1 00:00:01,140 --> 00:00:03,910 Thank you all for coming back. 2 00:00:03,910 --> 00:00:14,250 The last 15 minutes of this marathon, I feel like a picture of the people at the end of the London Marathon crawling across the line, 3 00:00:14,250 --> 00:00:21,990 but it's also been an intellectual, very important and amazing exercise in battery gear. 4 00:00:21,990 --> 00:00:36,090 We had lots of art and music and theatre, and I'm afraid the image that came to mind of the two day progressed was some of you will know that Banksy, 5 00:00:36,090 --> 00:00:47,190 the graffiti off his murder, the into which as soon as it had been sold for a vast sum of money, started shredding itself. 6 00:00:47,190 --> 00:01:00,870 And the theatrical image I have indicated was that Junko Jones had trained for 48 hours without any wine watching, 7 00:01:00,870 --> 00:01:10,350 while all of self-congratulatory ideas about the EU are shredded in front of his eyes. 8 00:01:10,350 --> 00:01:19,170 So Europe within those weeks divided boring. I'm attracted to different importance of deceiving, mendacious, patronising and practical. 9 00:01:19,170 --> 00:01:25,110 And that was only yesterday evening and this morning it got even worse. 10 00:01:25,110 --> 00:01:36,120 A continent which doesn't have equality before the law, which encourages refugees to cheat in the name of law and lie in the name of truth. 11 00:01:36,120 --> 00:01:42,300 An example to India, but an example of how keeping refugees out. 12 00:01:42,300 --> 00:01:54,720 And then in my book, worst of all, the story that how to make progress very hard about war and arms exports to Middle Eastern dictators. 13 00:01:54,720 --> 00:02:03,960 Arms to be used to kill their own people, all their neighbours, and send more refugees across the Mediterranean. 14 00:02:03,960 --> 00:02:10,170 So this was a rather sobering, elaborate sequence. 15 00:02:10,170 --> 00:02:16,950 However, now in our long sessions out of this gloomy cacophony, 16 00:02:16,950 --> 00:02:24,600 a wonderful politician is about to emerge and to give us this problem, and we have two wonderful speakers nothing to do about it. 17 00:02:24,600 --> 00:02:29,700 And that little girl, they will speak for 10 15 minutes and then we'll have a discussion, 18 00:02:29,700 --> 00:02:35,100 which is as much about computers and reflections as about to direct procurement method. 19 00:02:35,100 --> 00:02:47,040 Thank you. Thank you. One point Smith told me that I would be tasked with trying to create a polyphony out of the cacophony of public lights. 20 00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:49,860 And so I will not attempt that. 21 00:02:49,860 --> 00:03:00,390 But I do want to start by just taking stock with with all of you for the moment and the place that we've had this conversation. 22 00:03:00,390 --> 00:03:08,130 The moment is, you know, in the middle of the Brexit debate, the also two weeks, 23 00:03:08,130 --> 00:03:14,870 just two weeks ahead of the EU elections, which will be a big test for the European project. 24 00:03:14,870 --> 00:03:21,750 And and it's also, you know, just in the course of these two days news that some users have broken. 25 00:03:21,750 --> 00:03:36,000 Of course, there were local elections in England and and we found out that some junior Matteo Salvini of the who stands out as the single 26 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:43,800 most powerful far-Right politician in Europe today because he essentially runs the governments of a founding member states. 27 00:03:43,800 --> 00:03:53,010 He travels to Hungary and match with Viktor Orban, the self-proclaimed champion of liberalism, just just two days ago. 28 00:03:53,010 --> 00:03:55,130 And something else is happening. 29 00:03:55,130 --> 00:04:04,450 We learnt that Viktor Orban himself is going to travel to Washington to meet with Donald Trump and precisely on the 13th of May, 30 00:04:04,450 --> 00:04:09,240 so that's roughly 12 days before the elections. 31 00:04:09,240 --> 00:04:17,430 What signals that sends also from America? And on the 13th of May, I got an email inviting me to this and I won't be able to go. 32 00:04:17,430 --> 00:04:25,320 But in London, attempting to close the door on his own name don't know if this means familiar to the theories. 