As a lifelong English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life | Timothy Garton Ash | Politics | The Guardian

"And why has generation upon generation of British politicians failed to make the positive case for the project of European integration that we call in shorthand “Europe”? Tony Blair delivered some fine pro-European speeches – in Poland, Germany or Belgium. When he made one at Oxford, I begged him to express in public his privately withering criticism of the Eurosceptic press. What got past his inner spin doctor was one short paragraph, so weaselly that it would have embarrassed even a self-respecting weasel. (Ex-prime ministers have been bravely eloquent, but only when ex.)



Yet the origins of this debacle are as much European as British. As so often, the seeds of disaster were sown in the moment of triumph; of nemesis in prior hubris. It would be an exaggeration to say that a wall will be going up at Dover because a wall came down in Berlin, but there is a connection nonetheless. In fact, there are three connections. As their price for supporting German unification, France and Italy pinned Germany down to a timetable for an overhasty, ill-designed and overextended European monetary union. As a result of their liberation from Soviet communist control, many poorer countries in eastern Europe were set on a path to EU membership, including its core freedom of movement. And 1989 opened the door to globalisation, with spectacular winners and numerous losers.



Each of these chickens has come home to roost in Britain’s referendum. Since the financial crisis exposed the structural flaws of the eurozone, the continent’s economic weakness has been a key argument for leave, just as the continent’s economic strength was a key argument for remain in the referendum of 1975, when Thatcher wore that jumper. “As for the 19 countries locked into the catastrophic, one-sized-fits-all single currency,” the Daily Mail wrote on referendum day, urging its readers to vote leave, “ask the jobless young people of Greece, Spain or France if the euro has underpinned their prosperity.”



 ‘Take back control’ is also the cry of Marine Le Pen (pictured), Geert Wilders and Donald Trump.

The eastward enlargement of the EU in 2004 was followed by a large westward movement of people and, because of Blair’s generously miscalculated open-door policy, some 2 million of them came to Britain. They have been joined more recently by those seeking work from euro-torn Greece or Spain. Precisely because, in spite of Thatcherism, Britain is still basically a European social democracy, with generous welfare benefits, an easily accessed NHS “free at the point of need” and state schooling for all, pressures on those public services – and on housing stock in a country that for decades has built far too few homes – have been felt acutely by the less well-off. This is what I heard on the doorstep from the elderly white working-class woman and the Asian British hairdresser, not to mention the Syrian who runs a pizza parlour. It is a mistake to disqualify such people as racist. Their concerns are widespread, genuine and not to be dismissed. Unfortunately, populist xenophobes such as Nigel Farage exploit these emotions, linking them to subterranean English nationalism and talking, as he did in the moment of victory, of the triumph of “real people, ordinary people, decent people”. This is the language of Orwell hijacked for the purposes of a Poujade.



As a lifelong English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life | Timothy Garton Ash | Politics | The Guardian