Taking the Cure

Despite the best efforts of Irish, Welsh and Scottish nationalists, the process of Breaking Up the Union of Great Britain and Ireland is a job for the English, and always has been ever since the process really got started  in Dublin in 1916. Now, by an irony of history, it turns out that our shared membership of the EU across these islands was not only the essential underpinning of the Good Friday Agreement, it was the last glue that held together the devolved Union within the island of Great Britain as well. One of the battles yet to be properly fought is over the respective roles of the devolved Parliaments in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. Meanwhile, it is of totemic importance to the DUP’s ongoing dance of glee and grievance that the Assembly in Stormont is currently shut.  That the Parliament in Holyrood has been effectively sidelined by…well, what shall we call it nowadays…the Imperial Parliament?...in London, is essential to what is laughingly still referred to as a “smooth” Brexit.

The discomfort of calling Westminster either the Imperial Parliament (of the past) or indeed the English Parliament (of the future?) points to the structural dysfunction that Brexit is newly and ruthlessly exposing. The centre, to quote Ireland’s poet of 1916, cannot hold. To misquote England’s great poet, there’s quite a lot in a name. The names we call things are what all this boorach is about.

What is as old as the hills, or as Sherwood Forest, is the insouciant ease with which the words “England” and “Britain” or “English” and “British” are still apparently regarded as comfortably interchangeable, as, unfortunately, they still are in an essay on the English roots of Brexit published last week in the London Review of Books. This lazy identification has never been possible in any of the other constituents of the Union of British Nations. For one thing, we’ve always had our own patron saints and emblematic outlaws over and above St George and Robin Hood, potent though those symbols of Englishness are. My own profoundly loyal North British grandparents were wearily familiar with the phenomenon, and always regarded a hybrid identity as both Scots and British as being intrinsic to who they were – they regarded the Scots as the Best of British - whereas George Orwell, for example, in his justly famous panegyric on Englishness, The Lion and the Unicorn, acknowledged awareness of the uncomfortableness of the identification of the English and the British for his Scottish, Welsh and Irish readers in a rather irritated footnote.

No exploration of the very English roots (and likely destination) of Brexit can even remotely come to terms with any of it actually means if it doesn’t start with the insight that all four nations are going to have to learn how to name things all over again. No matter how irritating it is that the Scots, Irish, Scots-Irish and Welsh have got a head start in adapting to a new world of multiple rather than subsumed identities.

Unionism, for example, cannot be understood unless it is understood that the same word means subtly different things in all four nations that make up that union. And that hybrid rather than merged identity has always been the syntactic rule in three of them. Englishness needs to learn how to speak its name if it is to face the world with confidence. As Antony Barnett has argued in his excellent book “The Lure of Greatness”, it is only as the European English that the English will find a future.

Britishness, like every other national identity, was a series of projects, not an essence. Starting as a Protestant bulwark against dynastic Catholic Europe, it successively evolved into a commercial Empire and a Welfare State. When it ceased to be any of these three things then it ceased being a useful way to think about what it means to live on these islands. It became a distorting mirror in which to see ourselves.

But just as in 2014, the status quo, despite appearances, is not an option on the ballot paper. Just as there was no way “back to normal” in a No vote in the Scottish referendum, the events of the past few years have permanently let the English genie out of the British Bottle.  The Brexit process, like the process of the referendum in Scotland, has shone a ruthless light on tectonic change. There is no way back to the relationship with the EU that the UK used to have, and there is no way back to what Britishness, civic or civilising, used to mean.

Brexit is only the symptom. “Britain” is now the disease that awaits a cure.

The Last Redoubt

Bizarrely, the image that comes to mind for the politics of Brexit for the rest of 2018 comes from the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Maybe it's may age...and seeing "Zulu" on the telly on so many Sunday afternoons. 

The defence of Scotland's place in Europe is a series of redoubts...fortified positions that you have no confidence of being able to hold. But you have to do all you can to hold one position before you are forced to retreat to the next one. he first line of defense is the simplest...and yet, for many Independence activists the most troubling.  Keep the UK in the EU. You have to do everything you can by every means. In every arena. Westminster, Holyrood, the courts, public opinion. At this moment, there even seems to be the glimmer of a chance of a referendum to decide between whatever deal HMG can cobble together...

So, for me, to be logically consistent, and to take all possible allies with you, we have to wholeheartedly try that. Remember, there is no realistic expectation of the first line of defence holding...but if and when you have to retreat to the second line of defence, a vigourous attempt to hold the first defence will have helped enormously in organising allies.

Those aliies will include...and here's the tricky part for many Nationalisits...Unionists.

In the case of Scotland and Brexit, the second "redoubt" is specific to Scotland: defending the existing devolution settlement and a differential Brexit deal for Scotland...as, no matter what Arlene Foster says about blood lines...there will have to be for N Ireland and Gibraltar. Again....and again Devolution supporters who oppose Independence will have to be part of that defence.

Do you see where I'm going with this? That to make every line of defence the strongest it can be, we need everyone with us. What this means is Independence supporters doing everything they can in these first two lines of defence to bring as many allies with them as possible. And THIS means refuting the accusation of "really being interested only in independence" by making sure it is seen not be true. If we can hold the "British Redoubt" and keep all of the UK inside the EU, then that is what we should commit to do. If it is Devolution we can successfully defend then that is what we should wholly commit to do. 

I believe that if we do both of these things, without any other agenda, then when the time comes (as it probably will) to retreat to the third and last redoubt, which is seeking to rejoin the EU or EFTA and thus protecting what we have been trying to protect all along... ...then the means we need to do that, political Independence of the UK State will be self-evident and consensual...and will get support rom a lot of people who don't support it yet. 

But here's the more difficult argument to make when there's an SNP conference at the weekend...for this journey to work for the people who voted No in 2014, the SNP case must genuinely be above suspicion at each redoubt. We must be genuinely commmitted to the successive defences of the whole of the Uk...and then devolution. And if those defences hold, that has to be enough.  That's where we have to stick. This journey cannot start with independence, even if we think it probably ends there. If what we propose is Indeopendence Now...we lose everyone else. And I believe that we lose the EU...and we lose a referendum that Unionists will boycott anyway, a referndum that even if we win...we lose..

Therefore, I believe that right now, when the idea of a "confirming referendum" is current, we have not yet exhausted the "all UK" defence of Scotland's relationship with Europe. #I think the SNP needs to as near as damn it commit to that campaign. And do all we can to hold that line. I think that this means, along with a commitment to a second EU referendum...and here is where we need to take a deep breath... taking a second Independence referendum of the table if a "UK Remains in the EU" defence succeeds. 

Now, before I get shouted at...consider this. There is NO other way to persuade non-Independence supporters of a genuine commitment on our part to the aim of Remaining in Europe. Second, more importantly, the mandate for "Indyref 2" was a "material change" in ther circumstances of the UK...then that will be a material change which we will have PREVENTED from happening. 

As I say, I have no particular expectations as from week to week, the blathering chaos of Brexit gets more and more disorienting. But I want to see my representatives and my government adopt a realistic and clear posture that can hold the line and carry wide support no matter what comes next. 

I think this might be the way to do it.

Finally, whatever the next electoral test is...a general election, a second EU referendum, even the Scottish elections in 2021, the issue of Independence will be on the agenda. For me, to insist on Indyref 2 right now before anything else betrays an unjustified lack of confidence that the logic of the developing situation is entirely on our side. But if and when it comes, what is wrong with Independence being on the bais of consensus?  What is wrong with taking people who voted No in 2014 with us? 

What is wrong with a walk in the park in five years...even if we we need to be confident enough to behave a little strategically now?