UK and EU are friends in a dangerous world
Religious and political extremists have something in common: they reject difference. They cannot accept debate or a diversity of opinion; they want to force everyone to think exactly the same way. Sometimes, they set themselves up as arbiters of civilisation, without understanding that civilisation rests upon the agreement to disagree amicably. For example, even as Britain leaves the EU, it still looks across the Channel and sees fellow Europeans – friends and allies. And it mourns when Europeans are murdered by terrorists.
This week there has been a sequence of terror atrocities in Spain, with one or more even bigger attacks planned but aborted. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) claimed responsibility. The modus operandi was familiar: trucks driven into pedestrians with the purpose of killing as many as possible. At least 13 died in Barcelona, one in Cambrils.
What put Spain in the crosshairs of terrorists? One could rehearse its history as a battlefield between North Africa and Europe – the struggle between the Islamic caliphate and the Christian Reconquista – or the legacy of colonialism represented by the tiny Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the African coast. But Germany shares none of this narrative and yet has recently been attacked too. So, history looks suspiciously like an excuse. Isil hates the West for what it is now: free, and determined to remain free.
History was also an excuse for white supremacists to march on Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend: a very confused history that blended the defence of a Confederate statue with burning torches and the Nazi swastika. Protest was met by counter protest, and a woman was killed when a man who was said to be a Nazi sympathiser allegedly drove his car into the crowd.
America’s white supremacists often claim to be defending Western civilisation but they have far more in common with Isil than they comprehend. They, too, believe that different peoples cannot coexist, that they have a right to claim ownership of a nation in the name of an ideology. Racist and theocratic extremism are thus two sides of the same worthless coin – and even if decent people in the mainstream of public life cannot always agree what they are for, these acts of violence should remind them what they are against.
That moment of enlightenment has not yet come in the United States. President Donald Trump’s reaction to the Charlottesville protest has divided his country even further; he is now cleaning out his administration in a bid to steady the ship. The Spanish attacks, meanwhile, take place against the backdrop of the Brexit negotiations. Those talks are about controversial practical details, but the violence of this week brings some moral clarity to proceedings. Britain and the EU disagree over much, but they have so much to gain from putting aside their differences and operating as allies in a dangerous world.
No one can deny that Brexit has caused a political shock, or that the process of disengagement will be complicated. Real differences of opinion are coming out in these negotiations, that is true, but the points of mutual self-interest are obvious. It is time to move on from arguing over unreasonable divorce settlements to talking about the future. Why not write a free trade deal that benefits both sides? Why not emphasise our continued alliance over security? Why not acknowledge that correctly managed, well-policed borders benefit us all? The present regime is clearly not working. We Europeans must do what the extremists refuse to do: acknowledge our differences, yes, but accept them and forge a new partnership.
Following the attacks, Downing Street flew the national flags of Britain and Spain at half-mast, and the Prime Minister said that London and Madrid must “work together if we are to confront this evil of terrorism”. The West is united not only by shared security concerns but a love of liberty. Sometimes our politics, which can be crude and personal, would benefit from remembering the finer principles that bring us together.
We must do what the extremists refuse to do: accept our differences and forge a new partnership