Inside the incompletely-baked establishment conspiracy to foil Brexit

I got invited to a mini conference in Oxford, run by an important German research institution. Speakers included a historian who often writes on Europe in the newspapers. I am protecting myself with this thin layer of anonymity so as to bite the hand that feeds me.

 

The first day was International Relations theory, genus: high patrician. The ratio of verbiage to assertion was high.  One speaker talked a lot about the global. When adjectives are used as nouns, the wise man starts organizing his email. Another verbal tic is plurals on everything. Academics love plurals because they help divide up the grant money. Sure enough, soon someone suggested “contestations of the scripts of liberalisms”, as an improvement on “contestation of the liberal script”.

At dinner the conversation got more concrete. Everyone was talking about… oh, guess. As background, think panelled oak, candlelight, glasses of red and white; young academics, dressed to impress in jackets, quiffs and trousers; older chaps with accents and mannerisms from a world I thought long vanished. A former ambassador type person got on his hind legs. He started his speech with a quotation. “No man is an island, entire of itself.” I think it’s by Stormzy.

So then the historian-who-often-writes got up and corrected his quotation for him.

Basically, imagine a parody of the British establishment conspiring, produced by Russia Today.

 

Later the historian himself made a speech. Just a few details remain (the wine was good):

• 13,000 letters* have gone in to Corbyn, persuading him to move.
• “Write to all the MPs you know”.
• During the campaign, Europeans will have to “love bomb” the UK – even though we’ve been very silly.
• He thinks the Brexiteers will use the slogan “tell them again”. He wants a good counter-slogan, maybe “you didn’t vote to be poor”.
• And having a narrative will be key. (Grammar of political persuasion: they spread fake news; you spin; we have a narrative.) The ambassador suggested “it’s like buying a house, you don’t sign off until you’ve done the survey”. I said I wasn’t sure how relatable that would be in Grimsby. He stared crossly at his drink.
• Tony Blair is on board, but nobody’s going to listen to his arguments. The best figurehead, he thought, would be John Major.

 

As people ask at the end of conferences, what have we learned?

1. There really is an Establishment;
2. They really do want to thwart the people’s will;
3. They’re clueless.

The third point is important. Somewhere inside, left over from childhood,  I must have been holding the belief that there is someone in charge who know’s what best. This dinner killed that for me. These guys are the ultimate insiders… yet, they have no more expertise or wisdom on the topic than, say, the Big Issue seller who told me the day after the referendum that capital-T They would “never let it happen”. (“I think you’ll find they will,” I replied, strong in my democratic faith.)

 

The arguments I heard were entirely conventional. These being polisci people, they were mainly of the preserve-the-peace-in-Europe variety. The mournful consensus was that this argument was hard to convey to a generation that grew up with the blessings of peace.

Or maybe it is just not very compelling. What is the story which convincingly takes us from Britain exiting the EU to war in Europe? Does Germany invade France again? But those guys are staying in the EU, right?

 

There was no sense of the risks from the point of view of democracy. The historian suggested having a three-pronged referendum: no deal, May’s deal, stay in. I pointed out that three-option votes are shady from a democratic perspective – they split the opposition and induce strategic voting. Someone said, “I don’t see why we can’t use the Single Transferable Vote”.

 

Sounds optimal.

 

Hearing Tony Blair’s name took me back to 2003. I read in his memoirs about why he supported the Iraq war. It was an argument about needing to keep the Western alliance together. It was too subtle for the masses, but he saw! He could see further than anyone else! So he supported Bush, and we went to war, and now we know how that worked out for the Western alliance.

 

These guys think the same way. They think they’re the shepherds. They need to recall the flock from the error of its ways.

 

I haven’t said anything about the substantive issues of Brexit. I will try to do so soon. Preview: they’re huge, long-run, unfathomable. But political scientists talk about the authority heuristic, which is a fancy way of saying that voters follow the judgment of experts they trust. We all need and use that heuristic, in this murky world. We’d all like to find someone to trust.

 

These people want to fill those shoes. But they can’t be trusted, because they don't know any more than the rest of us poor fools.

 

 

* Letters, yes.

Update: tweaked style, jokes, slightly more polite. I forgot to mention the very kind lady who paid my hotel bill when I couldn't because the *☠️😖* admin haven't reimbursed me for last month's workshop yet. Or that the next night saw me eating Mickey D's in Westfield Stratford City, waiting for my bus home, for the same reason. Ah, the contrasts that make life such a story.