It's not EU it's me......!

Theresa May's letter (in English) is given to its Polish

addressee at his office in Belgium!

On my lap top are three news agency icons: the BBC, The Guardian newspaper and Associated Press one of the American news agencies. Each morning as I make the early morning cup of tea at about 6.30 am I open up my lap top and glance at each to look at the headlines for the UK, Europe, the USA and the wider world. Today, as I expected, the BBC and The Guardian were dominated by the various items about Brexit. Associated Press, not to my surprise, had mostly US dominated items. It did, however, have the headline that most chimed with me about Brexit; they seemed to have got it just right. Maybe it proves that a more accurate assessment of any particular situation can be made from standing back and seeing the bigger picture. In this case maybe the view from New York is rather more accurate than our own perception here in the UK and Europe. Associated Press’ headline was: “It’s not EU it’s me: UK files for divorce after 44 year marriage”.

As I read the header I shook my head in both sorrow and anger – it was exactly right. With yesterday’s triggering of Article 50, effectively setting out the divorce proceedings between ourselves and the EU, we are like two partners in a failed marriage ridding ourselves of each other. The important phrase to me, however, was “It’s not EU it’s me...” – a clever rewriting of “It’s not you it’s me”. Within that header is all that you need to know about the Brexit debacle, Brexit supporters and the state of modern Britain: namely, you are unimportant it’s me and my desires that are paramount.  Like the selfish husband or wife who sees only their interests as of importance and have no notion of the partnership, the feelings involved,  the give and take element of a marriage or of the vows that they made in entering the arrangement so, too, Brexit campaigners, the delusional wing of the Tory party, the right wing media and all those who mindlessly voted for Brexit in last year’s Referendum have consistently reflected the same selfish me, me, me view of life so prevalent in modern western society – and especially so in the UK

The Sun's headline - no more to be said about its or Brexit motives

Overnight all the pundits have been hard at work analysing the letter written by Theresa May to trigger Article 50. Presumably May and her ministers and civil servants  worked long and hard at setting out the various points that they wished to make concentrating as much on what they didn’t say as what they did. There was an immediate response from the EU and from the pundits highlighting various controversial issues in the letter such as issues of international security and the exchange and cooperation on issues of crime and terrorism.  The Sun newspaper this morning ran the disgraceful headline “Your money or your lives” – in other words give us (the UK) what we want in the Brexit negotiations or we will discontinue work with your security agencies and thus put European lives at risk from the terrorist and crime threat. The newspaper went on to say: “...the Prime Minister would be crazy not to use our peerless anti-terror security services as a bargaining chip. Some critics may be disgusted... We need to play every decent card in our hand, and security is one of our strongest.” Of course government ministers raced to distance themselves from this, assuring the populace and the EU that this was never their intention, but the damage was done and for me it shows up what Brexit is – a total shambles. The letter triggering the break from Europe is undoubtedly the most important document written by a British government for years – its precision and implications had to be exactly right both in word and spirit, no ifs no buts. By acknowledging that the letter did not mean what the Sun said it did – and certainly politicians and pundits across Europe and the UK took the meaning that the Sun did, that Theresa May was issuing a threat to Europe – the Brexit government was also acknowledging that they got it wrong, they did not strike the right note. Well, if that be the case then in my book they are either incompetent because they did not get it right or despicable because they actually meant it and are now trying to deny it having been caught with their proverbial trousers down. I’m not sure which, but I suspect it is both. And the shambles didn’t end there. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor also quickly pointed out that the UK’s demand for negotiations about both our withdrawal from Europe and the initiation of new trade deals were unacceptable. The so called “parallelism” would be a non starter. Frau Merkel told reporters in Berlin: "The negotiations must first clarify how we will disentangle our interlinked relationship... and only when this question is dealt with, can we, hopefully soon after, begin talking about our future relationship".  European newspapers virtually without exception, greeted the Brexit letter and its contents with a mixture of pain, puzzlement and predictions that the coming two years of negotiations could get nasty – especially if the UK resorts to what they perceived as “blackmail” over issues like security cooperation.

They were not wrong, for this outlook and position of threats and blackmail has characterised virtually every meeting and summit that we have had with our European friends and colleagues over the last 44 years of our European marriage. For as long as I can remember we have been unwilling to be equal partners in Europe always wanting special concessions or a bigger share of the pie. And, like badly behaved children, we have stamped our feet and sulked when we did not get our own way. The era of gun boat diplomacy that so characterised the British Empire of the Victorian age when Prime Ministers like Palmerston threw their weight about in Europe and across the world and threatened to send in a good old English gun boat if we did not get our way are still lurking in government and alive and well in national psyche.  We may not now send in a gun boat but, like the bully on the playground, we still seek to throw our weight about and find it impossible to cope when we do not get our own way; the worm in our national sub conscious, tells us, that  we, the English, (I choose my word carefully) are best. We might laugh at the old Flanders and Swann song “The English” but it still rings loud, clear and sadly believed in the ears, hearts and minds of the Tory party, UKIP, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph readers, and in jingoistic, flag waving pubs and bars across England:

The English

(Flanders & Swan)

The rottenest bits of these islands of ours

We've left in the hands of three unfriendly powers

Examine the Irishman, Welshman or Scot

You'll find he's a stinker as likely as not

The English the English the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest

The Scotsman is mean as we're all well aware

He's boney and blotchy and covered with hair

He eats salty porridge, he works all the day

And hasn't got bishops to show him the way

The English the English the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest

The Irishman now our contempt is beneath

He sleeps in his boots and he lies through his teeth

He blows up policemen or so I have heard

And blames it on Cromwell and William the Third

The English are moral the English are good

And clever and modest and misunderstood

The Welshman's dishonest, he cheats when he can

He's little and dark more like monkey than man

He works underground with a lamp on his hat

And sings far too loud, far too often and flat

The English the English the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest

