This realm of England
1st June 1996
Dear Andrew,
I've been thinking recently about how embarrassing it must be for patriotic Eurosceptics-particularly those, like you, of an intellectual disposition-to see their cause descending into xenophobia. It cannot be enjoyable for you to witness the anti-European and anti-German primitivism which has overcome the Tories and their press.
Yet I can offer little sympathy. The fact is that you and your High Tory chums-in and around both the Redwood and Major camps-have over the last few years been engaged in a campaign to make the old nationalist nostrums respectable; so you shouldn't be surprised that they are taken up with a vengeance by the populist press.
Isn't it now time for you Euro-sceptics and Europhobes to ask whether the language of nationalism which you have unleashed is of any practical use to us?
Let's take the centrepiece of your argument: the idea of British sovereignty. Day after day we hear the assertion that the EU represents a unique threat to our independence as a country.
Rarely do we hear the clear-eyed truth: that for some time now we in Britain, like most other countries, have had no "sovereignty" or "independence" left to defend. We lost our independence by stages after 1945. Where was our sovereignty at the time of Suez in 1956, when we were taught that we could no longer act independently in the world? Where was our sovereignty when we were defended by the "nuclear umbrella" of another country during the cold war, or when, beginning in the 1950s, large swathes of our culture became Americanised? Where was our sovereignty when, in 1972, our parliament enacted legislation formally entrenching European law as superior to British law? And where is our sovereignty now that global capital markets have made the old-fashioned nation state a bystander in the economic process?
Don't get me wrong. Unlike your Eurosceptic friends, I'm not complaining about these trends. I merely wish to point out that the old codger you love so much, the UK, is increasingly redundant. The UK is simply the wrong size to survive. It is too small to play any part in resolving the big issues (of defence, trade, geo-politics), yet it is too big and centralised for the proper functioning of democracy.
The other great myth of our modern nationalists and Europhobes is the Euro-threat to "identity"-or rather to our "common British identity." Yet, which "identity" are they -you-talking about? Scottish? Welsh? Yorkshire? Southern home counties? London (my own)? Black? White? Surely the British are one of the most diverse peoples on the whole European continent. Our cultural, regional and ethnic diversity needs to be reflected by a loose and pluralistic polity rather than by the rigid and centralised UK.
I cannot understand your affection for the UK state. After all, the UK is an almost perfect example of an over-centralised, highly bureaucratised superstate with a single currency. It is a bigger threat to our diversity than Brussels could ever be. It makes us subjects rather than citizens; it gives us no entrenched rights, and we don't even know the rules of its constitution.
Surely it's time to move on, time for Scotland and Wales to leave the union, and for England to assert its regional identity. Your friend John Redwood can talk about "defending the union" until he's blue in the face. But increasingly such talk is defensive and reactionary, with no sense of the future-like an old man crying into his beer.
Very best wishes,
Stephen
3rd June 1996
Dear Stephen,
There's no denying that some of the popular press coverage of the BSE "war" has been wince-makingly vulgar, but I suspect it says more about circulation struggles than xenophobia. I like to think that some of it is resolutely tongue-in-cheek, as when the Sun's "Up Yours Delors" article was by-lined "By Our Diplomatic Correspondent." For real insults, however, may I direct you to the German quality papers and magazines, especially their cartoonists' representation of the UK.
You are right to argue that central to the Eurosceptic case is the concept of sovereignty, which Sir Harry Hinsley defined in 1966 as "the idea that there is a final and absolute authority in the political community." Thus your characterisation of it disappearing "by stages" since 1945-rather like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only its smile behind-is wrong. Something that is "final and absolute" cannot be pooled or lost in stages. Sovereignty involves the right to make laws, issue coinage, levy taxes, negotiate treaties and raise armies. As all these are under direct threat from the European superstate, we clearly have something to fear as a nation.
If, as you argue, Britain lost part of her sovereignty at Suez, how did she miraculously rediscover it by the time of the Falklands and Gulf wars? What she lost in 1956 was her will and ability to impose her power over Egypt, not her inherent right to rule herself. By mistaking sovereignty for power, you fall into the old imperialist trap. Britain was sovereign before she had an empire, before Henry VIII's proud boast about "this realm of England," and can remain so long after. Humiliation at Suez changed nothing: did the US's even more humiliating defeat in Vietnam invalidate her claims to sovereignty?
All your arguments apply equally well to a uniglobe world government as they do to government from Brussels. To state that "the UK is simply the wrong size to survive" surely implies that Japan, similar to us in geographical and demographic size, is also doomed. Japan also has a monarchy (indeed, more anachronistic, an emperor), yet this has not harmed its exporting potential-as you often argue our monarchy harms Britain's.
