Happy holidays. Here’s to Brexit

In my days at the Telegraph an esteemed colleague – now editing a national newspaper – used to put his head in his hands regularly throughout the summer holiday season when confronted by the latest offerings from the comment desk which I, theoretically at least, oversaw. “Oh no, not another what I did on my holidays column,” he would cry, sometimes adding a swear word or two. Yes, I would respond glumly. One of our columnists is offering another “what I did on my holidays pieces.”

Columnists, of all the journalistic sub-species, are prone thinking they can get away with turning two weeks in a deserted part of Tuscany into an extended meditative essay on the condition of Italy, as revealed to them by five minutes spent watching the evening local news about a strike by binmen in Florence, and ten minutes garbled conversation about the European Union with the nice man running his own organic olive oil enterprise and charging us idiot Brits (under the banner of artisan individuality), double what we pay for the same stuff in our local Tesco. We hacks when abroad are shameless. We sniff the air and smell… well, whatever.

As I sit in my favourite part of France, sipping a glass of Gigondas and gazing up at Ventoux while my son performs the timeless British holiday pursuit of “playing on the Nintendo Switch”, I will resist the temptation to produce one of those tiresome visitor columns about the condition of France, where I am for a few days recovering from the general election and the side effects of the extended trauma suffered by the entire media-political class in Britain in recent months.

Still, two quick observations. President Macron has his work cut out reforming France. I was reminded of this by taking part once again in the ancient French tradition of “trying to get a reliable taxi at Avignon TGV station.” This is a process steeped in mysterious ritual so baffling and inefficient that even the French find it confusing. In the end, Uber stepped in. They were cheaper and the driver was helpful and polite. It’s almost as though competition produces innovation and improvement for the customer. Could it catch on? In France?

As a huge fan of this glorious country, where tonight we will eat in our favourite restaurant and watch the Bastille Day fireworks, I do hope so. But President Macron does seem to be heading for a fall. He seems to think he’s Napoleon crossed with Tony Blair. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, back in Brexitland it is fair to say that Brexiteers are pretty down in the dumps and anti-Brexiteers think they are going to finish it off and reverse the referendum. Or they will make it such an un-Brexity Brexit that even those of us who voted for it will apologise to Juncker and beg Brussels for readmission involving death by euro and a compulsory increase of migration to Britain of two million Belgians per year.

Brexit has not gone well. Indeed, it would be something of an understatement to say that the government has made a complete arse of it.

Far too little thought was given to how it would happen. The previous Tory leadership banned any preparation which is, when you think about, quite incredible considering that a vote to leave was at the very least a possibility. Considering what a mess Whitehall and the cabinet have made of matters since June 2016, David Cameron and George Osborne might have been better off commissioning a full-scale official preparatory planning exercise for Brexit and televising the results. The resulting “shitshow” might have convinced floating voters that there was no way officialdom could ever get us out of the EU without collapsing the country. This – the EU – is the one hotel you can never leave.

That is one of the oddest aspects of the complaints about Brexit, though. Of course the EU is difficult to leave. It is deliberately built that way, via an interlocking series of treaties supported by institutions and associations which bind in the member states. The architects of it knew what they were doing in building a nascent superstate, problematic though that has proved. But does this mean that because this project – only 25 years old in its Maastricht incarnation – is tricky to get out of then we simply should not try?

There, Brexiteers did their (our, in my case) harm by suggesting this was easier than it has turned out to be. This was the flipside of the “Project Fear” campaign run by the Remain side. Facing the Remain campaign deploying a disaster scenario (instant recession, national collapse) the Leave side felt it had to be breezy about the practicalities, made worse by there being so little understanding of how what is termed “free trade” these days is really a web of agreed regulation and matching standards. This is designed and enforced by people the voters never see, working for organisations that no-one elected.

The reality of the situation, as is so often the case, is somewhere in the middle. Getting out was always going to be messy, but it is hardly the apocalypse either.

Is Brexit worth it then? There, spurred on by that uplifting view of Ventoux, I am going to be optimistic and say that yes it is. Yes! It is. What we are doing is not weird. Countries from Iceland to India, from Canada to Japan, think it perfectly normal for a country to make its own laws and decide who comes in. We are joining them.

The British always deluded themselves on the EU, pretending it is not as integrationist as it is. Still we hear it said that the EU does not aspire to be a super-state, or cannot be, even when it puts on a virtual state funeral for a German architect of the euro, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, as it did earlier this month. If it’s holding state funerals in the middle of the European Parliament and draping the large casket of Kohl in an EU flag what message do you think they’re trying to send about the primacy of EU institutions?

We were never suited to participation in such an enterprise and we will be far better as neighbours and cultural and trading partners without holding back those who do want to pursue their dream of ever closer Union and subversion of the nation state and national laws and courts.

But the real reason I feel uplifted, is because of a recent cover story I read in The Spectator. I’m always on at people to subscribe to our artisan small enterprise Reaction, and in growing numbers you have been kind enough to do so. The Times, the famous paper which kindly carries a weekly column from me, should also be subscribed to.

But a summer “shout out” as they say, for the piece by historian Robert Tombs in The Spectator last week. I am not going to summarise it all here. Go and subscribe if you want to see it. If you do get hold of it you will find the most splendid and calm destruction of the doom-laden declinism that is just a mirror image of daft jingoism.

In this spirit of 2017 defeatism, we are treated to allegedly grown men such as Will Hutton saying that Brexit Britain is a society that has “committed suicide.” Tombs is too polite and erudite to say it about Hutton, a fan of the euro. But I’m not and I’ll say it. Saying Britain has “committed suicide” is just totally bananas. It is completely hyper juvenile bonkers batty. But that is only a more extreme example of the anti-Brexit mood of catastrophe that has captured the over-tired British anti-Brexit end of the media. Everything is leapt on to show that the mighty EU is magnificent and we are pathetic. Look! They’ve just signed a trade deal with Japan! No, the EU hasn’t, but its spin was swallowed whole because we must be rubbish.

Tombs – whose history of England is a masterpiece – shows that Britain tends to overdo the misery when it is not overdoing the excessive patriotism. The self-haters always mark us down more than necessary – and in the “what is to become of us?” wailing of the ultra-remainers it is there again. Equally, the stupid jingoists are far too insular and dismissive of other countries that have made contributions to human development that are as valid – often superior – as Britain’s. Think of German culture in the 19th century.

We’re not, it should be very clear, uniquely ace. But we’re a pretty good country, with quite a bit going for it, whose remarkable development was aided by historical accident and the sea meaning we were not invaded for more than three centuries. With that lucky break we used the space to build sound institutions that have sustained and adapted not always perfectly but often rather well. In the long sweep of history, it is to be regarded as wholly unremarkable that such a place should choose self-government rather than EU membership. I, for one, am glad we did. Here’s to Brexit…

I return with this newsletter in early August. Next week and the week after there will be guest writers giving you their take. One of them might even be a Remoaner. Sorry, I don’t use that term about my anti-Brexit friends. We must all do more to compromise and to bridge the divide and proceed to a sensible Brexit. We’re all in it together, as the editor of the London Evening Standard used to put it. And Brexit will be fine, eventually. Will Hutton is wrong, again. And Robert Tombs is right.

Happy holidays and have a good weekend.