EU Referendum


Brexit: panem et circenses


20/04/2021




I don't care if people are passionately interested in it. Short of terrorists blowing up Wembley Stadium or machine-gunning the England team, the so-called "beautiful game" has no place as a lead story in most of the English media for most of yesterday, carried over onto the front pages of today's newspapers.

That it has been given so much coverage is panem et circenses on steroids. The only consolation is the view that this "super league" would "destroy football as we know it". Bring it on.

Meanwhile, in the real world, a diminishing band of grown-ups is struggling to keep pace with events that really matter – a struggle made all the more difficult by the distorted news values of a puerile, incontinent media.

Of the many things struggling for attention, I note that the shellfish story has disappeared without trace and the Brexit news has dwindled to a scattering of stories about Ireland, north and south, and a few other desultory stories that are hardly worth mentioning. The fact that fresh violence has broken out in west Belfast seems to be of little interest.

The Independent, though, manages to combine football and Brexit, with a long article headed: " Just like Brexit, the European Super League is built on hubris – and it will bring them both down".

Accusing the big clubs of "hubris" and ignoring their fans, writer Tom Peck asserts that hubris only comes to pass on its own terms. I'm not exactly sure what he means by that but he goes on to say that Brexit "is almost certainly set on a path to failure and has been since day one". But, he adds, "that path has not been changed by long years of howling rage from its opponents, all of which began too late".

He contrasts this with the putative European Super League which, he writes, is being led by a small cabal of people who do not care for football and have precious little understanding of it. Thus, he concludes: "The most likely cause of its demise is itself".

Peck then asserts that the ordinary fan that doesn’t want this to happen might find life a little more bearable if they come to accept, sooner rather than later, that "the most potent weapon at their disposal is the overarching greed and arrogance of those involved". If it is to be derailed, he concludes, "that is what will do it, and nothing else".

His piece ends there but we may extrapolate from his title that Peck also believes that the overarching greed and arrogance of those involved in Brexit will give rise to its failure, in which case – it would seem – its opponents need do nothing. In due course it will end without their participation.

It is worth noting here that Peck is the Independent's political sketch writer, but he has also worked as a political correspondent, sports writer and Olympics correspondent. I cannot vouch for his comments on this super league thingy – I don't care enough, one way or the other - but, on the basis of his comments about Brexit, one might aver that he would have been better off sticking to sports writing.

At least John Crace doesn't resort to clunky analogies about Brexit when he tackles the parliamentary response to the ESL announcements, but he could have remarked that MPs in general – and the prime minister in particular – have said more about football in the last 24 hours than they have about Brexit in the last month.

As to Peck's thesis on Brexit, of course it isn't going to fail – not least because it is not the "property" of a political party. Johnson and his dismal crew may currently have the task of implementing post-Brexit policies (or presiding over the political vacuum left by Brexit), but it is not in their gift to make it succeed or fail. Policies can be well-executed, or poorly executed – the latter being the most likely. But Brexit, as such, cannot fail.

The reason for this should be quite evident, even for the likes of Tom Peck. It could only fail if the UK ceased to be outside the EU and somehow had engineered a situation where the government had managed to rejoin. And that – at least in the foreseeable future – simply isn't going to happen.

This is where the "rejoiners" simply haven't thought it through. There is no scenario where the UK government – of whatever colour – can simply decide that it's had enough of Brexit and go crawling back to Brussels, asking to be allowed to re-enter the EU.

Within the framework of the treaties, there is no provision for a departed member to come back, essentially continuing where it left off. The UK would need to start all over again, making a formal application to join which, if accepted, would require it to become a candidate country and negotiate its entry.

Just supposing the 27 were in the least interested in having the UK as a member again, terms would almost certainly require full participation in Schengen and the social chapter, stiff contributions without a rebate, a commitment to join the euro and also an active part in European defence and security.

Currently and for the foreseeable future, even the opening of negotiations could not happen under a Conservative government – even one which had deposed the loathsome Johnson. And, for the foreseeable future – while the Labour Party continues to self-destruct – there will only be a Conservative government.

Furthermore, given Starmer's self-denying ordinance on speaking about Brexit in public, it is unlikely that the issue will feature strongly – or at all – in the next general election. And the longer Brexit is absent from the national debate, the harder it is going to be reintroduce it at a political level.

Then, the longer we leave it, the greater the divergences between the UK and the EU, the gap widening even further with every RoW trade treaty that the UK concludes, and with every treaty the EU members agree between themselves. In little more than a decade or so from now, the gap could be virtually unbridgeable.

What could happen at some time in the future is a new EU treaty which introduces a form of associate membership, possibly based on the structure of the EEA. The EU for a long time has been anxious to rationalise its neighbourhood relations and bringing the Efta states (including Switzerland) into a common fold, together with the UK, could become a distant ambition.

Whether the UK government would entertain that prospect is unknowable, but much could depend on whether the UK even survives. An independent Scotland could change the calculus, creating problems similar to those experienced with Northern Ireland. An EEA-type arrangement, by another name, could resolve a lot of problems – even if it also created a whole lot more.

There can't be much doubt though that the shape of things to come will depend on there being a comprehensive national debate about the issues. But this is a nation which managed to have a referendum campaign on leaving the EU, with little semblance of a coherent debate.

And where a reorganisation of the management of football seems to excite more interest than the management of our government, and attendant matters, there can be little hope of seeing that debate any time in the future.

If panem et circenses represented the latter stage of the Roman empire, where a decadent population no longer cared for its historical birthright or for political involvement in its own government, then the events of yesterday and the newspapers of today should serve as a warning that we as a nation are travelling the same path.

Also published on Turbulent Times.