Jürgen Klopp underplays success of Reformation and US independence
It is all kicking off at Westminster. There’s a real buzz about the place. The teams are deep into extra time and on the customs union it looks as though it will go to penalties. At the end of the day, someone will be going back to the dressing room disappointed.
The reason I am writing lamely in football manager parlance is that Jürgen Klopp, the rather terrific manager of Liverpool Football Club, has entered the Brexit debate. In an interview with the Guardian he said that the UK should have a second referendum. (How about modelling this neverendum on the World Cup, with a group stage and then a knock out stage and then a final every four years? The sponsorship opportunities are non-existent.)
Klopp grabbed my attention, though. I had planned to give Reaction readers a run down on the latest customs union drama at Westminster but no, not tonight. Your time is valuable, life is too short, it’s a moderately nice evening, most of you have homes to go to, and the customs union row will still be there in the morning.
Instead, I will offer only one observation about the Klopp intervention. He claims in that Guardian interview:
“History has always shown that when we stay together we can sort out problems. When we split then we start fighting. There was not one time in history where division creates success. So, for me, Brexit still makes no sense.”
This got political football fans very excited. If only English footballers and managers could range so effortlessly across history and questions of identity like continental Klopp. Can you imagine Sam Allardyce discussing monetary policy or education reform? No. Quite. Britain is rubbish. Stop Brexit, and so on.
But there’s a problem with Klopp’s claim that division never works and that history proves it. He is wrong. He has overlooked several notable examples in history when division and splitting turned out to be positive.
1) The Reformation. With all due respect to my Catholic friends, the Protestant Reformation was the most tremendous success. In the Netherlands it was an outstandingly good thing. In England and Scotland the break with Rome created the conditions for the emergence of one of the most successful constitutional and economic enterprises in human history.
2) American independence. The experiment is still at an early stage, but the US splitting from British rule seems – on the whole – to have turned out well.
3) Paul McCartney’s divorce from Heather Mills. Staying together would have been a terrible idea from the point of view of the ex Beatle and his fans who still feel compelled to listen to his new work.
4) The SDP. Controversial this, but without such a breakaway in 1981 Margaret Thatcher could have struggled to get her major reforms through. The SDP split the opposition, and forced the Labour party to change and to reform itself. Splitting worked.
5) Poland and the rest of the Eastern bloc leaving the Warsaw pact. Should they have stayed together with Russia? Division was positive.
History, it seems, is a game of two halves.
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