LONDON – A sepia-toned image from my 1950s memory: near a freckled summer wheat field of poppies in northern France, English tourists stopped for tea. A man prepares a paraffin stove with a crank. An old kettle and teapot are produced. Driving in their bouncy Citroën 2CVs and curvaceous Renault Dauphines, French drivers observe the ritual with tolerant perplexity or haughty disdain. British travelers, a rarity then, wave when they see a similar sign.
It is often said – especially now that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reached a post-Brexit trade agreement with the European Union – that Britain’s desire to leave the European Union is rooted in nostalgia, a burning desire for past glories of a bulldog nation. The image of slogans of striking alone, “regaining control”, resonated with enough power for Johnson to win an overwhelming majority in the elections a year ago.
In fact, with much of the land almost blocked, confronted by a mutant and highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus, the very idea of control has become more convincing, as if the parallel narratives of politics and pandemic had intertwined in a yearning for a indistinct and far from a certain renovation. Both depend on a notion of sovereignty that may seem different from a world in which economic interdependence and disease have crossed national borders with equal and comparable ease.
This week, it almost seemed like the two had combined. Alarmed by the new variant of the virus in Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France, himself quarantined after a positive test for Covid-19, ordered the border to be closed, even with some 50 nations introducing definitive restrictions or bans on travelers of Great Britain.
Thousands of trucks – stuck in Britain as Christmas and the deadline for sealing a trade deal with Brexit approached – scrambled approaches to the port of Dover and the nearby entrance to the Canal Tunnel.
It may be a cliché, but it was tempting to compare events to a perfect storm: when Britain was about to say goodbye to the European Union, Covid-19 had left it isolated from the world. The chaos of trucks stuck on British highways and in an old airfield in the surrounding countryside in Kent seemed to offer a foretaste, in large letters, of what life outside the European Union could mean.
Against such an important turnaround, that little vignette from northern France so many years ago, when the memory of the global conflict was still vivid, spoke to a different yearning.
Poppies, of course, evoked the dead of World War I, but represented renewal after World War II. And in its modest form, the family that made tea (mine) venturing on the “Continent” in the late 1950s was part of the cautious avant-garde of the rapprochement that led, in January 1973, to Britain’s accession to what it was then called the European Community, confirmed by referendum two years later.
As in that first vote, a second referendum in 2016 was technically not binding, but politically beyond challenge. More than half of the voters – 52 percent – voted to leave, an emblem of dissatisfaction and disconnection, a chance to criticize the elite. But for some of the 48% of voters who wished to remain in the now much larger European Union, the choice was rooted in a sense of identity and common destiny within the body that helped cement the European peace that my father’s generation fought for.
In the four years of intense negotiations and politicking since then, the division has not diminished. “Leaving” has become a mantra in an almost mystical evocation of Britain, as it was in the colonial era, wandering the distant oceans in search of commerce and prosperity, in control of its destiny, free from obstacles from outsiders. Novelist David Cornwell, who wrote under the name John le Carré until his death this month, called this “false” nostalgia.
However, “Staying” was also a siren call from a more recent past of stability and prosperity, freedom of movement and cosmopolitanism. In saying that they seek to look forward, the two sides, it sometimes seems, are looking back – and at each other – with equal chromatic distortion in their pink glasses.
On the positive side for the Remain camp, joining the European Union came with a series of luxuries, such as the small blue European Health Insurance Card, which gives Britons access to health services for state providers in 27 countries; student exchange programs; a valid driver’s license in both Bologna and Brighton. These privileges may well be part of the sacrifice required by the Brexiteers’ vision of a sovereign Britain freed from the bureaucratic bonds of Brussels so that it could reach its true destination.
There will be other costs, argue the Remainers and others, such as the shrinking British economy and questions about the gaps in the last deal, mainly the lack of guarantees for the British financial services that made their banks, brokers, traders and insurers a power that feeds the world. bulk of the British economy. Although the deal offers British companies access to mainland markets without punitive tariffs or restrictive quotas, the prospect of bureaucratic tangles and a reversal to old national distinctions dates back to earlier times.
When I look back to the days of the poppy fields in northern France, I remember that we needed a document called booklet to make the parents’ Austin A40 cross the countless borders of Europe; coupons for buying gas in France; travelers’ checks must be converted into francs, DEM, Italian lira and all other currencies prior to the single euro currency.
And when I leaf through old passports from the 1970s, with their thick navy blue cardboard covers, I see the pages that record the exchange control regulations that accounted for my foreign currency transactions, part of the complicated web of paperwork that is about to be rebuilt. around what has become increasingly easy to travel to and within the continent. Then there are entry visas marking arrivals and departures in Belgium, Switzerland and other places that no longer require these formalities from British travelers.
But what was perhaps only vaguely glimpsed beyond the relentless campaign for the 2016 Brexit referendum was the enormous complexity and national division that would result from the prospect of disconnecting Britain from the web of Europe’s ties and animosities, rivalries and alliances.
In essence, Brexit represents a triumph for those within the Conservative Party who have fundamentally changed the country’s calculations of where its interests lie, a triumph over the pragmatism the British once held dear.
It is a tectonic shift that largely ignored the feelings of voters who formed what the Leavers ridiculed as the Remoaners. It has already expanded the centrifugal forces pulling the UK’s component elements, particularly Scotland, which voted to remain in the European Union and where a wave of growth is forming in favor of leaving the UK for 300 years.
Above all, this Covid-19 and Brexit collision reaffirmed the most self-congratulatory passions of British exceptionalism. Prime Minister Johnson routinely refers to British science as a world champion, although the country has recorded the second highest number of Covid-19 deaths in Europe, after Italy. A British government minister said his country was simply better than the rest of the world, largely because he was the first to approve the launch of vaccines developed in Germany and manufactured in Belgium.
“We have the best people in this country and, obviously, we have the best medical regulators,” said Minister, Secretary of Education, Gavin Williamson. “Much better than the French, much better than the Belgians, much better than the Americans. That doesn’t surprise me at all, because we’re a much better country than any of them, aren’t we? “
In this twilight of Britain’s accession to the most successful post-war trading bloc, no assessment can avoid a reference to the credentials of those doing it.
Mine is colorful for many years looking at Britain from the outside, but living a European identity. During many years abroad, in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, I lived several times in Switzerland, Germany, Greece, Italy and France. I traveled across the continent, from the icy efficiency of its outposts further north on the Baltic, to the Mediterranean sunshine and the bloodshed of the Balkans. I liked the fact that my European identity was stamped on my European-style plum-colored British passport.
Prime Minister Johnson and his supporters hope that the prevailing sentiment created by the agreement between the British will be a relief. Most worrying, however, opinion polls have produced stubborn evidence that many Britons cling to the opinions they expressed during the 2016 referendum struggle, suggesting that the country’s divisions have not been resolved. The 2016 choices are no longer on the table. With its dissociation from the European Union, Britain signaled a profound change not only in its relationship with Brussels, but also in the way the rest of the world views the European project.
“This moment marks the end of a long journey,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm. Like the journey through the poppy fields of northern France decades ago, it was also a new and untested foray into the unknown.
Alan Cowell was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times for more than three decades and is now a freelance contributor to The Times based in London.