The New European has published an article by Prof Nicholas Boyle, entitled: “The problem with the English: England doesn’t want to be just another member of a team”. It has a certain loftily disdainful style that may grate with some, but which I appreciated. Colourfully entertaining articles are generally much more fun to read than dully conservative ones. If that doesn’t work for you, ignore it. I’d also ask you to ignore the digs at some parts of the UK.
Underneath the various style points lies a key insight: that Britain voted to leave the EU because the British in general and the English in particular do not accept that Britain is just another geographically circumscribed unit in a world that is steered by others larger and more important that it is. He declares:
“For the English, the United Kingdom occupies the psychic space once filled by the empire: it is the last guarantor of their characterlessness, it is the phantom which in the English mind substitutes for the England which the English will not acknowledge is their only home. They will not acknowledge it lest they become just another nation like everybody else, with a specific, limited identity, a specific history, neither specially honourable nor specially dishonourable, with limited weight, limited resources, and limited importance in the world now that their empire is no more.”
Prof Boyle is not kind about the failure of the British (in his view specifically the English) to accept this, describing our not doing as “narcissism”, “psychosis”, “delusion”, “collective mental breakdown”, the “shunning” of an “adult political identity”, “self-deception”, “disrespectful”, a “failure of Vergangenheitsbewältigung”. He hopes that one day we might recover and “perhaps then, with their psychosis healed, the English will apply to rejoin the EU.”
I think he’s absolutely right to regard this way of thinking as a key reason the UK voted to Leave. For an important set of voters, how they viewed this matter was exactly aligned with how they voted. We see the same notion in play pre- and post-Brexit. Those who asked us to Remain said if we left we would be bullied by larger parties. The EU would refuse to deal with us. Other countries would have no interest in our trade other than as a way into the EU. International capital would withdraw. We would be humiliated, shown up for the modestly-appointed country we truly are. The talk of Brexiteers of going out into the world, making new trade deals, building new alliances, asserting Britain’s role anew on the global stage, finding out “what Britain did next” was mocked as delusions of grandeur.
Since the vote many of those that favoured remaining urge us to be “realistic” in accepting that we have much the weaker hand, that the EU will have to be seen to punish us and that we depend on their good will and fraternal feeling that that punishment will be light. We are incessantly told that countries such as Australia will not be interested in making any trade agreement with us if that disappoints the EU. We are warned against seeking a deal with the US because it’s bound to be one-sided and everyone knows that we will be “desperate”. The Economist continued the theme this week, with its cartoon depicting Theresa May as a naïve arm-wrestler enormously over-matched by her opponents.
The Remain side lost, as much as anything, precisely for the reason Prof Boyle puts his finger on: the British don’t accept that characterisation of the situation. But the huge, fundamental, epoch-defining error of Prof Boyle’s article is that he thinks we ought to accept that.
Why should we? On global power rankings, the UK is somewhere between the second and sixth most powerful country in the world. For example, European Geostrategy’s “Audit of major powers” places the UK comfortably second in the world, the only “global power” apart from the US (France, China, and Russia are the next three, all with “regional power” status). (Those favouring a new post-Brexit partnership with Canada and Australia might note that the three of us together would have a power of around 70 per cent of the US’). We have the world’s third largest military budget, behind the US and China but comfortably ahead of Russia, France or India. In 2016 we were the fifth largest economy in the world, and set to overtake Germany (currently fourth) in the mid-2020s.
Britain is not the US. Neither are we a serious challenger to the US. Dropping from being the world’s dominant power in the early twentieth century to being decisively not dominant has indeed involved some psychological adjustment. But there is a lot in between being No. 1 and being no-one. We do not “have to accept” that we are small and irrelevant and cannot have a global role. If we cannot have a global role, no-one other than the US can, and the US doesn’t want to do everything and the US isn’t always right. And Britain’s relative power isn’t going ever-downwards. In recent decades it has, if anything, gone up — particularly as Russia’s has declined.
The world needs our input today. Our advocacy of free trade. Our concept of liberal democracy — different from that of the Americans or Europeans. Our ambition and energy. Our craftiness and cunning. Our ability to calm things down with subtle diplomacy or to stir things up when others have surrendered to events. Britain’s race is not yet run – not remotely. Prof Boyle is right: we don’t accept that. And nor should we.