Bravo to Boris Johnson in finally achieving his dreams. An exemplar of the idea of the will to power, Johnson proved all rationalists wrong in achieving the highest throne in an ever shrinking land, damned be the height of the cost. It seems clear to all observers that this and this alone is about the only thing the man has ever wanted, power and the ability to wield it, and in our rules-based (only just) society, this power can be found most abundantly with the clout of the government, especially in an ancient country like Britain. Yes money clearly gets you the power, but with government backing you also get the points of prestige. The merchants and financiers are more often than not forgotten quite quickly within the ever receding mists of history, but the politicians have an annoying habit of clinging on to the imagination for well beyond the limits imposed on mortals by time.
While we’re speaking of history’s judgement, I think it’s clear in full to all around that Britain’s in for some form of disaster or at the very least ever more interesting times. Stripping itself of the regulations to which it’s been party for the past three decades, the economics and the politics of this little island now seem shaky on the most stable of days. Uncertainty reigns supreme, the final resting place of power on the island seems now unknown, and the future seems hard to predict for all involved.
The Scots, a naturally fearful race of whipped curs, see their ancient master now weakened, and so do what they’ve always done and return their sights to European allies for security and aid. The Auld Alliance will be reborn once again. In talks of “independence” they hide their deep insecurity about their value and place in the world, worrying now that their power shrinks ever weaker than its current non-existence. The only freedom wanted in Scotland is the freedom from financial insecurity and stress, and if that means going along with the big guy next door, that’s fine. The movement from being an unheard voice in an union of four to an even smaller voice in an union of nearly thirty hardly seems like a step towards independence at all, but it is the step that shall guarantee Scotland shall be less victimized by greater powers from beyond. Scotland is one of history’s great victim nations, and the true arguments under-riding this new sovereign movement only further reveal that, revealing the nation’s abuse-victim nature.
Scots should feel no pride in their abandonment of Britain for Europe, and should not mix it up with their typical feelings of showboating nationalism. Only when Britain flails in fear and desperation at the fast changing nature of the world that threatens the livelihood common folk everywhere, do the Scots suddenly find the courage to abandon their ancient oppressor and run into the arms of a bigger giant. Only when the English face the most perilous of times do the Scots finally find the courage to rise up and speak of freedom, in a time that would further threaten the English people. It all seems natural in the heat of the political moment, but what does it say to the larger character the nation wants to exhibit from afar? Everyone on Earth knows the English are bastards, they’ve done a great job making certain it’s the one fact about them of which everyone can be sure. Yet they’re Scotland’s bastards now, who else can be expected to keep their more arrogant instincts in check? The trappings of nationalism now tempt the Scots away from their ancient partner into the arms of a confusing financial-bureaucratic machine that seems to slowly consume more and more of daily life. The English fear what will happen in the future as the come to terms with their loss of unquestioned status, now the Scots heap further abuse upon those who have made them feel like a victim.
For that’s all Brexit really is, the final national reckoning of the end of the British Empire. It’s common political knowledge that the elderly are the ones who by-and-large pushed the election in favor of leave and the calamities now at hand, while the young overwhelmingly sought to remain and integrate with nations across the small seas surrounding their small land. If you listen to any older Briton, you quickly begin to realize that many of their world views belong in a parallel reality outside our shared space-and-time. They see the world still in the terms they were brainwashed into believing during childhood, the days of glory, and valor, and might.
They believe in the true brotherhood and loyalty still stirred by the old “Commonwealth” of nations, that noble term used to justify the financial and physical enslavement of their otherly-cultured fellow beings. They believe The War, for there is really only one war that matters to them, was won by British values of determination and grit, only later reinforced by unquestionable American might. The vanguard of civilization and moral integrity, Britannia alone stands for the defense of the goodness of man, a good-enough justification for invading unknown lands so that they might then hope to bring the light of civilization to dark-shores, a la Kipling. The foreign ways pose a threat to the values that are held so near and dear to virtuous living, and so it is British values that must be upheld for all our protection, values the young no longer respect because they did not exist during the times when they were properly threatened, such as the times of Hitler when evil nearly conquered the island.