33 00:04:25,320 --> 00:04:30,960 He's the thinker on nationalism, which I heard a lot about when I was in Washington in February, 34 00:04:30,960 --> 00:04:39,120 and it's been described by several people who know the Washington football much better than I do to us as a thinker that the people inside the Bush, 35 00:04:39,120 --> 00:04:44,220 the Trump administration read rather intensively these days, 36 00:04:44,220 --> 00:04:50,670 and he's going to be the first time in London and getting a conference on the 13th of May with, 37 00:04:50,670 --> 00:05:00,180 I'd say, hardline Brexiteers attending and some Polish peace and justice support, apparently and another. 38 00:05:00,180 --> 00:05:10,920 Such networks and I wanted just to, you know, just set the stage for the moment where in the title of that conference is Europe at a crossroads, 39 00:05:10,920 --> 00:05:17,340 the future of Europe, national identity and the virtues of nationalism. 40 00:05:17,340 --> 00:05:21,850 So that's that's the moment in which we're having we're having this, this this conversation. 41 00:05:21,850 --> 00:05:28,590 So I don't know if you've anticipated all of this, the thing when you get organised, 42 00:05:28,590 --> 00:05:35,190 everything, but it's certainly a very timely debate and it's a very rich debate. 43 00:05:35,190 --> 00:05:43,680 I thought I'd give you a little I thought I'd send you a little postcards from these moments of the last two days, 44 00:05:43,680 --> 00:05:53,520 just snippets of things that struck me that were said and perhaps to, you know, keep the conversation later on. 45 00:05:53,520 --> 00:05:59,160 So I jotted down some of the, you know, some quotes from various people. 46 00:05:59,160 --> 00:06:08,610 This is not an attempt to summarise everything that somebody said, nor is it an attempt to summarise the whole, the whole conference, the whole forum. 47 00:06:08,610 --> 00:06:13,770 But I hope, I hope I'll be faithfully, you know, restitute in some of what was said. 48 00:06:13,770 --> 00:06:18,570 So we started with a cacophony and you told us at the start of the conference that this 49 00:06:18,570 --> 00:06:27,540 would start with the cacophony and we would try to move towards a listening symphony. 50 00:06:27,540 --> 00:06:34,950 And so the things that struck me, I'm just going to quotes a few people and again, I'm not quoting everybody. 51 00:06:34,950 --> 00:06:39,690 Catherine Bernard from from the New York Times described a car mechanic in 52 00:06:39,690 --> 00:06:45,510 Strasbourg who crosses the border 100 times a year over a hundred times a year. 53 00:06:45,510 --> 00:06:50,730 And he was saying Europe here is for now and it is miraculous. 54 00:06:50,730 --> 00:07:00,420 She also mentioned in Saxony farmers who say that Europe of the EU is much more about wolves than it does about the local people. 55 00:07:00,420 --> 00:07:03,840 And he said, Yes, we are the endangered species. 56 00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:12,960 So right there we have immediately two very, very different polarised versions of the visible, Hoffman told us. 57 00:07:12,960 --> 00:07:19,740 Very interesting from her studies that Europeans do care very much about the project, 58 00:07:19,740 --> 00:07:26,580 and they know more than we think about Europe, and they pay attention to European politics. 59 00:07:26,580 --> 00:07:35,190 They have high expectations that eu, you, the EU and its politics, which is interesting to note on up to those elections later this month. 60 00:07:35,190 --> 00:07:40,230 They're not always very happy with the reality. That's the problem. 61 00:07:40,230 --> 00:07:47,040 Daniel, I'm going to quote you because you're you're you described this very interesting study by Chatham House and what I took. 62 00:07:47,040 --> 00:07:58,320 One of the things I took away is that the tribes, the tribes that we, the media and part of the media like to make so many headlines about, honestly, 63 00:07:58,320 --> 00:08:06,270 necessarily always the representative of the state of public opinion in Europe and in particular, 64 00:08:06,270 --> 00:08:11,620 the tribe called EU rejects that China makes a lot of headlines. 65 00:08:11,620 --> 00:08:18,140 But in the end, that survey you mentioned, it's it represents 14 percent of people across the continent. 