1 00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:07,050 So I know you have adoption outcomes of all of these is, of course, a safe as you know, 2 00:00:07,680 --> 00:00:13,800 she was one of the community of surprise and the sleeping outside professional group. 3 00:00:13,890 --> 00:00:16,980 English is definitely a success. Nanny has wise men, 4 00:00:17,850 --> 00:00:25,950 very wise woman of Europe and being actually to revisit that report on European patterns 5 00:00:25,980 --> 00:00:31,860 that she was very much involved in advising the Convention on the Future of Europe. 6 00:00:32,670 --> 00:00:44,790 She also advised the presidency of the I did I got your a beautiful idea which these days you had a little artistic pass. 7 00:00:45,870 --> 00:00:51,380 But anyway, she had a course who managed to distinguish to academic record vehicle. 8 00:00:51,410 --> 00:01:05,460 No, not at all. For college, though, of course, NYU, not to mention of the many, many articles created in volumes. 9 00:01:05,940 --> 00:01:15,420 She is, of course, the the mother of the idea of democracy, love denied in Europe of democracy, 10 00:01:16,200 --> 00:01:24,560 although we had the oil in that rather lovely island and she is also dedicated. 11 00:01:24,840 --> 00:01:27,860 Really sorry Keesha. 12 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:33,570 I didn't I can't tell you the number of conferences, workshops, seminars, 13 00:01:33,960 --> 00:01:39,660 which is not only organised but mostly animated in a wonderful, wonderful way. 14 00:01:40,020 --> 00:01:47,250 Those of you who at the conference saw earlier today and also the number of students all over the world, 15 00:01:47,340 --> 00:01:55,499 former students of that, at least in the most unlikely places, and who always teaching incredibly warm. 16 00:01:55,500 --> 00:02:05,129 And so we're very, very lucky to have this person who came to us for granted to give the keynote today, but was a very lucky to have an event. 17 00:02:05,130 --> 00:02:14,490 And we they do not for granted both have a very distinguished academic career embraces many of the same places Oxford also Columbia 18 00:02:15,890 --> 00:02:27,690 College London many occasions so he actually from city security policy and then going wider and wider and about particularly in Europe. 19 00:02:27,690 --> 00:02:35,300 In the overview article published in May 2016 under the title Britain's Influence in the EU. 20 00:02:36,430 --> 00:02:43,520 You might have an interesting perspective in these days about these purposes. 21 00:02:43,560 --> 00:02:50,190 He also does absolutely, extraordinarily, it's great project for the UK in a changing Europe, 22 00:02:51,300 --> 00:02:57,870 which claims and aspires to be absolutely impartial in the British debate about Europe. 23 00:02:58,680 --> 00:03:06,360 And I think absolutely and people in the institute of this of the Brexit that you are pretty 24 00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:13,190 close and I think strong achievement and I think you try and not think that across that time. 25 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:17,290 But I think that and it is also incredibly active on Twitter. 26 00:03:17,340 --> 00:03:29,580 I thought in from the time we got involved entirely and he did a wonderfully in his shop via Twitter bio as a better trustee of 27 00:03:29,910 --> 00:03:40,650 politics throughout Europe and interested in response to this lecture letter is going to give you a rather unusual perhaps. 28 00:03:41,070 --> 00:03:50,430 I kind of agree it is, I thought, a reduced Shakespeare version of a much longer text that she is in the process of 29 00:03:50,430 --> 00:03:55,500 writing on this subject to access directly to sacrifice the three meanings of Brexit. 30 00:03:56,820 --> 00:03:59,670 Then I will respond and then we have time for discussion. 31 00:03:59,670 --> 00:04:11,010 So he's got the introductory press and he was going to give the keynote originally, but I must say it's worth doing it, 32 00:04:11,340 --> 00:04:20,639 if only for such gracious introduction and having and then indulging my musings as well as having all of you here today. 33 00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:30,780 Thank you. As many of us have had already a long day saying it, thinking it in the beginning was the word, 34 00:04:31,050 --> 00:04:36,540 and the word was Brexit, but nobody quite knew what that word meant. 35 00:04:37,320 --> 00:04:40,890 And then the Oracle speaks of Brexit means Brexit. 36 00:04:42,480 --> 00:04:47,160 Since the June referendum, we each have our own way of dealing with the ubiquitous tautology. 37 00:04:48,030 --> 00:04:53,219 What does it say about the prospect of Britain's exit from the EU that the word itself, 38 00:04:53,220 --> 00:04:58,620 the most Googled in 2016, was the main contender for its elucidation? 39 00:04:59,460 --> 00:05:07,670 That's Britain. Mean Brexit mean I will not backtrack or we're ready to pay the price or ask you or on the other side, good riddance. 40 00:05:08,270 --> 00:05:17,870 What does that mean? As scholars, we are so involved in witnessing the day to day political saga which tries to rationalise it all. 41 00:05:19,070 --> 00:05:22,400 We turn to the past trying to explain why this happened. 42 00:05:22,580 --> 00:05:28,700 And earlier on today, Sara and Katherine give us wonderful analysis of that. 43 00:05:30,860 --> 00:05:35,540 We turn to the future, trying to predict what will happen or prescribe what should happen. 44 00:05:35,990 --> 00:05:43,610 We heard a lot about this earlier on. So explanation and implications, political sociology and policy. 45 00:05:44,150 --> 00:05:48,170 But what about the in-between? What does MI mean in Brexit? 