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The End of the Beginning - Paul Bickley

Much has stayed the same. Yesterday we were members of the European Union, today we are members of the European Union… the same trade rules and regulations apply, and we can still move freely around the continent, as our European neighbours can here. Businesses will still trade, schools will still educate and hospitals will still treat the sick.

But much indeed has changed. The Prime Minister has resigned and the governing party is in pieces. The Official Opposition is about to embark on its own process of bloodletting. Equity markets are in turmoil, sterling is at a 30 year low, and our own Union looks set to unravel. A general election would be distinct possibility, though one wonders if they’ll be any political parties fit to fight it. Today we are the source of the continent’s problems, as if it did not have enough to be getting on with. 

That’s just the political surface. Beneath it, the referendum has demonstrated that we don’t know ourselves as well as we thought or as well as we ought. The United Kingdom is a deeply divided place. The Scottish think differently than the English, London differs from ‘the rest of England’, there’s a gulf between those who feel like they’re doing ok and others who feel like they’re losing out, the young wanted in but the older wanted out. This is all so predictable, but when presented in full glory is still shocking.  Cultural rifts have been exposed and exacerbated, and this is not even the end – nor the beginning of the end… just the end of the beginning.

Brexit is unknown territory, and we must begin to think about what course we want to chart – what kind of country do we want to be, and what kind of country can we be? How little this supposedly decisive vote has decided. We’re leaving, but no one yet knows in which direction.

That Last Minute Goal - Nick Spencer

The Euro 2016 tournament has been renowned for the number of late goals, something like a quarter being scored after the 85th minute. None was bigger, more surprising or more momentous than last night’s.

Polls over recent days had seen Remain rally and no-one – well, no-one other than Elizabeth Oldfield in the Theos office sweepstake – predicted the result. But we are where we are, and left with some momentous prospects for the nation.

Beyond the obvious – renegotiation, uncertainty and a possible economic downturn – we face the prospect of renewed pressure for a referendum in Scotland; the new pressure for a referendum in Northern Ireland; the prospect of further volatility in the Eurozone, hardly the most stable place on earth in any case; the certainly that the next British Prime Minister will not have been elected by the British public, and the possibility of the eviction of the leader of the opposition.

Behind all these lurks the question, already posed by media pundits this morning: who are we? Boris Johnson may insist that the referendum makes no difference to our being European, and at a geographical and cultural level he is right. But such a political divorce cannot be ignored so easily.

Identities are not static and they are not singular. I can be European, British, a southerner, a Christian, and party political member equally and with pride, feeling stronger associations and in different ways at different times over different matters.

But all forms of identity – all serious forms of identity – are communal, depending on sharing something more than simply self-interest. Identity depends on solidarity, and solidarity has felt somewhat lacking over recent months.

We will need a lot more of it in the future – between different members of the government, between Remainers and Leavers, between London and the rest of England, between the different nations in the United Kingdom, between the UK and its erstwhile political partners – if we are to avoid Cameron’s decision to call a referendum from becoming a dramatic last-minute own-goal.

Paul is the Director of Political Programme at Theos | @mrbickley

Nick is the Director of Research at Theos | @TheosNick

Image by Elionas2 from pixabay available under this Creative Commons Licence