Preserve the UK’s finest values amid huge upheaval of Brexit
COLUMNIST
ENGLISH nationalism used to be described as the “dog that hasn’t barked”. This suggested that the passions routinely on display in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland could one day course through England.
Historians may look back at the Brexit vote as the moment when the dog got up off its mat, stretched and – well, we’ll soon see be able to measure the precise volume and cadence of any bark.
There is certainly fiery emotion on display.
Sir Gerald Howarth, the former Minister for International Security Strategy, admitted this week he found it “hard to contain” his anger when he heard reports of EU figures “demanding” billions of pounds in return for a trade deal.
In a piece headlined “Show us some respect – we’ve died for you,” he cast Brexit as a moment of selfdetermination which would allow the country to resume its “proper place in the world as a sovereign nation state”.
He said: “Our people fought and died for Europeans to have that right. It would be nice if they could stop treating us like criminals for exercising it ourselves.”
Anger is not just directed at the EU. Tensions are also running high within the Conservative party.
Former North Wales AM Antoinette Sandbach, now the Tory MP for Eddisbury, found herself on the front page of a national newspaper, named as one of the “Brexit mutineers”.
The “mutiny” was opposition to enshrining in law the precise moment when the UK would leave the EU. One of those named, former Steel Minister Anna Soubry, said she received 13 death threats.
Sir Bill Cash, one of Parliament’s most prominent eurosceptics, delivered a scathing critique of “Tory dissidents” and warned of “collaboration with Labour”.
Ms Sandbach described his comments as “unfit of a Member of Parliament” and furiously stamped on the charge of collaboration.
She said: “Such a comment, along with recent headlines branding individuals as ‘mutineers’, are deeply divisive and personally offensive to someone whose family was thrown out of their house by Nazis and lived under Nazi occupation.”
We are used to seeing MPs of different parties denouncing one another in the most graphic terms permissible under the parliamentary rule-book. But we are now witnessing firefights between MPs in the same party.
There is the potential for gaping divisions to widen into chasms.
Regardless of whether you see Brexit as a disastrous attempt to revive a vanished past or an exciting opportunity to escape bureaucratic strictures, it involves looking to the future.
The question facing people across the UK is what you want that future to look like.
Voters in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are used to voting in referendums about the direction they want to take their nation. We are no strangers to rapid and momentous constitutional change; new parliaments have been launched in our capitals in the last two decades and a new generation of politicians have the confidence and ambition to demand even greater powers of self-governance.
In contrast, voters in the northeast of England emphatically rejected an Assembly of their own in 2004, there- by killing John Prescott’s vision for regional devolution. The new wave of “metro mayors” may transform English political culture but Britain is not known for embracing radical change – quite the opposite.
There are still hereditary peers in the House of Lords, the monarchy retains astonishing popularity, and when voters were given the chance to change the voting system in 2011 they sent supporters of reform packing.
But difficult and pressing questions about how the UK will function after Brexit can no longer be ducked, dodged or dismissed.
What will be the balance of powers between the UK’s different legislatures? When people can no longer make an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights there will be unprecedented attention on the Supreme Court in London and we can expect debates about how these hugely influential figures are selected.
Once Britain is no longer required to implement EU directives in UK law, we can envisage fervent policy disagreements. Should Britain aim to have at least as strong protection for workers’ rights and the environment as exist in the EU, or should ministers try and torch red tape and taxation and deregulate at every opportunity?
Debates of passion and fury await. Devolved powers will give Wales, Scotland and (if self-government returns) Northern Ireland to pursue increasingly distinctive paths, but England will face profound questions about what type of relationship it wants not just with the rest of the world but with the rest of the UK.
This season of soul-searching could drive some MPs to think they have more in common with friends in different parties than with people who wear the same political badge. A chapter of convulsion could be about to begin.
We can only hope that the months and years ahead will not be defined by scaremongering and demonisation of opponents. If the question of the Brexit date can send tensions soaring in the Commons, it is sobering to think how important debates on subjects including immigration could foment division in the country.
Yes, there is an urgent need to ensure that the economy weathers the potential disruption triggered by Brexit but it is even more important to preserve the best values found in every UK nation.
A spirit of tolerance, fair play, goodwill and courage has won the respect of the world in the past; we need to show we can navigate new upheavals without losing hold of our strongest virtues.