46 00:05:48,170 --> 00:05:51,500 Mean Brexit. So indulge me. 47 00:05:51,530 --> 00:05:59,390 Meaning matters. Well, we have entered a battle of narratives whose protagonists will spare no future shortcuts. 48 00:06:00,380 --> 00:06:06,590 Which one dominated the next two years will help determine the nature of the Brexit deal and maybe of the EU itself. 49 00:06:07,550 --> 00:06:13,460 But they also meticulous instrumental reasons, meetings, process feelings, but do not transcend them. 50 00:06:13,880 --> 00:06:22,070 And as all of that famously argued, when the hidden narratives which sustain our society rise to the surface, 51 00:06:22,580 --> 00:06:28,890 they borrow from the qualities of past fantastic tales which help determine what we see together. 52 00:06:29,720 --> 00:06:37,520 They become mythology. So I couldn't help my friends then to explore the meaning of Brexit as mythology, 53 00:06:38,300 --> 00:06:43,730 to juxtapose parallel and incomparable meanings under the shadow of great archetypes, 54 00:06:44,300 --> 00:06:53,660 and treat Brexit like all such archetypes, as a dramatic pivot around a moment with a before and an after. 55 00:06:53,840 --> 00:07:03,730 Somehow connecting a feature of being. To be or not to be European and a feature of do it to stay or not to stay in the EU. 56 00:07:04,630 --> 00:07:12,820 For as with all such archetypal myth, it is in the making disconnection visible that the moment acquires meaning, 57 00:07:12,820 --> 00:07:19,180 allowing for an infinite retelling, and yet serving as a stable beacon for our collective imaginations. 58 00:07:19,420 --> 00:07:25,840 So in this period, I suggest that the meaning of this work can be told through the prism of three archetypes, 59 00:07:25,840 --> 00:07:32,380 each connecting, being and doing in a different way. Stories of exodus, stories of reckoning, and stories of sacrifice. 60 00:07:32,980 --> 00:07:38,080 Now, whether these stories echo most faithfully the voice of the world itself, 61 00:07:38,080 --> 00:07:41,920 as bacon would have had it, or whether they simply constitute common reference. 62 00:07:42,370 --> 00:07:44,290 We feel we know what they each mean, 63 00:07:44,770 --> 00:07:52,180 and yet yet they they do not emerge from the collective soul of humankind to provide easy answer to our predicament. 64 00:07:52,660 --> 00:07:59,440 Always ambiguous, they serve as ever retreating truth mirages to tingle our mind and entrench mystery. 65 00:07:59,710 --> 00:08:04,000 Humans are always, always turned on by a meaning that's hard to get. 66 00:08:04,780 --> 00:08:09,549 So stories may help us see from an innocent and large question viewpoint, 67 00:08:09,550 --> 00:08:18,940 or they may help us confront meanings dominant among various categories of people as they clash, overlap or cross in the dark. 68 00:08:19,570 --> 00:08:25,930 Say categories like British nationals, EU citizens, Brussels bubble, EU neighbours rest of the world. 69 00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:34,360 So we can use them to confront this meaning and we can use them like a kaleidoscope to shed light on each other. 70 00:08:35,230 --> 00:08:40,330 And it is this possibility for recognition that I'd like to open up here in our conversation. 71 00:08:41,860 --> 00:08:45,220 So let us begin Brexit. 72 00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:56,260 As is the most straightforward and perhaps widely shared meaning of the Brexit, both in the UK and on the European continent, 73 00:08:56,260 --> 00:09:02,890 is simply that it should be about Britain red, white and blue, Britain's prerogative and thus Britain's problem. 74 00:09:03,730 --> 00:09:07,060 Brexit simply means that the UK will leave. 75 00:09:07,870 --> 00:09:16,600 So progressive ideas are unmistakeably leading a people enslaved by the shackles of Brussels on an escape journey. 76 00:09:18,170 --> 00:09:22,299 They are hearing the harrowing tale of another people escaping slavery in Egypt, 77 00:09:22,300 --> 00:09:30,370 served by the strong headedness of prophets bargaining with the pharaoh over terms of departure and complete with the parting of the seas. 78 00:09:30,790 --> 00:09:33,970 Egyptians, Europeans let the people go. 79 00:09:35,530 --> 00:09:41,770 And so the story goes. Brexit is a very British thing and British exceptionalism is overdetermined. 80 00:09:41,980 --> 00:09:51,280 We talked about this earlier by geography, the island, nation by history, the en invaded nation by politics, the parliamentary nation, etc. 81 00:09:51,700 --> 00:09:57,340 So in this story, the tabloids did not cook the British Eurosceptic brew, but they simply served it. 82 00:09:58,180 --> 00:10:04,089 So say the UK you profess to dispel British sovereignty against you. 83 00:10:04,090 --> 00:10:08,130 Encroachment is to depart for the promised land of no, 84 00:10:08,140 --> 00:10:14,710 the eight that milk and honey where we are not governed by others, but do the governing ourselves. 85 00:10:14,770 --> 00:10:23,620 The old Anglosphere will be our new Jerusalem, which connects Great Britain's future with a glorious space in the English heartland, 86 00:10:23,800 --> 00:10:32,980 with the British past the impossible note a kind of politically correct Englishman Anthony Barnett in the room speaks brilliantly about this, 87 00:10:33,250 --> 00:10:40,629 which loves our parties and EU friendliness as parochial and so very pleased that the 88 00:10:40,630 --> 00:10:47,440 Exodus story of an exceptional people is not only a harrowing tale said by Brexiteers, 89 00:10:47,620 --> 00:10:55,660 your credulous admit that letting these people go is quite a route and people cut off from the continent by 90 00:10:55,870 --> 00:11:04,570 any bit of tongue in the channel whose aspiration to harmony they never really understood the good was right, 91 00:11:04,900 --> 00:11:11,050 even if for the wrong reason. The Brits are simply not European enough to remain part of this EU. 92 00:11:11,410 --> 00:11:16,720 Let the EU themselves and their fantasy fantasyland tired of the fog. 93 00:11:16,900 --> 00:11:20,650 Try the brass cheese French recruiters with glee. 94 00:11:22,120 --> 00:11:28,210 But our myth, of course, never quite meeting what they really see. 95 00:11:29,230 --> 00:11:33,490 The exodus of the Old Testament has inspired, of course, an infinite retelling. 