And crossing the channel one cannot say much

For the French or the Spanish, the Danish or Dutch

The Germans are German, the Russians are red

And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bed

The English are noble, the English are nice

And worth any other at double the price

And all the world over each nation's the same

They've simply no notion of playing the game

They argue with umpires, they cheer when they've won

And they practice before hand which spoils all the fun

The English the English the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest

It's not that they're wicked or naturally bad

It's just that they're foreign that makes them so mad

The English are all that a nation should be

And the pride of the English are Chipper and me

The English the English the English are best

I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest

Flanders & Swann - brilliant - but their gentle humour has a barbed point

Yes,  all a bit of knock about fun. Nothing wrong with that we might chuckle. Except, except....... if one looks a little closer we have form on this in a number of areas. Our glorious National Anthem is a case in point. ”God save our gracious Queen.....” we are enjoined.........   Well, I’ll put aside my republican reservations about how in a parliamentary democracy such as ours, where the basic underlying principle is that every man and woman is supposed to be equal, yet we tolerate a national anthem that is asking a God to somehow “save the Queen”. In other words we are asking an entity (a deity) that arguably doesn’t exist to somehow preserve an entity (an hereditary monarch) that arguably shouldn’t exist in a parliamentary democracy based upon equality!  Why should we save her, I wonder? Does she need saving? Is there a shortage of Queens so we must preserve what we have for some sort of regal “rainy day”? But it doesn’t end there; unlike the EU anthem based upon  Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”,  there is nothing in our anthem of the virtues, ideals or aspirations of our country or our people.  Instead, if one reads all the verses, not just the first verse, which is the one usually sung,  it is not only to do with lauding and pouring rewards onto the preserved  monarch’s head it also has some very unpleasant words and ideals, encouraging aggression and pouring scorn and destruction on “knavish”  foreigners – notably the “rebellious Scots”:

God save our gracious Queen
Long live our noble Queen
God save the Queen
Send her victorious
Happy and glorious
Long to reign over us
God save the Queen

O Lord our God arise
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall
Confound their politics
Frustrate their knavish tricks
On Thee our hopes we fix
God save us all

Thy choicest gifts in store
On her be pleased to pour
Long may she reign
May she defend our laws
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen

Not in this land alone
But be God's mercies known
From shore to shore
Lord make the nations see
That men should brothers be

And from one family
The wide world over be.

From every latent foe
From the assassins blow
God save the Queen
O'er her thine arm extend
For Britain's sake defend
Our mother, prince, and friend
God save the Queen.

Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid
Victory bring
May he sedition hush
And like a torrent rush
Rebellious Scots to crush

God save the Queen

The undercurrent of anti-foreigner feeling is alive and well in the UK and especially so in England. The Brexit campaign brought it out into the open with a vengeance bringing a rise in hate crime, a rise in general intolerance and a suspicion of our neighbours. Watch English TV any and every week and you will not have to wait long to see a programme harking back to the World Wars – their unsubtle message invariably the same, how the good old brave and fair minded British saved the world from itself and brought  light and salvation to those poor, demented and wayward foreigners; these films and programmes will repeat time after time the message that the Frogs, the Krauts, the Wops and the Diegos are inferior, rather pathetic, not to be trusted and responsible for most of the world’s ills. Watch our football fans abroad and how each game is seen as a battle to overcome these European teams who so often are better than us – too often it brings games not only on the pitch itself but pitched battles on the streets of host cities and xenophobic headlines in the right wing press.

Punch's view of how to treat foreigners

England and the wider UK have a proud and glorious history but as a nation we are blind to our weaknesses and failings and with a misguided sense of our worth. So much of our history and how we today see ourselves is self centred. Maybe we can explain it because of our island geography – we always have been a little removed from mainland Europe, we have rarely had to suffer the invasions and the great sweeps and movements of people that most other European nations have experienced. Our island home has been both a barrier to the impact of other powers and influences but has, at the same time, given us a warped view of the outside world giving us too often an air of superiority. This is not to deny the huge contribution that Britain has made to the safety and well being of Europe through the ages  but it also hides the absolute fact that there are many parts of our history of which we should not be so proud. In short we have not always been and are not the good guys we like to believe ourselves to be.  To paraphrase Flanders and Swann’s song: “The English are noble, the English are nice, And worth any other at double the price”.......well, not always.

This unfortunate sense of superiority, even though our history records many things of which we might rightly be proud, is what underpins the Associated Press headline and our relationship with Europe in general and the EU in particular over the past 44 years of our marriage.  It has not been 44 years of wedded bliss; like it or not we have had and still have an arrogant “Me, Me, Me, self importance and ego centric attitude towards our near neighbours and assume that they must agree with us on our terms. This is not a recipe for a successful partnership of any kind where one partner has to constantly acquiesce to the other's demands, needs and desires! Maybe, if we had spent the last 44 years talking to our friends and neighbours in the EU rather than talking at  them they might just have been more willing to see the world in our terms. We have brought this catastrophe firmly upon ourselves; we might like to think that we are in charge and demanding our exit from Europe but I suspect that deep down, although we might be missed economically there will be some communal sighs of relief in Paris, Berlin and Brussels – and rightly so.

A few months ago shortly after the Brexit voter a senior politician from Europe had the temerity to suggest that any negotiations on Brexit between the EU and the UK might be conducted in French or German – after all it was we, going cap in hand, who were seeking to withdraw, from Europe. For me this seemed a perfectly reasonable idea; after all if I lived next door to a man who was not English and I wanted to ask his advice or to borrow something of importance then the least I could do, it seems to me, is try to address him in his own language. But this is England 2017 and the suggestion made by the politician simply drew a howl of protest from the tabloid press, UKIP and the delusional Tory Party; “We are English – foreigners should learn our language!” squealed the tabloids”

