Am I Being Unpatriotic?

Dear Michael, I begin to feel that your negativity is bordering on the unpatriotic! Don't you think that our leaders deserve our support?

That was an intriguing tweet to receive yesterday, not as a personal message but publicly. She (it was from someone I know) was responding to a tweet I'd posted that contained a link to an article in The Guardian. It was lamenting our political leaders' lack of imagination and sense of history in their handling of the Brexit negotiations, specifically the matter of the Irish border.

In the two years I've been blogging about the EU, I've been accused of many things: being intemperate, ignorant, theologically inept (yes!), and over-confident about being a Remainer. But this is the first time my patriotism has been called into question (though it's a common jibe from people who should know better that Europhiles collectively are not acting patriotically).

So let's go there. First, we need to disentangle patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism means a love of and loyalty to your homeland. In Roman thought, you owe your homeland that much simply because it bore you and nurtured you. It's an act of piety (pietas) to acknowledge your debt to the people and institutions that have formed you. This is not at all the same as saying that your homeland is better than anyone else's. It's simply yours. It's part of your identity as a human being. That's why it's precious to you. At its best, patriotism is a virtue that is liberal, humane, peaceable and beneficent.

Nationalism is different. "Hard" nationalisms survive and flourish because of an innate conviction that somehow, your nation is superior to others. This can be on the grounds of almost anything you care to name, your proud history for example, or your race, religion, intellectual enlightenment, military prowess or wealth. "Soft" nationalisms are more subtle, and not always conscious. But they are expressed by aims and behaviours such as pursuing political or economic purposes that benefit your own nation in preference to, or at the expense of, others. This tends to foster national autonomy and self-determination, where the good of a nation state is no longer understood in the setting of the wider human family. It's hard not to think that agressive flag-waving, hostility to immigrants and rigorous border controls encourage a kind of national egoism that owes more to a romantic notion of "blood and soil" than to a rational idea of what it means to be good citizens.ii

I've often written about my late mother's side of our family. She was a German Jewess who escaped from the Third Reich before the war and was welcomed as a refugee in the UK. She settled here permanently, married my (gentile) father and wanted nothing else than to live out her days in domestic tranquility. She absorbed British ways, learned to speak English free of any German accent, brought her children up to love this country as the civilised, generous nation she had found it to be when she needed rescuing. She became, I think it's fair to say, a patriotic British citizen (she would never have said "English") and encouraged us to be the same. But her keenly attuned antennae abhorred the slightest whiff of self-regarding nationalism. She was a citizen of the world and of her continent, and for this reason was appalled that her adopted country opted to leave the EU just before she died.

For me, this is the nub of Brexit. What was the patriotic thing to do when we voted in last year's Referendum? Part of the answer is surely, to think about what would be in our country's best interests, what would enable it to flourish in the future. I'm sure that most people voted in that way, whether they were Brexiters or Remainers.

But patriotism (precisely because it is not nationalism) doesn't restrict that question only to "what's best for Britain" (to quote the tiresome rhetoric of David Cameron when he tried to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU). It asks how the welfare of our nation sits alongside the welfare of all the nations and of the world as a whole. It plays with the conjecture that what's best for Britain in the long run will also turn out to be best not only for Europe but for the worldwide human family. What if we even entertained the thought that we should start at the other end of the question, so to speak, and begin by asking what's best for others, especially those a lot less privileged than we are? I want to say that that option, too, is a patriotic one because it sees flourishing as mutual. We only prosper in any profound sense when everyone else does as well. It's what it means to love your neighbour as yourself. That Golden Rule should have been right at the heart of the Referendum debate. It grieved me that it wasn't.

So I see patriotism as inextricably linked to our belonging, our citizenship, not only in a national sense but in a global one. Patriotism is certainly not less than loving your country (and why not also your region, your locality, the city, town or village where you live?). If wherever we call "home" is important to us, then we should love it and everyone else whose home it also is. But belonging has concentric circles. I love my European homeland and am proud to carry a passport that announces me to be an EU citizen as well as a British one. I love the planet I have been born on, so broken and divided and carrying infinite burdens of pain, yet for all that still full of beauty and goodness, so rich in the diversity of its peoples with whom it's a joyful mystery of life that we share this globe together. Theresa May was quite wrong to say that if you are a citizen of everywhere, "a citizen of the world", you are a citizen of nowhere. Patriotism means we can be glad and grateful to be citizens of many different "somewheres", all of which we can be loyal to and love, whether it's the world we live in, the nation of our origins, or the particular place that we call "home".

