He is the co-author, with Annabel McGoldrick, of <\/em>Peace Journalism (Hawthorn Press, 2005), and <\/em>Debates in Peace Journalism, Sydney University Press and TRANSCEND University Press<\/a>. He also co-authored with Johan Galtung and Annabel McGoldrick, <\/em>Reporting Conflict: An Introduction to Peace Journalism, which <\/em>TMS editor Antonio C. S. Rosa translated to Portuguese<\/a>. His most recent book of scholarly research is <\/em>A Global Standard for Reporting Conflict\u00a0(Taylor & Francis, 2014).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The unholy alliance, between Little Englander mythology and parasitical profiteering, should be recognised in Brussels as the strategic enemy it always was, to be weakened by all necessary means. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[479,1868,433,1268,739,613,253,249,639,75],"class_list":["post-164978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-brexit","tag-covid-19","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-germany","tag-new-world-order","tag-putin","tag-trump","tag-uk","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- The EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) will no longer be available to Britons, it was announced<\/a> \u2013 obliging them to obtain expensive medical insurance when travelling, along with copious documentation to take pets abroad, or even drive their cars \u2018on the continent\u2019.<\/li>\n