It speaks volumes of our relationship with and our respect for other nations when our schools and universities are struggling to teach foreign languages mainly because as a nation we, and our children, perceive it as not very useful or too difficult. In a survey done a year or two ago it was found that only 48 of Britain's 1,900 diplomats are judged to have an ‘extensive’ grip of a language, meaning they are close to communicating like a native.  Another 145 have an ‘operational’ grasp, meaning they can live a day-to-day life in the country but may struggle with technical or academic information.  Fifteen are recognised as having language ‘confidence’ – defined as being able to read road signs and book a hotel room.  But incredibly  some 1690 staff, or 90 per cent of the Foreign Diplomatic Service, have no recognised language abilities for the country to which they are posted! We lag far behind most other countries – for example in Australia 50% of their diplomatic staff abroad are local language speakers. In India, whose government recently declared France the preferred bidder over the UK to build fighter jets just one UK diplomat could speak Hindi. In Pyongyang, North Korea, five British diplomats are posted there and are encouraging the regime to drop its nuclear programme. Sadly, they must be finding this somewhat difficult since just one has a beginner’s level of Korean. A number of British embassies, including in Cuba, Egypt, Malaysia and the Philippines have no diplomats recognised as speaking the local language. There are no diplomats registered as speaking Latvian in Riga, the capital of the European Union’s fastest growing economy. There is only one Arabic-speaking diplomat registered in each of Britain’s embassies in oil-rich Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

Despite these embarrassing   figures the government, in its wisdom, decided to close down the Foreign Office Foreign language School. One assumes the reasoning behind this is that everyone else must speak English, because as everyone knows that we are the best and speaking English is the best.....it’s what “good chaps” do!

I suppose, that when one looks at the letter sent by Theresa May to trigger Article 50 and realises that it is written in English yet it is addressed to Donald Tusk who is Polish and who represents an organisation based in Brussels in Belgium it tells us all we need to know about the respect that we have for other nations, their peoples and their language. But, why worry, we are leaving Europe and going into the big wide world where presumably foreign languages don't matter(!) we are superior, everyone must respond to us and our needs, learn and use our language, see things from our point of view, and where necessary touch their forelocks because  as Flanders and Swann suggest and everyone knows, “The English, the English, the English are best”.

"Dream of things that never were......"

As the ramshackle funeral hearse that is Brexit carries the rotting corpse of what was once a respected and honourable people and wends its creaking way towards Wednesday March 29^th the UK Prime Minister Theresa May will write the letter that will trigger Article 50 and thus the formal process of the UK leaving the EU. We are witnessing the last few days of what was once a great and justifiably proud nation. On Wednesday, for reasons far more to do with sating the delusional appetites of the Tory Party who are intent upon clinging to some clapped out notion of an imperial Great Britain clothed in the Union Flag and basking in the long lost glow of a  forgotten Empire, than for any national good we are turning our backs upon our nearest friends and neighbours and “going it alone”. Like Captain Lawrence Oates that brave hero of Scott’s ill fated endeavours at the South Pole in 1912 as he stepped out into the icy wilderness, we are announcing to the rest of the world “We are just stepping outside....we might be gone for some time”.

Muddled thinking and headless chickens -  the defining  characteristics of the
whole Brexit debate debacle.

For as long as we have been members of the EU the Tory party has bickered and complained. A look at my previous blogs over the past five or six years reminds me that I have so often voiced my surprise that the Europeans have so graciously and for so long put up with us and our constant whining. Like spoiled and badly behaved children in playground we have constantly squealed that "It's not fair", that others have a bigger slice of the cake than ourselves, or that we have no friends to play with. Our near neighbours in Europe have watched like unhappy parents, embarrassed and bemused at our childish antics, and, I am sure and not a little offended, as year after year we have displayed a grudging unwillingness to put aside our misguided jingoistic belief in our self importance, our perceived natural superiority, our outdated beliefs of former greatness, and worst of all, our selfish egocentricity and plain rudeness to our friends and neighbours. England (and I choose my words carefully here) has long had a tradition of genteel politeness, of doing the right thing, of impeccable manners but in the past half century large portions of the Tory party and the right wing of society have proved themselves to be both boorish and thoroughly unpleasant individuals with regard to our friends across the Channel. The Brexit campaign has now spread their ill manners and loutish behaviour to a wider public - now Everyman can heap his scorn and venom  upon Europe and Europeans as a salve to his and our own failings and weaknesses.

As the years have passed, a largely unthinking electorate has allowed itself to be indoctrinated with spurious tales of Johnny Foreigner and his alleged evil plans to infiltrate and demean our  nation; the ready assistance of the head banging sections of the Tory party many of whom still hark back to the extremist speeches of Enoch Powell half a century ago, and more latterly the extremist support of UKIP, the right wing press, and a series of dubious political opportunist such as Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson has ensured that a culture of blame, fear and division has taken root in the national psyche. We are now, as a nation, both unwilling and indeed unable to take responsibility for our own problems and shortcomings but are quick blame others for all our failures and our ills; Europe and Europeans are intent on one thing, argue the Brexiteers, the taking over and reducing of Great Britain to a nonentity; it's all part of an evil plan, they argue, cooked up in the corridors of power in Brussels or Paris or Berlin. The golden dawn of Brexit, we are told by its promoters, will restore us to our former glory and allow us to keep out these vengeful  foreigners, bring us untold wealth, ensure that we all have jobs rather than having them robbed from us by those of a different skin or creed. Brexit has become, in the eyes of its followers, the panacea for all our perceived ills. Well, maybe, but I don’t think so.