Because that’s the fact that really counts, the one of survival and grin-and-bear-it attitude that really drives the ability to face the daunting future of Brexit. Because of that fact, because Britain was heavily attacked but never invaded or beaten, they believe it makes them better somehow, and more able to stand above their weaker neighbors around them and face challenges that would bring lesser nations to their knees, as if the national belief systems are somehow the reason they survived the onslaught of the fires, and not mere geography as with everything else. There’s something deeply innate in the spirit of Britain, they believe, that defies the threat of enslavement, something primordial willing to fight for freedom that’s unique to themselves alone. “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.” In a world of slaves and masters, Britain will only ever play master. They still sing those lines at the proms every year, most of us now can without thought hum the tune to that song and know probably those lines alone.
It sounds like a crazy belief system to a child of the 21st century, something archaic and completely incompatible with the liberal order of today, an internationally agreed upon rules-based system used as the foundation of the entire postwar world-order. That encapsulates not just internationally treaties, but nearly all the political and business contracts built upon these original agreements that create our shared story that further enables the ever increasing expansion of our globalized world. (I really believe in Yuval Noah Harari’s connecting theory of story, the idea that the tales we tell one-another are the things upon which all civilization is based. He lays it all out in Sapiens, which I shall echo many others in suggesting as a near-essential read.) This slave/master dynamic only works with a worldview that still views things in terms of domination and control, instead of the new world-ethic which works from the assumption of cooperation and mutual understanding in order that we all might together grow. These Old Britons refuse to believe this, seeing it as some sort of trap that allows the internationally enfranchised to only further trick these basically honest individuals into giving up power so that this global power-elite can continue to further grow. They’re not wholly wrong in this reasoning, only in the belief that it’s all bad.
The entire foundational purpose of the EU is the free-trade of products across Europe, and thus the empowerment of those European partners. In the advancement of these aims, the European Commission came to realize that political alignment contributes to easier economic alignment, and so moved their purely economic enterprise into a more powerful system of political entanglement. Having fought so hard for the preservation of democracy and the preservation of a multi-ethnic continent, the body had to ensure the entire endeavor at least pretended to exist on the pretext of uniting the diverse nations of Europe in one big happy family, and implicated the citizenry of all those nations in the guise of a vote.
By electing representatives to this new political order, the individual citizens had to suffer the whims of this largely foreign and misunderstood body working in some strange bureaucratic wonderscape called Brussels or Strasbourg or something, as they’d had a choice in deciding the idiots involved in the enterprise. Their governments had become complicit in the scheme because of the financial rewards they could potentially gain, and sold certain rights of sovereignty in exchange for these seeming bargains. The liberal parties signed on to the deal because the European Union agreed to float the costs of so many social programs and cultural fundings which they could then tout during campaigns as their own. This of course meant downplaying the involvement of their European partners to boost their own image. The conservatives of course partook because of the financial gains. Everyone gets rich with free-trade, in the end, and the more money is good for the nation. They kept the EU’s role in the matter quiet, just like the liberals, here by touting the economic gains and sowing disinterest in unifying movements of pan-European socialism, which called attention to the unjust nature of some of these gains, in favor of gentle nationalistic sentiments that helped encourage voter demographics at home to show up for the general.
Anybody with any local political knowledge of Britain knows that the European elections are some of the least respected and attended across the country, with turnout in utterly dismal numbers. When election numbers don’t meet the needed threshold of at least half the potential voters voting, then it makes them illegitimate on some level. The theory of representative democracy works on the basis that an individual’s decision making power is transferred in the form of a vote in semi-regular intervals into the hands of another person. This empowered representative then takes that power and uses it in a place filled with other similarly empowered individuals to pool together the combined power of the entire voting population. Through countless wars and struggles, we have come to the baseline understanding that every citizen of a nation deserves the political self-expression that the vote guarantees, as the commitment of citizenship commits an individual to the laws laid down by that duly empowered unified social band.
When a population does not turn out to represent itself through the vote, it means the population has not fully empowered another individual to represent them. The symbolic action of power transference has not taken place in the form of an electorally representative ballot, so whoever might win the most votes in a low-turnout election does not matter, as no winner has become empowered by the people of that voting population. All actions taken by that representative do not speak for those the individual is purported to represent. Fervent activists always vote, because they understand the power they wield, the commoner votes during important elections because they’ve been instructed it’s their duty. This leaves low-turnout elections skewed in favor of radicals and more extreme elements of the entire population.