This is why I believe that my vote to remain in the EU was profoundly patriotic. A patriotism for today means that we must continue to strive for a peaceable commonwealth of nations and peoples that transcends national boundaries, in which our own flourishing is part of everyone else's. So was it "bordering on the unpatriotic" to question the leadership of those who are trying to negotiate a Brexit settlement with the EU? I don't think so. A grown-up democracy doesn't blindly follow its leaders, least of all when it fears it may be heading for disaster. Yes, there is a loyalty to democratic choices that is required of all citizens, whether it is the outcome of a referendum or the government we have elected.

But it can never be an uncritical loyalty. To go on questioning, exploring, doubting, challenging, being open to change in the light of new evidence or arguments - these are both the privileges and duties of all of us in a democratic society. When it comes to Brexit, the national conversation was not suddenly closed off on 23 June 2016. On the contrary, each new step forward requires that conversation to be shifted and reconfigured in the light of altered circumstances or newly understood realities. It's patriotic to want the best out of each iteration. And it would be patriotic as well as democratic if, in the light of circumstances, we decided as a nation to change our minds about Brexit. (The "will of the people" refrain trotted out by some of our elected members including many who voted Remain doesn't advance intelligent discourse in any way that I can see.)

So you can call me a member of Her Majesty's loyal "Brexit Opposition" if you like. A twenty-first century recusant even, as Tony Dickinson suggested in response to the first version of this blog. For I believe that it's not only allowable but positively necessary to monitor how such a major decision is being worked out in practice, interrogate it closely, scrutinise the performance of those who are steering it so that we can hold them to account. If I say that I just don't believe that the case has been made for Brexit, and that this year has felt like a catalogue of mistakes, unintended consequences and muddled aims, is that unpatriotic? Not if it's said out of a genuine care for the welfare of my nation. On the contrary, maybe it's those who won't engage any further in the Brexit conversation who don't care enough about what happens to our nation.

I don't accuse the good person (whose tweet started this whole thing off) of not caring. Far from it. But I did think I needed to explain myself and defend what I want to describe as a liberal global patriotism. In these times, we have to learn to construe patriotism in the largest, most international way we can. Our world is simply too small for any of us to imagine that supposedly sacrosanct national borders can still define the limits of our concern. We urgently need to cultivate a good patriotism if all life on the planet is going to be respected and conserved. Nations and peoples need to act together to solve the world’s problems. In partnerships, we can achieve vastly more than we ever can on our own.

As I see it, Brexit is propelling the nation in completely the wrong direction, towards isolationism and disintegration. That’s dangerous. It’s not unpatriotic to say so.

If I were Theresa May... Seven Things to Think About

Never will a prime minister have been on the receiving end of so much advice. It's enough to make you feel sorry for her. Nevertheless, here's one more offering for the smorgasbord as she tries to pick up the pieces after the election.

Who am I to say anything? I'm a lay person when it comes to politics. I realise that comment is easy and comment is free; it's much harder to do the job. Despite her mistakes, despite the fact that she brought this election fiasco on herself, I feel for Mrs May. She cuts an isolated and lonely figure, tragic in the proper meaning of that word because her nemesis is the consequence of her own flawed vision.

So I write in a spirit of constructiveness as one (retired) leader to another. My experience tells me that we ought to be worried at the moment. These volatile days call for highly skilled leadership. How leaders behave under pressure reveals their strengths and weaknesses. Especially the latter. And I don't know that Mrs May has got it right in the last couple of days, indeed, the last couple of months.

