Be proud, not embarrassed

I'm talking about the Brexit debates in Parliament, of course. 

What we are seeing is our elected representatives arguing, debating and voting, largely as their consciences tell them, about difficult questions to do with our country's relationship with its neighbours. We are seeing citizen legislators, concerned with the will of the people and the good of the country, deliberating in public. 

Let's not beat about the bush here. That is what we fought the war for. It is what any number of wars of independence or liberation, any number of civil wars, have been fought for - and rightly fought. Revel in it. Delight in the sweet taste of public discord. Rejoice in the mess. This is democracy.

I'm entirely serious. Sure, everything was a bit more dignified when the well-educated and well-brought up likes of Henry VIII and Kaiser Wilhelm just decided how things were to be. But there's a reason we don't do things that way any more. There's a reason that "at least Mussolini made the trains run on time" is not a good argument. 

Or maybe you just think they're a bunch of pygmies making a mess of something that [insert name of past leader] could have sorted out? Maybe they are. They're just people, like you and me. They make mistakes, like you and me. Just like Barnier and Juncker and everyone else. And they're trying to do something pretty tricky, so you can expect quite a few mistakes to be made. But they are doing it in public and they are answerable to the people for doing it. When the members of the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China make mistakes (and they do), then what happens?

We have, in reality, what Benjamin Franklin called a Republic, if you can keep it. This is what keeping it looks like.

Don't just take it from me, take it from Simon Schama, Tom Holland ...

... Bruno Maçães ...








































Because what is the alternative?

This is the alternative:

 As the song (nearly)  has it, don't commit a performative contradiction, be happy.