It has been a little over ten years since I
made a trip to London. Early May, and very warm.
A few months before that, I had published
my book ‘The Case for Commonwealth Free Trade’. In the days and weeks that
followed, I had made the acquaintance of a good number of people – many of
which I am still proud to count as valued colleagues and friends.
During that trip I met with a great number
of individuals involved in government and business who told me that they liked
the book and it’s general direction (although some felt that the idea of a Free
Trade bloc encompassing the entire Commonwealth was far too ambitious).
Almost to a person, they told me that it
was a great idea and that Canada should partner with Australia and New Zealand,
and possibly a couple of other member states. They also said that it was a
shame that they could never contemplate any involvement in such a venture. They
explained that membership in the EU precluded them from ever contemplating
signing on, but that they wished us every success.
During a few candid moments in private, I
asked whether or not they saw a day when this might change.
Almost all of them, regardless of party
stripe, remarked that they didn’t see this as a possibility, although they
would certainly back a change.
For years, I had the sense that the
sentiments in Britain were akin to what you would see at a grade school dance.
Boys lined up along one wall, with girls along the other. A slow dance is
playing, but the only thing dancing are the lights reflecting from the mirrored
ball.
Possessing perfect knowledge and some
degree of mind reading, you determine that there are at least a half-dozen
cases where a boy would not be refused a dance by the girl he likes and vice
versa. A dispassionate and neutral observer might see the attractions, but they
don’t. What they see is the prospect of humiliation and disappointment. Given
the notorious degree of self-consciousness among adolescents, those involved
sit through ‘Stairway to Heaven’, moving either to the washroom or the
refreshment table, not to the opposite wall.
Almost every Briton I spoke to was unhappy
with the European Union. Yes, they wanted to trade freely with the continent,
but the whole incremental move toward a United States of Europe was an entirely
different matter.
The thing is that in the spring of 2006,
the call to have a referendum was a decidedly minority view, and the push to
quit the EU even more exclusive.
Today, ten years and about five weeks
later, not only is there a vote on the issue, it will be decided in less than a
week and if polling is to be believed, that departure is a real possibility. In
short, a significant portion of the British electorate has summoned the courage
to cross the dance floor and seize the moment.
What changed?
A lot of people will have their own views
on what represented a pivot moment, and many theories are equally valid. Having
said that, I have my own.
In October of 2008, while celebrating our 9th
wedding anniversary, I lay in a hotel suite in a Cuban resort. The television was
turned to CNN and the camera was panned to a group of Congressmen and Senators
in Washington. At the same time, to the side of the image, one could see the
Dow Jones and NASDAQ dropping like a two ton boulder off a sheer cliff face.
Like a great deal of the world, we were
shocked and nervous, although the abundance of rum and sun were effective
distractions.
The biggest crisis to the global economy
dictated a concerted response, and the world through everything it had at the
situation. Interest rates at near zero, deficit spending and ‘quantitative
easing’ on a historic scale.
The good news is that it worked, but even
the most effective medicine has some nasty side-effects. When using
chemotherapy, doctors can kill cancer cells (which is good), but the tradeoff
is to knock your immune system down to nearly nothing.
In fixing the global economy, governments
and authorities did something else. They exposed their weaknesses. Like the
proverbial receding tide at a nudist beach, modesties and shortcomings were
revealed.
The Eurozone had always had its
inconsistencies and contradictions. Harmonizing currencies among still
sovereign states with greatly differing economies and economic policies was
going to be a difficult task at the best of times. The difficulty lie in the
fact that abandoning a significant symbol of nationhood – a currency – meant rolling
back the cause of an ‘ever closer union’. That’s what it’s been all about – a European
Parliament, European Courts, European laws, and yes – European money.
The Euro was not so much a deception, but a
delusion – that you could harmonize the currency before you harmonized the
forces that controlled and regulated it. But delusions are as stubbornly held
as deceptions, and are defended just as vigorously. The defense is also similar
in its pathology – defend a deception by laying down another one to cover it.
If that doesn’t work, then add another.
The problem is that a delusion, no matter
how stubbornly held it is, is just that – a delusion.
The delusions in this case led to drastic economic
measures, and it is in the effects of those drastic measures that everyday
citizens felt the pain – higher unemployment, bank failures and credit
constrictions.
Had 2008 not happened, I doubt that Britons
would be presented with the referendum. There would certainly have been calls
for one, but they would have been dismissed by the powers-that-be as a ‘fringe’
opinion.
Delusions have a short shelf life, and even
with that, require a great deal of energy to sustain. For those fighting to
create a ‘United States of Europe’, the delusions have been plentiful, and the
effort to keep them up equally demanding.
The delusions that you could ignore
national and cultural identities and histories, that you could introduce a
single currency without fully merging economic and political power, that you
could create political institutions without giving them democratic legitimacy
are all significant, but they pale in comparison to the one that – for Britain –
started it all.
It is the delusion that you must give up
your flag, your Head of State, your currency, your laws and your system of
government in order to sell 10 percent more widgets.
This coming Wednesday, the world will learn
if the delusion holds, or if it collapses under the weight of its own inherent
inconsistencies.