66 00:08:18,140 --> 00:08:24,870 Parts of Europe is up for grabs. And the widest reaction is not. 67 00:08:24,870 --> 00:08:38,400 Rejection can do just hesitancy. But and the Gisela Stuart said she mentions the McCullen St. Collins photo exhibit to the tape gallery in London, 68 00:08:38,400 --> 00:08:40,500 which I really encourage you to go see. 69 00:08:40,500 --> 00:08:50,250 And she mentioned the photo of a young boy in 1961 in East Berlin looking over the Wall, and she said, This is my story. 70 00:08:50,250 --> 00:08:55,260 Whatever happens with Brexit, I won't let that story take it from me. 71 00:08:55,260 --> 00:09:01,680 But that was interesting. I'm Jewish love, Hungary warned us. 72 00:09:01,680 --> 00:09:06,330 The Western liberal culture has become disconnected from reality. 73 00:09:06,330 --> 00:09:17,550 Man is a communal being said. The individual has earned such a position that the community is left to ignore or disparage Slavic Slovenia. 74 00:09:17,550 --> 00:09:24,930 The self-described is a good cold said, but he listed amongst the amongst the key accomplishments of the EU, she said. 75 00:09:24,930 --> 00:09:33,900 Independence, the safeguarding of independence. And he asked us separately what's NATO's supply to the EU? 76 00:09:33,900 --> 00:09:43,920 At dinner, we were all I think moved extremely moved by Peter Opposers recollections of his childhood in the Austria of the 1930s. 77 00:09:43,920 --> 00:09:53,340 Witnessing the Anschluss, which marked the end of the Second World for him and to him, the beginning of World War Two, 78 00:09:53,340 --> 00:09:59,840 those were stories of Europe and we were 20 like windows into a tortured changing shift. 79 00:09:59,840 --> 00:10:07,890 And reinvented continent. I'll go on for for a few more minutes with quotes Andrew Harrell, 80 00:10:07,890 --> 00:10:18,440 who was one of the two or three people asleep in the room on the first day, who voted to put up his hand to say, I'm a federalist. 81 00:10:18,440 --> 00:10:24,200 He told us early on, and that goes to the conversation that the debate that we've just had, 82 00:10:24,200 --> 00:10:31,890 we've just heard very, very stimulating one who said there was an internal interest aspects to our discussion. 83 00:10:31,890 --> 00:10:37,160 He reminded us that much of Europe's narrative has been in relation to the other. 84 00:10:37,160 --> 00:10:44,240 Europe is no longer in the middle of the world. CALIPSO Nicolaides us asked us. 85 00:10:44,240 --> 00:10:51,200 We all have our stories. Just thinking about the Europe from other team presentation. 86 00:10:51,200 --> 00:10:56,050 We all have our stories. But how do they connect? Europe is a bubble. 87 00:10:56,050 --> 00:11:00,140 Yes, but it does have some simultaneous translation. 88 00:11:00,140 --> 00:11:06,020 And she mentioned the importance of feeling recognised, which I really take away as an important thing. 89 00:11:06,020 --> 00:11:14,000 Quarrelling, calling amongst each other amongst ourselves, even throwing insults of each other is also a way to know each other. 90 00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:19,520 So there's a silver lining to contestation since it is so common. 91 00:11:19,520 --> 00:11:24,710 The singer, who spoke in the presence of a space identity Kafka, 92 00:11:24,710 --> 00:11:32,760 the Chinese walls that are not boundaries with mental constructions, boundaries or futile an illusion. 93 00:11:32,760 --> 00:11:39,320 And yet they are vital. She mentions Thomas Monson as the perfect, liminal space, she said. 94 00:11:39,320 --> 00:11:45,170 Half land, half water, like a natural pair of literature, helps establish identity, 95 00:11:45,170 --> 00:11:51,780 and the beauty of literature is also to explore what happens when your identity falls apart. 96 00:11:51,780 --> 00:12:01,400 I go on for a few more minutes with quotes, and Kershaw reminded us of the somewheres versus nowheres narrative, 97 00:12:01,400 --> 00:12:05,840 and she said multiculturalism works in London or Oxford, 98 00:12:05,840 --> 00:12:13,160 whereas where there is natural intellectual mingling, but not in the north of England, where I come from. 99 00:12:13,160 --> 00:12:21,320 Margaret Macmillan told us looking at Europe from the outside helps, helps see confusion. 100 00:12:21,320 --> 00:12:25,280 But let's not create a narrative Europe that is a work in progress. 101 00:12:25,280 --> 00:12:38,570 No single narrative supersedes all the others. Andras Wilson said Europe's crisis is undeniable, but it could prove less damaging than we think. 