But more important than any leadership experience I have, I write as a citizen of this country. I have cast my vote and that gives me an interest in what happens next. (If you chose not to vote, that suggests you don't care too much about your own future or the nation's. Dare I suggest that in that case you forfeit your right to comment on the outcome of this election?) The surprise result has consequences for us all. There needs to be an honest conversation among the electorate to try to understand what has happened. To talk to one another is part of being good citizens. It's what democracy means, not just voting but participating. Gaining insight will take time, and this is only the day after. Nevertheless, here goes.

First, Mrs May needs to say sorry. I don't mean to her own party, her MPs who lost their seats, those who supported them in their constituencies, her own cabinet colleagues and staff. She has done this (not as swiftly as they would have liked). But what she has not done or even hinted at doing is to apologise to the nation. She has put us through a bruising election that we did not need nor ask for. It has cost a lot of money, and more importantly, a vast amount of precious time that should have gone into dealing with the crises we face such as the terror attacks and Brexit.

It's hard not to feel used (or abused?) by a gamble which, even if it had paid off, would always have been a kind of large-scale displacement activity. We can conjecture about her reasons, though she was clear what they were when she announced it. Whatever she intended. it took our eyes off the balls that were, still are, flying through the air above our heads. But it hasn't paid off. The opposite in fact. That needs to faced up to and apologised for. By her. In person.

If only she had begun by apologising when she spoke to the nation yesterday outside No 10. It would have shown something of the humility we like to see in our leaders. Contrition in public life is a sign of wisdom. It shows we know the limits of our powers and recognise our capacity to get things wrong. Is it too late now? My experience tells me that it's never too late, though apologising always comes with more conviction when it's done as soon as possible. In her shoes, I'd try apologising rather than defending myself when I did the next round of media interviews. I'd say to myself that in this catastrophe, there wasn't much to be lost.

And it would be the right thing to do. "I beseech you, think it possible in the bowels of Christ that you may be mistaken." I've always cherished that advice from Oliver Comwell to parliamentarians. I don't trust leaders who are without any shred of self-doubt. So I was nervous yesterday when the PM spoke no fewer than three times about "certainty". It didn't sound well on a day when we looked for a little more humility and tentativeness in the light of events.

Secondly, the PM needs to be more candid with the nation. It is striking that since the election result, she has stuck rigidly to a message about having "more seats and more votes" than any other party. This is true but it's not the point. She told us when she launched the election that she looked for a bigger majority to strengthen her mandate in negotiating Britain's exit from the European Union. She has signally failed to achieve this. And that has damaged, not enhanced, our position in those negotiations that will shape our country's history for decades.

Nicola Sturgeon got it right when she said how disappointed she was at the loss of SNP seats, even if it was still the largest party in Scotland. She promised she would consider and reflect in the light of the election. Mrs May needs to do that too, and demonstrate more transparency. She must make it clear that she is not just reading from a script but is thinking hard about recent events. This includes the part she herself has played in calling this election and how she has performed during the campaign. There are tough lessons to be learned for her personally. Some are saying that her credibility has been shot to pieces by the gamble she has taken. Maybe. But I do know that she won't be credible if she doesn't show signs of having pondered deeply. Being a "reflective practitioner" is an inescapable aspect of good leadership. We need to know that she understands this.

Thirdly, Mrs May needs to find a different style of working. The rhetoric from the Downing Street lectern last night made it sound like it's business as usual. It's absolutely not! British politics has changed during this election. It's become clear that voters want to be treated like grown-ups. They want to take part in conversation, not be lectured to de haut en bas from a script that "may" not be departed from. The "Maybot" epithet is unkind (even if it's very funny). But like all good caricature, it contains more than a grain of truth. Mrs May's refusal to take part in broadcast debates with other leaders was a clue to this aspect of her character. It hasn't played well. Maybe she has been too quick to listen to the advisors who seem to have had enormous influence over her. Perhaps she needs to discover a new "self" in her leadership role, humanise her persona where she can.

If I were leading a minority government in the aftermath of this unforced error, I would want to reach out to the leaders I had failed to engage with during the campaign. I don't mean her natural allies like the DUP. I mean everyone who shared my belief in doing our best for our nation. I would want to sit down with opposition leaders and ask, How can we work together when our nation faces so many big, even life-threatening, challenges? Without sacrificing principle, are there ways in which we can give and take for the sake of the common good? I think the non-hawkish majority of the electorate likes it when people of different opinions start working together. It's how we find that very often, what unites us is far greater than what divides. I'm not naive about this. It's difficult and takes effort and much patience. Yet this is just such a time at least to try out a collaborative approach to the nation's challenges. Her emotional intelligence ought to be telling her that.

