In the days immediately following Brexit I am in France, in the valley of the Sarthe river, near Le Mans, whence the Plantagenets hailed. The long march of history and the lack of any hysteria in France comparable to that on English media reveals a sober truth, which is that we have not quit Europe or cast ourselves off into mid Atlantic. We have rejected a particular model of European plutocracy.
Our history and culture derives from Europe and our future will continue to be there in many ways. It is culture, not systems or markets, which creates civilisations, makes us good Europeans or, for that matter, racist xenophobes. This ought to be one of the lessons taught us by Pope St John Paul, who saw that a country’s soul has to be something far more deep, powerful and spiritual than the systems of politicians if it is to survive.
When people bewail the “small-mindedness” of Brexiteers, I think of what the monk of Solesmes said to me when we discussed the referendum: ‘‘Mais, bien sûr, one can love Europe without loving this Europe we have created by diktat.” It is foolish to equate the structures of the EU with European civilisation or to conflate their loss. The faith is what created the Europe I love and only Catholic culture can restore it. That the rise of the European Union project is concomitant with the collapse of the faith in Europe does not mean that it caused it. But there is much about the EU that is directly hostile to Catholic culture and family, and even more which is manifestly in contradiction to the Catholic social principle of subsidiarity. There can be no true solidarity without subsidiarity and freedom.
In fact, there is far more sympathy for Brexiteers in France than there seems to be in England. Many French commentators are describing it as a victory for democracy and talking about “Frexit”. They point out that all the British ever voted to join was the single market. They also explain that the huge fall in the value of banks throughout Europe is because there is a crisis of liquidity in the eurozone which was none of Brexit’s making, but which it will test as people seek to move money.
Most frightening to my mind of what I have seen in the aftermath is the reaction of numbers of the remain side who, having failed to persuade the demos to support their campaign, simply regard the prevailing vote for Brexit as invalid on the basis that it has had the temerity not merely to reject their views but to win a popular vote in doing so.
To such a mindset, the stupidity and perfidy of leave voters is proved by the mere exercise of their franchise in voting to leave. In calling for a re-run of the vote, or suggesting that Parliament is not bound by this vote, some people show an alarming disdain for democracy, one which is, in its way, a mirror of the opportunist xenophobia and racism of those who act outside the law, since it manifests a peculiarly confident prejudice against a huge swathe of society, namely the majority who voted to leave. It seeks to relegate them to the status of second-class citizens whose votes do not deserve to count because they are not in accord with some a priori idea about the permissible outcome of an in/out referendum.
From what I have seen, it would seem that anything about the would-be leavers’ ages, condition, intelligence or motivations may be demonised, ridiculed, stereotyped and insulted in a way that would rightly cause uproar if directed against any minority group, to further prove that their votes are not as valid as those who voted to remain, with the implication that “right-thinking” people whose votes are ideologically pure deserve to carry the day over a majority of others.
A democracy that holds a plebiscite and then rejects the outcome on the basis that the “wrong” side won is nothing but a tyranny. It was just such a contempt for democracy that insisted that the people of Ireland should continue to vote on the Lisbon Treaty until they came up with the “right” answer. And yet we wring our hands and ask ourselves why extremist parties are gaining ground all over Europe. It’s what you spawn when you disenfranchise people: assuring them their opinion matters and then acting as if it doesn’t, when you decide that the colour of someone’s opinion makes them ineligible to be trusted to vote correctly.
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