It makes me very sad that people say Brexit is over. It’s never over. It’s like saying politics is over, politics is never over, it is an ongoing project, like the Labour movement or the endless incarnations of ITV singing competitions.
Gavin Esler today said/tweeted this:
You cannot love Europe without loving the EU. The EU is our shallow, light continent’s lifeblood, its organs, its machinery.
I’m not ashamed of loving the EU. My love for my country (Great Britain) is steadfast enough, but it is a little like the overgrown ivy around my pagoda, it changes over time, across the seasons.
But my love for the EU resembles something more steadfast, more eternal. It is like the Ankerwycke Yew*; the setting for famous meetings; declarations of friendship and of course ancient ritual.
My love for the EU is a source of much visible beauty, much like the EU member states. When I think of my beloved EU I am reminded of happier pre-pandemic times in Zermatt, where we could be at peace, where the milky elements allow the skies and the earth to become one.
Sometimes you cannot see the deep roots of the Ankerwycke Yew underneath the ground — a stone’s throw from where the people rose up to take on the fascist King John. Roots that have anchored that weathered and battered tree for thousands of years. Little else of that once marshy terrain remains since the Magna Carta was signed. Yet the place remains sacred to our nation, the EU can still be our nemeton once more, this does not mean we need to worship trees because we all know that to be sacrilegious, but we can humble ourselves before the great political project of our time.
Because what other political project has sought to reunite divided nations like ours? One could argue that the European Project reversed the reformation, how bittersweet the breakup is when that very project literally prevented us all nuking one another to death.
I am hurt, I am angry. But like the people/Barons in 1215, we shall rise up once again from the ashes. We will sign a new declaration, one that cannot be undone by an undemocratic referendum where people did not understand what they were voting for. To paraphrase (professor) AC Grayling, we will signal the first cannon for electoral reform because that is how we get our country back.
*The Yew is said to be a male tree with a girth of 8 metres, just in case that was of comical interest to you, haha!
