Us and Them?

I had a revelation while listening to the radio this morning. I can’t claim that it was an original thought and it may well be that many others have understood this before but it made me stop and think for a while. 

The politicians and the pundits on BBC Radio 4 were talking about the latest twists and turns in the Brexit saga. In particular they were referring to the position that the British Government has now adopted on the relationship between the UK and the European Union after March 2019. This is no more and no less than a proposal that Mrs May and her ministers will take into a discussion with the European Commission. It will probably change and develop once serious discussions are under way. I have an opinion as to its merits but that isn’t what my revelation was about. I was struck by the way that everyone speaking – whether politician, journalist or BBC presenter, referred to the European Union as “them”, as opposed to the “us” which was the United Kingdom. This was true whether they were talking about the current situation in which the UK is preparing to leave the EU or past times in which we have been full members of the Union with significant influence on its policies and aspirations.

And this was my revelation. There is a significant body of opinion in the UK that sees national sovereignty as the paramount goal of policy and furthermore sees sovereignty as a strict zero sum game. Any gain for someone else must necessarily mean that “we” have lost something. And then I joined the dots. This is exactly the same mindset that drives President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rhetoric. He appears to view the world as a series of transactions in which “we” can ether screw or be screwed. The idea of win-win is as alien to him as the idea of shared sovereignty is to the Brexit diehards.

This is all tied up with the question of identity. How do I identify myself?

I am a living creature on a particular planet. I am a member of the species homo sapiens, one of some seven billion currently alive on Earth. I am of western European descent with pale skin and blue/grey eyes. I am for the time being a citizen of the European Union and a subject of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I am English. I was born in a medium sized industrial town in Lancashire. I support Oldham Athletic, Lancashire County Cricket Club, Harlequins RFC, The Boston Red Sox and Mark Cavendish. I am a graduate of University College London and the Open University Business School. I am married with two grown-up children and I have a mother, a brother and a sister.

All of these things and many others go to make up my identity. Some are more important than others but it is my strong preference that none of them should dominate to the extent that I, or anyone else, lose sight of the rest. This is where I differ from the Brexiters and the Trumpsters. In their world view it appears that one characteristic is so important that it must override all of the others. In the case of Brexit that is being “British” and for the followers of Trump it is being “American”. In both cases the definitions of national identity are carefully constructed to exclude groups that are considered unworthy on racial, socio-economic or other grounds. By establishing a principle that this nationalist identity is overwhelmingly important it becomes possible to condone terrible and/or stupid things done in its name. Make no mistake, the impetus for both Brexit and Trumpism was a set of very real problems that affect real people in their real lives but it was distressingly easy to sell the message that solutions could be found in simplistic nationalism.

I have long thought that the most important divide in politics is the balance to be struck between the individual and the collective. To what extent do we want our society to take care of everyone versus creating the conditions for each individual to take care of him or herself? To this I now add the divide between recognition that we all belong to many different categories of identity and should look to all of them versus the belief that solutions are to be found in a simplistic label to which everything else must be subservient.

That was the revelation that I had while listening to the BBC this morning. The world is a complicated place full of complicated questions. Those who would have us believe that there are simple answers are simply wrong. There is no “us” and “them”. There is “us” meaning you and me, “us” meaning him and me and “us” meaning you, me and her all together. They are all valid and they are all important.