As Article 50 is triggered many of us take a long view. On BBC Radio 4 The Long View makes a comparison with the overtures made by Elizabeth I to Turkey, Asia and North Africa to open trade routes. You can hear it on iPlayer so it would be otiose to go on about that.
A friend visiting his alma mater had a chat with the Master of his college. The Master’s view reminds me of the gardener at an Oxford college who was asked by a visitor how he got the lawns in such good condition. “All you need to do is mow and roll for 800 years.”
The Master refers to where we are now as Brexit 2 unfolds and explains:
Well, Brexit 1 happened in the 1530s led by King Henry and had very long-term implications. It didn’t work out particularly well for Ireland, as an example. And we only allowed Catholics back to this University 350 years later. On the plus side he did re-endow Trinity and finished the Chapel at King’s. So these things can have uncertain outcomes.
I cannot compete with that long view. I am reading Scum of the Earth by Arthur Koestler. It’s a memoir about his time in France at the beginning of WW II. Substitute 22nd June 2016 and this extract seems to represent the plight of Remainers.
If, on August 22nd, 1939, you had told Yankel – or any member of the French, English, or German Communist Party – that within twenty-four hours a Soviet-Nazi pact would be signed and the Swastika hoisted in Moscow, he would have either laughed at you or hit you in the face. During the fortnight between the signing of the treaty and the actual outbreak of war, they still tried to convince themselves that the pact was really a supreme stratagem of Stalin’s to preserve peace …
A first cousin told me that his opinions on the referendum were formed like a plumped up sofa cushion – he received the imprint of the last person’s views he heard. I am now in the same position over Brexit. I worry whether new trade deals outside the EU outweigh departure from the customs union and the single market.
I doubt whether the EU commissioners will join in with The Honeycombs.