102 00:12:38,570 --> 00:12:45,980 In particular, if the British decides it's much better to stay and to take to the open seas on sunset, 103 00:12:45,980 --> 00:12:52,910 it's from the House of European History in Brussels said something very important to control emotions. 104 00:12:52,910 --> 00:13:00,230 She said people tend to go to museums to confirm their world view, but that can change the world for you. 105 00:13:00,230 --> 00:13:08,180 The world. You can change just the opposite a museum. If they are made to feel emotion, if they are made to feel empathy. 106 00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:15,560 Michael Schwartz from the Travel Foundation told us about a smart question that his 107 00:13:15,560 --> 00:13:21,260 team asked politicians and peers from various countries rather than asking them, 108 00:13:21,260 --> 00:13:27,920 What's your position on fiscal policy? The question was Why are you a politician? 109 00:13:27,920 --> 00:13:37,220 And I think I think that that really makes sense to really widen the question, you know, what is it being European? 110 00:13:37,220 --> 00:13:45,020 Why or why? And ask any piece or any other question, why are you a European politician? 111 00:13:45,020 --> 00:13:51,710 To came to me from the worlds of theatre told us about losing the plot. 112 00:13:51,710 --> 00:13:58,820 The story means three things where it takes place, where it begins and ends, and what happens. 113 00:13:58,820 --> 00:14:06,560 And she asks us, Europe, one place, one day one is that if you had to choose, what would it be? 114 00:14:06,560 --> 00:14:11,060 And she put it all in place to help us find inspiration. 115 00:14:11,060 --> 00:14:15,900 And the quote was to see the world in a grain of sand. So I checked that, folks. 116 00:14:15,900 --> 00:14:20,850 I found I found the larger, the larger quote, and I'm going to read it because I think it's truthful and this. 117 00:14:20,850 --> 00:14:27,230 This helps us to see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower. 118 00:14:27,230 --> 00:14:33,140 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. 119 00:14:33,140 --> 00:14:36,950 But then, after all of this came the Timothy Snyder bombshell. 120 00:14:36,950 --> 00:14:49,700 Yes, fable of the wise nation. Europe is a soft was a soft landing for empires and not the result of a wise nation or wise nations. 121 00:14:49,700 --> 00:14:59,750 Having learnt that war is bad. And you told us the trouble with our general narrative about Europe is that not only is it delusional, but it actually. 122 00:14:59,750 --> 00:15:09,040 The narrative of those who say there is a place to go back to after Europe after membership, the nation state says that doesn't exist. 123 00:15:09,040 --> 00:15:16,790 And meanwhile, said empires outside of Europe are waiting, waiting for us to pounce on us. 124 00:15:16,790 --> 00:15:22,640 So it was a brilliant, tense down to Fletcher, not one that everybody agrees on. 125 00:15:22,640 --> 00:15:27,230 Agreed with, I would say. But maybe Timothy Snyder was right on one thing. 126 00:15:27,230 --> 00:15:33,650 Maybe we don't need a narrative. Maybe we need history and common sense politics. 127 00:15:33,650 --> 00:15:37,100 Still, I think I wasn't the only one to be a little bit shaken by this, 128 00:15:37,100 --> 00:15:45,620 but his talked and I felt a little bit like the man he described at the very beginning, saying this man who arrived in Oxford had lost his luggage. 129 00:15:45,620 --> 00:15:54,740 I felt like I was going to be scrambling for my luggage. There were many, many metaphors for friends, as you said. 130 00:15:54,740 --> 00:16:00,530 As you said, some of the carpets, the carpets, music, weaving threads, 131 00:16:00,530 --> 00:16:06,290 a ship sailing in one direction and people on its deck moving in another direction. 132 00:16:06,290 --> 00:16:13,010 The carpet was a poignant metaphor by it, but I am so, so sorry. 133 00:16:13,010 --> 00:16:21,120 And also, she mentioned that the musical metaphor, you know you need a tune you need to know, do you need a Pete Hudson member song? 134 00:16:21,120 --> 00:16:26,390 And so does her very emotional, striking film fulfilment. 135 00:16:26,390 --> 00:16:37,960 I am a Romani woman. I am European. And she said, if we need a new story, then that story has to be about diversity and solidarity. 136 00:16:37,960 --> 00:16:42,640 But I want to throw in another metaphor, which is the fox, 137 00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:49,260 and I'm stealing it from from Tony Jones book post-War, it's right to the beginning of the introduction. 