CIVILISATION IS THE REAL ISSUE

This will be read when I am in Europe. Yes, I’m depressed by the Referendum-Shambles and even the prospect of a Euro-Divorce (are we insane?) so I’ve fled to Venice and left my proxy vote at home in safe hands.

As I walked through Brighton yesterday a tough looking, crop haired, wiry girl (probably an off duty copper I thought) said to her friend:  “So we want less interference from bloody Brussels right? No one tells us what to do. Correction - no-one tells me what to do.”

It was the rolling plod of her walk and the “you are nicked” tone of her talk that suggested she was a copper - life is full of such first impressions.

And what has struck me throughout this gruesome debate is the oil and water mix of an argument about money and an argument about sovereignty. Add to this a bubbling “we don’t like Johnny Foreigner” ingredient and you have a complete Eton Mess.

 
Politics is ill served by its main protagonists right now. Most of the people I most dislike are politicians - shifty, cocky and furtively looking as though they are “up to no good.”   But I am in Venice chewing my finger nails and wondering why all the Europeans I’ve recently met seem nicer and more sensible than many of my neighbours and the Brexits.

Yet this isn’t a simple either/or decision. It’s more nuanced than that. What it really involves is defining the sort of world we want to live in. I love the idea of living in this the biggest-economy-united-states of the world which has an asset I prize and the world as a whole prizes above all others.

Civilisation…

We have in this vast “kingdom” the greatest art, music, creativity and sense of humour (yes even Germany - watch Klaus Myers) but most of all we have the best food, drink and civilised conversation. If Jesus returned he’d come to Continental Europe (sorry not the Green and pleasant land of Britain).

My cleverest soothsayers tell me not to worry that the result of “remain” by a wide margin is a foregone conclusion. Drink Prosecco. Relax. Celebrate.

Relax?

The problem is discovering 50% of the UK comprises people that I don’t want to live with anymore.
‘Once you’ve decided to start an argument you have to be prepared to finish it’…I’m sure someone said that once but I wish they hadn’t because it’s completely wrong. The survival of the human race (no less) depends on not finishing arguments.

In recent years the derided (by some), undemocratic EU has been brilliant at nudging us towards compromises and liberal consensus. We have abandoned the idea of fighting as our default mode and when we revert, as we did in Iraq, the results are not great. As with the Arab Spring violent disruption tends to be a bad thing.

I’m in Venice looking at great paintings and talking to gentle Venetians.

Please vote for civilisation.

   

NEW YOUNG SCOTLAND - WELCOME

I watched a referendum debate on TV the other night at which hordes of young Scottish students were in the audience. They were amazing- very bright, eager and full of passion. If this is Scotland, I thought, they’re going to have a ball whether Thursday’s decision is ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And the debate has gone beyond a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ already. It did that with Gordon Brown’s olive branch, not so much an olive branch as an olive forest. And the bruising nature of the debate from the ‘No Campaign’ has meant one thing.

Union as we know it is over.

There’s been an overall miscalculation by everyone and oddly I think this includes the SNP. They were, I was told a few months ago by a pundit, making the most of an average hand that had been dealt to them. But the campaign, populist, mostly positive on their part and above all young now feels more like a revolution than a referendum.

I wonder if Alex Salmond realises what kind of toothpaste he’s squeezed out of the referendum tube. Times writer, Robert Crampton, who’s been touring Scotland on a temperature-taking tour, may be right in predicting a successful “yes” vote. But what he rather sadly concludes is that this is a great, happy and upbeat nation we’ll miss. One he thinks that deserves to have a go by itself. But the general sense is that Alex will have served his time whatever happens. Old politics - simply not fit enough.

A friend of mine said right at the start of the campaign that he'd been down to England on holiday and felt what a miserable bunch we all were.  This holiday had converted him from staunch “no” to wavering “maybe”. Another friend defined the issue as a “governance” one. Westminster cannot rule anywhere anymore - too remote culturally. The mayor has taken over London and Westminster is sitting in a stagnant, historic pool. If Scotland goes, just watch the action from Cornwall and Wales.

(Something odd’s just happened. I’m a dreadful typist and I just made an error - Westminster as “Westmonster”. History will judge this époque as the one when centuries of history may be seen to have reached their sell-by date. ‘Westmonster’ is in its death throes.)

Undertakers are gathering like Nigel Farage and George Galloway (in that Scottish Referendum debate looking grumpy, wearing a trilby - why? What’s George got to do with anything?). Both are yesterday’s minor men.

Back to Scotland ….. whatever happens on Thursday this is the place to be right now … like Berlin after the wall came down. It’s got energy, verve and ambition. I’d guess it might even manage to hang on to its young talent - previously it squandered its entrepreneurial youth. It’s got momentum and that rebel yell feeling that successful and innovative places seem to have.

I think the referendum is no longer relevant. A new, young nation has been launched.

WHAT WENT WRONG WHILST I WAS AWAY?

We’ve just spent a fortnight in Venice - again. That city’s life started with people fleeing attacks from Germanic and Hun hordes. These refugees from places like Treviso and Padua scrambled to relative safety (but with very wet feet) into the marshes in the Venetian lagoons.  No horses would come there to pursue them. They were wet but protected by swamps. Wet, on their own  and with only the future to think about.

