Douglas Murray: Lessons from Brexit | NatCon Rome 2020

well thank you so much Ben and thank you to all of you I thank you everyone who's spoken so far thank you to the organizers particularly to Yoram had Sony for the invitation to be here today maybe I could start by mention by the way this is the second time I've been in Rome in a few weeks and I mentioned this not so much as a for a laugh line as simply for a statement that nevertheless requires noting I got here yesterday from Heathrow Airport and arrived in Rome as I've done many times before and nothing happened I got on my plane at Heathrow as I've got on planes three years and I landed in Rome as I've been lucky enough to do for years I was allowed out of the UK and I was allowed into Italy I say this because we have been told in Britain for three and a half years that such events were unimaginable if we were to leave the European Union and this at any rate to me is a source of among other things great sadness because there's an opportunity cost to a population having to suck up lies for such a long time there's an opportunity cost I would say to people speaking lies like that for such a long time as well but I'll Park that for the time being a second observation on the weekend I was lucky enough to be invited to a private viewing the Royal Academy in London on Piccadilly for the new Picasso on paper exhibition this again is one of the things that we were told would not be possible once we left the European Union we wouldn't be allowed to enjoy European art for instance we would have to return to art pre Picasso if we were going to enjoy art museums would not be lending us art and yet there I was in the Royal Academy and the most magnificent exhibition of work from throughout Picasso's career lent by museums from around the world and across Europe I mention this simply because so often it's worth pointing out the things haven't happened the dogs that didn't bark and I wanted to start by noting that now let me next get on for fact that now as a Brit and one of the only British speakers here inevitably now I find myself at slight odds with some of the content that's already gone ahead and Yoram knows this I'm not a nationalist myself I never described myself as one and so it's always slightly strange to stand on a podium where you agree with about two thirds also of the logo but nevertheless I admire many of the people who have spoken much of the content already but perhaps I could say then that I retain a sort of two cheers for nationalism for reasons that I'd like to just elucidate for a moment it seems to me that there's much that one can tell in this from tonal issues one way to think about this it seems to me is to say that nationalism in America sounds different from nationalism in Europe nationalism in Europe sounds different feels different to nationalism in Britain and I mention this because I'm particular thinking of something that one speaker said earlier I don't think it is the case and I would certainly urge people not to regard it as a case that for instance we can just sort of get over the twentieth century and we have to get beyond it it's an enormous temptation of the political left to try to play that game they tried to play it very recently in my own country where they tried to pretend that there basically are no bogeymen to the left and you keep running left and left and left and it's fine all the way and you never get to the gulag and it's just not the case and it's such a damn lie everyone knows it but I think it's disingenuous for the political right not to concede the fact that there are things to our own right which we also have to contend with it isn't the case that we can just get over the twentieth century and many of us in countries like Britain simply think that we oughtn't to take such a view among other things because of the risk of eating it now of course this throws up the problem which is pren Leon perennial II on my mind and will be on many of yours of how to work out a way through Europe at this moment and I would just say this there is one conundrum in particular it's always on my mind here on continental Europe it seems to me most of the old parties are in some ways historically compromised but all across the continent there are parties that have histories of collaboration is amande lots more and of course there is the problem of new parties new parties are suspect but this keeps us in this incredibly uncomfortable and I think impossible situation where old parties are a problem and the new parties are a problem what are we meant to do I don't know other than to keep as strong a headlights as we can as we go ahead knowing as Yoram has said that nationalism can go wrong but knowing also that everything can go wrong love can go wrong love cause the Trojan Wars but nobody yet has advocated it's a cessation I would I would further say that there's an awkwardness being British speaking about these things in Europe now because and I think one other speaker mentioned this earlier there is an instinctive problem for conservatives in contending with these issues because the left has one great advantage over us and the left's advantage over us is that it always wants exactly the same things in exactly the same order in exactly every country and the right does not and we all know that the conservation of things is different in different countries a British Conservative is necessarily defending and conserving different things to a conservative in France is conserving different things to a conservative in Italy and they are conserving different things from people in Scandinavia where everyone's conserving different things in countries that the outside looked remarkably similar but with inside of course have very important differences and distinctions between them now I happen to be rather suspicious of analyzing trends in politics I think that it leads to very easy thinking and simplistic thinking we've had one in recent years with the motif of so-called populism of populism is among other things a euphemism for popular that is elected and and this too seems to me a pretty unsustainable position it I still waiting to hear a legitimate definition of populism that's used in the pejorative way that it's been used in recent years but I'll come on to that now I'm clearly however despite expressing my reservations about analyzing great trends nevertheless clearly something has happened in recent years and 2016 is seen I think legitimately as a pivotal year and that because of