96 00:11:34,570 --> 00:11:39,400 Can we not imagine a modern kind of exodus, Exodus Lite, 97 00:11:39,910 --> 00:11:46,030 where the European are spared the ten plagues and the Brits of 40 years of wondering in the wilderness? 98 00:11:48,070 --> 00:11:56,260 After all, many don't want to leave it all. Why has it done this to us and claimed the Israelites to Moses? 99 00:11:56,650 --> 00:12:01,230 That. Our has led us out of Egypt. That was Moses. 100 00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:06,630 The Lord himself will fight for you. Just say to keep calm and carry on. 101 00:12:07,230 --> 00:12:12,930 We know the verse. But what if we do not believe in your version of milk and honey? 102 00:12:12,960 --> 00:12:16,950 Explain the Scots, Scottish, the Northern Irish and the London Trials. 103 00:12:19,050 --> 00:12:24,030 How do you expect us to really get lost in the legal and political no man's land? 104 00:12:24,510 --> 00:12:29,190 Ask the reluctant differences when your land is governed in our language, literally, 105 00:12:29,190 --> 00:12:37,560 as well as the ideologically whose achievements of the last two decades stand as markers of our influence, as I have argued brilliantly. 106 00:12:39,600 --> 00:12:47,310 So these guys who they elect to exist as Brexit and embark on their own Brexit is for better for Brexiteers. 107 00:12:47,550 --> 00:12:54,600 How do you see the light? Understand that Exodus is an exercise in delayed gratification. 108 00:12:57,750 --> 00:13:06,479 Now political sociologists and we've heard, have explained the vote as a tale of two Britains a cultural war between cities and countries, 109 00:13:06,480 --> 00:13:12,480 young and poor, educated and non, and between sides who differ in everything from the death penalty to gay rights. 110 00:13:12,900 --> 00:13:16,410 We're even told that the two sides have different sexual fantasies, 111 00:13:18,690 --> 00:13:26,970 or perhaps it boils down to the different connotation of one word bond and not James Bond. 112 00:13:29,350 --> 00:13:35,520 For one side, it evoked evokes bondage, and for another, it evokes the ties that bind. 113 00:13:37,980 --> 00:13:50,490 So see from the continent, we try to draw our gaze to see better to not the hyperbolic expressions of nativist sentiment on Lennon's Island. 114 00:13:50,820 --> 00:13:57,150 How British Tim they have become. I think the decision to go mad letting yourselves go. 115 00:13:58,310 --> 00:14:03,470 Very frustrating tremendously. And most frustrating still. 116 00:14:04,040 --> 00:14:10,620 The leaders themselves seem to have radically different ways of not being Europeans and not allowed to go. 117 00:14:12,230 --> 00:14:20,010 Some want to leave because they found Europe in big, others because they find it too small for a promised land. 118 00:14:20,030 --> 00:14:28,280 The parochial dream of the shires, the globalists of the antipodes, the former want more protection and to pull the drawbridge. 119 00:14:29,000 --> 00:14:32,780 The later wants less protectionism and to build bridges. 120 00:14:34,130 --> 00:14:38,840 So you know what? It's not clear what version other Europeans dislike more. 121 00:14:39,170 --> 00:14:46,130 It's slightly alienating in different ways. If the Brits have less us because they find Europe too big, 122 00:14:46,310 --> 00:14:51,860 we can confine Brexit to all that is compelling about Brexit, exceptionalism and Little Britain. 123 00:14:53,180 --> 00:14:58,520 But if they have left because they find Europe too small, they may be delusional. 124 00:14:59,680 --> 00:15:03,909 But this panache in the story of Cool Boat Britannia goes global. 125 00:15:03,910 --> 00:15:07,390 As you said earlier, you wasn't saying it was going to happen. 126 00:15:07,990 --> 00:15:13,480 You know, I have grudging admiration for these bloody minded Brits in some European circles. 127 00:15:13,600 --> 00:15:24,210 They dared. Well, so for every European applauding the departure of this four draggers, another will miss their experts. 128 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:30,670 But. For Britain has been everybody's balancer of the French. 129 00:15:31,030 --> 00:15:35,169 On behalf the German of the Germans, on behalf of the French and of both. 130 00:15:35,170 --> 00:15:42,200 On behalf of the periphery. It's not for nothing that you get to be the most sought after ally in the council negotiations after Germany. 131 00:15:42,610 --> 00:15:45,940 Great regret has many variants on the continent. 132 00:15:46,900 --> 00:15:57,400 In fact, we find even beyond Europe, this ambivalence writ large Commonwealth citizens bemoaning the closing of their link to the EU. 133 00:15:57,410 --> 00:16:04,620 They're happy but can be flattered to be chosen as less problematic migrants than the close by pools. 134 00:16:04,780 --> 00:16:09,750 And spoken to many of them. The prospect of an awkward rule, 135 00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:18,040 Britannia does leave puzzled observers wondering why the Brits would want to abandon a land that still attracts so many from the rest of the world. 136 00:16:18,640 --> 00:16:23,650 But it doesn't hurt either to serve as the new horizon for this rebellious tribe. 