They built upwards by learning to drive piles of wood down and creating platforms on top of them. A city grew from trial, error and persistence. Any management consultant would have told them they were completely crazy. “It won’t work, there’ll be floods, disasters, go to dry land”…and back to the Huns?
In 570 AD Venice didn’t exist yet just 600 years later it was the biggest and most powerful city in the world. Necessity drove imagination, energy and success.

Management consultants (them again) have propounded the effectiveness of creating crises to enliven and motivate management teams - a kind of “jump-start” theory.

Well, coming back from the balmy calm of the one-time Venetian master state I encountered the current Scottish referendum ‘crisis’ with a degree of amazement.
“I go away for a week or three and you wasted, simply wasted 20% lead points. You all need a damn good shaking.”

The realities, as most of us, the experts and most businesses know them, is that independence is not a good idea judged from an economic perspective. The head is shaking (‘No. It’s a very bad idea’) … but the heart is thumping away (‘Yes. Yes…. just imagine how wonderful freedom could be.’) It’s extraordinarily naïve of us to discover this late in the game that ‘YES’ is a more powerful, motivating and exciting word than ‘NO’.

So what’s happened in this fortnight of apparent madness? Quite simply rather than ravening hordes of spear-wielding barbarians it’s been the grey suited, male Westminster crowd of dull, old fashioned and self-interested, elite politicians who’ve driven away the more adventurously, positive yes-minded and discontented Scots rather like those Venetians years ago.

Maybe it’s too much Prosecco, maybe it’s too much holiday , maybe it’s the rebel inside me that’s got provoked but I’m beginning to see the “yes” votes point of view quite vividly. If you have to choose between Ed, Nick and Dave or mad Alex and if you’re into a bit of excitement, well, you know where to go.

Scotland, if you do take this brave (reckless even) step to be alone, you can survive, indeed you will thrive if you take the Venetian route of building new foundations and pretty well starting from scratch.  My guess is the chill of the ballot booth will calm the urge for risk and there’ll be a “no” vote but we shall see.
But I think Roy Jenkins got it right years ago in 1959. Try this:

Colourfulthinkers.com

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM IS FOREIGN

The elephant of course is the EU which, having been heavily exercised in the Spring, now appears to have bored politicians, The Tories have sprinted off on their holidays in fine spirits after seeing DC beat up Ed Miliband in the Commons and then being fed burgers at No. 10. Quite simply elephants have stopped being important.

Yet an “in-out” referendum will determine our grandchildren’s lives. And the debate, in so far as there has been one or ever is one in the political forum, is neither particularly rational or thoughtful.

It’s clouded with prejudice, short termism and narrow self-interest. Too much bluster, not enough calculation.

Even Matthew Parrish, not unknown for saying what he thinks, confesses he just doesn’t know what to think when it comes to Europe.

We start from the fact that many of us simply don’t seem to like foreigners at all. It’s in our DNA. And the Europeans are the most convenient to dislike.  And then we seem short of the skills which we used to have and which inspired that board game “Diplomacy”. I’ve been watching the “White Queen” on BBC TV and listening to Philippa Gregory and others on the Wars of the Roses and the purposeful way the major players of that time worked out how to secure advantage.

Give Margaret Beauford, Elizabeth Woodville or, a few years later, Thomas Cromwell the situation we face and they’d come up with a somewhat more creative solution than one involving taking your bat and just leaving the game. (Machiavelli from about the same era would have loved it too.)

All our competitors have been seriously weakened by recent events, particularly France, but also Spain and Italy and even Germany. Meanwhile Britain stands in reasonable stead with  an economy on the upturn and  reputational kudos through a good Olympics, recent great sporting successes, London being acknowledged the capital city of the world as is our status as the global arts centre.

Weak competitors mean it’s time to advance not to retreat.

If we choose we can be a real lead player inside Europe helping Germany re-construct it. Our 15th and 16th century strategy role models would unblinkingly have seen the opportunity of advancing Britain by such a powerful alliance.

When it comes to being rational I have to imagine that the vast majority of businessmen who want us firmly in the centre of the EU represent left brain thinking. Why would they say this if they couldn’t see how important it was?

(Incidentally I thought a potent downside of separatism was well expressed by a top Scot who confided that wealth and talent would flood out of Scotland if independence were to be voted in there.)  And it’s not just the world of business. Ask America or Japan (and probably China and India too) and they’re mystified why we aren’t striding up to the Board Table as the player to replace the role the waning and woeful France once had.

Britain at 1% of global population isn’t a great world power any more but it’s a great European power.

That’s where we can exert real influence and where we’re needed.

Those who disagree probably take a similar view of social media…they don’t like it, understand it or even want it. They say they’ll ignore it and that it’s not that important. Yet 93% of business use it in their marketing and, like it or not, Facebook, were it a country, would in terms of population be the third largest in the world.

The elephant can’t be ignored.

The debate may be tough and nasty.

But a bit of a thoughtful punch up is better than potentially acceding to a generation or so of isolation and decline, isn’t it?

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