26.6.16

Please Don't Take my Sunshine Away

I could maunder on for hours about Brexit - ugh: horrible word! - and what a disaster it is; but it'd achieve nothing.  (Actually, I might post something later.  Brace yourselves.)

Of course, achieving nothing is the lot of just about everyone, if we're being completely honest.  But, all the same, I've taken it into my head to write to some important people in the hope - the vanishingly small hope - that we won't lose everything good from the debacle of the referendum.  Please do feel free to copy and use this as a template for your own letters if you think it's any good.  I've embedded the email addresses of recipients behind their names.  For UK Ministers, I've used their ministerial email address, rather than their Parliamentary one.  The exception to this is for David Cameron, who doesn't seem to have a ministerial email address that I can find; I've had to use his Parliamentary one.  But I'm planning to send paper copies to the MPs in addition to the email anyway.

Obviously, I'm going to use my real name when I send it.  I'm not thick.  You should do the same.  You're not thick either.

*     *     *     *     *

Mr Juncker
Thursday’s referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued membership of the European Union has already had severe repercussions around the world.  At the time I write this, it is unclear when (or indeed whether) the UK will invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and thereby begin the formal process of leaving the EU: the referendum is not legally binding, after all; but whatever happens in the coming months and years, it is clear that there will be huge changes in the political landscape of the continent.

However, it is also true that very nearly half of the electorate voted to stay within the EU; and a good portion of that half is positively enthusiastic about continued UK membership of the EU.  To them – to us – the outcome, and the prospect of leaving the Union, is nothing short of a disaster.

One of the reasons for this is economic.  Yet, though the economic consequences of “Brexit” are likely to be severe, they may also be transient in the medium-to-long term, and it is the job of politicians and central bankers to manage them.  But there are other reasons for Europhile gloom: notably, UK membership of the EU represents an outward-looking, cosmopolitan, and optimistic attitude.  This is not something that can be managed politically.

I am currently a citizen of the United Kingdom, but also a citizen of the European Union.  This European citizenship means a great deal to me and to millions like me precisely because of the symbolic status of the EU.  The prospect of losing that European citizenship feels like being disinherited.

With this in mind, I would like to ask whether, in the course of whatever negotiations occur in the next few years, some way could be found for those UK citizens who wish to keep European citizenship to do so, perhaps as dual citizens.  Is there any chance at all that we might be able to retain a European passport, and the rights that we currently have across all member states?

It is worth noting in passing that citizenship of the EU was established under Article 8 of the Maastricht Treaty, according to which:
1. Citizenship of the Union is hereby established.
Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union.
2. Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights conferred by this Treaty and shall be subject to the duties imposed thereby.
Thus everyone who is a citizen of a member state of the EU is also a citizen of the EU; and anyone who is a citizen of a state that accedes to the Union becomes a citizen of the EU as a matter of course.  This is confirmed by Article 9 of the Lisbon Treaty, which also makes it clear that
[e]very national of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship.
Citizenship of a member state, on this basis, would appear to be a sufficient rather than a necessary condition of holding EU citizenship.  Under Article 50 (3) of the Lisbon Treaty,
[t]he Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
Clearly, there is no provision for people who are born in, or become citizens of, ex-member states of the European Union to be granted EU citizenship, any more than there is or should be for citizens of states that are not and have never been members.  However, neither is there any provision by which citizenship, once granted, may be withdrawn from EU citizens once conferred.  This is a very different matter, and I would suggest that summarily removing citizenship from tens of millions of people may not set the most happy precedent.

It is my deepest hope that the UK’s departure from the EU can still be avoided somehow, and that if it cannot, the door to rejoining the club will not be closed to us forever.  (On this, I cling to Article 50 (5) of the Lisbon Treaty, as do many others.)  In the meantime, a great many UK citizens do think of themselves as European, and are horrified at the prospect of having that taken from us for even a comparatively short period.  If there is any way that we can maintain a European citizenship that we have come to regard as our birthright, it would surely be embraced.