the two major votes in America and Britain by the way I should mention that Trump supporters are always very pleased to twin their success of their candidate with brexit and the opposite is very rarely true which itself is a very interesting phenomenon brexit ears generally speaking don't particularly want to be caught up in the prompting whatever that is and they don't feel that it is part of some vast international movement simply something that we had that we needed to address ourselves however as one of the earlier speakers from France mentioned there is this trend Monsieur McCraw recently indulged in that's been going on for some decades now whereby the leaders of Europe basically distanced themselves from the countries that they run or aspire to run they say for instance their countries have never done anything very good in the world or they say that their national identity does not exist and this is clearly an overreach by them an overreach not least it happened again in Britain the other day one brexit day the BBC pushed out a children's programme that was making fun of the idea that there's any such thing as anything British said absolutely everything British is from or tea is Indian as if we didn't know that shook sugar turns out not to come from Wales and a whole set of other sort of straw man points and what this BBC program was saying was look at you silly awful rube Brits who think you've done anything good and it said entirely in that tone of vengeance and correction and it's deeply unfair we know among other things the British public like public's across Europe know that we have a culture which has been influenced from a massive number of other cultures nobody is unaware of that but to pretend as a result that British culture doesn't exist or French culture doesn't exist or anything else is like pretending that steel does not exist steel is not just found in its natural state in the ground it comes from a composite it is work that is required to create it and yet it is there we see it it holds up bridges we couldn't do without it so to my mind the vote of 2016 in the UK in particular is a correction to this overreach by figures such as those who have run British the European countries rather in recent years now I've been asked to say a few words about the brexit phenomenon and let me start by saying I'm although I'm a supporter of brexit voted for brexit or advocated it like Johnny Sullivan as long as I've been writing although not as long as Johnny Sullivan of course I do think of a wonderful essay of Montagnes some of you will know called how we weep and laugh at the same time it's a remarkable essay and he quotes Petra sonnet 81 where Petra reflects on the counter Montfort's reaction after his defeat of Chell Dubois who is his rival of the Duchy of Brittany and Petrarch writes there I won't give you my Italian rendering of it but Petrarch writes thus does the mind cloak every passion with its opposite our faces showing now join our sadness let me say that that how we weep and laugh at the same time isn't a bad way to approach the events of recent years so let me first of all say what some of the sadness is our to do with the brexit vote even speaking as I say obviously as a brexit here the first is that obviously brexit is to some degree a demonstration of failure in the eyes of those of us who are supporters of it that failure is primarily in our view a failure on the part of the EU to prove itself sufficiently adaptable to retain us within its ranks however there are people who will make that accusation the other way around but it seems to me a legitimate complaint that the direction in which the EU declared itself as going in particular ever closer Union was just not something which the British were willing to go along with it may be right for you and I stress that I would restrain a right for you it's not I think the role of Britain once it's out of the EU to tell other countries what you should or should not be doing but whatever your own relations with it with it it's been clear for at least I would say 30 years certainly since Maastricht that it just wasn't right for us but that is a source I think of some sadness another source of sadness is the fact that during the 2016 debate I was struck by one thing in particular which were the appeals to us in Britain from our European counterparts the sort of sadness because it doesn't have something good I was told repeatedly debating and discussing in private in public with European counterparts I was told by people in the countries in the south and the Mediterranean countries you've got to stay in because you can't leave us with the north I was told by people from the north that you've got to stay in because you can't leave us with the south I was told by people from Eastern Europe you have to stay in because you can't leave us with the west and I was told repeatedly from people in Western Europe you can't leave us with these madmen in the East now that was a source of some eyebrow-raising at the time but it did expose and does expose an ongoing problem and one that I don't I have to say relish there is another sadness that's worth highlighting and particularly for anyone here and there are some I think who do regret our exit from the European Union I get the interpretation that some of our friends on the continent put on our vote and I think not enough has been noted of this I know many people across Europe many of whom is skeptical of the EU many of whom are sceptical of all sorts of things and indeed everything but people who did interpret our vote in I think the wrong way people who thought that for instance we voted the way we did because we didn't want European citizens to be in Britain or people who thought it was an expression of dislike of our friends and brothers and sisters across the continent now it seems to me it's not enough just to say and to reiterate that that isn't the point but to prove in the years ahead that it is not the point many people have very dishonestly misrepresented the actions of my country in recent years but that was never one of them and I think for all of the people who felt that this was in some way an insult or pushing away to our friends across Europe I hope that in the years ahead all of us can prove that that was not the case another source of regret and I will get onto the sources of joy don't worry but another source of regret is that the British people have been so persistently misrepresented in recent years I think it's fair to say that if you