137 00:16:25,930 --> 00:16:35,850 So the house. What happens next year when you don't see it? 138 00:16:36,450 --> 00:16:41,610 That's behind the slide. We've got the biting of the apple. 139 00:16:42,390 --> 00:16:52,290 So where we have such a prospect, European leaders seek to enact a more self-aggrandising version of this story where it is they who set up the gates. 140 00:16:52,620 --> 00:16:57,390 This is not your eggs of this Brits, but our banishment. 141 00:16:58,390 --> 00:17:04,690 You may have chosen to bite the apple and claim control over your life, but we define the terms of departure. 142 00:17:05,170 --> 00:17:08,890 This story is not about freedom gain, but paradise lost. 143 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:14,380 But what does punishment say about the Badger? 144 00:17:15,130 --> 00:17:20,680 It is surely for Brussels to recognise that it could give, given Cameron a better deal to sex up the Remainers. 145 00:17:20,680 --> 00:17:24,069 So see what we have freedom with in Egypt. 146 00:17:24,070 --> 00:17:28,630 Truly not an option. And what does banishment say about the banished? 147 00:17:30,160 --> 00:17:36,640 That they deserved it. Remainers did not only care for their own bite at the EU apple. 148 00:17:37,270 --> 00:17:41,409 I know many in this room. So it was banishment anyway. 149 00:17:41,410 --> 00:17:47,020 Always on the knife pitch, all or nothing, but with little separation between the two. 150 00:17:47,480 --> 00:17:51,550 Really, devil. A short moment of gluttony in paradise. 151 00:17:52,360 --> 00:17:55,540 Who said that biting the apple was written in British jelly? 152 00:17:56,050 --> 00:18:01,300 How do we make sense of the very real possibility that a decision could have gone the other way? 153 00:18:01,300 --> 00:18:08,050 If only? And we've got a lot of it only counterfactuals today together. 154 00:18:08,380 --> 00:18:11,710 No one would be talking about Brexit, British exceptionalism. 155 00:18:13,940 --> 00:18:18,710 To be sure, there is nothing less exceptional in Europe than exceptionalism. 156 00:18:19,250 --> 00:18:26,780 And the EU is the machinery designed to turn exceptions into rules and exceptional countries and to rule. 157 00:18:26,780 --> 00:18:37,280 By now, Britain's exceptionalism lies both with taking the EU too literally and its rules in its rule abiding. 158 00:18:37,280 --> 00:18:47,250 This and its insistence of special treatment in or out of the EU, as the French like to say in above language about any business. 159 00:18:49,190 --> 00:18:55,580 But then again, which country in the EU does not have a so-called transactional view? 160 00:18:56,150 --> 00:19:01,730 You were saying that or Catherine was saying that's not what's in it for me. 161 00:19:02,360 --> 00:19:07,730 The British only exceptional in their belief that leaving the table altogether will strengthen their hand. 162 00:19:10,340 --> 00:19:17,270 So this exodus means exodus by the guardians of the faith on the continent cannot 163 00:19:17,270 --> 00:19:22,670 obscure the fundamentals that Brexit means inventing a new category of country, 164 00:19:23,330 --> 00:19:27,530 namely former member, say former EU member states. 165 00:19:28,280 --> 00:19:33,350 The people who painted here resided in Egypt for many centuries before they left, 166 00:19:34,010 --> 00:19:38,780 which meant which really made them indispensable to the Pharaoh and the family. 167 00:19:39,290 --> 00:19:43,249 Now we can treat the Brits as if they had never been part of us. 168 00:19:43,250 --> 00:19:47,390 Can we never run our markets, build our cities, build our coffers? 169 00:19:48,080 --> 00:19:52,680 They deserve better than those who have never been our equals around the table, 170 00:19:52,680 --> 00:19:58,370 who do not know our strategies are and are a dirty little secret in the EU Council. 171 00:19:59,450 --> 00:20:08,600 The the other fundamental as the Putin Trump axis laid bare, the old commonality is about the idea of old Europe, 172 00:20:08,900 --> 00:20:16,550 which is not the EU and somehow, even for a harsh Brexit years, remained part of the promised land. 173 00:20:16,730 --> 00:20:22,760 How do we handle this? So in the end, it could be you or you. 174 00:20:22,760 --> 00:20:25,580 Any of us perhaps? Sure. 175 00:20:25,730 --> 00:20:37,070 Are the Brits exceptional who feel left behind by economic growth, left out of politics and left frustrated by that societal change. 176 00:20:38,850 --> 00:20:44,770 Well, this is a question. Which leads us. 177 00:20:45,840 --> 00:20:50,820 To our second story. Brexit is not just about Britain, of course. 178 00:20:52,650 --> 00:21:00,810 As we should start days from the little island colony retreating within its shores to the continent as a whole. 179 00:21:02,730 --> 00:21:09,690 Itself, the this multiple major landmass we find land submerged by our seismic wave after another, 180 00:21:09,930 --> 00:21:15,540 each coming on stronger before we've had time to absorb the aftershocks of the preceding 181 00:21:16,530 --> 00:21:23,310 chaos is upon us and the shockwave threatens to engulf the very foundation of our world, 182 00:21:23,340 --> 00:21:29,430 Order says. Just as meaning drifts towards stories. 183 00:21:29,430 --> 00:21:35,730 A reckoning we read Brexit as a revealer of terribly uncomfortable truths. 184 00:21:36,870 --> 00:21:41,160 Brings us no longer just means a fact of the matter that Britain will lead. 185 00:21:41,670 --> 00:21:46,290 But an injunction Brexit means that everyone should meet. 186 00:21:47,220 --> 00:21:50,280 It is about the fate that is awaiting the ever smaller union. 187 00:21:50,670 --> 00:21:54,240 The Brits have only served to make it visible. 188 00:21:55,870 --> 00:22:04,210 So Brexit may be a bombshell in the European landscape, but the landscape was already devastated by the policies and mindset that betrayed its people. 