When Theresa May declared in her landmark Brexit speech this week that it was her fervent wish that Europe should succeed with the European Union (EU) project, it struck me how strange it was that she was talking about Europe as an entity utterly separate from Britain.
Yet this is undoubtedly how a large proportion of the British population – certainly those who voted for Brexit – see their country, as near Europe but not part of Europe.
As someone who lived for a long time in Europe, but whose home is in Australia, it had always been a wonder to me that so many British people declined to regard themselves as European as well as British.
As a citizen of a country geographically isolated at the bottom end of Asia and truly isolated from its region in its heritage, language, culture, political system and alliances, it seemed to me that the British did not know how lucky they were.
Now, as Britain rushes for the European “exit” door to float alone in an increasingly uncertain and, arguably, more dangerous world with its cap in hard in search of much more difficult-to-achieve trading partnerships than the bountiful one it had as a member of the European Single Market, my sense is this is extraordinary folly.
And all because – essentially – a vote by a majority of Britons (or at least those who voted) have rejected being forced to share Britain with their fellow European Union citizens. (Or, to be fair, feel that their already overcrowded country has become more overcrowded by having an open border with Europe.)
There seems increasingly to be a chorus in the Anglosphere willing the European Union project to fail because it is a bad idea.
In fact, as I see it, the division between the British and the Europeans runs much deeper than that. It runs to a fundamentally different way of seeing the world.
And here is a critical point: it is often said that people who speak different languages see the world differently.
Having lived in Europe and having had to learn a European language (German) to be able to live and work, I came to a very personal understanding of this truth. When you describe what you see and feel in another language, you do have a different understanding of yourself and the world around you.
You certainly can never get beyond a superficial understanding of the people among whom you live if you cannot communicate with them in the language of their everyday lives.
After living in Germany, and then living in London, the reality of the gulf between British perceptions and German perceptions was starkly apparent.
In Germany, the ideals of a Europe united with its neighbours in a grand bargain for the purpose of avoiding a repeat of the horrendous history of the first half of the twentieth century had deep appeal. Even having to give up the beloved deutschmark (symbol of Germany’s post-war success) for the euro was a price sadly but readily paid. For many Germans, the acceptance of the euro underlined their country’s emergence as a transformed nation, finally separated from its terrible recent history.
It was impossible to imagine the British so easily dumping the pound, even had the case for it been overwhelming.
Setting aside the economic arguments for why it was reasonable for Britain not to join the Eurozone, the fact that Europe and Britain continued to have separate currencies after the introduction of the euro bound the core of Europe more closely together. And it not only maintained but deepened the gulf with the UK.
… The fact that the Anglosphere nations have never experienced invasion, occupation, mass-slaughter and starvation of the kind much of Europe experienced means it is harder to understand the world as Europeans understand it.
But there is a wider point, an important point, to this and it helps explain why what has been called “the Anglosphere” (the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK) has failed to “get” Europe and still does not comprehend the determination of Europeans to make the European Union a success.
Much of what people in the Anglophere understand about the EU and European affairs comes from British sources, or from media correspondents based in Britain.
But these are essentially “outsider” views. These perceptions are seen through the prism of British separation from Europe, of antipathy towards Europe, of the ideas of free market economics and libertarianism and, now, of the rising power of nationalism, patriotism and nostalgia.
There seems increasingly to be a chorus in the Anglosphere willing the European Union project to fail because it is a bad idea.
This seemed to be Donald Trump’s mindset in his recent interviews with British and German media in which he applauded Brexit and welcomed the possible collapse of the EU.
Trump may have had a German grandfather, but his strident antipathy towards the EU, Germany and chancellor Angela Merkel suggest he feels no European blood in his veins.
Some analysts argue that the fact that the Anglosphere nations have never experienced invasion, occupation, mass-slaughter and starvation of the kind much of Europe experienced means it is harder to understand the world as Europeans understand it.
The European ideals of shared sovereignty, of social democracy, of cross-border laws and international courts and of state action are reactions to that history. It seems not to matter to most of the current leadership of Europe that outside of Europe these ideas are seen as out-dated or wrong-headed or bound to fail.
Recognising that a deeply rooted determination to make the European project work and avoid a repeat of Europe’s recent bloody history is critical to understanding “Europeanism”.
To see Britain’s decision to withdraw from the project and go its own way as the beginning of the end of Europe’s dream of shared peace and prosperity in the form of a union and maybe a federated state is a fundamental failure to understand Europe and Europeans.
by Geoff Kitney
