More on the themes linking Tony Blair and Brexit today in the Observer, and more on how the nice people need to get together to form a new centrist party, featuring Shirley Williams, founder member of the SDP, an earlier nice people's party that split Labour briefly. Their passion for Europe was a major factor.
So what is the passion for Europe? Ed Vulliamy offers an amazingly frank column in the Absurder. Ed lives in Paris. He seems to show a major shame for being British and feels the barbs or 'superior amusement' of his neighbours after Brexit. He tells us being European was part of his adolescent fantasies, wearing shoes that made him look European (kickers). This last part is especially odd - -that being European was primarily a matter of style, heavily influenced by consumerism, for Ed, and he seems tearful and angry that so many of his countrypeople voted Leave.They voted Leave because they did not want to live in Paris or wear kickers? Or perhaps because they felt Ed might be just a little bit affected?
This is the bad side of seeing the personal as the political --share my tastes or be condemned as political idiots.
Now I admit these fantasies were important for supporting my growing distance from working class culture in the 1960s and 1970s too. I smoked Gaulois when I felt like being sophisticated,or rather showing others I was. I enjoyed my school trips to France, loved being able to drink absinthe in cafes at 11 am on the Boul' St Mich, and came home demanding of my bemused parents that we try some French cuisine -- soft cheese with peas, I recall.
Those ideas were still around when I voted to enter the EEC, as it was then, in 1975. I remain pro-Europe, but maybe less so in those adolescent fantasy terms. There is a dimension to politics which is not primarily cultural or personal
But the global economy is something else, threatening even those ill-thought out, sentimental and nostalgic aspects of national cultures. What better sign of cultural barbarism than the appalling Bologna Declaration that said the knowledge economy and its apparent demands for business-friendly skills should dominate higher education in Europe? Non-relevant social sciences and humanities subjects should no longer be funded was the recommendation -- and the UK Government bought it in full (Italy and France were far less keen, thank heavens). Hence market-oriented HE in England and Wales, the dithering about the 'skills agenda', higher fees,endless irrelevant business-facing courses.
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