189 00:22:04,510 --> 00:22:09,420 Did now is the only reason for European leaders to hang on to the first exception 190 00:22:09,430 --> 00:22:15,850 with soaring sense of reckoning stories and important stories of reckoning. 191 00:22:16,810 --> 00:22:28,030 Tell us that this is not a tsunami coming from nowhere or from Wall Street or from Palmira, but one of our own making chastisement for past deeds. 192 00:22:28,570 --> 00:22:33,100 It tells us that the EU is being punished less for what it has done. 193 00:22:35,190 --> 00:22:42,090 Then what it has failed to do. Deal with unfair competition, uncontrolled migration, unfettered enrichment. 194 00:22:43,590 --> 00:22:51,930 So with Brexit, the spectre of European disintegration has become real and institutionalised in procedures. 195 00:22:51,930 --> 00:22:56,730 Article number and summit agenda that citizens didn't used to know at all. 196 00:22:58,590 --> 00:23:10,380 Euroscepticism is now not only power in some of the UK but able to command the very boundaries of Europe, a clear marker of our collective identity. 197 00:23:10,830 --> 00:23:16,110 If there is such a thing as collective identity and it has transformed every domestic 198 00:23:16,110 --> 00:23:21,480 theatre from Marina's two years into a local battle somehow for the survival of Europe. 199 00:23:22,230 --> 00:23:27,660 So in short, Brexit a strengthening represents the challenge of Eurosceptic view of the world, 200 00:23:27,900 --> 00:23:31,320 which has captured the public imagination across Member States. 201 00:23:31,650 --> 00:23:39,180 The boldest expression of the new politics of anger, popular insurrection, tribal eruptions. 202 00:23:39,750 --> 00:23:43,830 It will not do to dismiss the prophecy as a self-fulfilling. 203 00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:55,800 The euro sphere will ignore it at its peril. But of course, just like Exodus, so is a reckoning does come in different shapes and forms. 204 00:23:56,100 --> 00:24:04,970 What there is, should we hear? For one, the for one, the uncomfortable truth that must be faced. 205 00:24:05,420 --> 00:24:15,170 This is very intrusive affair. Who is to say Oedipus pictured here was always going to steal his dad's politics and marry his mom, Jocasta. 206 00:24:15,860 --> 00:24:22,430 But for what reason? Who failed to heal the prophecy? The parents who wavered at his birth. 207 00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:26,810 The shepherd waver that the river he himself to build read the signs. 208 00:24:27,620 --> 00:24:34,549 So it doesn't tell at the paradigmatic seeker and avoider of truth Oedipus both very 209 00:24:34,550 --> 00:24:41,480 deliberately so this things riddle and very accidentally fulfils the prophecy. 210 00:24:43,490 --> 00:24:49,890 What have I don't ever begin by acknowledging that the truth is blindingly obvious. 211 00:24:50,430 --> 00:24:59,340 Upon realising what he had brought about his own eyes, which could not see him, will be led by his daughter. 212 00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:12,090 To second use is always the Redeemer. So we have our differences for whom the bell tolls in these stories of reckoning. 213 00:25:13,890 --> 00:25:16,320 Some believe in indiscriminate judgement. 214 00:25:18,510 --> 00:25:28,800 And others said it's only the sorting out the worries from the sitters as Bush painted so vividly many centuries ago. 215 00:25:29,100 --> 00:25:39,509 So in this story of popular wrath, there's little doubt that elites must be punished for the double sin of gluttony and contempt as 216 00:25:39,510 --> 00:25:45,110 the happiness you reveal in their favourite game of chess and capitalism playing Russian roulette. 217 00:25:45,120 --> 00:25:54,900 Will the welfare and dignity of millions yet reckoning in the real world can be impervious to the impartial eye in the sky? 218 00:25:55,740 --> 00:26:04,290 Perhaps. And as always, the most vulnerable will pay the poorer in the South, the east, the still left behind. 219 00:26:04,860 --> 00:26:10,650 After all, who among the powerful does not believe that they are the ones who belong on Noah's Ark? 220 00:26:12,930 --> 00:26:19,670 Now, depending on your art and theological bent, the story that we are taught. 221 00:26:19,740 --> 00:26:24,780 The story of reckoning is about different kinds of end the end of our world, 222 00:26:24,780 --> 00:26:29,940 the end of the end of history, or about an interregnum between one world and another. 223 00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:37,990 And in the far reaching of the earth, one hears the echoes of post-imperial sharp shards. 224 00:26:38,010 --> 00:26:46,890 Learning loud and clear in the sound of the corporation are rejected by the very nation which invented them. 225 00:26:47,790 --> 00:26:50,850 What's their claim to fame anymore is ignorance. 226 00:26:51,870 --> 00:26:55,740 And others believe, of course, that the last judgement will never happen. 227 00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:09,200 That this means that the EU now lives in its shadow in a state of permanent ontological insecurity, 228 00:27:12,890 --> 00:27:17,090 a reckoning forever postponed and or ever possible. 229 00:27:20,550 --> 00:27:27,270 So where does the reduction lie then? Embrace it is not the bluntest expression of the Eurosceptic verdict. 230 00:27:28,470 --> 00:27:36,330 There are, of course, many types of scepticism with different takes on what kind of chastisement we should expect as Catherine so brilliantly. 231 00:27:36,780 --> 00:27:43,890 So certainly I will continue to discuss tomorrow, so to speak, and I apologise to hugely simplify. 