For me, however, there is a different  and more important, more far reaching narrative - not one that defines us or Brexit in economic terms,

Jingoistic nationalism - rabble rousing

propaganda. As Joseph Goebbels said: "Say it

often enough and eventually people will

believe you". And the Brexit Homer Simpson

voter swallows the lie.

important thought these might be - but rather one that asks the questions "What are we and what ought we to be?" Throughout the Brexit debate I have never been much moved by the economic arguments that we will be better or worse off, that jobs will be more or less plentiful, that only those entitled to will be able to claim benefits and all the rest of the well publicised pros and cons of remaining or leaving Europe. I don’t dismiss these as unimportant but they signal how, as a society, we have become increasingly defined by wealth and possessions rather than high ideals and great vision. When we finally leave Europe I have absolutely no doubt that life will go on, we will adjust, some things will be worse and maybe some better; the sky, however, will not fall in. But there is something infinitely more important than economics and its associated impacts; indeed, for me it is the only thing of importance about our withdrawal from Europe. It is about what it says of us as a people. Are we a people who will work with others for the greater good; are we a people who are willing to extend our goodwill to others of any creed or colour; are we a people who see our future as positive contributing members of  the wider world? Or, are we, as Brexit defines us, a people who wish to build barriers, who wish to deny our interdependence with others, who wish to always blame others for our problems and failures, and who wish to abdicate our moral, social, economic and political responsibilities to the wider world and to our nearest neighbours for a quick buck? For me there is only one answer and it is about brotherhood, goodwill, contribution, and acknowledging that we are all human sharing the same aspirations, desires and faults. I am horrified at the ease with which this country has so easily turned the world on its head and conveniently forgotten the reasons why our fathers and grandfathers in the immediate post war period worked to establish the infant European venture and bring peace, brotherhood and no little prosperity to a continent that for centuries had been riven with distrust, division and war. We should be both ashamed and alarmed at the ease with which we have walked away from our responsibilities to both our neighbours and ourselves.

David Davis, Theresa May, the corpse of Enoch Powell (the

Tory MP who half a century ago prophesied "rivers of blood"

if immigration continued and whose ideas are alive and well

in Tory mentality), and Boris Johnson.

The whole sorry shambles is best summed up by American political satirist and pundit Patrick O’Rourke who describes Brexit and its American counterpart, the election of Donald Trump as President, as “self criticising exercises”. The term is that used by US security forces when discussing a terrorist bomb maker who, in constructing the bomb, blows him or herself up by accident. It is apposite for we are indeed manufacturing an unconsidered and unintended national suicide, constructing a bomb which may well devour us. Brexit, when it finally comes, may or may not be an economic catastrophe but it will certainly be disaster in more important ways - namely that we will have lost a major part of our very humanity and the right to call ourselves respected citizens of the world. And as we put the last wires in place, and even at this late hour, we are too stupid to recognise that fact. President John Kennedy once remarked that “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it” – the errors in our national thinking have been consistently exposed in the months since the Brexit vote and still the Tory Party and the extremists in power refuse to acknowledge the flaws in their reasoning and correct the error by changing course. But instead, like Patrck O’Rourke’s metaphorical bomb maker, they are as characters in a macabre Morecambe and Wise comedy sketch gleeful, insanity gleaming from their swivel eyes, as they connect all the wrong wires to all the wrong terminals!

Beethoven

So on Wednesday I intend to redress the balance just a little – at least in my own home, and especially in my office where I sit writing this blog. It will not stop Theresa May signing the Article 50 letter nor it will cause some great and mighty social media campaign to suddenly thwart Brexit; neither will it stop all those delusional politicians and voters who seem so keen to renege on our political, economic, social and moral responsibilities. It will, however, for about 25 minutes make me feel better because it will remind me that I am human and humans, unlike most of the animal kingdom, have ideals, beliefs, hopes and dreams. They have  feelings of responsibility towards each other, a moral context in which they operate and above all a spirit that encompasses the ability to act generously, humanly, sympathetically and justly. I will endeavour to rekindle a little of this lost generosity of spirit that the followers of Brexit have brought to my country...... and at the same time I will remind myself of what we might be and  perhaps can be. Rather than gnashing my teeth or otherwise showing my anger or distress as Theresa May signs the letter effectively making us just a little less human and taking us further from our European friends and neighbours I will instead listen to some music to remind me of more important values. Instead of trade deals, reducing immigration, getting rid of the alleged benefits scroungers, or controlling our borders I will listen to a work that demands that we extend the hand of friendship to our fellow man and woman and that we join all nations in celebration of our common humanity.

Schiller

The piece I will enjoy is not just any music but one of the very great pieces of the world that defines us as humans. Some might argue that it is the greatest musical work every written and whilst I might challenge that assessment I have no hesitation in saying that this work is undoubtedly one of mankind’s two or three defining works of  western art and culture and in my ideal world on Wednesday March 29^th every radio station across the nation, every CD player, every digital gizmo would sound out this piece. Every choir, orchestra and flashmob would get together to sing it out so that we might all be reminded of what and who we are – first and foremost humans who must live as brothers and sisters and not pawns in  grubby deals to be done to satisfy the accountant or the banker or the little Englanders who would close us off from the world and the rest of mankind. It is a work that was written as the modern world slowly emerged in the early years of the nineteenth century. It is a work that was considered at the time to be revolutionary both in its musical format and in its inspiration. It is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, or more precisely, the final movement from that mighty and wonderful work. 

The last movement is choral and its glorious words and music are without doubt some of the most inspirational, powerful and sublime ever written. It is not without reason that it is the anthem of the Council of Europe nor is it without reason that it is frequently used in times of great anxiety or mourning such as in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 for it is about brotherhood, friendship, empathy, love of our neighbour and love of all mankind no matter what his creed or colour. It is, in short, all that Brexit is not; where Brexit seeks to divide and despise the final movement of the Ninth seeks unite in love.