Sincerely


Enzyme

cc The Rt Hon David Cameron MP, Prime Minister;
The Rt Hon Theresa May MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department;
The Rt Hon Philip Hammond MP, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs;
The Rt Hon David Lidington MP, Minister of State for Europe;
Frans Timmermans, First Vice President of the European Commission;
Federica Mogherini, Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy;
Marianne Thyssen, Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills, and Labour Mobility;
Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy;
Dimitris Avramopoulos, Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship

14.6.16

Do Not Adjust Your Sets

Here's something mildly diverting... although - at risk of sounding like I'm trying to get my excuses in early - whether it makes any real sense might depend on the characteristics of the screen on which you're reading it.

I'm currently in Edinburgh for the IAB, but took the opportunity to pootle off this morning to the SNGMA, where they've a Bridget Riley exhibition.  (It's small, but very good.  Well worth a visit, I'd say, though perhaps not if you've got a hangover.)  One of the paintings on show is this one:

It's called Rattle, and it's a touch over a metre and a half high, by almost four metres long.  It's a series of stripes, each of which is constituted by alternating sequences of diagonals in red bordered with green (which look a bit orange), and red bordered with blue (which look a bit pink).

But here's the thing: the intensity of the colour seems to depend on the direction of the diagonals.  To my eye, the bends sinisters (top right to bottom left, as we look at it) seem to have a much deeper and more vibrant hue than the bends dexters.  I wondered if it was just my eyes, but I asked a couple of other people who were there, and they agreed.  It's just occurred to me that maybe they were just being polite, but I'll take them at their word.

The picture I've just used is one I downloaded; here's a detail from the painting that I photographed myself.  The effect is lost a little in translation from reality to camera to blog, but I think it's just about visible in the two "pink" stripes; the lower one, to my eye, seems to be more intense than the upper one.  Oddly, the bends dexters in the "orange" rows now look to be the more intense to me here, which was not the case when I looked at the painting directly a couple of hours ago.  That in itself is possibly worth noting.

I wondered if the effect would be preserved in black-and-white; and I think it is.

Look at the top three rows in the reproduction on the right here; the top one, the third, and the fifth one down are pink-looing in real life, and the one between them is orange-looking.  But the top row and the third do look to be different even here - darker in the bend sinister than in the bend dexter.  Rows 4 and 5 look to be more similar to each other than rows 3 and 5.  Had I not seen the colour version, I think I'd be inclined to guess that 4 and 5 were the same colour in real life, and 3 different from both.

Or maybe I'm just trying to persuade myself now.  It's a bit hard to tell.

So that's mildly interesting.

5.6.16

The Narcissism of it All

In the end, it's the narcissism of it all.

There's something oddly fascinating about the Brexit campaign.  I think it's factually wrong about a lot of stuff, bullshitting on a good deal more, and out-and-out mendacious on some.  A case in point is the £350m-a-week claim; it might have been forgivable to state that at one stage, but once it's been so thoroughly rebutted, to keep making it implies either a desire to deceive (which at least implies that the truth is important qua something to be avoided), or an utter contempt for truth.  I have to admit that there's a degree of bullshit to the remain campaign as well (not as much, I don't think, but some), and likely as not a few errors too - though I'm not aware of any outright lies.  That economy with the truth is, regrettably, to be expected.  It doesn't explain, though, why I find Brexiteers to be by turns risible and infuriating.

And then it struck me - that there's a theme that unites the Brexit arguments; and that theme is a quite staggering narcissism.

Brexiteers' strongest card is, I think, the immigration one.  Lots of people are very worried about immigration; whether or not that worry is warranted is neither here nor there.  If people are worried about immigration, and the Brexit camp is willing to say that (a) they're correct to be worried, and (b) leaving the Union will do something to salve those worries, then that's a politically astute strategy.  Employment has something to do with it; benefits have something to do with it.  It's a line of argument that we first heard way back in 2004 with the last expansion of the Union: we'd be opening our doors to floods of Eastern European migrants who would come across here and take all the jobs.  To hear the Brexiteers speak, they're still doing that now.  The difference is that the problem is no longer associated just with the accession states; it's merely potential members of the EU, too - notably Turkey.

