Charles Moore
Last Thursday, I was getting worried by Boris Johnson’s apparent indecision about the EU referendum. Having produced a bestseller about Churchill, Boris is now writing a book about Shakespeare, so I sent him the following text: “Mrs Thatcher said in 1982 ‘Nought shall make us rue if England to itself do rest but true.’ Apparently she stole those words from some old bald bloke, whose name you will probably remember. In his play [ King John], they were spoken by the Bastard. Be a Bastard for Britain!” The Mayor of London wisely did not reply, but at last he has decided. He’s our Bastard.
His decision will make a huge difference. Although the Leave campaign is essentially a popular movement whereas the Remain campaign is an elite one, people still look for leadership. In a debate where the details – though not the general principles – are so confusing and the elites are almost all of one view, undecided voters reach out for cogent arguments from front-rank politicians to support their yearning to rebel against the tired old dogmas.
In this, the combination of Boris and Michael Gove will be strong. Mr Johnson will electrify the crowds with his instinctive, liberalminded patriotism and his jokes against bureaucracy. Mr Gove will ground the argument in its constitutional principles. Both men, who come from the “modernising” side of the Conservative Party, will coalesce with the more “trad” Euroscepticism of those such as Iain Duncan Smith. They will be effective in explaining why the EU is a relic of the 20th century, rather than the shape of the future, just as David Cameron hit the button in 2006 when he described Gordon Brown as “an analogue politician in a digital age”. It was rather pointed of Mr Gove to adapt that image in his statement on Saturday: Mr Cameron will have felt the sting.
As they made up their minds, Mr Gove and Mr Johnson were warned by 10 and 11 Downing Street that they would cause a run on the pound and betray the City of London. The same arguments were made against those who said, noticing that it had halfdestroyed our prosperity, that we should leave the ERM. After we did so in 1992, the economy recovered steadily until well into the 21st century. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were a run on the pound between now and the referendum, but that would be to our competitive advantage. The notion that the currency and the City will collapse, however, is a fantasy dating from the era of fixed exchange rates and flared trousers. Mrs Thatcher used the words quoted above in support of the Task Force’s attempt to recapture the Falkland Islands. Britain would not be Britain if she had not, by doing so, annoyed some Scottish Nationalists. The SNP MP Gordon Wilson complained in Parliament that Scotland was not mentioned in her quotation (hardly surprising since, when King John was on the throne, England and Scotland were separate countries). Mrs Thatcher replied with adroit sweetness: “I am sorry if by quoting Shakespeare I have caused offence.”
All the same, it helps the Leave cause a bit that Mr Gove is a Scot. The main slogans the Remain cause will use are, judging by what Mr Cameron said on Saturday, “Britain safer, stronger and better-off in a reformed Europe” and “the best of both worlds”. The debate will rage about what makes us safer, stronger and better-off, but what is clear is that we have not got a reformed Europe. In his Bloomberg speech in 2013, Mr Cameron set out an agenda for EU reform. He failed to get it and quietly switched to seeking a series of British exceptions, which is very much not the same thing. As for “the best of both worlds”, the phrase comes from a proverb, which needs remembering in full: “You can’t have the best of both worlds.” Back to Shakespeare. Before the Bastard delivers the line about England resting true to itself, he says: “This England never did, nor never shall, / Lie at the proud foot of the conqueror/ But when it first did help to wound itself.” This could be a warning to both sides.