Yesterday was a hard day.
At a personal level lots of little things happened (like burnt toast and a sore throat). But far more importantly, at 11 pm, three and a half years after a Conservative Prime Minister called a referendum to protect the nativist flank of his electoral coalition, the UK left the political institutions of the European Union.
I have made no secret of the fact that I did not want this to happen. I have always supported our continued membership of the E.U. I’ve done so because it improves lives. The business case for membership is incredibly strong. And successful business means a wider tax base to support those with less in society. Free movement has enriched countless lives. Scientific and artistic collaboration are easier as part of the union.
But more important than all of that, more so even than a feeling of European identity, is the reality that, working together we can achieve more. The greatest challenges we face in the 21st century do not recognise national borders, and it will be far easier to tackle them if we are already the closest possible partners.
Humans have evolved to live in community. Voluntarily cutting ourselves off from that, and retreating into an exclusive, narrow-minded nationalism will only harm ourselves.
I may have been on the losing side, still not convinced it was the wrong one.
Waking up this morning, it is so easy to feel crushed. To abandon hope. To retreat into our own lives and our own worries. Yet to do so is, in the end, to give victory to those who want that smaller vision. Those who believe that what we owe to one another is limited to those who look and sound like us.
Whether or not we are members of the E.U. – indeed whatever our future relationship is – I will hold on to that belief. I will try to let that belief shape what I say and do. I will continue to work for a world which is more collaborative and more diverse.
And as I wake up this morning, I see that so many of you feel the same, and I am proud to have the friends I have.
Something else came to an end last night. The Good Place was perhaps the perfect sitcom. I think we all need some wisdom right now.
“Sometimes, when you’re feeling helpless, the secret is to help someone else.”
“We have no plan. No one’s coming to save us. So… I’m going to do it.”
“Principles aren’t principles when you pick and choose when you’re gonna follow them.”
“I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.”
“Now we’re going to do the most human thing of all: attempt something futile with a ton of unearned confidence and fail spectacularly!”
“Picture a wave in the ocean: you can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts… and then it crashes on the shore and then it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while.”
Whatever's Left 