The debate over the UK's relationship with the EU has been depressing at best. Guesses are trotted out as statistics, people make downright lies, and the nature of the relationship is hardly questioned. It is as though there is bickering over the contents of the house as one spouse plans to move out, or maybe as one member of the commune thinks of leaving.
What is not asked about is the very nature of the dream that caused the relationship, nor the pain that will be felt after the departure by all around, except in monetary terms.
I live in York. It is not in the centre of Europe. It is not the most powerful city in Britain and not the most influential area, but it was the capital of a Kingdom of Northumbria in days past and that kingdom was a treasury for some of the greatest late Roman cultural expressions. Its influence, the influence of Northumbrian saints was felt across Europe, as bearers of the light of civilisation in a cold and barbarian world. When Charlemagne attempted to re-establish a cultured, civilised new western Roman Empire it was to the School of St Peter in York, the Cathedral School, that he went to get Alcuin to lead an intellectual renaissance. Northumbria, York, was once again bringing light in a dark and dangerous world.
Of course Alcuin was not the first. It was the Roman Legion in York which proclaimed Constantine as Caesar, leading him to re-invigorate the Empire, to legalise Christianity, and to make a change to European civilisation which is almost beyond imagination. If he had not been chosen, Christianity may have faded in the west while in the east the Syriac Christianity of Persia was already spreading to China and India. Christianity would have been seen as an Eastern religion and who knows what would have happened in Europe as the Church withered. No Michaelangelo, Mozart or Bach.
And from the same Northumbria came the railways. Imagine Russia or India without them? British creativity is not just about art and culture and faith.
Britain then brought culture, education and civilization back to the rest of Europe in its darkest days. Just as by standing against totalitarianism this strange monarchical democracy in the last century stemmed the flow of Nazism.
I have spent a lot of my life living in other countries. They see Great Britain in many ways, not always affectionate ones. But they see that this is a country of great significance. Its significance has grown since it joined the EU because it has such clout as part of this great company of democracies. People look at this country and think of culture, education, of Shakespeare and the dynamism of the performing arts; the land from which many of the greatest and most inventive popular musicians have come, of engineering and technology.
And those who want us to withdraw, who want their country back, what do they want? Nothing really except to go back to an imaginary past. Hogwarts and Enid Blyton maybe. Leave us alone, they say, let us get on with... well, with what?
So let us see the struggle for Europe as a noble and holy cause.
Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
People look at Britain, and they see the country whose lawyers brought Human Rights to the heart of the civilised world. A country whose constitution is about fair trial and the rule of law in a country where no one was above judgement ads where judgement was to be public and accountable.
We can whinge about the bureaucrats in Brussels, but we elect MEPs to hold them to account, and because UKIP was so persuasive they don't hold them to account, UKIP MEPs hardly attend meetings, do little scrutiny and prevent the democratic process from working. We should demand from our elected representatives that where they see stupidity they challenge it, and the rest of the time they inspire the struggling countries, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and so on; that they say: let us stand up for what us honourable, just, pure, commendable. Let us stand up for universal virtues, and inspire the people and politicians across the Union that we can all make Europe, and the world, a better place, a place worthy of Constantine and Pericles, of Alcuin and Aristotle, of Newton and Einstein.
We have so much to offer Europe, and our Europeans colleagues was us to make this contribution, It is time to stop this nonsense and be committed to a Europe of virtue, nobility and justice.
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