Everywhere you look these days, in the papers or on the internet, there are people calling the European Union ‘evil’, as though its will is set against the righteous beliefs of the nation, like catholic opposition to the protestant reformation.
How dare those European blasphemers dictate to us, they say. Be gone, foul idolaters with your complicated rituals and your bureaucrats basking in the glory of your over-decorated cathedrals. Give us back our blue passports and stop telling us how to behave.
It is an absurd idea. But like the reformation and counter-reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Brexit has become a holy war in the minds of both believers and non-believers. And like all wars, the demonising of the European Union is a necessary step towards driving people into conflict. It’s a way of uniting one congregation against the other, compelling them to say and do things that they might otherwise have baulked at.
For example, under normal, rational circumstances, it’s difficult to imagine how a clown like Boris Johnson could become leader of this country. Affable and amusing, he’s as much like his hero, Churchill, as the nodding dog on the insurance adverts. You can’t imagine him lasting very long against Gladstone or Disraeli. He would have been shredded by Lloyd George. Harold Macmillan would have booted him out of the party long ago. And yet, like the magician’s apprentice, here he is, playing with powers he doesn’t understand, with the brooms and the buckets marching us towards disaster.
Only the same kind of religious convictions that sent men on crusades to die in the Holy Land can blind so many people to the reality of the current situation. We are at war with each other over a set of beliefs that, when you try and poke them with a stick, have no substance.
(Just to continue the crusader theme for a moment, it’s ironic that it was the imagined threat of Islam, from the tens of thousands of refugees pouring into Europe to escape the devastating war in Syria, that sparked this debate. The thought that they would migrate to our shores was a very real motivator in the way many people voted in 2016. Defend our borders, they said; prevent the flood from taking our jobs, our council houses and our health system – as though any of those things could have happened to any significant degree in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But if there is an ‘evil’ in this debate, then it was in the hearts of those that didn’t want to share our extraordinary wealth with those that have lost everything.)
Is the European Union evil? Is it the antichrist? Unlike my religious metaphors, the beliefs at the heart of the union are not based on supernatural factors. There is no ‘magic’ of the transformation to argue over. Like the American constitution, it is just a set of rules. While Americans might debate the Second Amendment, with one side defending the right to bear arms and the other saying it’s an anachronistic throw-back that needs to be changed, all Americans believe in the basic principles as they were laid down by the Founding Fathers. To question the Constitution, in a general way, is to undermine the foundations of their society.
The European Union has a similar intent but with one important caveat: the executive is represented by the leaders of each individual state. The president of the European Union is about as powerful as a glove puppet. But it suits the rhetoric of the detractors to portray him (soon to be ‘her’) as some kind of papal authority. Brussels is the new Vatican. Its devious bureaucrats have become like Jesuits, determined to spread their faith across the world, whether the recipients want it or not.
Britain’s relationship with Europe has always been presented as a David versus Goliath encounter – despite the fact that we’ve stood taller than most of the hogs at the trough. We portray ourselves as victims, like the Israelites in Egypt and Johnson has become Moses asking the pharaoh to ‘let his people go’.
Except there is no pharaoh, no oppressor, no Goliath to throw a rock at and no Old Testament god to bring wrath and brimstone down on the heads of those that oppose the ‘will of the people’. Instead, there’s more of a flavour of Balaam’s ass; people sticking to their prophecies no matter what.
But it’s no coincidence that the language of Brexit has taken on religious over-tones. From Bloody Mary to the first Elizabeth, from the English Revolution to the Glorious Revolution, from Irish Catholicism to Scottish Presbyterianism, Victorian missionaries and multi-culturalism; religion has been at heart of British politics for centuries. And like any addiction, it’s a hard habit to break. It divides families, communities and will bring about the dissolution of the United Kingdom. It brings out the worst in everyone.
Henry VIII broke with Rome so he could divorce his Spanish wife and marry his young English mistress. An act of supreme selfishness began the English reformation and led to decades of conflict afterwards. That same spirit of selfishness has permeated the Brexit debate.
A set of rules – that’s all the European Union is – created to prevent a third European war after the horrors of the first and second. It’s a way of uniting the continent through trade and common values rather than any kind of religious or quasi-religious beliefs. They are not after anyone’s soul.
However, there is an evil here; it’s in the minds of the men who will profit from leaving the union. It’s in their determination to protect their off-shore bank accounts from the scrutiny of new European laws. It’s in the promises of a fictional heaven when we’re free of the shackles of this hellish union that has brought us nothing but prosperity, peace and a variety of wines and cheeses.
There is only fifty years of wilderness to look forward to; there is no promised land and the merciful god on the other side of the Atlantic isn’t going to bless our country without selling us bleached chicken first.
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