Bye Bye Blighty?

So, David Cameron is about to give in and hold a referendum on Britain's future in Europe. Maybe. Maybe he's just scared shitless by his party's decline in popularity which is fuelled by the extreme Conservative Right: the same people who want nothing but austerity, lower taxes for the rich, a squeeze on 'benefit fraud' and to take the UK out of the EU. Cameron thinks (rightly) that Tory voters are defecting to the xenophobic nutters of UKIP, but doesn't see that those who are, are not the centrist sensible voters whom he attracted with his New Conservatism (à la Blair's New Labour) but the far right who think he is too soft. So, it may just happen, and if it does we must fear the worst: that the old imperialist Britain that thinks itself a world power while drifting into orbit as a US satellite might prevail and the UK will exit the EU. This is not even what Cameron wants.

There are those in the EU mainstream, and I am almost tempted to be one of them if the decision wouldn't leave my country on the outside, who would welcome this as the best chance we have of realising the hope of a Europe that is beyond the divisive and in the past explosive rivalries of mutually distrusting nation states, a Europe where collaboration (it means working together, not necessarily cosying up to the enemy) is natural and competition restrained to commerce and sport. As long as the British people believe that their politicians, however much they distrust them - and right now their dislike of our own political class could hardly be hight - are better than anyone else's (just because they speak a different language, as if Cameron and co didn't speak a different language amongst themselves), then the old xenophobia (the fear of foreigners) will remain.

Last night in my local pub by Tower Bridge, I watched as droves of British drinkers cheered and cheered as 'Europe' beat the USA in the Ryder Cup. It doesn't have to be a dream.