‘Those who would end this relationship ask us to put our faith in an angry fistful of myths’
Geraint Talfan Davies’ new book tells Wales’ Brexit story through the eyes of his journal. In the first of three extracts from Unfinished Business, the co-founder of the Institute of Welsh Affairs and member of the Executive Committee of Wales for Europe
JANUARY 3, 2011
Spare a thought for Welsh politicians. Please.
By the beginning of May 2011 they are going to be exhausted, broke and not a little confused after months of varying and probably reluctant cross-party alliances, and none.
The first four months of the year will entail non-stop campaigning, first in a referendum on March 3 on further law-making powers for the National Assembly, and then on May 5 another referendum on whether or not to introduce the Alternative Vote system for electing the Westminster Parliament, on the very same day as elections to the National Assembly – one straight party fight and two cross-party challenges that will divide the parties in different ways.
The Welsh public will be expected to make sense of two football matches played on the same pitch at the same time by four teams who may turn up in different shirts in either half. If this were happening at a UK level the political sports correspondents would be adding some artificial frenzy to the confusion and demanding the abolition of the FA, but since the confusion will be confined to Wales and Scotland, they will probably leave it to the sketch writers.
DECEMBER 11, 2011
David Cameron’s battle was lost long before he reached Brussels.
As was pointed out at a recent conference in Cardiff, countries that want the empathy of others in moments of difficulty have to build up a credit balance in the good times – a kind of Keynesianism of manners rather than money. But instead the Prime Minister has both abandoned potential mainstream allies in European centre-right parties, and preferred to lecture the Eurozone from a distance.
Yet what right have we to do so? A country that sees “muddling through” as a virtue, and thinks intellectual coherence in public affairs an alien continental habit, is hardly in a position to criticise the rest of Europe for insufficient rigour in thinking through the Euro issue. A country that, notwithstanding devo- lution, has embodied a mindset more centralised even than France, is hardly in a position to criticise the rest of Europe for insufficient rigour in thinking through the Euro issue, or in a position to lecture other countries on the virtues of subsidiarity and self-determination.
APRIL 27, 2014
I am unshakeably prejudiced against those who propagate the big lie.
This is the only description that one can attach to Mr Farage’s poster campaign: “26 million people in Europe are looking for work. And whose jobs are they after?” It is a brazen and calculated deception. It is the technique perfected by Josef Goebbels. Make the lie big enough and you put it beyond the possibility of proof. Create fear and suspicion, and a lot of people will look over their shoulder.
Simplistic explanations are always easier to sell than complex ones, and never carry a health warning. These fundamental uncertainties are, unfortunately, endemic. That is why Mr Farage – whose name is pronounced with a surprisingly French inflection – is not alone. He has his counterparts in almost every country, not all of whom exude his own back-bar bonhomie. History, as well as our daily news, tells us that thuggery of the deed, is not far behind the disguised thuggery of the word.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2014
It is difficult to over-estimate the impact of Scottish secession from the union.
Yes, we can have fun contemplating a name for the rump UK – Little Britain or, more controversially, England. Don’t laugh, the elephant next door would comprise 92% of the population.
We can amuse ourselves redesigning the Union Jack to remove the Scottish saltire and insert a dragon or the cross of St David. We can debate whether a Yes vote would require David Cameron’s resignation, or whether Boris Johnson might become the first Prime Minister of “England plus” on the basis that he might provide England with a psy-
Those who would end this relationship ask us to put our faith in an angry fistful of myths
GERAINT TALFAN DAVIES
chological pick-me-up.
But beneath all this would be the reality that the loss of Scotland would be more traumatic for England – and particularly for the political, financial and cultural elites of the south east – than the loss of the British Empire. We cannot know what the psychological effect of such an amputation will be.
JANUARY 8, 2015
Yesterday I sat in my car outside B&Q – I needed a plug for the sink – for a full half-hour listening to the news from Paris that 12 people have been shot in the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
It’s appalling and frightening. I just wish it were unbelievable, but there is too much evidence that the world has gone mad. I could feel my eyes prickling.
I was trying to imagine the startled, disbelieving faces of the group as masked gunmen burst into their editorial meeting. They would have been discussing the next issue. Did this or that article hit the right target? Was it funny? Had they just shared a new joke? Did the gunmen burst in on banter and laughter? These people were cartoonists, for God’s sake, two of them pushing 80.
Were they grandfathers? I wonder. If they were, I would bet they had drawn funny birthday cards for their children and grandchildren, or nieces and nephews. They would have been popular, loved.
JULY 3, 2015
Within the next two years the United Kingdom is promised “an In/Out referendum” on our membership of the European Union – a relationship that, at the time of the vote, will be nearly 45 years old.
Those who would end this relationship ask us to put our faith in an angry fistful of myths.
The first myth is that our kingdom’s watery boundary creates an ineradicable distinction between us and our continental brothers and sisters; that we ourselves, and our problems and issues, are different and separate; that we can stand aloof from our neighbours. This has never been true. For centuries we were part of the Roman Empire. For a millennium we were fully part of Catholic Europe. Our Protestantism was derived from elsewhere in northern Europe. An instinct for standing aloof has not prevented us from being drawn into wars with Spain, France, Italy and Germany. In the 20th century we were not able to stand aside from Europe’s two civil wars, the bloodiest in history.
For the last half-century the European Union has preserved an unprecedented internal peace by focusing on our common interests and weaving common solutions. In the process we extended democracy to millions. As war reappears in too many places and terrorism spreads its bloody tentacles, that common effort is surely more necessary than ever.
AUGUST 5, 2015
The UK prides itself on the strength of its financial sector and on its creative industries yet, unlike Germany, it has been astonishingly careless of its capacity for making things, exporting things and, even more inexplicably, owning things. Recently these ironies were brought home to me forcefully at BMW’s huge exhibition centre near the Olympic Park in Munich – BMW Welt ( BMW world).
But it is the issues of industrial policy, particularly ownership, that confront the British visitor head on. In a large space a few yards from the entrance a Rolls-Royce Phantom is a model of gleaming haughtiness. Close by are signs to the BMW museum with its display of the history of the Mini, that commands an even bigger space. Both Rolls-Royce and the Mini are now owned by BMW. The British visitor (of a certain age) is hit by the poignancy of the juxtaposition of the letters BMW and BMC, synonyms for respective success and failure.
Their stories could not have been more different. BMC – the British Motor Corporation – came to stand for British industrial ineptitude, a toxic mix of managerial complacency and incompetence and union intransigence, memorably sent up by Peter Sellers in the film I’m All Right Jack. BMC was not even a brand, but parent to a self-defeating fragmentation between its competing brands – Austin, Morris, Wolseley, MG and Riley – brands that mimicked the British obsession with class. In contrast, BMW has always been a single brand, imposed on both its cars and motorcycles.
BMC was content to sell poorly made cars to protected Commonwealth markets, BMW sold to Europe and then the world, notably in recent years to China.
In 2014 it had revenues of €80.4bn (in the same year Mercedes had revenues of just short of €130bn, and Audi €53bn). Ponder these figures when you next read of Britain’s ballooning trade deficit or that EU membership is an obstacle to selling globally.