were to read the German press or the American press actually you would get an entirely fallacious view of the British public the British people and why we voted the way that we did we've we've even seen the phenomenon of an incredibly based form of analysis which has been promulgated I think most notably by the New York Times which says the Boris Johnson is exactly the same as Donald Trump and it's analysis runs very little deeper than both of them have wacky hair I I cannot stress enough how pitiful this is that at a time when we need to understand each other deeply when we need to reconcile ourselves to very significant problems that still lie ahead that major newspapers would still pump out analysis of such incredible shallowness in the new york times we've recently learned that in Britain until only a few years ago we ate nothing much but mutton readers of the New York Times could learn that one of the major areas in the center of London was a place called Mayfield and and we could learn day in day out quite how racist and appalling the British people are most recently by the New York Times giving its main opinion which I read in the International Edition on the way over yesterday to a famous Leninist so that is as I say one other source of sadness the conspiracy theories which we've had pumped around conspiracy theories which are not entirely alien to some people in this Hall the claim for instance that we did not vote the way we did because we were unhappy with the settlement in the European Union since at least Maastricht but we voted the way we did either because we're racist or xenophobic or homophobic or misogynist they can do anything and but also because for instance we had been manipulated by Russia or that the poles had been manipulated or that something else had happened and there were dark arts and that the British people haven't just been unhappy with the European Union for decades but we'd been perfectly happy until a few Russian BOTS suddenly got into our mother's Twitter accounts and hey we voted to leave and this is a source of sadness because anyone who wants European Union to succeed and indeed anyone who wants the people of Europe to succeed you would have thought would try to contend with arguments that their most serious and the argument that the British people had at its most serious is worth contending with and I'll get onto it in a moment but let me just before that say a two other quick things of one other quick thing on that which is that our vote has and again this is a source of sadness exposed a quite amazing spiteful duplicity in people who one had expected better off at the weekend Donald Tusk urged the breakup of my country the United Kingdom the European Parliament managed the night after we left the European Union to run a massive light campaign on one of the buildings in Strasbourg urging Scotland to come into the European Union which is of course to ask Scotland to vote again and by the way there was a plebiscite four years ago and a Scottish people voted to remain in the United Kingdom it is not for Brussels to tell the British people who should be allowed to be British it is and it it seems to me quite remarkable that somebody like tusks and indeed other people who have recently been in prominent positions or who are still could think that that is their task if we are going to get on in the years ahead and we will have to and we should that is exactly the sort of thing that will have to stop now I said I would get on to some of the joys the first is this and this is scoffed at by all sorts of people and publications but it is simply the significance of the return of our sovereignty as a nation many people have pretended that the British people do not understand the concept of sovereignty that it is something so abstract that only a professor or somebody with a PhD could possibly understand this concept and that it is beyond the people and I can only tell you and the poll evidence supports this the British people understood very distinctly the significance of sovereignty now Tony Benn who I the late Labour politician who I don't often quote with praise um nevertheless who was an early euro skeptic he had a very useful shorthand for this the Tony Benn used to say he used to say there were five questions that he always asked people in power the first was what power have you got the second was where did you get it from the third in whose interests do you exercise it the fourth to whom are you accountable and the fifth how can we get rid of you now as it happened I should mention when Tony Benn met Saddam Hussein he'd asked none of those questions but but this is a detail of history that I but but these are very useful questions and the last of those in particular how can we get rid of you was simply a question that the British people no longer believed that they were given an honest answer to they didn't know who governed them they were uncomfortable we were uncomfortable with the manner in which we were governed were uncomfortable with the ideas of where the laws were made and we were uncomfortable of the idea that we could hold to account those people who made those laws if they were bad in the same issue of New York Times I read on the plane yesterday I read a sob story about an MEP called Claude mores now the New York Times covered the fact that he has been in the European Parliament for just over two decades he's been on many committees he's also been a president vice president of the Parliament center-left grouping and the piece covered the tragedy of the fact that claude mores was having to pack up his office in Brussels his papers were going into boxes doubtless to be filed in a university be pored over by generations of students in the years to come and he also had a view a beautiful view from his office which he would no longer be able to enjoy and this was all presented in the manner of a sob story and I at any rate made a little punch of the air on the plane and this was because I do not believe that if you sees a million people and asked them in Britain if they'd ever heard of Claude mores one of the Remy Peas I don't think one in a million could say they had heard of him and if you did find out them it would be one of the little Maria's children or something and and you see I think this is an absolutely emblematic of the problem we didn't know how to get rid of these people we didn't know who they were and so in some very beautiful way the leaders of our democracy have come back to us it doesn't mean