I suspect that your antipathy to our monarchy arises primarily from the way it symbolises British sovereignty, rather than its supposedly deleterious effects on our ability to compete internationally. It is central to the "common British identity" which you decry, and its removal would enormously advance the psychological groundwork for the European future which you, in a defeatist frame of mind, have mapped out for us in your thought-provoking book, The English Tribe: Identity, Nation and Europe.
In May 1904 Joseph Chamberlain warned that "The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of empires has come." Within two decades, four of the great empires had gone. By limiting the world to three competing power blocs-the US, the EU and Asia-you are making the same mistake as he did. Not only is Europe, on present economic showing, probably the wrong one for Britain to join, but you are also ignoring the warnings of history. Look at what has happened to the federal structures of Yugoslavia, Canada, the Soviet Union and now possibly South Africa. Surely the day of the small state has returned.
This is even more likely to be true for us if, unlike you, one sees Britain as far more than a weak "old codger." With no loss of sovereignty, we proudly play our part in Nato, the Group of Seven, Gatt, the Commonwealth, the UN Security Council and the single market of the EU. Drop all this un-Tory, utopian talk of a superstate, and we really could be enthusiastically "at the heart of Europe" as well. Britain helped stop Saddam Hussein snaffling half the world's oil four years ago and, military "downsizing" permitting, she would do it again tomorrow. Not bad for an old codger.
Yours ever,
Andrew
6th June 1996
Dear Andrew,
Like many Eurosceptics you seem to have an over-blown and unrealistic view of the importance of the UK. From the way you talk it would seem that the UK was an economic success story with a higher GNP than Italy, or was leading the world in an array of endeavours other than yobbish tabloid culture. Also, you seem to have a thing about our "standing up to Saddam" and "bashing the Argies" in the Falklands. However, the truth is rather less glorious. We played a very minor role in the Gulf war, and we could not have prosecuted the Falklands conflict without utterly vital US help-in the form of bases, material and, above all, satellites.
Yet the real problem I have with your argument is not so much with your misreading of Britain's world position; it is with the way you pitch your defence of the UK's "sovereignty" in democratic terms-as you conjure up a picture of poor liberty-loving Britain at risk from the European juggernaut.
You cite Hinsley as saying that "final and absolute authority" rests with the "political community." I agree. But the problem you have is that the UK is perhaps the least democratic state-the one which most ignores the "political community"-in the whole of western Europe. Look at the sad story: in the UK only 42 per cent of the electorate is needed for an over-mighty executive to rule for over 17 years; we "sovereign" Britons don't even have any constitutional rights. The UK is the most highly centralised of all the main European nations (including the French) and simply does not allow the expression of "political community" at lower levels than Whitehall.
Real democracy or sovereignty must mean "the political community" being able to deal with the big interests of the global economy. That's why we need Europe, and why Europe, not the UK, is the only mechanism for "the political community" to re-assert itself.
If you are really worried about democracy, then I suggest you join us in campaigning for more powers for the European parliament. I notice, however, that for Euro- sceptics and isolationists the European parliament is the most hated of all institutions.
Ultimately, this Eurosceptic-inspired sovereignty debate is not about democracy or accountability; it is a cover for an old-fashioned political campaign-of Westminster politicians, and their acolytes, trying to keep their jobs. The fact is that in the new Europe they become increasingly redundant. Edward Heath has already suggested cutting the Commons down to 300 MPs. Bearing in mind your well known distaste for politicians, perhaps you could sign up to his idea?
Yours ever,
Stephen
7th June 1996
Dear Stephen,
My God, you really have fallen into the old imperialist trap. It seems that unless we fight and win the Gulf war entirely on our own, and refuse all foreign aid in liberating the Falklands, we have somehow become a satellite state. International realpolitik just has not been like that since your childhood, when the school room map was covered in pink. (You are quite wrong, by the way, to say as you do in your book that the Falklands was "virtually a joint exercise with the Americans"; to equate some sidewinders, airstrip matting and satellite photos with the task force is absurd.)
Much more absurd is your excitement over our unwritten constitution. Just because we do not have a single, written document like the Americans, or the confetti continental constitutions which have done so little to entrench European liberty in the past, it does not mean that we live in the sort of undemocratic neo-tyranny which you describe, but which I cannot recognise. British common law, built up by precedent over the seven and a half centuries since Magna Carta, provides us with strong and inalienable rights as subjects that I doubt we could successfully claim as citizens.
