“You’ll be all right when you get a cold beer down you.”
The advice, delivered on a chilly Saturday night on Tooting High Street in South London by one 20-something to another as they strode briskly toward the Trafalgar Arms pub, struck me as an oxymoron. That is, unless he was recommending to his pal a European lager, which, unlike British ale, is blessedly served cold.
Maybe he was making a tart Brexit-related point?
I am in Britain again. What can I tell you? Brexit calls. I’d rather be in Venezuela covering the Latin American version of Ukraine’s Maidan, and being able to do so in warm weather, very different from 2014 when I’d flown into a frigid Kiev from Cairo without any winter clothing.
But, no, I’m stuck here in London, exhausted by the issue that never wanes. While the U.S. is obsessed with President Trump along with a dollop of the Kardashians, Britain is self-absorbed with Brexit, with a touch of “Strictly Come Dancing” able to break through occasionally.
Even innocuous conversations are skewed by Brexit, and the most harmless remark can provoke uproar at dinner parties. Hence my questioning whether the giveaway High Street remark should be interpreted through the prism of Brexit.
The issue can indeed do terrible things to your brain. A couple of months back, researchers at London University’s King’s College found that prescriptions for anti-depressants have risen since Britain voted narrowly nearly three years ago to quit the EU.
The lead researcher, Sotiris Vandoros, cautioned that the reasons for the jump were “open to interpretation,” but he fatefully added, “There was a lot going on in the news with Brexit, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of debate.” That, of course, prompted furious dispute in the newspapers between “Leavers” and “Remainers.”
The seemingly neverending psychodrama of the country’s proposed departure from the EU, and how it does so, risks ending up as the political equivalent of theater-land’s “The Mousetrap,” a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie that opened in London’s West End in 1952 and has been running continuously ever since. Yawn.
Britain’s relationship with Europe has always been plagued by a half-in and half-out attitude even at the best of times. Winston Churchill exemplified the ambiguity and has been a singularly unhelpful guide in these times. Both sides of the Brexit divide have laid claim to him.
In 1946, he delivered a speech in Zurich calling for the establishment of a United States of Europe and the “the re-creation of the European family” as a way of ensuring a peaceful future for a continent devastated by two major wars in the previous 32 years.
But he was equivocal about whether Britain should actually be a member, as opposed to simply a sponsor and ally. One moment he worried about Britain standing aloof from Europe and being left behind, only to become anxious about the country not standing aloof.
In 1951, he wrote about plans for the European Iron and Steel Community — the basis for the later EU — thus: “We help, we dedicate, we play a part, but we are not merged with and do not forfeit our insular or Commonwealth character.”
Six years later, he was humming another tune, announcing: “We genuinely wish to join a European free trade area — and if our continental friends wish to reach agreement, I am quite sure a way can be found and that reasonable adjustments can be made to meet the essential interests of all.”
Curiously, when Anthony Eden resigned as prime minister in the aftermath of the disastrous Suez campaign, Churchill counseled the queen to appoint the pro-Europe Harold Macmillan as successor rather than R.A. Butler, who was dismissive of European integration.
Hardcore member states, and the EU bureaucracy, haven’t helped Britain work through its ambiguity with their constant high-handed demands for greater political integration. Indeed, integration makes sense if you want to act collectively and thus more effectively in the face of major global challenges and complex continent-wide dilemmas, but the tone has often been grating, and not only for the equivocal British.
To misquote Churchill, what Britain finally decides to do is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
Jamie Dettmer is an international correspondent and broadcaster for VOA.