138 00:16:49,260 --> 00:16:56,170 He quotes the great poet who who puts the fox and the hedgehog in the same sentence, 139 00:16:56,170 --> 00:17:03,790 and he says the hedgehogs the hedgehog knows one big thing the fox knows many things. 140 00:17:03,790 --> 00:17:09,220 And I think and until he does this, Europe knows many things. 141 00:17:09,220 --> 00:17:14,280 And perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is, is not so much. 142 00:17:14,280 --> 00:17:19,100 You know, what is what is or what is the sound? 143 00:17:19,100 --> 00:17:26,860 He produces a cacophony. Is it probably for me? Perhaps we have to take stock and ask ourselves, What do we know? 144 00:17:26,860 --> 00:17:34,450 What do we know about ourselves, about this region, this part of the world and its relation to others? 145 00:17:34,450 --> 00:17:45,040 And then, like foxes, maybe we have to us knowing what we know, what can we do and how do we do it? 146 00:17:45,040 --> 00:17:58,590 And that's my takeaway. Thank you very much, method that. 147 00:17:58,590 --> 00:18:05,550 This work. OK. Thank you. Thank you. 148 00:18:05,550 --> 00:18:09,420 I took one at least promising things from your tongue. 149 00:18:09,420 --> 00:18:16,770 Somewhat sombre introduction of setting the stage is where we are now, which is that people in the Trump administration read something. 150 00:18:16,770 --> 00:18:26,950 So that was a positive for me, as positive for me as an American, which sort of leads me to confessing my outsized status. 151 00:18:26,950 --> 00:18:35,430 This has been a day of outsiders and I want to. I'm an American, I'm half British, but I consider myself an American and worse than that. 152 00:18:35,430 --> 00:18:43,560 I study American history. So to say this is not my field, we find it mildly. 153 00:18:43,560 --> 00:18:55,860 But I have been listening to whole conference and I would like to kind of play the hedgehog who values Fox and 154 00:18:55,860 --> 00:19:05,490 try to bring us together some picture of the kinds of stories that we at this conference have told this week. 155 00:19:05,490 --> 00:19:12,630 So perhaps not the stories Europe tells of the stories we have told over these past few days. 156 00:19:12,630 --> 00:19:26,700 And to do that, I'll leave you with them on safe ground for myself with the American parallel, if you let me and lurch us back to 1910 or the. 157 00:19:26,700 --> 00:19:40,950 A moment in which America was facing a great immigration and migration crisis of Europeans, Poles, Bohemians and Scandinavians, Jews, 158 00:19:40,950 --> 00:19:51,220 Irish Germans all coming in huge numbers to the states and forming is all the time fragments of European nations inside the US. 159 00:19:51,220 --> 00:19:55,590 There was a lot of debate about what that meant for American identity. 160 00:19:55,590 --> 00:20:05,580 Reading Cross was famously to the idea of melting pot and in its most extreme form, Teddy Roosevelt's idea of 100 percent Americanism. 161 00:20:05,580 --> 00:20:15,090 But there were opponents to this, including one who wrote a very famous essay in the Nation for US Cable and Democracy Versus the Melting Pot, 162 00:20:15,090 --> 00:20:22,590 and Taylor articulated the problem that America was facing then in a way that might feel familiar to people who have been at this conference. 163 00:20:22,590 --> 00:20:27,750 He wrote, Our spirit, the American spirit is inarticulate and our voice. 164 00:20:27,750 --> 00:20:32,580 But of course, of many voices, each singing a rather different to what must. 165 00:20:32,580 --> 00:20:38,370 What shall this cacophony become like unison for a harmony? 166 00:20:38,370 --> 00:20:42,240 And Kaitlyn's response was not to say a hundred percent Americanism. 167 00:20:42,240 --> 00:20:48,840 It wasn't quite to deny anarchism, but it was to pull it in a clever dialectical trick and say the rise. 168 00:20:48,840 --> 00:20:55,260 I'm quoting the rise of the cultural consciousness and social autonomy of the immigrants. 169 00:20:55,260 --> 00:21:03,120 Irishmen, German Scandinavian Jew poll or opinion is Americanisation. 170 00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:10,530 Americanisation, he said, has no trust nationality. Americanisation has liberated nationality, 171 00:21:10,530 --> 00:21:17,220 and he went on to say that American civilisation may come to me in the perfection of the cooperative harmonies of European civilisation, 172 00:21:17,220 --> 00:21:25,100 the waste, the squalor and the distress of Europe being eliminated by curiosity and unity and orchestration of mankind. 