Fourthly, the Prime Minister needs to pay attention to the messages of the election result. There's a lot of "noise" around in these febrile times when we are trying to make sense of an unexpected and perhaps confusing vote. But here's what clear. Our nation is divided, perhaps more than ever it was before the EU referendum. The polarisation of opinion between left and right, young and old, cities and countryside, among the UK's nations and regions, has been much commented on. Another aspect of good leadership is that it is responsive to change. There is a multitude of issues debated during the campaign where the election result calls for a rethink in policy and presentation. I don't simply mean Brexit. I'm thinking of the future of the NHS, education, local authority funding, austerity, welfare and national security. Being responsive as a leader means taking the evidence seriously. If I were the PM I'd want to listen again to some of the best media campaign debates, re-read some of media commentary, try to map the landscape I was travelling in and try to discern the best way to traverse it.

Fifthly, Mrs May needs to look again at Brexit. Why specifically? Because this was her stated reason for calling the election in the first place. It's very odd how Brexit did not feature very much in a campaign whose focus this was meant to be. We were told she was looking for a result that would strengthen her position in Brussels when the negotiations began. Fair enough. Yet we did not learn anything we didn't already know about her negotiating stance. And now that we are on the brink of them, all the evidence suggests that despite everything, she is going into them with her well-known hard Brexit position unchanged.

I don't think this will do. The message from the election seems to be: we as a nation are not disputing the referendum result. But we do not want a hard Brexit. If we did, we would have voted massively to strengthen the PM's position as she asked us to. In particular, everyone who defected from UKIP would have tumbled into Mrs May's arms and not voted Labour in the numbers they did. So we badly need a far more open, nuanced, approach to Brexit. She needs to go into the negotiations willing to have an adult conversation with the EU, not just set out her stall and lay down the gauntlet. She needs to treat the EU27 nations as our best allies and close friends, not as adversaries. And first on her to-do list must be to offer unconditional permanent residence to citizens from other EU countries who are already living in the UK and who are desperately worried about their future.

Sixthly, she must not resign any time soon. This bit Mrs May seems to have got right. What we need now is indeed a version of the stability she has talked so often about. It won't be "strong and stable" but even in her fragility, there can be a measure of continuity. Another Tory leadership election would not help. Even less another general election, at least for a while. Yes, I doubt that Theresa May has a long-term future as a prime minister, maybe not more than a few months. But more elections, with all the uncertainty they produce, can only distract further from the Brexit negotiations and all the other crises our nation is facing. (In any case, I doubt that my ageing constitution can face many more long and anxious nights in front of the TV.)

To me, David Cameron piled error upon error by resigning on the day after the referendum when he had promised to carry on, whatever the result. I think that was an terrible mistake, an unforgivable failure of leadership. Yes, it's tempting to throw in the towel when things don't go according to plan. Which of us hasn't thought in that way when times are tough and so many seem to be against you? But the day after is not the time to make far-reaching decisions. All credit to the PM for putting nation above personal interest, at least in this respect.

Lastly, Mrs May should re-read what she said on the day she took office. When I was a dean, I looked from time to time at the sermon I preached at my inauguration service. Did I really say that, I would ask myself? It was important to be reminded of those first fine (I don't say careless) raptures. I suggest Mrs May does the same. She started out well. She spoke about helping those most in need of what a good administration can do. She wanted to support the "just about managing". Many of us felt included to an extent we hadn't foreseen. It was probably her best moment. We had high hopes.

How long ago it now seems! Mrs May has made so many mistakes in her incumbency that it's hard to imagine that her standing can ever recover. It probably can't: history will make up its mind about that. But maybe she can repair her reputation a little by going back to the values she laid out in her personal manifesto. If she cares about how we remember her, it may be as simple as refreshing her memory to help her re-set her approach to public office.

