Dear oh dear. Those patriotic snowflakes – many still clinging on to Brexit delusions – are triggered again.
The Proms, the BBC’s annual season of great, classical music – much of it European – ended this Saturday. Since 1941, at The Last Night of the Proms, the Royal Albert Hall has boomed out “Rule Britannia”, filled up with Union Jacks and vapours of imperial nostalgia. This time hundreds of attendees joyfully waved EU flags. And sure enough, the easily “disgusted” are raising hell. They want an inquiry.
Really? An inquiry into punters who brought in a flag that symbolises their attachment to a club to which we once belonged and many long to be back in? In a free country? The group Thank EU For The Music have already admitted handing EU flags to audience members and, in an open letter, explained why: “Tens of thousands of music lovers have taken our free European flags into the Royal Albert Hall… in solidarity with musicians who feel (like countless others) the destructive impact of Britain’s recent isolation from Europe.” Suella Braverman will likely soon damn the “traitors” and ban such protests.
Then on Sunday, national treasure Stephen Fry spoke his mind on Laura Kuenssberg’s show: “Brexit… we must mention Brexit. The Labour Party is afraid to mention it. It was a catastrophe – and everybody knows it deep in their bones. They know it, of course they do, and certainly the rest of the world knows it too.”
Kuenssberg retorted a little too fast that “some people would disagree”. Was that balance or genuflection to the Government and right wingers? Will BBC bosses roll over as more outrage is emitted by Brexiteers and the Tories? Probably. The quivering Sir Keir Starmer will not dare defend EU enthusiasts and realists either.
Free speech warriors daily warn us that “the woke” are silencing voices and yet disregard (or even justify) the far more ruthless silencing and suppressing of liberal social democrats. We must expose these leviathans – whose power grows globally. More importantly, we must now avidly promote our creed.
Liberalism, “the most successful political and economic system in history, is under sustained assault on all sides,” wrote David Boaz, senior fellow at the American Cato Institute in an article this July.
Cato is right wing, I am on the left. But I am with him when he writes that liberalism protects individual liberty, constitutional government, the rule of law, toleration, civil liberties. His liberalism includes untrammelled capitalism, mine is based on socialism. But we both think that liberal thinking and movements spread the idea of dignity and liberty. I think prosperity and equality too.
All that is good about Britain is the result of liberals thinking and pushing the once unthinkable. They include abolitionists, Suffragettes and legal defenders of divorced women. In the 20th century, quests by females, minorities, LGBT people and children’s champions for fair treatment were based on inviolable liberal values.
Admittedly, the fathers of western liberalism – John Locke, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, among others – were openly racist. But then, de-colonisers fought off their masters using liberal notions of dignity, liberty, equality and independence. So why oh why are today’s liberals so nervous of holding up their flag?
Ah, “Red Wall” voters I hear, proud Englanders committed to their families, communities and traditions and ferociously against equal rights, truths about history, sex education or the environment. That’s the trope.
Well, guess what? YouGov data published in 2021 showed that these voters are diverse and many support progressive policies and views. For example, 50 per cent of the people polled agreed that ethnic cultures are “part of British culture” versus 31 per cent who suggested that these cultures undermined British culture. While 40 per cent agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33 per cent believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing. Answers by a nationwide representative panel showed 50 per cent believed immigration to be positive and 24 per cent negative. Fifty-two per cent of Red Wall respondents thought more should be done to stop online abuse; 25 per cent thought free speech should be protected.
In 2016, philosopher John Gray mourned: “The liberal pageant is fading.” That was when liberalism lost its confidence, its influence, its soul. Since then, bullish nationalism has marched into power using democracy as its instrument. As Gideon Rachman observed in the Financial Times: “Liberalism has had a miserable decade, with the financial crisis and its aftermath turning ‘liberal’ into a term of abuse for both the nationalist right and the radical left.”
This is true, but the core values are still invaluable and deeply civilised. I don’t mean Thatcherite free market, survival of the fittest liberalism, which, alas, still has many fans in high places. I mean insurgent, expansive liberalism which believes every life matters, deserves dignity and equal chances, which must not be subjected to unjustifiable control, must be free to be itself and strive to be part of but not beholden to community or nation. A good liberal should care about each unique human and also their social and physical environment. This cause needs impassioned new soldiers.
Liberals have given up too much territory. They’ve run away from their responsibilities and hidden in the bushes for too long. Can you imagine the BBC or Starmer leading the troops? Not really. Not yet. But one day they will have to. Because a world without liberalism holds no hope, not even for the Red Wall.