No sooner had I written about Brexit and lauded a Guardian Weekly article by Fintan O’Toole, than I opened my next edition of the same magazine and found another article by the same guy on the same subject, equally brilliant and thought provoking.
The central claim of the article is that Brexit is not really about Europe at all, but Britain's (and predominantly England’s) reckoning with itself. Europe is just the catalyst for that reckoning.
He makes a brilliant comparison between the recent events in parliament to the scene in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where the dodo organizes something called a caucus-race. All the characters have descended into a vale of tears, and are urged to try to dry out by running around aimlessly in a race with no rules. After a while, the dodo cries out that the race is over, at which point everyone asks him “But who has won?”
The story also reminds me of a game that panellists play each week on a British radio show called “I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue”; amazingly, the show is still running according to Wikipedia. In that game the panellists shout out London Underground stations until one of them closes the game with the station Mornington Crescent. Those not in the know try to work out the rules of the game, whether a station needs to be connected to the one before by line or geography or alphabet or in some other way, but the truth is that there are no such rules, the stations are just chosen at random. This is a lovely example of British humour.
O’Toole finds the machinations of the British establishment over Brexit in the Dodo game. Everyone is running around, displaying enormous passion but little logic beyond a competitive hatred of the other participants, and with little prospect of a resolution. When Theresa May’s deal was roundly rejected, to the great joy of many players, one newspaper coined the term “Brextinct”, just like the dodo itself. But the reality is that the game has no real end and certainly no winner.
O’Toole claims that the root cause for all this is that Brexit is not really about Europe at all and hence won’t be resolved simply within the context of the debate about Europe. The debate is about Britain itself, the sort of country it wants to be now that it is growing up.
O’Toole quotes various unresolved questions within Britain as having been left to fester and collectively led to dysfunction. He mentions the precarious balancing act of the union of four (well, three and a half) countries, the regional inequalities epitomised by the financial City of London, resentment of immigrants, and the hollowing out and consequent incompetence of the ruling class. He could have added the royals, the Church of England, the relationship with the US, residual colonial attitudes, hangups about sex and many other factors.
I loved the analogy and analysis, but then I wondered how unique it is to England. The Irish have just as long a list themselves, starting with partition, the Church, alcohol, petty corruption as a norm, and the attitude to the English. The US has race (including native Americans, the true elephant in the room), militarism, social issues including abortion, and immigration.
Most nations have a long list of unresolved undiscussables. What may be unique to England, for now, is the presence of the catalyst, in the form of the EU. It may be only a catalyst rather than a root cause, but without a catalyst there is at least uneasy stability.
Wondering about how undiscussables work, I recalled another Brexit article from a couple of months ago, by Bagehot in the Economist. His diagnosis for the sorry state of the UK (including not just the Brexit mess but the general incompetence of current leaders), was that the establishment had fractured.
Bagehot tried to define what an establishment is. So does Wikipedia, but I found their attempt rather technical. I prefer something like an informal or even unconscious network of people who define and police a set of norms and boundaries for a society.
It is easier to see who constitutes the establishment. In the UK, it includes senior civil servants, royals and advisors, judges, blue chip business leaders, the BBC, Christian Church leaders, university academics and deans, and the military. For a time trade union leaders were reluctantly included. The list is similar in most counties but the balance is different. The series The Crown, among other wonders, beautifully depicted the British establishment of the post war era.
An establishment is self-serving. It is usually reactionary, and it wants to maintain its privileges and preserve unequal opportunities for its children. The opera still gets subsidies; public schools still enjoy charitable status; offshore tax clampdowns are limited.
But it can also be argued that many establishments are a net positive, when respectful of institutions and offering some openness. A society can more easily progress when the boundaries are known and stable. A good establishment is patient, thinks long-term, and is not too showy or arrogant. When disruptions come along, an establishment shows tolerance until an invisible line is crossed, at which point ranks are closed and power wielded.
Essentially there is a grand unwritten unconscious deal between the establishment and the public. We’ll let you stay in charge while we believe you have our back and you deliver benefits to us. Singapore, Dubai and China all work this way.
Often, the very things that define the boundaries set by an establishment are the undiscussables. You can also characterise them as the too difficult column. An establishment can allow change, but not too much too fast and not without lots of stabilisers and consideration of unintended consequences. As a result, some issues are parked, but can explode should a catalyst arrive or should the establishment splinter.
Bagehot argues, with merit, that this splintering has happened in the UK. Some trends, usually good trends, make holding an establishment together harder, such as social media, globalisation, and better education. Bagehot does not agree with me, but I think the UK establishment committed an own goal under Thatcher in the 1980’s. One part got greedy and has remained greedy since, copying the US. Another part has lost respect for that part. The contract with the people has broken down. And when things like Brexit come along, the ranks don’t close like they used to.
Considering this helped me to understand what an establishment is, how it works, and how it can be good or bad. The Downton Abbey establishment of Victorian England was hopelessly inequitable, but enabled progress overall. The establishment in Pakistan, dominated by the military and fear of India, has held the nation back. The collapse of the establishment in Venezuela has led to awful suffering. The one in China, post Deng, has enabled the historic economic and social progress, but at the expense of building up undiscussables that will explode one day.
So thank you Bagehot and thanks again to Fintan O’Toole. It is good to be reminded that sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good. The world has made fantastic progress over the last 75 years, even if the cost has been some undiscussables. Establishments have even carefully moved on some of those, such as acceptance of homosexuality, even in Ireland. Reactionaries have their place.
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