There's a lot more to say about the 2017 election and how it will reshape our politics. But that's for another time. Meanwhile, we say our prayers and keep the conversation going.

Mrs May's is not the only letter to Donald Tusk this week

Mrs May is not the only person who is writing this week to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council. Here is the letter I have sent. I don't have a personal courier to deliver it by hand, as she does. Nevertheless I hope he will have received it by email and will be interested, even glad, to hear a different voice coming out of the United Kingdom as the Prime Minister triggers Article 50.

********

Dear Mr Tusk

You will be receiving a long-awaited letter from the UK Prime Minister this week. In it she will be giving formal notice that our nation intends to leave the European Union.

I did not want to let this week pass without writing to you myself. This is a purely personal letter of course. But I know that millions of British citizens will be feeling the same way as we head inexorably towards the door marked Brexit.

It will not be news to you that those of us who voted Remain in last year's Referendum are very sad that events have come to this point. That is putting it mildly. We believe as firm Europeans that the UK's proper place in the world is to be a committed EU member state. We think that the EU has been all the better for Britain's belonging to its family of nations. The UK has had so much to bring to the Union, and so much to gain from it in return. We have seen relationships across the EU grow and flourish during the years we have been a member. The world's safety and wellbeing surely lies in nations collaborating together for the sake of all our peoples and of all humanity. "Ever-closer union" is a noble aspiration.

So like the many who make up "the 48%" (perhaps more now than when the vote took place?), I am utterly dismayed at the prospect of walking away from the European Union in two year's time. There is no point in rehearsing the arguments now that the decision is made. But I don't think I am alone in wanting to place on record my profound sense of disappointment as the die is cast this week. There is room to debate whether or not action under Article 50 is reversible. But I don't expect a way back to the EU be opened in my lifetime.

I also want you to know that I have deplored the self-interest that has dominated the UK's rhetoric about the European Union since David Cameron announced the Referendum. All we seemed to hear as he tried to negotiate "a reformed EU" was the endlessly-repeated phrase "what's best for Britain". There was never any question about what might be best for Europe as a whole, or how this nation could benefit the EU. When we should have been celebrating the remarkable achievements of the past sixty years and helping to build a consensus about the future not just in this continent but worldwide, the only themes that seemed to matter were the economy, trade and migrants. I could not believe that this once outward-looking nation of ours had become so insular.

It's easy to come out with a long list of "if onlys" this week. It doesn't serve much purpose to say, if only the UK had been truly committed to the European Project in the first place. If only we had thrown ourselves into the EU with enthusiasm! But maybe sharing hopes, dreams and aspirations for a kinder and better world order just isn't the British way. Perhaps the European Union will be better off without this country's historic grudging, foot-dragging attitude to its membership.

We have just celebrated the EU's 60th birthday. Our founding parents (yes, I can still say "our" for the time being) believed that only economic, social, cultural and political cooperation between nations could reconstruct our continent free of the warfare and division that plagued it for so many centuries. As a Christian, I share their belief that the quest for peace and justice comes down to loving your neighbour as yourself. This is why supra-national organisations like the European Union are so essential. There is no future for the world unless we can all commit to looking beyond our national boundaries, not just with fine words but with actions that make a difference.

The EU faces many threats at present. Brexit is just one of them. I hope that the United Kingdom will always be a good neighbour and friend to the European Union, whatever the future holds. I hope that the Brexit negotiations will be amicable and free of bitterness and rancour. I am especially thinking of citizens from EU countries outside Britain who are resident in the UK, and of British citizens living and working in EU countries abroad. You know how anxious they are in the face of an uncertain future.

You can count on us who are "the 48%" to go on trying to be good Europeans. That includes a majority of British young people. They have only ever known a Britain that is part of the EU. Many of them are very angry that their future has been stolen from them by my silver-haired generation. But I am heartened when I hear them talk about politics and the kind of society they want to belong to. They are more articulate than I was at that age. They are all for grasping hold of our destinies as peoples and nations and making a difference. I think we can trust them, one day, to look again at this monumental folly we have bequeathed them, and undo it. When that day comes, I hope the European Union can be generous enough to welcome us back.

With my best wishes and prayers,
Michael Sadgrove