An Easter Dream

Palm Sunday.

So that's the end of another Act in the Brexit Saga! Here I am in Alcobaça, Portugal, and most English people I come across dearly want to tune out. 'Why can't they just get it over with, so we know where we stand?' Well tomorrow I'll be back in Ireland, which brings to mind just one of the reasons why 'they' cannot do any such thing. Brexit has laid bare the bankruptcy of the present set-up, particularly in the North - a compromise that has fallen at the test.  The breakdown of the devolved power-sharing executive and the threat of a return to violence that this implies just might have figured more in the headlines, if the world was less fixated on the carry-on in Westminster.

     What else might the headlines have been about? Climate change, the millions suffering from environmental degradation, hunger and violence, or nuclear proliferation, trade wars, democracy under threat all over the place including the U.S.A., the world awash with money that doesn't know where to go while the poor are falling back? Perhaps, but most people would rather tune out that lot too, and it's hard to blame them!  

     In fact of course all this and the Brexit saga are interconnected.  In the face of chaos and impending doom, there is a very natural inclination to pull up the draw-bridge and dig in behind 'old certainties'. Prime Minister May and her Chancellor, Philip Hammond, the dude with a po face who generally appears  behind her at the despatch box in the House of Commons, keep on about the 'bright future' that beckons if only they would pass her deal - a reunited country, its ancient liberties and place in the world reasserted, will at last be able to resume the march to ever greater prosperity etc. Who are they trying to kid? A realistic appraisal of the fraught situation in this ever more interconnected world means that Britain will either be drawn into  even greater integration with the rest of Europe, or become something of 'an overseas territory' of the U.S.A..

     Ireland suffers from the same dichotomy, complicated by the relationship with Britain and much exacerbated by The Duckie. I know too well that it is a lot easier to cross the Irish Sea than the Bay of Biscay, or even the 'Western Approaches' to France - otherwise, history may well have been different. Yet they are all a lot easier than crossing the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the two island economies are pretty much 'joined at the hip'. There is no way that Ireland's relationship with Europe can thrive by trying to pretend that this reality can be totally overturned, much as I for one would sometimes rather like to. There will be no easy resolution of this situation.

     'Never let a good crisis go to waste!' This might be a much more fruitful way to look at things, though I don't suggest it will be easy. I have taken the line, for most of my life, that if the world wants to go to Hell, there's precious little I can do about it. The best thing is to do my thing as well as I can and leave the rest to God. However, the nearer I get to leaving this world, the more I am inclined to love it, to dream dreams of a future for my grandchildren, and to remember that I shall be called to account for what I have done or failed to do, or even have said or failed to say. Talking about things (not just chattering) is after all the first necessity if anything effective is to be done about them, and when people cop out of the challenge of doing so, because they find it difficult or uncomfortable, they are on the way to paralysis and break-down.

     So what of my dreams? They are likely to be rather different to those of Prime Minister May and Chancellor Hammond! I have criticised their Brexit project from the start as an unrealistic fantasy, though not as whacky as that of the likes of Mr Boris Johnson. Hadn't I better set down my own little notions? I will try, and I would have allowed that they too are probably unrealistic, were it not for the little fact that it is impossible to visualise a realistic future at all if we persist in trying to stick to 'business as usual' much longer.

     In England a prerequisite for real progress is to finally leave behind the dream of Empire. Interestingly, this is by no means a problem confined to Great Britain.* The European project is so important largely because it seeks to realise a new paradigm for the relationships between and within the nations, which is why the likes of the Brexiteers, The Duckie and President Putin dislike it so much.  But how could England finally sign up for this project, maybe even leading the way for the renewal of the EU?

     Perhaps one good starting point would be to dispense with the monarchy. It could be done quite gently. Let Queen Elizabeth live out her reign, and meanwhile consult with Prince Charles, who after all gives the impression that he doesn't have that much ambition to be King. He would actually make a pretty good chairman for the establishment of a new set-up, some kind of confederation of independent republics. Indeed he might relish active involvement, rather than being called upon as another stuffed shirt. Perhaps the President might be appointed, not without reference to the demos, but in some other way than universal suffrage, possibly by the House of Lords, along the lines of the method by which the Pope is chosen. After all the papacy is the institution that has endured the longest, and there is an example of the gentle deconstruction of an imperialistic set-up! In fact the heir to the throne might sit in that Upper House, along with some other heriditary members and other representatives of society. There is something to be said for having some there who owe nothing to any political patron, nor constituency of voters, but who are trained from youth to think about the big picture and also to cherish unpopular minorities and truths. 

     The new British dispensation could even be a trial run for a European confederation. Part of it would have to involve strong but inter-related levels of subsidiarity, actively involving as many people as possible in local and regional democracy, that anyone could participate in and wherein their representation worked from one level to the next. The achievement of such active and widespread collaboration should be one of our highest social aspirations - a new kind of sport, rather better than gawking at football on the tele, and more important than most 'work' too! 

     Just how this is to be worked out would involve regional assemblies, preferably going beyond the five nations (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, probably with Mann), to perhaps the four provinces of Ireland and a similar breakdown of England - Wessex, Essex, Northumbria etc. A similar reconstruction of France and Spain would also be good, so that Brittany, the Basque country, Galicia, Catalonia etc would also find their voices in more than name.  In the other direction, let's have a Council of the Atlantic seaboard nations, from Norway to Portugal. One could envisage some four such mega-regions in the EU. In this way, the European project would shed its remote, Napoleonic aspect, and a much more hands-on, immediate and dynamic kind of democracy could be applied both to the development and integration of Europe and to the immense global challenges of the Great Transition to a sustainable future. 
     
     It could be fun. Happy Easter!

Alcobaça Mosteiro.

  *https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/10/nostalgia-for-empires-lost-seductive-dangerous   

I'll be taking an Easter break from this blog too, and hoping there will be stronger progress on the 'sailing' side of things when I resume. At this point the 'Anna M' is slowly acquiring new steel floors, which hold the hull and keel together.