173 00:21:25,100 --> 00:21:29,880 As you said, a symphony. So two lessons, I think, from this entire conference. 174 00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:36,090 The first is that American experiment doesn't work out, come to America, and we'll take care of it all. 175 00:21:36,090 --> 00:21:48,210 The second is that Kaitlyn gets less money out of this cacophony by pulling this kind of dialectical by saying the more American is, 176 00:21:48,210 --> 00:21:55,980 the more national. The more diverse right Americanisation is liberated nationality. 177 00:21:55,980 --> 00:22:00,780 And I would like to suggest that that's one thing that we've seen at this conference. 178 00:22:00,780 --> 00:22:07,890 The idea that Europeanisation, if I could put it that way, far from repressing European nationalities, 179 00:22:07,890 --> 00:22:16,290 liberates them or perhaps more than liberates them and makes those nationalities possible and makes them possible by protecting them. 180 00:22:16,290 --> 00:22:21,230 And that's the coalition that I think I'd like to try and draw from this kind of cacophony. 181 00:22:21,230 --> 00:22:25,350 The narratives that we've heard here have been, I would say, 182 00:22:25,350 --> 00:22:31,500 almost universally centred on protection, and that word has come up quite a lot over the past year. 183 00:22:31,500 --> 00:22:42,120 And now that that's the reason the thought of unity is that there is some question of whom or what Europe is protected. 184 00:22:42,120 --> 00:22:47,760 And I would say that there are two kinds of protection narratives that we've seen. 185 00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:57,400 The first, which Tim Snyder would tell us is what we get from the fable of the wise nation is a narrative of Europe as a project. 186 00:22:57,400 --> 00:23:05,470 The protests, its nations from themselves, from Europe on worst in six months or more. 187 00:23:05,470 --> 00:23:11,230 And it it creates a system that protects from within. 188 00:23:11,230 --> 00:23:18,820 And the second is Europe as protecting its nations from something outside from the rest of the world, which is, in a sense, 189 00:23:18,820 --> 00:23:31,480 the narrative that we get if we accept tennis history that she gave us yesterday and was, I think, the narrative she was encouraging us to take up. 190 00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:38,860 What struck me about the conference is that the first narrative Europe as protecting its nations from themselves. 191 00:23:38,860 --> 00:23:44,740 Well, it's perhaps true that this is a widespread narrative outside of this conference room. 192 00:23:44,740 --> 00:23:53,890 I did not hear much of it here. We heard it to some extent on the second day Congress version told us that they had to think of 193 00:23:53,890 --> 00:23:59,810 the EU as perhaps a quote binding set of principles that protects Europeans against themselves. 194 00:23:59,810 --> 00:24:03,770 And also to carving out mechanic in for that country. 195 00:24:03,770 --> 00:24:10,900 Ballots were counted. Europe is a region like it is banal. It is miraculous because it protects from within. 196 00:24:10,900 --> 00:24:13,300 But what's striking to me is that as I look back through my notes, 197 00:24:13,300 --> 00:24:23,650 I actually couldn't find many instances of that narrative coming up all over the Europe as self-protection. 198 00:24:23,650 --> 00:24:31,120 So the narrative that should come out of the wise nation fable that in so brilliantly eviscerated last night was actually, 199 00:24:31,120 --> 00:24:38,320 I would say, at the conference, largely absent. And instead, when I look back through my notes, I saw a lot of the second protection narrative. 200 00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:41,440 Europe has protection from the outside. 201 00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:50,530 One would expect to come from chains corrected in quotes historical record, which is perhaps to say that in fact, 202 00:24:50,530 --> 00:24:57,880 rather than tends to ensure destabilising us, we were moving quite readily towards the narrative that he was going to push us to accept. 