Friends and Neighbours

(Trigger warning: Brexit.)

I have been considering this (in The Economist) and this (in The Guardian), a couple of pieces by Jeremy Cliffe that make similar points about the mutual UK-EU misunderstanding. You might want to read them.

Cliffe's central point is that the EU sees itself as the guarantor of a "recognisably European way of life": long holidays, universal healthcare, a quiet, safe, calm world made manifest in "well-heated social housing blocks in Utrecht or Vienna, in comfortable houses with gardens on the outskirts of Barcelona or Prague, in safe streets and decent hospitals".

Cliffe's theory is similar to (and indeed in some respects overlaps with) my theory that the EU genuinely sees itself as guaranteeing peace in Europe: Cliffe and I both posit an EU that is doing something different from – and rather more ambitious than – what the UK imagines.

Below the break, I try to explore how this idea of the European Way of Life (EWL), and its centrality in the EU's conception of itself, has created problems for UK-EU relations.

 

British commentators love to use the analogy of the tennis club when discussing Brexit: you will have heard about how Leavers want to leave the club but carry on using the facilities, or about how paying a fee for membership is fair enough.

But when we are thinking about the EWL we need to expand the analogy. Think of it this way: Britain joined a tennis club because of the excellent showers and it regards the tennis as a distraction.

Let me explain. Take the Working Time Directive (WTD): ask any doctor my age or older - any normal decent pro-EU doctor - and they'll tell you that the WTD has been a nightmare for medical training. So far as other pro-EU elements in the UK are concerned, the WTD reduces labour market flexibility and is generally one of those regrettable prices we have to pay for the benefits of EU membership.

But if you believe in the EWL then the WTD is an achievement - it's not one of the costs but one of the benefits. Long holidays, protected workers - that is the tennis; the Single Market is just part of the shower block.

Or consider the various opt-outs that British Prime Ministers have 'succeeded' in obtaining. From an EWL point of view, this is tantamount to saying "hooray - I've managed to get us out of playing in the mixed doubles - but we can still use the showers!"

Or think of the “Germany Plus” model which you might have seen circulating on social media:

 

This is broadly how the most compelling Remain case goes – and it’s a good case. But it’s all about the showers, with nothing about the tennis: note, for example, than a European Army is firmly on the debit side of the ledger. To the British, this is Germany Plus: but isn't it also, more fundamentally, Germany Minus?

That’s the way the Brexit debate in the UK has always been: on the one side were those who said that the showers were so good that we should put up with the tennis, and on the other side were those said that the tennis was so bad - and the fees so high - that we should find our own showers. Apart from the likes of the British signatories of this letter, there are not many people in Britain who sign up to the EU+EWL package.

Why should this be?

One reason is economics. The best way in to this is to examine how the EU and the UK see the modern, globalised world.

On the one hand, the EU says this: "Look at the cold hard world out there: America, China, all the developing countries, globalisation, etc etc. The EWL is under threat! Unless we all join together and build a strong EU then we’ll end up more like America."

But the UK – by which I mean the normal, centrist, pro-EU opinion-formers of the UK, anyone in the sensible FT-Economist-Cameron-Blair spectrum – says this: "Look at the cold hard world out there: America, China, all the developing countries, globalisation, etc etc. The EWL is a dead dog! We need to end up more like America."

I’m quite serious here: the most influential strand of pro-EU thought in British society sees itself as contributing to the EU by strengthening the Single Market (think Thatcher) and by trying to make the EU more like the flexible, free-trading Anglophone countries that The Economist admires. That is to say, pro-EU British thought wants to help the EU by undermining the EWL. It wants to get all the other members to ease off on the tennis and put more shampoo in the shower block instead.

In this vein, you can find countless articles in the British pro-EU press bemoaning the fact that Brexit will deprive the EU of its principal advocate for free trade and flexible labour markets. This week's Economist, for example, urges labour market reforms on Germany and pushes a Scandinavian free-trader for President of the Commission.

Consider also the Republic of Ireland's tax policy. Ireland decided that the right approach to globalisation was to entice multinationals to set up shop in Ireland by giving them favourable tax treatment. To British eyes, as to Irish ones, that seems more or less plausible depending on your views about economics and tax. But the whole idea is anathema to the EWL – and the EU is going to stamp on it.

