The Rubicon has virtually been crossed, the die has virtually been solid and no matter different selection phrases from European historical past s
The Rubicon has virtually been crossed, the die has virtually been solid and no matter different selection phrases from European historical past spring to thoughts. As we depart the European Union, to the cheers of the 52 per cent and the tears of the 48, what most pursuits me as a reluctant Remainer is how, or certainly whether or not, it is going to have an effect on our collective nationwide sense of Europeanness. In sure – London, metropolitan – quarters, this considerably elusive high quality has been getting an exhaustive airing and we might properly must brace ourselves for an extra mass outbreak of EU flag waving within the coming weeks.
One of the crucial fascinating elements of the final three and a half years has been the rise of what I’ve taken to calling ‘performative Europeanness’. You’ll have seen the phenomenon in motion, for certain, from the EU flag pins which have crept onto lapels in all places to the full-on sporting of these blue-with-gold-stars berets. The peddlers of this assortment of tourist-style tat should be laughing all the way in which to the financial institution, the place they could properly plan to vary their kilos for euros. But the awkward reality stays: previous to the 2016 referendum, it’s laborious to recall seeing many EU flags on this nation, a lot much less draped across the shoulders of passers-by on the street.
What’s going on with all this effortful behaviour, harking back to pupil demonstrations? It seems to be the proper storm of identification politics and advantage signalling, of flagging up – usually actually – a want to be perceived as worldwide and cultured. There’s nothing fallacious with any of that per se, in fact. It’s human nature all of the sudden to leap to the defence of one thing treasured, one thing beforehand taken with no consideration, that’s about to be misplaced – and that goes a good method in the direction of explaining the surge in gross sales of European memorabilia. But nonetheless, it’s laborious to shake the niggling sense of unease that there’s something each extra and fewer than this strutting and fretting upon this explicit stage.
I requested a lot of ardent Remainer buddies what they contemplate to be the best private detriment after we depart the EU and the overwhelming majority of those solutions have centred across the situation that they’ll now not have such a straightforward capability to dwell and work in one other European nation. A loss certainly, have been it not for the truth that none of them, in 20 or so years of grownup life, has taken benefit of this feature up till now. Few of them would possess the language expertise to take action sooner or later, for regardless of how a lot we declare to worth a detailed connection to our European neighbours, it usually doesn’t lengthen to having the ability to discuss with them in something apart from English. But these are sometimes the exact same individuals who have taken, often in one thing of a self-aggrandising method, to insisting upon describing themselves as ‘European’ at any given alternative, relatively than ‘British’.
I’m at the moment studying my fifth Romance language, Portuguese, however it might by no means cross my thoughts to self-identify as ‘European’. I believe fondly of my many multilingual buddies in Finland and Italy, who have been absolutely signed-up – and frighteningly educated – members of the European mission lengthy earlier than I ever heard any of my contemporaries right here communicate wistfully about Brussels. These European friends would fairly merely die laughing in the event you steered that they have been ‘European’ relatively than ‘Finnish’ or ‘Italian’. They’re fiercely happy with their cities, their areas and their international locations, however they handle to interweave that right into a deep-rooted dedication to the European perfect that goes method past sporting a self-publicising merchandise of clothes. That’s the fashionable approach to profess allegiance relatively than strutting round bedecked in blue and gold. The latter is as tiresome as these bores who drone on about getting again the ‘conventional’ blue British passport and purchase these terrible covers – not less than the vacationer tat market spans either side of the Brexit divide – to cover the ‘horror’ of the European maroon.
As we attain the ultimate au revoir to our EU membership, for higher or bitter, I believe our nationwide feeling of Europeanness will stay precisely as nebulous as ever.