232 00:27:44,700 --> 00:27:51,660 There are those across in Britain and across Europe who vote or demonstrate against Brussels for London, 233 00:27:51,780 --> 00:28:01,080 Budapest or Athens, and for whom the EU says its credo to tell nationalism through agreed constraints across Europe. 234 00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:11,280 Fingers pointed at the other within rotate towards the union, bent on chipping away from the community's most fundamental collective instincts. 235 00:28:11,460 --> 00:28:19,270 The capacity to include. So they are those who demonstrate against Brussels for London. 236 00:28:19,300 --> 00:28:20,530 But then there's the other side. 237 00:28:20,530 --> 00:28:29,259 Those who vote or demonstrate against London, Rome or Paris through their note to Brussels, for whom the true target of people, 238 00:28:29,260 --> 00:28:35,500 Brexit or Brexit or present, is the service of national establishment, the system nurtured by the release. 239 00:28:36,190 --> 00:28:43,270 In short, we can have national sovereignty and popular sovereignty and it would be a mistake or Europhiles. 240 00:28:45,790 --> 00:28:52,390 Aren't we all, both Europhiles and Eurosceptics to dismiss the idea there is Euroscepticism. 241 00:28:53,230 --> 00:29:01,900 We can try to dismiss cries of the USSR. Heard from Warsaw to Budapest as unreconstructed transitional s, sure. 242 00:29:02,890 --> 00:29:10,540 But the powerful move to take back control has long been heard in the streets of Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Athens. 243 00:29:11,110 --> 00:29:13,540 Through past EU referendum campaigns and the like. 244 00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:22,530 So question can we learn anew to disentangle the yearning for self-determination from nationalism and xenophobia, 245 00:29:22,540 --> 00:29:32,739 mindful of the mistakes of our forefathers? Now I think it's even harder to dismiss the second variant of Euroscepticism in the EU, 246 00:29:32,740 --> 00:29:37,570 simply the collateral damage of the pathology of national democracy to boot. 247 00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:47,740 Well, yes, when we recall that repatriating powers from Brussels may disempower people like us consumer activists or victims of corporate power. 248 00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:53,830 Sure. But no. If we see the EU as an enabler of elite collusion, 249 00:29:53,830 --> 00:30:01,130 allowing the political class across Europe to strike the Faustian bargain, as Chris Bickerton and others have said, 250 00:30:01,420 --> 00:30:07,540 changing self-government at national level or liberal constitutionalism at EU level, 251 00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:17,650 thus creating Weber's famous iron cage but more still remote opinion cage in a bubble. 252 00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:22,630 So along these lines, 253 00:30:22,870 --> 00:30:32,040 the elites cannot or ever drift in their lifeboat in the belief that the reckoning is simply part of the folk consciousness that has set equally. 254 00:30:35,650 --> 00:30:44,800 Fail to acknowledge that we are here to deliver public goods precisely because these are public and thus cannot be left to the public wins. 255 00:30:45,700 --> 00:30:49,330 But what if the people stubbornly remain a multitude? 256 00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:58,360 Now. Just as in the myth of air, which concludes the republic, 257 00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:04,240 Plato tells us that we might or might not learn from our past lives when choosing future ones. 258 00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:13,360 But that's really not an easy thing. Even the gods can be tricked by the pious men, both men of the people, 259 00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:21,069 I quote departed a man who was not truly righteous, but he able to hide it and then pour it in. 260 00:31:21,070 --> 00:31:23,920 The next life was destined to keep his own children. 261 00:31:24,850 --> 00:31:34,509 So in this tale, the Republic, the myth of Air and the Republic of Equal Opportunity, the afterlife, only love, wisdom, 262 00:31:34,510 --> 00:31:40,540 justice, courage and moderation, not the pretence of these virtues can break the cycle, reward and punishment. 263 00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:49,150 So the question is, can the EU become wise and walk through the citadel of necessity pictured here? 264 00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:54,020 If reckoning means really knowing, we are in a world of a second chance. 265 00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:58,949 Let us not trivialise this opportunity through all these last chance summits. 266 00:31:58,950 --> 00:32:08,740 That's just reform plan, on the contrary. And if this fate is meant to remind us that truth seeking comes through initiations. 267 00:32:10,030 --> 00:32:18,340 So I suppose that it might help to start by distinguishing between existential and transformative scepticism. 268 00:32:18,790 --> 00:32:24,460 Scepticism about the use of death and scepticism about what it does. 269 00:32:24,970 --> 00:32:30,010 And I think a lot of our conversation earlier was about seeking this distinction. 270 00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:35,050 And I think we do. So the EU might become slowly. 271 00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:45,440 The Guardian over the long term model could be saved for future generations if it was able to do so. 272 00:32:52,130 --> 00:32:59,450 But perhaps the Brexit story is more immediate, though that long term is not in the long term world said. 273 00:33:02,300 --> 00:33:10,220 What if we told it not as therefore something that will or should happen tomorrow or in a decade, 274 00:33:11,810 --> 00:33:15,110 but rather as an event that in itself changes the world. 