"Ode to Joy" The Final Movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony: The Choral

Beethoven took the words of his countryman the German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller’s mighty poem Ode to Joy and set them to his glorious music. To hear the work is not just to hear great music it is to be forcibly reminded what it is to be human. It speaks of our brotherhood of humanity rather than the cynicism, pettiness and scepticism of those whose horizons are limited; it speaks of aspirations great ideals and not of vilification and grubby motive. It reminds us, and anticipates John F Kennedy’s words of a century and a half later when he told his fellow countrymen: “This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor…….Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.” Oh, that this quote was not broadcast far and wide and rammed down the throats of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and the rest in the run up to the Referendum! But try explaining those concepts to the average Daily Mail reader or the unthinking nodding donkeys who, Homer Simpson like, were looking for an easy victim to blame for their ills and problems  and so voted for Brexit. Try explaining humanitarian ideals or concepts such as ethical action to  the delusional Tory, or those mindless right wing UKIP leaders Paul Nuttall and Nigel Farage, or political opportunist Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Liam Fox or David Davis; the effort will undoubtedly prove to you once and for all that Napoleon was on to something when he noted that “In politics stupidity is not a handicap”. So on Wednesday I will sit quietly - and maybe  a little sadly - and listen to Beethoven and Schiller's great words and music to endeavour to refresh my belief in the ultimate goodness of man:

Ode To Joy

O friends, no more of these sounds!
Let us sing more cheerful songs,
More songs full of joy!
Joy!
Joy!
Joy, bright spark of divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire-inspired we tread
Within thy sanctuary.

Thy magic power re-unites
All that custom has divided,
All men become brothers,
Under the sway of thy gentle wings.
Whoever has created
An abiding friendship,
Or has won
A true and loving wife,
All who can call at least one soul theirs,
Join our song of praise;
But those who cannot must creep tearfully
Away from our circle.
All creatures drink of joy
At nature’s breast.
Just and unjust
Alike taste of her gift;
She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine,
A tried friend to the end.
Even the worm can feel contentment,
And the cherub stands before God!
Gladly, like the heavenly bodies
Which He sent on their courses
Through the splendor of the firmament;
Thus, brothers, you should run your race,
Like a hero going to victory!
You millions, I embrace you.
This kiss is for all the world!
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving father.

Do you fall in worship, you millions?
World, do you know your creator?
Seek Him in the heavens;
Above the stars must he dwell.

All men become brothers.......... But those who cannot must creep tearfully, Away from our circle...... You millions, I embrace you.......This kiss is for all the world.....Brothers, above the starry canopy......There must dwell a loving father”: not much there about controlling borders, building Trump like Mexican walls or turning away those in need. Indeed Schilller actually says those who cannot be brothers must “creep tearfully away from our circle”. Sounds to me a lot like he is describing our Little Englander Brexiters, those who would make us Europe’s “Billy no mates”!

The Daily Mail will write any spurious

nonsense to drum up sales and pour scorn on

Europe. The really worrying thing is

that more people read the Mail than any

other paper. That fact alone tells you all you

need to know about the intellect and 

mindset of 2017 England

The words of Schiller’s great poem may seem old fashioned today but in being so they remind us of where our priorities should lie; they speak of higher things than trade deals or controlling borders; they speak of fairness and worthy action rather than injustice or jingoistic nationalism; they speak of the joy in and of all humanity not the funereal cynical drum beat of the Brexiter. Almost half a century ago John Lennon wrote in his song Imagine: “You may say I’m a dreamer, But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world can live as one.....” he wrote; well we all need dreams and ideals, something to aim for something higher than ourselves and in a western world obsessed with itself, with its selfies and its “me, me me” outlook on life especially so. So, tomorrow I will  dream a little. I will listen to Beethoven’s mighty music and Schiller’s great words and dream of what we might be not what, sadly, we in the UK have become. And as I listen and dream I will think of another comment by John F Kennedy: “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

The Brexit negotiators plunging the depths

“Dream of things that never were”.......dream not of Brexit and its follower and their Homer Simpson culture of blame, vilification, or of selfish obsessions; dream not of pushing our would be friends or those in need away; dream not of making grubby Trump like Brexit "deals" or of using people as bargaining pawns in the Brexit negotiations; dream not of the false god of economics and the grasping hands of the me, me, me society which demands more, more, more at whatever the cost to our very humanity. No, listen......... and "dream of things that never were" ...........and dream of a better time and place than March 29th 2017 Britain.

Contempt for what you have.

Hannah Arendt

Just over 40 years ago, German political scientist and philosopher the late Hannah Arendt wrote: "Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: 'Things must change—no matter how, Anything is better than what we have.'Totalitarian rulers organise this kind of mass sentiment, and by organisng it articulate it, and by articulating it make the people somehow love it....... Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another". As a German born Jew who had grown up as Hitler rose to power and had fled the persecution of the 1930s and the holocaust war years she knew what she was talking about.

Through the 1930s and into the war years Arendt watched as Hitler and other fascist leaders moulded public opinion by infiltrating the free press, setting up ministries of propaganda and ultimately by the use of physical violence via groups like the fascist blackshirts or brownshirts against those who disagreed or challenged their ideas. The experience encouraged Arendt to write in 1974   “.....the moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please”.

Arnedt was not wrong in her analysis and it would certainly have worried her greatly that we stand today in 2017 at a point where we are witnessing in the UK, the USA and in some other European states – most notably the Netherlands and France – a repeat of what occurred in the interwar years.

Not 1930's Nazi Germany but the UK

in 2016

What we now glibly term the post truth era or the age of alternative facts hides a sinister trend on both sides of the Atlantic. The lambasting by Donald Trump of the media, the falsehoods put out by the Brexit campaign in the run up to the Referendum, the scorn and vitriol poured upon the judiciary by the right wing press in this country, the rise in hate crime and rampant nationalism are all reminiscent of pre-war times.  And what pulls all this together are Arnedt’s initial points – namely that “Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: ‘Things must change—no matter how, Anything is better than what we have.”  This was precisely the message hammered home by Trump in his campaign and it was the same message put out in the UK by Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and the rest: "we have 'American carnage' cries Trump or we are subject to 'faceless  politicians in Brussels' say Brexiteers - we must be free of it, anything is better than this". The same message is now being broadcast increasingly loudly by Marine le Pen in France and by Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. Against this back drop, just as Arnedt had witnessed in her youth in Nazi Germany and later recorded we are increasingly seeing in the UK and the USA and elsewhere the " [organising] of mass sentiment, and its articulation so that the people love it."

