Addressing certain realities… and a left critique that may not quite work…

Here’s an odd one. Chris Johns in the middle of a piece on how foolish Tory Brexit proponents are, given that as he notes they’ve already rolled back on their intentions when Article 50 was signed, says something that has long struck me, and I’m sure many of us.

The sort of things that often go along with both success – effectiveness – and job satisfaction rarely have much to do with Leaving Cert points or a first-class honours in something or other. The brutal truth for our children is that there are hundreds of millions of other kids in this globalised world with more and better formal qualifications. If you really want to do the competitive thing you need all those certificates plus a host of other things, not least of which is luck.

Perhaps the word ‘luck’ is the wrong word. Chance, is that more appropriate? The jobs we get, the one’s we don’t. Whether we go to third level or not. Whether we are positioned from the off to do something, anything, that will lead to some degree of contentment (I’m not sure that success is entirely meaningful as term).

And he’s right. In a this world there are so many people who are ‘qualified’. That queue is already full. How this system, this society, these societies, manage this reality is an open question. And for those of us on the left our critique one might think would have some traction in this. But it doesn’t seem to be quite working out that way.

Meanwhile, he makes a good point here:

The clearest example of a group of seemingly educated but actually inauthentic, unserious people is to be found in the current British cabinet. With Oxford and Cambridge degrees in abundance, Brexiteers are, on a daily basis, displaying their superficial approach to everything, incapable of paying attention to detail, clearly don’t read anything and are not devoting any thought to what happens when they fail to deliver on their promises. Instead, they mouth platitudes; they promise that crashing out of the EU with no deal will be a good outcome; and they threaten war with Spain over Gibraltar.

And:

The mention of war laid bare the Brexiteers’ complete lack of knowledge of European history, the total lack of awareness that Europe has a hundred, maybe thousands of Gibraltar-like tensions. Gibraltar’s “constructive ambiguity” is replicated in so many different ways around the EU. This is why the EU exists: to make sure that none of these points of tension ever becomes a flashpoint for the nastiness that characterised Europe’s history. Another obvious example is the border on this island: Europe has rendered it invisible. Brexit places it front and centre.

There are many many reasons to dislike the EU, to loathe it, to want it replaced. But there’s a significant element of truth in what he says above about how the EU has managed to calm flash points within Europe. Of course there are obvious hypocrisies, and contradictions in all this, but it is unquestionable that Brexit has, as he says placed front and centre the tensions on this island. The last week has been stunning. Not so much that conflict between EU members is unheard of but because the rhetoric emanating from the UK has been so sharp, so rapidly coming on foot of Article 50. Brexit has consequences. This is one of them – a radically different relationship between the UK and other European states. Including this one. Including this island.

So far that has been dealt with in a relatively manageable fashion. Long may that continue.

But Johns is right. There is a fundamental unseriousness about those pushing Brexit. There always has been (bar a small minority whose efforts have had considerable detail when addressing the issues, sadly not on the left unfortunately – and they have been sidelined almost entirely to date, perhaps they will renter the picture). Indeed as the reality of Brexit looms ever larger it is telling, and Johns also makes this point, that the actual relationships that need to be saved between the EU and the UK and vice versa demonstrate that the sort of absolute sovereignty that seems to underpin a cohort of Brexiteers (and the most honourable ones to my mind, at least those on the left for whom it is an issue, even if I disagree with their analysis) is a relic of the 19th century. Britain can no more go it alone without Europe than it can rebuild the Empire. That’s simply not functionally possible in this century. And arguably that’s no bad thing.