275 00:33:15,530 --> 00:33:19,070 A story of sacrifice on the altar of the greater good. 276 00:33:20,300 --> 00:33:24,830 Britain's say Britain here takes the form. As you can see, a vacuum. 277 00:33:24,830 --> 00:33:35,180 Edmund's daughter, Iduna the Stormborn, offered to the gods for the winds to rise and the Greeks to set off to conquer Troy. 278 00:33:37,820 --> 00:33:41,270 Brexit means that you leave the EU in order to save it. 279 00:33:43,700 --> 00:33:53,330 There is a simple, dare I say, the macho version of the story which we can call heroic sacrifice. 280 00:33:54,770 --> 00:34:01,380 He implored some of the French journalists and people I talked to during the campaign leave. 281 00:34:04,270 --> 00:34:10,030 Leave. So they because if you stay, you will forever bury your federalist dream. 282 00:34:11,110 --> 00:34:20,349 While leaving will create a sanitary crisis of the kind that will lead our heroic leaders to act against the moral risk of crumbling into nothingness. 283 00:34:20,350 --> 00:34:29,560 And I quote Some will recognise that the art of federalism, Basim, and in fact this is worse. 284 00:34:29,740 --> 00:34:32,020 Brexiteers seem to agree. 285 00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:41,410 Did we not often hear during the campaign Boris Johnson reassure all his continental press not to worry as Brexit will be good for you. 286 00:34:41,740 --> 00:34:45,280 With us out of the way. You can at last integrate all you want. 287 00:34:47,100 --> 00:34:51,420 Strangely, both sides have brought up Britain's history of truly. 288 00:34:52,270 --> 00:34:57,940 Heroic sacrifice on the battlefields of Europe to herald the virtues of Brexit, 289 00:34:58,900 --> 00:35:05,050 the Somme, the Battle of the Somme as the buried evidence of the virtues of absence. 290 00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:16,600 Are you kidding me? Unless, of course, we understand the sacrifice narrative in a way which preserves is genuinely ambiguous nature, 291 00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:25,660 a sacrifice which we can more all more easily live with, literally as an ironic sacrifice. 292 00:35:27,070 --> 00:35:35,770 Always look on the bright side of life. Or, as Boris would say, we are going to make a titanic success of it. 293 00:35:37,060 --> 00:35:50,040 We did. So, yes, there is a tragic irony in invoking the great sacrifices of two world wars to celebrate Britain's retreats, 294 00:35:50,380 --> 00:35:59,080 to get to the cliffs of Dover as an echo of its historic landing on the shores of Normandy in Europe. 295 00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:04,840 Better off when the British say in what is it that their mission never accomplished? 296 00:36:06,550 --> 00:36:11,380 No theories of atonement offer us a multitude of ironic fairness. 297 00:36:11,950 --> 00:36:23,110 Brexiteers know full well that the sacrifices have no way to come back and how exactly the executioners as Agamemnon impinging that content, 298 00:36:26,740 --> 00:36:33,430 and then the victims of mythical sacrifice more often than not say alive and well. 299 00:36:36,190 --> 00:36:47,440 Eyebrows. I like it. Jenna is replaced by a girl, literally by a listing of good friends that roam the world with her brother arrest. 300 00:36:47,650 --> 00:36:55,390 Here we find we continue to come to realise that unabashedly embrace the Donald on behalf of British citizens. 301 00:36:56,110 --> 00:37:05,590 Not that she is, in fact alive and well from people who have made the art of civilised skewing a national badge of honour. 302 00:37:05,710 --> 00:37:09,890 It's most disconcerting to be so publicly offered to jump that trait. 303 00:37:09,900 --> 00:37:16,240 Cute. Ultimately, it's sacrifice, not always in vain. 304 00:37:17,050 --> 00:37:23,680 Yes, the wind did rise to carry Agamemnon to Troy after ingenious kind of sacrifice. 305 00:37:24,220 --> 00:37:27,960 But there are precious few triumphs. And welcome home in the Odyssey. 306 00:37:28,900 --> 00:37:32,260 Europe. What has Brexit sacrifice done for you? 307 00:37:33,910 --> 00:37:40,420 There is, in fact, an ironic answer to this question, which does not require pronouncing on any resurrection. 308 00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:45,830 Brexit means that you can leave the EU and therefore you should. 309 00:37:45,850 --> 00:37:50,680 It's the version of the sacrifice story. 310 00:37:50,860 --> 00:37:55,360 Such is the idea that the very essence of a union is defined by the way you may leave it. 311 00:37:55,810 --> 00:38:04,440 And this is the intuition that I think led to the drafting of Article 15, 2002 in the European Convention, to mention that I was there. 312 00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:13,089 And indeed, I remember how the Euro Federalists vehemently opposed this exit laws as a sovereign exploited for in their minds, 313 00:38:13,090 --> 00:38:19,600 proper states generally do not have prenups and introducing an exit clause in Europe and the 314 00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:25,060 treaties meant that the EU would not have crossed the Rubicon and become a proper state. 315 00:38:25,720 --> 00:38:32,140 And as the US in 1865, when secession was redefined as civil war. 316 00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:39,070 So I personally belong to another camp of Europeans who passionately defended the very idea of Brexit. 317 00:38:39,490 --> 00:38:44,050 Oh, sorry, Alexis, as the key to articulating a third way for Europe. 