I am not concerned here with whether the UK or the EU is right that the EWL can be maintained in the face of the cold winds of globalisation. All I want to point out is that, as with my security theory, the UK's approach is to take the world as it is (or as it seems to the UK) while the EU's is to take the world as it could be (or so it seems to the EU): there is a difference in ambition and world-view that causes mutual incomprehension.

But there’s more to it than economics. Support for labour market flexibility and globalised free trade are certainly part of the elite centrist consensus in this country, but they are not universally popular. Nonetheless, the EWL has no emotional purchase even among opponents of the free market consensus. The EU is not associated with what we value about our way of life.

Take healthcare: we like decent hospitals as much as the rest of Europe. But in this country, the EU is nothing to do with universal healthcare. (Come to think of it, I seem to recall that the NHS was mentioned on the Leave side of the debate ...) Indeed, at a fundamental level, our healthcare system is distinctly different from the insurance-heavy models familiar to the EWL.

But there’s more. No discussion of life in this country is complete without mentioning the two great British concerns: the weather – and class.

Europe solves the weather problem, but not the class problem. To the British, ‘Europe’, or ‘the Continent’, is (to a large extent) Paris and Tuscany and Vienna and sailing round those charming Greek islands. Part of the appeal of ‘joining Europe’ was a feeling that they arrange these things much better in France and perhaps we can all grow up a bit and learn from them: drink wine, eat proper food, indulge in a passeggiata. These are not class-neutral thoughts. (They are also at best only tangentially related to the EWL, with its love of suburban Barcelona and short working hours.)

I know that ‘Europe’ is also the Costa del Sol and Faliraki and (most class neutral of all) stag nights in Prague. But it is not the social housing of Rhodes or the municipal governance of the Czech Republic that appeals to us Brits: it’s the chance to live the British Way of Life somewhere else.

I’m not just making the point that British people’s experience of Europe varies according to their background. I think the point is deeper: to the extent that any European way of life has an appeal in this country, it is not an appeal that unites us, but one that divides us. Thinking about Europe calls attention to some potentially bitter divisions in British society.

The contrast here is with the Australian Way of Life. I would love to see the definitive treatment of the effect of the broadcast of Australian soap operas, particularly Neighbours, on British political thought. But in the absence of a readily accessible PhD thesis on the topic, you can have my wild speculations.

In a nutshell, in Erinsborough, Neighbours showed the British public a society that has solved the problems of both weather and class. Here, far away from Europe, was a world in which drama consisted of a swimming race, a couple getting married despite being quite young (Scott and Charlene's wedding got 19.6 million viewers in the UK!) and a dog having a dream. Whether because of Neighbours and its competitors or by some other route, the Australian Way of Life has come to hold a place in the British collective imagination that "well-heated social housing blocks in Utrecht" simply don't have.

And when I say the British collective imagination, I mean across the classes. Australia is a country that is famous in the UK for cricket, an opera house and inventive slang. A country where the Prime Ministers go to Oxford but also hold beer-drinking world records. Barbecues. Nice wine with easy-to-understand labels. Rude words. It’s a potent cocktail for the British palate.

Or perhaps you preferred the classless and contented New York of Friends, the long-running comedy series about the Geller siblings eventually deciding to marry their best friends? That was more clearly a fantasy world than Erinsborough, but, like Erinsborough, it was a fantasy that caught the British imagination. There is something notable about the fact that both Neighbours and Friends recognised their popularity in this country by setting episodes here.

Look, I've seen Frasier, I've seen Kath and Kim - I know that Australia and America are well capable of recognising and laughing at their own class systems. I'm not pretending that Erinsborough is a real place. But it's real enough for the British to know that they have Friends and Neighbours with safe streets, decent hospitals, comfortable houses and well-heated homes who are not European. There is a decent way of life that is not the EWL.

Perhaps I can sum up this way: Cliffe does well to remind us that the Brexit negotiations are plagued by the misunderstandings that result from Neighbours fans with a shower obsession talking to tennis players who love their warm Utrecht council houses. Farce or tragedy? Sitcom or soap? Take your pick.