A seminal book -without doubt

one of the creators of the modern world

Richard Hoggart the author of the seminal work  “The Uses of Literacy”, an in depth study of the impact and use of mass media, would, too, have recognised this trend and been appalled. “‘We all need to remember, every day more and more, that in the last resort there is no such thing as the ‘common man’” he  wrote  in his book published seven years before the birth of Nigel Farage. “If we do not, we may in the end have allowed individual decision to slip away in our dutiful democratic identification of ourselves with a hypothetical figure whose main value is to those who will mislead us.” Hoggart, who died in 2014, at the age of 95, spent his working life urging us to watch out for men such as Farage and Donald Trump; “mass persuaders”, Hoggart called them, “whose cynicism and self-interest knew no bounds”. Hoggart, like Arnedt would have recognized instantly how those who follow the doctrine of the Trumps, the Farage’s, the Johnson’s and the Gove’s and who voted for them and their “Make America great again” or “Give us back control of our borders”  emotional propaganda – have been brain washed and misled; “deprived”, as Arnedt suggests, “of their capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please”.

Finally, Arendt suggested another dimension to this trend. "Since these mass persuaders tell us that things must change and must get better" she argued "the law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. But if you want something better, and better, and better, then you potentially lose the inherent  good in what you already have. The good is increasingly sidelined and perhaps no longer even being measured."  In short we  forget what it was like to not have the very goods and benefits that we today enjoy: Brexiteers tells us that things are so dreadful as members of the EU that we must leave and take back control; Trump tells the citizens of the USA their land is filled with “carnage” and they must make America great again. Professor Tony Judt in his “Ill Fares the Land” , however, is clear – we have, he suggests, reached a paradox and have forgotten why we wanted these beneficial things in the first place. The EU was established to bring peace and prosperity to a continent ravaged for centuries by wars; the welfare state across the world introduced so that citizens no longer had to struggle the deprivations of poverty, ill health, lack of education or insecurity; the great talismen of modern times: free education, equality before the law, human rights, equality of pay, gender and the rest, and the great freedoms such as that for religion or political belief were put in place for the equal benefit of all men and women. True, everything was not and is not perfect, things can always improve but ask someone who grew up in the 1930s or before and who fought for these things that we take so much for granted today and they will look at you askance  tell you that to go back to those far off days would be a very bad idea indeed.

Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts in the 1930s - with Brexit

and Trump, le Pen and Wilders we are close to a return

to this madness.

But, today, as Judt and Arendt suggest, we have forgotten just why we wanted these benefits in the first place; we have lost the ability recognise and to measure “the good” which we have, as we blindly follow the mantra of Trump and Brexit that things are so terrible  that  we must dismantle the very institutions and beliefs that gave us this paradise in the first place. We continually look for this mythical place where the grass is greener and in doing so neglect and increasingly despise that which we have. Trump tells Americans that Obamacare is to be ditched, that the public schools are to be privatised or that walls are to be built to keep out foreigners and millions cheer; Brexit politicians tell us that we must get rid of the Human Rights Act, privatise our NHS and set ourselves free from the constraints of Europe and throughout the land their unthinking acolytes  think  it sounds wonderful, the panacea for all life's ills. As nationalistic alarm bells ring across the free world, just as they did in the 1930s, we should all be very afraid. All those who march to the tune of Donald Trump or the Brexit politicians and who now mindlessly regurgitate their propaganda of isolationism, nationalism and extremism  are, as Arendt suggests, sad, desperate and dangerous cogs in a machine where “....totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.” 

At the end of last week ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair pessimistically, and for me terrifyingly, said, when making a speech about the Brexit situation "In the long term, this is essentially [about] values: liberty, democracy, the rule of law. As the world changes and opens up across boundaries of nation and culture, which values will govern the 21st Century?.... The one incontrovertible characteristic of politics today is its propensity for revolt… Today, for the first time in my adult life, it is not clear that the resolution of this question about liberty, democracy and the rule of law will be benign."  Quite; if you are not worried then you  should be.

Quietly sipping our beer whilst the world teeters on the edge of dark times.

Travel, it is often said, broadens the mind. I’m sure that it does – the opportunity to visit other places, see other people who may have very different lives from one’s own or learn about other cultures seems to me to be a wonderful thing whether it be to see how people in other parts of one’s own country live or in the wider world. But over the last few days I have come to another understanding; namely that travel and seeing the wider world also allows us to assess and reflect upon our own place in the great scheme of things.

Pat and I have just returned from a wonderful week away in Lanzarote. We have increasingly become creatures of habit, staying at the same hotel each year and enjoying the sun and the chilled out life style of this lovely volcanic island. This year was especially pleasant – the sun never stopped shining and it seemed to us that the hotel excelled itself. Today, as I sit in my office watching the sleet fall from the grey winter East Midland’s sky Lanzarote seems a very long way away!

A quiet drink under a setting sun

Each year when we visit Lanzarote it is not long before I say, at some point, that the hotel and indeed the island itself must be very glad of the English and German pension funds. At this time of year, wherever one walks the tourists are, like Pat and I, very much senior citizens from northern Europe: Dutch, Scandinavians, French but above all Germans and English. The work and business provided by this huge influx of older people all with their pension pots must be a very real and important boon to the island’s economy and employment situation during these off season months.

It was with this thought in mind that I sat one evening as the sun was setting on the hotel’s bar terrace enjoying a cold beer and skimming thought the news from the UK and wider world on my smartphone. I read of the latest bizarre and worrying news coming out of Washington and the frightening machinations of President Trump but that paled rather into insignificance (no mean feat!) as I read, mouth agape, at the latest actions of the UK government and the wider politicians at Westminster. As the UK Brexit machinery rumbles on, and the positions harden I read that, amongst many other indefensible things, the government has decided to abandon the promised and agreed decision of a few months ago to take in some 3000 unaccompanied refugee children – children that everyone agrees are amongst the most vulnerable in the world. To date some 350 have been taken in and the scheme - known as the Dubs Amendment after its author Lord Alfred Dubs – is to be scaled down and closed. Lord Dubs was himself a child refugee and came to Britain as one of the Jewish children fleeing Nazi persecution on the famed Kindertransport when Britain took in some 10000 such children in the months leading up to the second world war. The reasons given for this scaling back seemed to be threefold: that we could not afford to take in too many, that if we did take them in then this would encourage more to come, and that as a nation we are already giving large amounts of money in various aid budgets to help with the wider refugee situation.

