Sea Change

We all know that the first rule of the modern world is to expect the unexpected. Corbyn, Brexit and Donald J Trump. Ex-Russian spies poisoned with nerve agent in Salisbury and ex-Russian journalists emerging alive in Kiev, having been assassinated less than 24 hours earlier. There’s really nothing that should surprise us. That Irish referendum last weekend though. A huge victory for women and a turn of events that would not have been predicted a year ago. Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar took a big risk when he pushed ahead with the poll on a pretty tight timescale. He was vindicated by a spectacular 2:1 victory for liberalisation that would simply not have been possible in 20 th Century Éire. This was, after all, a country in which the conservative Catholic Church was completely entangled with the state and the expectation was that people would always defer to the religious order. No more. But the surprise referendum produced another twist. Suddenly attention w...

The literal meaning of the word ‘insular’ refers to back to the idea of an island. It’s perhaps hardly surprising, therefore, that the UK’s referendum campaign on membership of the EU has been insular in the broader, metaphorical sense too. Everything is about us. We’ll be more democratic and more sovereign and free from the shackles of bureaucracy if we leave. We’ll be stronger and less isolated and richer if we stay. The truth is that, whatever your personal viewpoint, the UK’s decision on Thursday 23 rd has ramifications way beyond our borders. If the unthinkable happens and we vote to break away from a tariff-free market of 500 million people, what happens next in continental Europe? The first pressure will almost certainly be on the Eurozone. Italy’s maverick Five Star Movement – which just won key mayoral contests in Rome and Turin – has already called for a vote on whether Italy should leave the single currency. Despite a period of relative calm, the underl...

Two things really worry me about the EU referendum. The first is the incoherent messages emanating from ‘remain’ supporters because of Labour’s determination to separate itself from the mainstream campaign fronted by David Cameron and George Osborne.   Following the vote on Scottish independence, there has been an impression that any connection with the Tories is an electoral liability for Labour. South of the border, I very much doubt this is the case, even in the context of the recent string of PR disasters for the government. Nevertheless, Corbyn insists on putting his own spin on the issues. He proclaimed last week a ‘socialist’ argument for the EU, which seemed only designed to shore up the support of people on the far left who have yet to embrace their leader’s remarkable and Damascene conversion after 35 years of anti-European rhetoric. The Conservatives focus on the financial cost of quitting the trading bloc, while Labour talks of some imaginary world in whic...

It’s impossible to tell exactly how the Eurozone crisis will play out, but there’s a danger the political dimension to the ongoing drama is often overlooked amid the economic tumult. When we talk of worst-case scenarios, involving Greek default, countries withdrawing from the single currency or maybe even the collapse of the Euro itself, the financial consequences are almost too big to contemplate. Bank exposures to sovereign debt may lead to a complete unravelling of global markets and a worldwide depression. But what of the politics? Can we be positive that the democratic certainties of modern Europe aren’t in danger of collapsing into the Mediterranean? One thing that’s easy to forget for those of us born from the late 1960s onwards is that there is not a strong history of democracy in southern Europe. Up until 1975, General Franco ruled the roost in Spain – a fact which didn’t deter the growth of package tourism, as Brits and many other northern Europeans are notorious for puttin...