Due to the fact that Britons do not believe they have any commitment of duty when it comes to European politics, as that’s the messy business of the foreign continent with complicated ways, they do not care to learn when to vote or why it matters, and if they do know they still do not care enough to partake. The ones who seem to passionately care are either the urbane internationalists who never seem to understand the daily life of the regular Briton, or else they are the obtuse anti-Europeans who never seem to understand the daily life of the regular European. They all see the other side as something different and foreign to their values, and so talk over one another’s heads at the small percentage of voters who gather enough information together to care and vote in these exercises in pretend engagement with the base. Before Brexit, few Britons could have told you what an MEP (Minister of the European Parliament for my ignorant Americans) even is, never mind naming the one elected to supposedly represent them in some distant house.
As far as the average voter is concerned, each MEP is just another faceless bureaucrat collecting a tax-funded paycheck while figuring out ever-creative ways whereby they can continue to screw working people. So when they were finally given a real choice on whether or not they should keep funding Britain’s continued paying for this endeavor, they said fuck that and voted to take their chips off the table. The people who have been ignored most of their working life were finally given a real choice in the direction of their society, and they voted resoundingly against the instructions of their perceived masters. They were told what to do by all the smart people who thought they knew better, they were told to bow down to the threats of economic sanctions and isolation in the international cold. Yet these smart politicians forgot the ancient spirit of Britons that’s been cultivated beyond true reckoning in the social ethos of the island. Nobody shall be our master. So the voters bolted, abandoning the dependency of international law and finance in favor of the archaic yet dependable fighting strength of the nation. On some level they crave the glorious days of the Blitz.
In these times of war and challenge, Britain needed a national character that can distract from the perils, and remind the people of the strength found in unity and shared social structures, that which makes Britain a great country, something beyond profit driven financial reasoning. For all his flaws Boris well fits this aim. He clearly favors individual character and principle over that of party, even if those principles seem to be exclusively in the attainment of power, in a time when the British parties are in crisis, daily losing the voters trust and the power coming with it. This will focus the national attention on his latest exploits, giving the party functionaries time to cultivate and thoroughly re-create their image and strategies. In this time of political chaos, expect wholesale realignment of party values.
Al, as family call him, comes from the class of the urbane internationalists and their language is his first and most fluent, but he speaks too the tongue of the commoner, BoJo, and can well-manipulate and grab their attentions. In a time when London is the enemy to Conservatives and vice versa, he ruled them both with wit and unruly charm if naught else. As Britain faces financial insecurity and potentially turbulent waters, the most important thing the next leader can do is cultivate an illusion that on the other side there is coming the promised light, and that until then just to get on with the daily yarn. Boris is a clown, but he is one with which a serious section of the population seems to have some resonance. He makes the average voter feel like they have some sort of personal relationship with him, which is the most effective tool in any strong leader’s tool belt, as it means the citizens have some sort of personal relationship with the state. When properly used this can lead to monumental feats of national power. I’m thinking here of how Roosevelt’s fireside chats helped spiritually lift up the possibilities of his new deal with the nation.
Britain needs a strong leader now more than ever, for it shall be that strength alone that will hold the national ship together. The people laugh at BoJo, the left mock him while the right dismiss him, but all are united in believing that he has none of the skill to do it. Yet Theresa May seemed skilled, and while in office seemed totally inept and catastrophic with every passing day on the job. David Cameron seemed slick and clever, and he unleashed this beast into the national kitchen then fled to France rather than clean up the mess. Gordon Brown seemed smart and sensible, and made repeated dumb and costly mistakes all while grumping. Tony Blair seemed like a good man, and led the nation into evil wars and costly swindles. Britain has proven repeatedly that its leaders are not what they seem, so now they’ve elected a clown. I think it a fitting thing that Johnson believes himself akin to Churchill, for there exists real meat in the comparison. Churchill too was considered a joke of a Tory and a bit of a clown, yet got given the helm to the ship after Conservative leaders before him made costly mistakes that created catastrophes nobody knew how to fix.
The entire political exercise has become a pantomime to the television attached nation. The stage has been set, with the evil Europeans playing their familiar role as villain. The coming Blitz have been set in motion, and now they have their great leader to help guide them through these dark times. Who knows where this latest ascension shall lead, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere near the direction any of those witnessing now can predict.