EU pettiness reminds us every day why Brexit was worth it
As a youngster on the pop press, I coined the term “non-specific epic-ness” to sum up a certain sort of music that was all bombast and no bite, U2 being the best example. So it was a match made in heaven when their frontman, Bono, exhibited extreme BDS (Brexit derangement syndrome) on tour a few years ago. Previously, pop stars had shown us fun things onstage (i.e. Jim Morrison’s genitalia) but the only thing Bono managed to reveal was his barmy levels of virtue-signalling.
There was: “Its values and aspirations make Europe so much more than just a geography. They go to the core of who we are as human beings, and who we want to be”. Then: “That idea of Europe deserves songs written about it, and big bright blue flags to be waved about”.
But perhaps my favourite example of Bono’s wit and wisdom was: “Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling.”
What a joke! Europe – or rather the EU, which pulled off the con of all times in convincing a significant number of Europeans that they were one and the same thing – was only ever a feeling. A fantasy founded in order to make little men feel big – and for Germany to be the boss of Europe without risking a third bloody nose from Britain – where mediocrities with delusions of adequacy could rise swiftly through the ranks without ending up in an international court when it all went wrong.
We Brexiteers are accused of nostalgia for an empire, but how the heck did that ever equate with the desire to break away from a monolith and reassert ourselves as the small dynamic country we’ve been all our lives – from Magna Carta to the Swinging Sixties – except for a few mostly miserable decades? It’s the Remainers who always craved being part of an empire by another name.
They say you never really know someone till you break up with them; their generosity or pettiness when it comes to dividing friends and possessions (in this case, who gets custody of the fish) can make you fall in love all over again or reinforce the reasons you wanted to get shot of them in the first place.
Gaslighting us like an errant partner (“No one else will want you!”) didn’t work, so, like many a rumbled narcissist, the EU is coming from a different direction and treating us like a naughty child – while actually revealing their own immaturity in the face of not getting what they wanted for Christmas.
It was a revelation to see the Dutch customs official “Martijn” bullying that poor lorry driver last week over the contents of his lunch box, finally confiscating a ham sandwich and announcing that it must be destroyed because it contains undeclared British foodstuffs with a sniggering “Welcome to the Brexit, sir!”
Such playground petty-mindedness of the EU reminds us every day why Brexit was worth it, as does Angela Merkel’s reference to “the British virus”. Is she going to start sniggering about French letters and Dutch ovens when other countries stand up for themselves? And if we’re so immature, how come we never felt the need to call our female leaders “Mutti” as do Merkel’s electorate?
The danger of desiring leaders to boss them about often ends badly for nations; Alexander von Schoenburg, editor-atlarge of Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper, Bild, wrote recently: “The sclerotic and sluggish EU machine has botched the roll-out of the vaccines… delays, in-fighting, national selfinterest and sheer bungling bureaucracy have combined to cripple the EU’s vaccine efforts.” There’s nothing infantile about wanting to break free from a stifling fetid comfort blanket and seeking to strike out into the big wide world.
If we are juvenile, then it’s in the manner of the kid who saw that the Emperor had no clothes – childlike, not childish, curious and questing. We are the eternal youngsters of Europe and we have the oldest parliamentary democracy, uninterrupted by dictators, behind us; the best of both worlds. Behind all the brotherhood-ofman braggadocio, the EU were only e ever a gang of playground bullies, t their impotent rage revealed in their spite as we extricate ourselves from their moribund grasp, the end of the Big Sulk ( La Grande Boude) nowhere in sight.