of course that it'll all be brilliant it could well go wrong everything always can but at least we know where the leaders of our democracy now are another point of joy I would say is the reassertion of our national consensus over brexit in the way that it is a healthy value now I stress this again Britain and the detractors of Rex had always I think failed to deal with this Britain is a remarkable country in many ways but in one way in particular it's worth highlighting we have never had a far-right political party not just anywhere near power but even in Parliament it has not happened all across Europe we have the fears there are actual far-right parties and there are parties that are accused of being far-right but in Britain not one person who is far-right has ever even made it to Parliament why I would say among other things it's because we take seriously in things like the brexit vote the idea that the people should have a say in how their government governed and do not allow resentments to fester and build until they blow out of the side in a volcanic eruption and I think that that fact is another one that we have a right to be proud of in Britain we've been fat that we recently saw off a far left contender for the British prime ministership and British government a contender who reminded us that anti-semitism and racism are by no means the preserve of the far-right but can be indulged in and indeed welcomed by the far left just as easily and I would say that it's important to remember that brexit is a reasonable expression of nationalism in the way I would refrain it in the British sense which is simply in the means of patriotism Roger Scruton who was mentioned earlier and who's on much of our minds wrote in what was one of his last books as it turned out for ordinary people living in free association with their neighbors the nation means simply the historical identity and continuing allegiance that unites them in the body politic it is the first-person plural of settlement sentiments of national identity may be inflamed by war civil agitation and ideology and this information admits of many degrees but in their normal form these sentiments are not just peaceful in themselves but a form of peace in others and Scruton points out that the virtues and also the flaws of the religious model of we for when it comes to the matter of law for instance he says secular law adapts religious law endures when God makes the laws the laws become as mysterious as God is when we make the laws and make them for our purposes we can be certain what they mean the only question then is who are we and in modern conditions he finishes the nation is you answer to that question an answer without which we are all at sea now we in Britain have broadly speaking thought of ourselves and think of ourselves still as largely a force for good in the world we are buffeted as everyone is by the stories of self-hatred we are buffeted as everyone else is is by the worst aspects of our history but by and large the British people and the brexit vote is a fine demonstration of this think that we have been a more a force for good in the world than a force for ill and have not wanted to listen to those people who've tried to contend maliciously otherwise but none of it is new as I draw to a close I should stress that none of this is new and the defamation of the British public is not new in his reflections on the revolution in France Edmund Burke mentions the radical pamphleteer and advocate of the rights of man dr. Richard price and he mentions dr. Price's passing reference to the dregs of the people who are generally paid for their votes the dregs of the people and Burke says you will smile here at the consistency of those Democrats who when they are not on their guard treat the humble a part of the community with the utmost contempt so nothing has changed very much but we in Britain have reasserted perhaps the most important thing of all in our sovereignty and done so it seems to me and this is again worth noting in the most reasonable and decent manner possible we haven't had a yellow vest like movement there have been no riots there be no mass burnings of cars and civil disobedience we were asked our opinion in a vote and we gave it and for the first time in modern European history that vote was counted as meaning something let me finish by saying one other thing in the art of poetry Horace says that it's not enough for poems to be fine they must charm and Burke somewhere picks up on that and says there ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well formed mind would be disposed to relish to make us love our country our country ought to be lovely for Burke this loveliness centered on two things in particular on the spirit of the gentleman and the spirit of religion we could be here all day very happily listing the things that should and can make a country beautiful let me just though reiterate a few which are irrelevant to our discussions today one of the things that makes a country most beautiful is a genuinely free press free from government interference and free from hostile individuals who want to manipulate public opinion another thing that makes a country beautiful is free University and education system which is both free from the malign pressures of government and free from malign pressures from without a genuinely beautiful country is indeed open to the world but it is not borderless because it cannot be because such a country becomes chaos it will be tolerant but not endlessly tolerant it will not be tolerant for instance to the extent that it encourages and pays for those who do not tolerate us and it would perhaps I should stress again and perhaps remembering Roger Scruton in particular a beautiful country will be a beautiful country with a beautiful built environment a place that allows people whatever their economic origins to live in beautiful places and have an opportunity to aspire to the timelessness that those buildings can suggest I had any rate I'm concerned about the future of Europe I'm concerned that this correction that we're going through does not in the years ahead become an overcorrection but with that one caveat aside perhaps I can just say in this most beautiful of Europeans is a final thank you to you thank you [Applause]

Channel: National Conservatism

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Length: 29min 51sec (1791 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 16 2020

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