203 00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:03,640 And that began even on the very first health where we were told by Isabelle Hoffman's 204 00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:10,600 opinions that far from globalisation and EU integration being linked in people's minds, 205 00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:20,090 quite to the contrary. People saw Europe as their whole showed as the quote protector against globalisation on day two. 206 00:25:20,090 --> 00:25:29,680 Andreas version and I'm quoting him again because he put these things so well and so concisely said that this was not. 207 00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:33,820 The European narrative was not a question of the nation state versus the EU, 208 00:25:33,820 --> 00:25:40,780 rather than it was quote the assertion of the nation state and the return policy where the nation states. 209 00:25:40,780 --> 00:25:44,710 I would actually say this is quite close to the argument that we are moving toward. 210 00:25:44,710 --> 00:25:51,790 After his talk on Friday, instead of the EU nation state dichotomy, 211 00:25:51,790 --> 00:26:04,960 the EU enables nation states as they consider themselves to survive by protecting them and cutting them off from the threats outside, Calypso replies. 212 00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:11,980 I a similar argument later on. Asked in question Isn't the European story about a rescued, 213 00:26:11,980 --> 00:26:20,830 radically open nation state in a Europe and that nation state exists only because Europe, in her words? 214 00:26:20,830 --> 00:26:26,860 So that's the good side of this narrative. But I think we also saw a lot of the negative side. 215 00:26:26,860 --> 00:26:33,160 The narrative produced by Europe as protector from the outside can be used to very sinister ends, 216 00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:38,950 too, and I think we learnt that at this conference and I would say that's starting to hurt the most. 217 00:26:38,950 --> 00:26:50,350 So we heard anger against the EU, anger against in the first panel from Katrina Hoover against quote the EU of industry, oligarchs and tech companies. 218 00:26:50,350 --> 00:26:56,950 In other words, an EU that had failed to protect against globalisation that had failed to protect. 219 00:26:56,950 --> 00:27:09,610 We now talked today. So the narrative goes against refugees, perhaps, and have those that question the refugees so determines one's view of Europe. 220 00:27:09,610 --> 00:27:14,470 As we heard both might today and from the Chatham House survey. 221 00:27:14,470 --> 00:27:22,090 So again, the question of protection for the new protect against refugees or to protect refugees from the things that are coming from. 222 00:27:22,090 --> 00:27:31,390 But either way, the frame is the same. Europe is a protector, and we heard that also from the second panel on Thursday. 223 00:27:31,390 --> 00:27:39,580 Question either coming from anti-EU financing in voice of Hungary or even from a professional sports from the. 224 00:27:39,580 --> 00:27:48,880 There's always the narrative of Europe was centred around whether it had succeeded in protecting its people. 225 00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:54,130 Terrible yesterday called this cold called this kind of of a buffer. 226 00:27:54,130 --> 00:27:57,560 I am today referred to it as a very. 227 00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:05,930 And I think that exemplifies the way in which this narrative can be used one way or the other, as we heard in the last panel. 228 00:28:05,930 --> 00:28:10,850 Can you increase Europe's budget for border control, the proposed increase and, 229 00:28:10,850 --> 00:28:15,110 amongst other things, securitisation trying to reinforce this narrative? 230 00:28:15,110 --> 00:28:22,100 It does have some basis in reality. It seems the EU wants to be a protector. 231 00:28:22,100 --> 00:28:30,650 So what strikes me about all these protection narratives is that they tell a deeply conservative story of Europe. 232 00:28:30,650 --> 00:28:35,060 I knew that in a very literal sense. There is something to be preserved within Europe. 233 00:28:35,060 --> 00:28:40,980 What that thing is, it's up for debate, but it's to be preserved against that or not. 234 00:28:40,980 --> 00:28:46,460 I think at worst, as we can all obviously imagine, this is a very dangerous way to think of Europe. 