Precisely because they are not entrusted to a single document-and are thus unrepealable in another-these legal precedents provide Britons with literally thousands of statutes for protection. You want some flashy, heroic statement-but that could be torn up in a way that precedent and tradition, evolving organically, cannot. Constitutions are not about exports or administrative efficiency, but are for worst-case scenarios. They are rules to prevent revolution, civil war and anarchy. Our three century record of avoiding these-the longest of any main western country, by the way-is too good to muck about with for the dubious benefits you offer.
Similarly, to see the European parliament as superior to the House of Commons in terms of "democracy and participation" is to ignore the fact that each Westminster MP represents an average of 66,107 electors against the Strasbourg MEP's 483,571. How can any real, personal contact be possible with nearly half a million constituents each? The reason that turnout in Strasbourg elections is less than half that of Westminster's is because the British people rightly view the European parliament as distant, unrepresentative and fundamentally illegitimate. It is, to go back to Hinsley, not a political community they wish to endow with final and absolute authority.
Nor can I sign up for Edward Heath's idea for a half-sized Commons. This would, if put into practice, reduce parliament to a regional assembly of an alien superstate, so I think the more potential Pyms and Hampdens there are, the better. That's not an argument for paying them more, mind you.
Yours ever,
Andrew
9th June 1996
Dear Andrew,
Well, at least I've got you to admit-grudgingly-that Britain is no longer the centre of the world, and that in attempting to solve problems it has needed friends and allies. However, this may only be a paper concession on your part, because you obviously still believe in your heart in a "sovereign" Britain acting alone in the world.
I have no quarrel with your fondness for Magna Carta, the splendours of the common law, and so on (although you did leave out "the mother of parliaments"). I, too, admire our history. But the point is that it is history, and you con- fuse our past with the reality of contemporary Britain. It is worth asking yourself what exactly it is that we really excel in today, apart that is from tabloid titillation, Sun and Mail headline writing or football hooliganism.
I'm afraid the "Britain is best" flag waving of the Europhobes and isolationists is no longer cute. We have had a tendency to indulge this provincialism in the recent past, but now it is starting to damage us. Look how even you now insult our allies-no doubt unwittingly. You describe one of the greatest political documents of all time, the US constitution, as "flashy"; and rehash the tired old nostrums about "confetti continental constitutions"-even though our principal continental partners are stable, prosperous nations from whom we can learn more than a few things.
Worst of all is what all this flag waving reveals about us. In a way it's rather sad, for it displays a serious loss of nerve and confidence. It also provides no vision for the future, and that is why you Europhobes will ultimately lose this great battle which you are now embarked upon. The future that you have in mind for us-as a poverty-stricken off-shore island, incestuous, self-congratulatory and revelling in beefeater tourist-trap history-does not bear contemplating.
As to your dismissive point about the European parliament, I realise that it is full of foreigners but it really is the only mechanism we have for making the commission and the council of ministers accountable. The British parliament-"mother of parliaments" though it may be-is so emasculated by our over-mighty executive and the whips that it ceased to be a real legislature decades ago.
With best wishes,
Stephen
11th June 1996
Dear Stephen,
Your sarcasm about the British parliament being "the mother of parliaments" is misplaced. In fact it was John Bright who said in 1865 that "England is the the mother of parliaments." This illustrates my point that it is the people, not the politicians, who are wedded to the Westminster parliament and see no reason for another elsewhere. As for flag waving, have you ever been to the US? (I was not calling the US constitution "flashy," by the way, but the sort of Citizens' Charter-cum-PR exercise which you and Charter 88 would have us adopt.)
But even if our written constitution were a perfect combination of Shakespeare and the Book of Common Prayer, it could never provide us with the support for liberty which precedent gives us. That is not history, that is today. I cannot recognise the oppression you seem to see as endemic here.
As for our country not excelling at anything but football hooliganism, may I direct your gaze towards the BBC, inward investment due to our semi-detached, non-social chaptered relationship with the EU, British Airways, the music indus-try, the largest and most efficient national lottery in the world, mo-tor racing, the City of London as an important financial centre, English as the international language of computers, academe, business, air traffic control and so on. Hardly "theme park."
You may well sneer, but I would also rate our royal family as a huge PR benefit to Britain. If the estranged daughter-in-law of President Boothroyd or President Jenkins visited Chicago I doubt anyone would cross the street for her. Our monarch's daughter-in-law was mobbed in the most anti-British city in the US.
Your touching assumption that our European partners are more stable than we are ignores the fact that within the last quarter century Spain was fascist, Italy nearly communist, Greece a military dictatorship and Portugal had a revolution. In the past two centuries, while we have enjoyed uninterrupted constitutional monarchy, France has notched up two empires, two monarchies and five republics.
By constantly decrying everything about modern Britain, you are in danger of joining the George Walden/Will Hutton, Eeyore tendency, and you are far too cheerful a chap for that.
Yours ever,
Andrew