Lord Alf Dubs stands in the Calais refugee camp

As I read this, and of the many people such as the Archbishop of Canterbury who had protested at this decision by government I sadly looked around me at the other tables where there sat people like me enjoying their evening beer under a golden sunset; each of us well enough off to be able to do this. Whatever, the government might like to tell us for its own devious devices we in the UK are one of the richest nations by far on the face of the planet. Earlier that day I had read in my copy of the digital Guardian that sales of new cars in the UK is at a record high and as I thought about that I tried vainly to make sense of the claim that the cost to the nation of the Dub’s amendment made it worthy of scrapping. In the end, and as always, it is all about choices and as each year passes I am convinced more and more that the old adage is true: “Money has the loudest voice but the deafest ears.” 

But, of course, it is not only all about money. That is a convenient excuse. We pay a few billion into the fund for assisting those people from war torn countries – countries in the middle east that are war torn in some large measure because of our actions there – and somehow this salves our national or governmental conscience. On the same day that I read this news of the scrapping of the Dubs Amendment I also noted that many of the tabloids didn’t report it at all – far more important to them was the death of the socialite, celebrity and reality TV star Tara Palmer Tomkinson. Yet only as few months ago when child refugees were being drowned as they tried to cross the Mediterranean it was the tabloids who produced the heart rending photographs of these distressed children; tabloid campaigns were set up and social media sites fed on the emotional tales that the tabloids. But no more. The bandwagon has moved on’ Distressed child refugees no longer sells newspapers, the media – both social and news – now feeds the Brexit frenzy and the Brexit reading populace cry  “keep out the foreigners, control our borders, cut immigration”. Now tabloid readers would much rather learn about the unfortunate death of a dubious socialite known for her bizarre lifestyle and fashion comments than it would about the rights and wrongs of a very real world crisis.

The scrapping of the Dubs Amendment is undoubtedly part of the sea change that we have seen in the UK, America and the wider world which has brought the growth of jingoistic nationalism, racism and xenophobia. As the Conservative government force through the Brexit legislation they know that this is their hour; “the people have voted for Brexit” so Theresa May tells us and “we must take back control of our borders”. Even the Labour Party has given in to the logic and provides no form of opposition. On the same day that the scrapping of the Dubbs amendment was quietly and surreptitiously slipped into government policy, Parliament voted by large majority to accept the government’s plans for the UK leaving the EU; MPs who only a few months before were strongly anti Brexit and campaigned actively for the nation to remain as part of the European Union tossed their beliefs to one side, and voted with the government. Suddenly what only a few months ago was a huge majority of MPs who supported the UK remaining in Europe has become a majority voting for us to leave. Only a very few stood by their principles and voted against; clearly they all had one eye on their Parliamentary and Ministerial salaries, fearing defeat at the next election.  As I say, “Money has the loudest voice but the deafest ears.”

Nicholas Winton shortly before his death

And, against that back drop, that means that we exclude any easy targets like child refugees – they come penniless, with no useful skills, utterly dependent upon our munificence; in other words they are a financial liability, and to add to their ills they are not white Anglo-Saxon, speak a different language and worst of all, it seems, may not be Christians. In the Gradgrind, Scrooge like world of 21^st century Brexit England that is one step too far: Charles Dickens writing a century and a half ago would have recognised the landscape, he condemned it so many times and it is now back to haunt us. The government know that in reality they are safe from real criticism; Mr & Mrs Joe Public like the idea of helping those in need as long as those in need as long as it is only tweeting, putting photographs of Facebook or maybe sending a few pounds to charity – in other words much the same stance as the UK government. “But”, say Joe Public and Theresa May, “don’t come to live next door to me, stay in your own back yard”. That is the long and short of it.

This situation is well illustrated when one examines the position of Theresa May, our Prime Minister. As an MP May represents Maidenhead in the Thames Valley – her constituency has not taken one single child refugee of the 350 so far taken in by the now defunct Dubs Amendment. Yet, Maidenhead and the surrounding area is one of the very richest regions in the UK. It beggars belief that this area, a place of the country’s highest property values, of high end motor cars, of the country’s highest per capita income, and of the preferred place of residence of many or most of the country’s celebrities and captains of commerce, business cannot afford to take in just one child refugee. That very fact should make Theresa May and the other good burghers of Maidenhead and district bow their heads in shame.

But it doesn’t. Let us take the story a little further, for the depths to which those in power will now stoop knows no bounds.

Lord Alfred Dubs came to the UK on the Kindertransport in the months leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939. He was born a Prague and came together with 668 other similar children from largely Jewish backgrounds. The transportation upon which he came was the result of the work, often dangerous in the circumstances, of a young English stockbroker Nicholas Winton. Winton’s work lay largely hidden - he never spoke of it - until relatively recent times but eventually it was revealed and he became known as the English Oskar Schindler for his role in saving  so many threatened children. Dubs was one of those children. When he came to England Dubs grew up, had a successful career and became a Labour MP and minister. He now sits in the House of Lords and his Amendment, to assist the bringing of young refuges from the middle east, must have seemed to him to be absolutely right; perhaps he was trying to repay the huge debt that he himself had enjoyed.

The statue of Nicholas Winton at Prague

railway station.

Nicholas Winton, the brave humanitarian, who gave Dubs and 668 others their chance of life died in 2015 aged 105. He lived in Theresa May’s own constituency at Maidenhead. When his role in the Kindertransport became known he received numerous accolades: knighted by the Queen for "services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia". He received the highest award that can be given in Czechoslovakia, the Order of the White Lion.  He received the freedom of the City of London and many other awards from various bodies. In September 2010, a statue of Winton was unveiled at Maidenhead railway station by Theresa May, his local MP depicting Winton sitting on a bench and reading a book and at Liverpool Street Station in London and at the main station in Prague there are  statues depicting Jewish refugee children – the one in Prague shows Winton carrying a child.

