orchard
Player Valuation: £60m
Oh for the days when it was all Brussels’ fault!
David Mitchell
Jeremy Hunt blamed our Brexit shambles on the EU – the favoured whipping boy that has served British politicians for decades. That won’t wash any more…
Sun 29 Jul 2018 10.00 BST
Shares
965
Comments
909
Who would have thought Jeremy Hunt was such a massive nostalgic? I mean, he’s not called Jeremy Hostalgic! Seriously though, it turns out he’s a real old softie and I fancy there must have been a tear in his eye on his visit to Berlin last week.
I’m not saying he misses the Nazis! Honestly! I know hyperbole is fashionable at the moment, so it’s probably worth making clear that I don’t think Jeremy Hunt is a Nazi. I mean, he’s not called Jeremy Hazi! Seriously though, the man’s not a fascist, even if I don’t much like his politics. Having said that, English is all about usage and I reckon the word fascist is regularly used online to mean “someone whose politics you don’t much like”. Which, oddly, makes it a synonym for communist.
Advertisement
The foreign secretary betrayed this sense of nostalgia when criticising Brussels’ conduct over Brexit. “Without a real change in approach from the EU negotiators we do now face a real risk of a no deal by accident and that would be incredibly challenging economically,” he warned, adding that the British people would blame the EU for this and it “would change [their] attitudes to Europe for a generation”. So there he is, a Tory cabinet minister, saying that British problems are the EU’s fault. Just once more, for old times’ sake?
Sign up to our Brexit weekly briefing
Read more
Bless you, but you can’t do that any more, Jeremy. Those days are gone. When we chose to leave, the EU’s duty of care over our country came to an end. It isn’t supposed to look out for our interests any more – it’s not accountable to the people you say will blame it. You might as well say that Sainsbury’s shareholders will blame the CEO of Tesco if their investment loses value. So what.
I understand how he must feel. For his whole political career, the EU has been there for him. Despite favouring Remain in the referendum, Hunt subsequently told LBC that he’d changed his mind due to the “arrogance of the EU”. But in Berlin the other day, he said that, if Brussels allowed a no-deal Brexit, “it would lead to a fissure in relations which would be highly damaging for that great partnership we have had for so many years, which has been so important in sustaining the international order”.
Advertisement
He doesn’t seem to realise that that’s all happening anyway. The “fissure in relations”, the complete ending, not just damaging, of the “great partnership” is what we have nationally decided to do. Which means that’s all good, isn’t it? It’s the will of the people, Jeremy, it’s lovely! The poor man is so confused and emotional, he’s started talking Britain down.
We’re witnessing the end of a way of life. For decades, our political leaders, both Tories and Labour, have been able to blame things that went wrong, things they failed to do, anything that seemed unfairly constraining, or frighteningly liberating, on the Brussels bureaucrats. Anything that smacked of globalisation and corporate power, but also anything that seemed overly statist and controlling, anything that was bad for business and anything that left the individual citizen too exposed. Put simply: anything.
It was a sweet little scam: the people in charge only admitted to being in charge when it suited them. They were good cop. Bad cop was some Belgians you never met. And Brussels is an excellent receptacle for blame. It has an aura of irritating blandness and pedantry, but not of frightening or acquisitive aggression. We could project enmity on to it without getting too scared and, for several decades, without creating the political momentum for anything to be done.
Advertisement
This is why, despite the stratospheric importance of the question of whether or not Britain is in the EU – not just in terms of economics and geopolitics but of the hearts, minds and self-image of millions of Britons – the two main parties haven’t fought a general election on the issue for over 30 years. They’ve argued endlessly about privatisation and NHS funding and tuition fees and foxhunting and MPs’ expenses, but they’ve both avoided the main problem, this colossal, festering unresolved question and left it as a personal matter for individual members. That’s like having decades of religious debate in the 16th century between two groups both of which refuse to say whether they’re Catholic or Protestant.
But it worked well for the politicians – Brussels was there to be slagged off and there was no threat to party unity. The British people have paid a lot for the unity of their politicians’ groupings and, more than anything else, that of the Conservative party, which should perhaps be renamed the “Self-Conservative party” as that appears to be the only political aim on which its MPs are agreed.
The Labour leadership could probably have told its membership “Look, if you don’t like the EU, join another party” years ago and stayed pretty much intact. But the Tories would have fallen in half and turned from the electoral juggernaut of the first-past-the-post system to two Lib Dem-sized groups with little hope of office without major electoral reform of the sort Tories have been resolutely helping to block ever since the Earth’s crust hardened.
Advertisement
So, with the rise of Ukip, and the pre-eminent importance of Conservative party unity in mind, David Cameron rolled the referendum dice. It is the most egregious example of putting party before country in British history and he also screwed it up. It was cynical and it was stupid, the work of a second-rate chancer.
And the long political tradition of Brussels-bashing left him in an awkward position for the campaign. He could hardly say: “You know all that stuff that we’ve been saying is Brussels’ fault for as long as you can remember? Well, it’s Westminster’s fault, it’s my fault.”
“Your problems are my fault! So do what I suggest!” is a flawed slogan. He’d probably banked on Labour being a bit more effusively pro-EU. Yet another thing that poisonous little prick got wrong.
But when I look at Jeremy Hunt, still trying to blame the EU for everything even now – like an orphaned calf nuzzling the festering corpse of its mother, because it’s his instinct and that’s all he’s got – I take some comfort. At least the politicians are losing something too.