235 00:28:46,460 --> 00:28:55,520 It's expanding the nationalist mindset out to international borders, but it's making a cut somewhere. 236 00:28:55,520 --> 00:29:00,440 And that's perhaps the dominant narrative that has. 237 00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:09,950 The clip that has come out of this cacophony is a kind of falling to the floor and her liberalism fear European Union of Fear, 238 00:29:09,950 --> 00:29:25,010 a kind of damage control European Union. That's as far but guarding against either itself or against the empires and digital forces around them. 239 00:29:25,010 --> 00:29:32,630 But as I said today, and I'm quoting her, if Europe is very difficult to define, it's even more difficult to protect. 240 00:29:32,630 --> 00:29:36,950 And I wonder our projects as we move out of this conference on part of the research 241 00:29:36,950 --> 00:29:45,620 team is about a very minor generation in Europe and speaking as an even higher myself. 242 00:29:45,620 --> 00:29:53,060 If Europe does not protect against the threat that my generation will be the major threat to climate change, 243 00:29:53,060 --> 00:30:01,040 that narrative of Europe, a story in Europe as protection is not going to work very well at all. 244 00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:05,840 But another story of told my on this, which I won't fully address. 245 00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:10,550 Hopefully we can explore it in the comments is on a slightly different level. 246 00:30:10,550 --> 00:30:20,920 We've been discussing how far you can take the curve, whether we should perhaps be playing a little more cautiously with this term. 247 00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:28,340 I think this is an important note to end on on a conference that is expanding into a project without narratives looking for narratives in Europe. 248 00:30:28,340 --> 00:30:36,920 We've heard from some of our speakers like Haiti and some of our talk about literature, 249 00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:45,590 that there are perhaps places where narrative is better suited to literature, fiction and places where it is less well suited as certain. 250 00:30:45,590 --> 00:30:54,500 Kershaw reminded us of history and perhaps Tim Snider, too. 251 00:30:54,500 --> 00:30:59,630 It seems that perhaps rather than have a narrative of protection, 252 00:30:59,630 --> 00:31:07,730 there might be some case for cordoning off the idea of narrative itself, given that orders. 253 00:31:07,730 --> 00:31:17,540 And so I think that what that leaves me with and what I like to kind of open for up to if that's 254 00:31:17,540 --> 00:31:29,030 OK is a question of both what stories we've told here and in what form we should be telling them. 255 00:31:29,030 --> 00:31:37,490 And and some caution about not exaggerating the importance of those stories too much for the public. 256 00:31:37,490 --> 00:31:43,640 And I wasn't planning on ending all this, and I sort of promised myself I wouldn't. 257 00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:52,510 But since now we've brought it up. I'm Tony Johnson and. 258 00:31:52,510 --> 00:32:01,170 Of course. His voice has looms large over this conference for me. 259 00:32:01,170 --> 00:32:14,610 And last night, I went back and read an old essay writing 96 called Europe a Grand Illusion, where she urged us to exercise that same kind of caution. 260 00:32:14,610 --> 00:32:19,350 And I, I promised, I promised myself that I would never, ever, ever try to speak for him. 261 00:32:19,350 --> 00:32:30,120 But I can, at least if I can remember the quote, right, said that Europe is more than a geographical notion, but less than an answer. 262 00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:45,380 And perhaps what we can take from this conference is that Europe is more than the narrative, but less than an answer. 263 00:32:45,380 --> 00:32:55,940 Thank you very much. And, you know, it's interesting because in a way, if you're today speaks, 264 00:32:55,940 --> 00:33:06,320 more questions can be raised in Europe a grand illusion than it does to the very cautiously optimistic conclusion of Post War, 265 00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:12,437 which is of course, published just before the high point of what seemed like European success without five six.