John Gray – Brexit has left the British political class trapped by its own history

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1. Good analysis. Some points; what is derided as populism and nationalism in the media is not authoritarianism, quite the contrary. Liberalism, which in the context of the EU and also the West’s apparent geopolitical designs is tending towards the new world order kind of plan-which may be a feint for something else, or not- is authoritarianism. Whatever one chooses to call the interests associated or behind the EU federalisation project, democracy it is not. This is not to say that liberal democracy may not, some day, become a fact for some current EU member countries if the EU federalisation project goes ahead as envisaged and is, according to its architects, successful. Realists will be able to imagine what it would take for Europe to be federalised per this recipe and how it would end. Europe deserves better than that. Besides, human nature, the European peoples and Europe’s history being what they are, a successful conclusion, however brief, of this elite-driven affair looks doubtful, set as it is upon very dated foundations.
   In principle, a federal Europe as a notion is an admirable sentiment, and would work if politicians could give themselves 500 years to gently allow the right conditions to fall into place. But no, the West has a political class and dominant polity which, it has become clear, are behind the times in some crucial respects. They are eminently suitable to create a crisis by disposing of the kind of people not up to scratch with the new way of playing politics. The EU has made no bones about its methods. Through crises it creates opportunity and reckons to profit thereby. Ah, it thereby also creates the opportunity for the European peoples to learn about politics and develop participatory democracy to suit the peoples, not the world’s elites. That would mean struggle in many ways. There is much to learn, if people are willing to self-engender the conditions to take European democracy to the next level. All the ingredients are there. If people wait as per usual to be stitched up and put in a straitjacket, they will find that to escape is much more difficult than to decline to be put into that position. The time that voters could mind their own business for four years and then cast their vote, after an electioneering campaign, and all will be fine for ever more is past. Self-study and, for many, an inner struggle, is necessary if people want to pull their finger out. It’s a choice, always, but this choice comes only once in perhaps six to ten generations. A failure to take note, a failure of nerve, and two hundred years from now Europe would be unrecognisable.

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