On Winton’s death in 2015 Theresa May spoke at his memorial service. She was the local MP, and a future PM – this was too good a photo opportunity to miss. Her speech was glowing in its tributes: Winton she told the mourners was  ‘....an enduring example of the difference that good people can make even in the darkest of times.......I hope that his life will serve as an inspiration for us all … and encourage us to do the right thing.’  

Indeed. Good people can make a difference. In dark times it is important that we all step up to the mark and make a difference. We should indeed all be inspired to do the right thing. Winton’s daughter, following the scrapping of the Dub’s Amendment this week wrote an open letter to Theresa May reminding the PM of her words at Winton’s memorial service: “As the world once again teeters on the edge of dark times, I ask you to remember those words...... Don’t sit there wringing your hands. My father had 5,000 children on his list to rescue and he managed to save 669. In his scheme of things he failed, but on the other hand there are 669 children who were saved and about 6,000 people alive today because he did that........He was the kind of person who, once he made up his mind that something was right and needed doing, wasn’t going to be put off. He was only 29 at the time, but nevertheless had that kind of stubborn certainty. He found likeminded people, got them on board, and between them they moved mountains......”

Theresa May talks of the right thing to do at Nicholas Winton's

memorial service - except she seems to have forgotten

what she said or how to do it.

Theresa May has yet to reply or comment in any way. I suspect she knows that she has been rumbled. But I also suspect that she doesn’t much care – in wealthy Maidenhead her Parliamentary seat is safe and against the political backdrop of Brexit Britain she appears impregnable; the racist, xenophobic, flag waving jingoistic Brexit mob are calling the shots. The moral high ground has been lost and forgotten.... the “enduring example that good people can make even in the darkest of times....... which serve as an inspiration to us all...... encouraging us to do the right thing....” seems to have slipped from May’s memory or her party’s manifesto. It is a sad sign of the times in which we live that our PM, herself the daughter of a vicar as she often likes to remind us, seems unable to implement in any meaningful, way the  righteous actions or the aspirations that motivated the Good Samaritan in the country that she is now responsible for.

So, as I sat, at the end of a glorious day, sipping my beer on the bar terrace and watching the sun set over the Atlantic I looked at the other guests, all of us comfortably off, perhaps self satisfied and wondered just what kind of people we in the UK are becoming. What sort of people can spend more on motor cars than ever before but can still be unprepared to take in a few vulnerable people? What sort of people are we that we conveniently forget our previous beliefs and obligations as we have done with the Dubs Amendment? What sort of people are we that we can allow our politicians to forget the obligations that they have made on our behalf? What sort of people are we that can prefer to read about the unfortunate, maybe untimely death of a rich socialite rather than of the great issues facing mankind? What sort of people are we that we can allow our Prime Minister to conveniently “forget” the words that she uttered in a memorial service only few months ago?

And as I took another sip of my beer I sadly thought that the Good Samaritan would get short shrift in 21^st century Brexit England. He would fail and be mocked on every count. The tabloids and social media would have a field day. Brexit England clearly does not “do” helping others in need. It does not “do”, as the Samaritan did, helping those of a different culture or nationality. It does not “do” taking hard actions in dangerous situations as the Samaritan did – it was easier to close the Dobbs Amendment down, it might lead to more benefit scroungers arriving at our rail terminals. It does not “do” meeting our obligations whatever the  cost – unlike the Samaritan who told the innkeeper to spend whatever he needed to care for the injured man and the Samaritan would repay on his return. No, should the Good Samaritan raise his head in Brexit Britain the Daily Mail, Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids and the right wing press would soon spot him as the left wing liberal that he is; they would soon have him in their sights for trafficking benefit scroungers or helping health tourists take advantage of our NHS.

The view from our hotel balcony -  a paradise but only a few hundred miles from where refugees are fleeing

from war torn countries. And our government seems keen to bury its head in the sand and renege on its responsibilities.

And as I sipped my beer under a cloudless evening sky another thought occurred. Less than a hundred miles across the ocean from where I sat on the bar terrace lies north Africa and beyond that the thousands of miles from whence many of these refugees are increasingly coming. At the moment it is war that is largely displacing these people but increasingly other factors – climate change, employment, the desire for a better life – are swelling the numbers. And we in northern Europe sit quietly and sip our beers, somehow believe that it will all go away and that we can, Canute like, halt the swelling tide. Does Theresa May and her Brexit followers seriously think that Little England can, in this global world somehow remove itself from this great and increasing movement of peoples. To believe so is a nonsense. We have to learn to live with it, manage it and above all do the right thing. Whatever Theresa May, Brexit or Donald Trump may think we in northern Europe and the USA will have to learn some very hard lessons; our pension pots, our new cars, our glitzy shopping malls and our spend, spend, spend mentality will not sustain us. The world and the world order is, in my view, entering a new phase. May’s closing the door to a few vulnerable children, Trump building his wall and imposing travel bans at his borders, the UK’s increasingly volatile and vindictive anti immigrant rhetoric will simply exacerbate the situation and show us up for what we are – mean minded, self interested and prejudiced. But, just possibly facing the hard questions and ultimately doing the right thing might just enable a better, more cohesive, more equal world to grow. Given the trenchant prejudices and lack of moral compass prevalent in Brexit England, however, I don’t hold out much hope; as I have noted increasingly in blogs over the past year or two both the UK and the USA seem no longer capable of even asking the question is it right or is it good or is it just or is it decent let alone framing an answer to these moral considerations. The result of that inability is witnessed in the current leadership of these two nations: Trump, the Republican Party and Brexit Britain led by an inept government - all of them incapable of distinguishing  courses of action that are not only in the best interests of our nations and the wider world but are also just and morally acceptable.