As Britain and France embrace nation-first we need change (or face being swallowed up)

The calling of the snap general election in Britain by Theresa May last Tuesday has electrified politics over there. It has given rise to all sort of opinion about the future of Europe in the Brexit age, the terminal decline of the once great British Labour Party, the prospect of perpetual Conservative rule and the irrelevance of Northern Ireland to political considerations in the rest of the UK.

There does not seem to be much vision among European leaders these days and it is becoming increasingly difficult for those who believe in the European Union to articulate a positive view of the union in a world that is becoming increasingly nationalist.

The British Conservatives are on course for a huge majority come June espousing such a nationalist vision. As much as anything else this is due to the historic weakness of the Labour Party and their truly dire leader. Jeremy Corbyn has shown no willingness or desire to lead Britain at all and offers an unreconstructed form of socialism that was roundly rejected by the British in 1979 with the election of Margaret Thatcher.

It was buried with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It cannot be resurrected whether by Corbyn or anyone else. The takeover of the Labour Party by the Corbynistas is destined to see the party in the wilderness for perhaps a generation.

The same nationalism that has emboldened the British Conservatives has also been the predominant theme in the French presidential election where politicians from the left and the right are offering a similar ‘France first’ vision that will attract the votes of close to half the electorate. The French political centre is barely holding as its citizens, like their British counterparts, increasingly question the very purpose and meaning of the European project and their place in it.

Europe, to many of its citizens, has lost its way. They see it as a vehicle for a rampant neoliberal capitalism that has left them behind. To many it is a Europe elites elites. This perception manifested itself in the Brexit vote last June, as did a similar view, in the election of Donald Trump last November.

It might be counterintuitive to think of those who oppose elitism voting for Trump, but the outsider motif he adopted was one of the principal reasons for his surprise victory.

Trump, the Brexiteers – most notably Boris Johnson and Michael Gove with their disdain for experts – and Marine Le Pen have all tapped into the disenchantment with modern politics that pervades modern life.

It is far easier to espouse a dystopian political vision that blames immigrants, globalisation, mobile capital and elites for the woes surrounding individual states and their citizens than to articulate a positive vision of how one might fix any democratic society’s ills.

So Donald Trump can say he will build his wall and drain the swamp while Hillary Clinton is left searching for a message beyond more of the same. Boris Johnson can say that Britain needs to take back control of not only its borders but its whole decision-making structure while the Remainers are left scrambling trying to explain why membership of the EU is in itself a good thing.

The result of their hopelessly failing to do so has left the EU facing its gravest crisis since its foundation. It is cast adrift in a sea of apparent pointlessness unable to articulate what it does and, more importantly, why. Nationalism with its certainties seems a much more attractive alternative altogether.

The citizens of the Great War power nations Britain and France are especially susceptible to such a narrative.

With long and glorious histories, politicians of the right can always point to days of yore, when England was for the English and France for the French, when appealing for votes. These were the days of warm beer, sunshine and good wine. They have been replaced with dark and dank days and bureaucratic meddling from interfering unelected officials based in Brussels. Relatively newer states such as our own are more immune to the seductive yet lethal charms of this form of nationalism. Membership of the EU has long held widespread popular appeal among Irish citizens. Even Ireland’s most nationalist party, Sinn Féin, having been sceptical about the EU over a number of decades, is now in the vanguard of those seeking a special deal for Northern Ireland in the Brexit negotiations and declares a new-found zealous devotion to the ideals of the EU.

It wasn’t always thus. Over 40 years, Sinn Féin campaigned against every single European referendum from accession in 1972 to the Fiscal Compact Treaty in 2012. But as nationalism unleashes its destructive force across Europe Sinn Féin has decided there is merit in belonging to a club of 27 rather than being ourselves alone. It has joined the political consensus that has dominated Irish politics when it comes to the question of Europe.

That of itself is a good thing but as the Irish State drifts along with a crippled ineffective Government and a lame duck leader we cannot ignore the fact that not only does Ireland need to be central to the Brexit negotiations, but it also has to be at the heart of deciding the changes that the EU so desperately needs in order to make itself relevant to the lives of its citizens.

And if the EU doesn’t make those changes, and offer a credible alternative to the nationalist fantasy intoxicating the US, Britain and much of Europe, then it will be destroyed.