From Brexit to Barcelona, liberals have lost faith in self-determination
The Prime Minister must urgently involve more true Brexiteers in negotiations and push policy through
There was a time, just a few decades ago, when most young radicals espoused a heady mix of Enlightenment values, Left‑wing economics and a liberalised personal morality. The Sixties’ generation embraced free speech, legal equality, religious freedom, the presumption of innocence and democratic empowerment. In foreign policy, they supported anti‑imperialism, and in economics the welfare state and big government.
Some of these ideas were right, others dangerously wrong, especially the rejection of capitalism and the family, but they were coherent and inspired by many great Western philosophers of the past 350 years. They were grounded in reason, liberty and scepticism. As a result, conservatives and liberals, socialists and libertarians could still talk to one another, if merely to agree to disagree.
The great tragedy of the 21st century is how it has become cool and edgy to repudiate these Enlightenment values and to embrace a darker, ultra‑adversarial ideology. Many of our best and brightest still agree with the baby boomers’ youthful rejection of conservatism and free markets: these are easy positions to hold. But the harder‑edged ideas have gone out of the window. Contemporary “liberals” – the dominant group in the civil service, academia, the cultural industries and among young, highly educated urbanites – have all too often become born‑again authoritarians.
Far too many applaud when Balliol’s Junior Common Room bans the Christian Union from its freshers’ fair on the grounds that it would be “alienating” for followers of other religions and constitute a “micro‑aggression”; they cheer drastic restrictions to free speech in the name of “safe spaces”; and they no longer believe in national groups’ rights to self‑determination. Forget about democracy, people power and autonomy: the New Left loves authority, elite rule and cultural warfare. It’s out with John Locke, Montesquieu and David Hume, and back in with Plato.
The trendy, right‑on classes now seem to oppose all independence movements. In the Fifties and Sixties, young idealists took to the streets to defend the right of the ex‑colonies to break free of the imperialist yoke. Today, those who see themselves as their political heirs spend their time decrying “nationalists” and cheering on those who threaten to ruin the secessionists.
Take Brexit, Kurdistan and Catalonia: people who believe themselves to be progressive and enemies of oppression reflexively back the status quo. Big is beautiful; small is seditious. The way that Catalonia has been treated is one of the great scandals of our time, a disgraceful stain on Spain’s and the EU’S reputation. The province deserves a free and fair referendum. The violence, the intimidation, the bullying have all been outrageous, yet the New Left couldn’t care less. As to Kurdistan, which was originally promised a referendum on independence at the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, the silence from the “progressives” has been deafening, even though the only way forward in the Middle East is to ensure that states and nations are aligned.
This ideological shift among Western elites is staggering: it risks undermining the foundations of much political progress of these past 250 years. The US Declaration of Independence argued that governments derived “their just powers from the consent of the governed”; and that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it”. The French Revolution also referred to the principle, which became hugely influential in the 1800s. Slowly but surely, the new battle was between the imperialists, who wanted the Great Powers to dominate, and the liberals, who wanted nations to set their own rules. There was much talk, after the First World War, of the “principle of the nationalities”.
By the time of the Atlantic Charter of 1941, President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill pledged that there would be a “right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live”, and six years later India and Pakistan were independent. The United Nations charter enshrined the principle of self‑determination into international relations.
So are Western elites really seeking to renege on all this? Do they not see how they are playing with fire? Do they not recognise the connection between their support for oligarchy and the growth of populism in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Eastern Europe and almost everywhere across the Continent? Britain was a pioneer in promoting self‑governance, despite our colonial history. The Balfour declaration, a hundred years ago, was a milestone, with the UK promising to set up “a national home for the Jewish people”. The Statute of Westminster in 1931 granted self‑government to the dominions. There have been two European referendums and one for Scotland, and the public still overwhelmingly backs self‑rule as an ideal at home and abroad.
Yet all of this is now obsolete nonsense, as far as the new authoritarians are concerned. Self‑ determination is too messy, too complicated. It is in this context that the British government’s incompetent approach to Brexit and the establishment’s increasingly successful counter‑offensive to sabotage it needs to be understood. In such a hostile climate, those entrusted with pushing through Brexit need to be passionate, competent and as hard as nails. They cannot be mainstream centrists who just want to follow their civil servants’ advice, especially given that the latter will be dead set against the principle of self‑determination. They need to surround themselves with the best of the true believers.
Crazily, neither Theresa May, Damian Green nor, of course, Philip Hammond can bring themselves even to say that they back Brexit, despite it being their policy. Revolutions are hard at the best of times: how can they be executed successfully by people who can almost not bear to enact them?
Mrs May, assuming that she stays in office, must therefore urgently involve more Brexiteers. Boris Johnson should accompany her to the negotiations, to stiffen her resolve, and a newer generation needs to be promoted. Leaving the EU is an ideological project, grounded in hundreds of years of Western political philosophy, so now is the time to call in the ideologues to the rescue.