There's a Vote Leave poster on the main road from Salford to Manchester that screams TURKEY IS JOINING THE EU.  That's a bare faced lie.  But if you look at page 6 of the Vote Leave brochure, great play is made of the fact that Turkey's population is at the thick end of 80 million.  And there's an arrow heading from there right to the Thames valley.  Subliminal message: they're all going to come here.

That's some quite remarkable argumentative chutzpah; but it's also where the self-absorbtion comes in.  Why would they come here?  What is so special about the UK that the first thing that would cross the mind of the people of an accession state (or accession-possibly-at-some-pont-in-a-generation-or-so state) is to pack their bags and come to the UK?  It makes sense if you think that the UK is the land of milk and honey - finite milk and finite honey, of course: not enough for everyone - and that that's a given.  And yet, of course, the UK is not that land.  The UK is, in the end, just another country.  It's quite a nice country - we're wealthy, and there's no State oppression, and low crime, and little to no political violence; so, yes, things could be a lot worse.  And given the choice, I think I'd rather live here than in Turkey.

Yet at least some of that has to do with the fact that I've been brought up here.  I understand the culture; my ties are all here; I speak the language; the faff of getting a bank account somewhere else seems like too much to be bothered with.  But Turks probably think the same.  It might be true that the jobs are currently more and better in the UK; and that is a reason to migrate.  But there're lots of reasons not to as well.

Bluntly, the UK is not so attractive that everyone will want to come here by default.  It's strangely masturbatory to think otherwise.

Something similar goes for the economic arguments.  One of the lines for remaining is that the EU represents a huge free-trade area; free trade is good for the economy and so - when well-regulated - good for the people.  Brexiteers insist that they would negotiate free trade after leaving (which raises the question of why we'd leave to begin with, if one of the priorities afterwards would be to negotiate to secure what we'd just lost; but still...).  And they think that such a deal would be easy to negotiate, on the basis that the UK imports more from the EU than it exports to it.  That, in the mind of a Brexiteer, implies that the EU needs the UK, and would therefore be wary of putting up any trade barriers.

There's an obvious non sequitur there - the fact that they send more here doesn't mean that they depend on us in any way.  But there was a spokesman on the radio the other day whose claim was that the Germans would be loath to disrupt free trade, because of all the German cars we buy - I don't have a link, sadly, but there's someone reported as saying something very similar here.  In other words, if the UK leaves the Union, the UK will be able to dictate terms, and the rest of the Union will have no choice but to accept them.  Just how up yourself do you have to be to think that?  How much of a narcissist?

To think - as seems to be the case - that when we buy BMWs we're doing Germany a favour, and we might rescind this favour if those naughty Europeans don't play by the rules we want: to think that requires... and here, I begin to struggle for words.

It's more than a little bit repellent, if we're being perfectly frank.  But it's also insane - and it's deeply worrying for what might happen if we leave the Union.  If exit is run by the kind of twerp who thinks along those lines, then the post-exit UK is doomed for a generation.  It would struggle outside the EU even with wise leadership - but I'll admit that it might just about be OK with immense good luck and a following wind.  But if that kind of delusional thinking is indicative of what's to come...  God, it doesn't bear thinking about.  I'm increasingly worried - no, scared, that the UK is about to leave the EU.  And it's about to do so under the leadership of liars and fantasists.

And we're supposed to leave because BRITAIN, and we'll be OK afterwards because BRITAIN, and we're the greatest nation in the world because BRITAIN, and that's why everyone wants to come here - because even if we are the greatest nation in the world, we're not quite so great enough to handle non-Brits coming here and building our walls.  Still, BRITAIN, eh?  Fucking BRITAIN.

I don't pretend that any of this is a devastating insight.  I'm probably well behind the curve.  But I think it's interesting, and worth pointing out nonetheless.

Shit, I'm scared.