318 00:38:44,650 --> 00:38:47,470 That's not a federal state, but a federal union. 319 00:38:48,010 --> 00:38:54,610 Yes, a democracy in the making and using our people to govern together, but not as one and stay together by choice. 320 00:38:54,880 --> 00:39:03,610 Now, obviously, something that should, in theory, may have a way of doing its own thing and you may not support in practice. 321 00:39:04,810 --> 00:39:14,920 So if Brexit demonstrates that this is a union that you can leave, it, is this very freedom to leave that that ought to entice you to stay? 322 00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:18,400 This is the biggest contradiction in the public rhetoric. 323 00:39:18,430 --> 00:39:25,990 If the EU is a terrible supranational leviathan living Britain's sovereign ways, how can it be so easy to detach ourselves from it? 324 00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:29,770 Single vote. Welcome to the Brexit paradox. 325 00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:37,510 So ready to sacrifice us now for the world, the Brexit paradox and the ironic terms of the current saga. 326 00:39:38,760 --> 00:39:46,140 All these ironies and we could list many. Taking back control is, of course, the ultimate goal of all human sacrifices. 327 00:39:46,470 --> 00:39:49,620 Taking back control of the wind, the rain and thunder. 328 00:39:50,130 --> 00:39:57,960 Agamemnon shall sail. But what control is to be had when we all face tragic choices? 329 00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:03,809 Isn't there some irony in a clean Brexit predicated on a Great Repeal Act which will 330 00:40:03,810 --> 00:40:08,820 retain everything as it is the EU rules on the book and the EU citizens in their homes? 331 00:40:09,540 --> 00:40:12,660 For everything changes, everything must remain the same. 332 00:40:13,410 --> 00:40:18,030 Isn't there some irony in asking Westminster and Whitehall, 333 00:40:18,150 --> 00:40:23,969 the two most pro-European bodies in this country, to sanction and conduct the deed themselves? 334 00:40:23,970 --> 00:40:33,030 And we have a great representative here all along having to explain to the three Brexiteers at the top what it all entail. 335 00:40:33,180 --> 00:40:42,900 Now here is the old British aristocratic oath of obedience at its best, the sacrifice of their own views to the will of the people. 336 00:40:44,130 --> 00:40:50,640 It is hard for their friends on the continent not fully to admire a whole political class and civil service, 337 00:40:50,910 --> 00:40:54,960 mobilising with such ingenuity to produce an outcome that deplorable. 338 00:40:56,430 --> 00:41:02,129 And it's hard to deny, of course, the sense of humour of the British people who instructed Westminster and Whitehall 339 00:41:02,130 --> 00:41:07,650 to restore their authority on UK matters while branding judges their enemies for. 340 00:41:08,240 --> 00:41:12,000 Exactly that. And ironies abound. 341 00:41:12,510 --> 00:41:15,870 We need to allow for the thought that the British prime minister, 342 00:41:15,870 --> 00:41:24,330 when she warns of her readiness to put on her jogging shoes in a race to the bottom, she knows she's all taxes and standards. 343 00:41:24,750 --> 00:41:30,059 She must see the irony in presenting self regulation as a threat on the part of a country 344 00:41:30,060 --> 00:41:35,040 so proud to have often the highest standards of civilisation to the rest of the world. 345 00:41:35,070 --> 00:41:38,350 There are many quotes here, you understand now. 346 00:41:38,370 --> 00:41:39,270 On the other hand, 347 00:41:39,690 --> 00:41:49,020 it would be ironic for her partners to insist on denying tourism the smoke and mirrors which will make the sacrifice bearable for all involved. 348 00:41:49,290 --> 00:41:52,410 There's always smoke and mirrors in paintings of sacrifice. 349 00:41:54,390 --> 00:42:05,970 So the irony of this British sacrifice, then, is that in order to sustain it needs to avail itself of all that is good about British exceptionalism, 350 00:42:06,510 --> 00:42:10,710 that precisely which reminds us why should not happen in the first place. 351 00:42:11,490 --> 00:42:14,940 You know, it's like the Enlightenment turned in Christian theology, 352 00:42:14,940 --> 00:42:22,050 which privileged the idea of sacrifice for the sake of greater moral influence or moral government. 353 00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:31,479 Grotius and say the UK could aspire to demonstrate his worthiness in the manner in which withdrawal it could. 354 00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:36,780 We might expose European of those bits of British exceptionalism which make good 355 00:42:36,780 --> 00:42:43,560 on such moral influence having to do with the right of the ruled to limit power, 356 00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:49,800 sovereign adherence to legal commitment, the ethos of Her Majesty, the loyal opposition, 357 00:42:50,790 --> 00:42:56,850 or a history of restraint from arbitrary interference with people's lives otherwise known as the rule of law. 358 00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:08,730 So after four decades of co-creation of the new legal and political order that is the EU and would not have to be stopped without the UK, 359 00:43:09,660 --> 00:43:14,840 this moral influence might still be a goal for the British negotiators. 360 00:43:15,450 --> 00:43:20,760 All we need is for the two sides to picture themselves on the same sides of the commons. 361 00:43:21,970 --> 00:43:25,000 That's very hard when you watch the wonderful debate. 362 00:43:25,600 --> 00:43:29,530 I'm on the same side of the commons, facing a common problem called Brexit. 363 00:43:30,460 --> 00:43:34,720 All British negotiator, all European negotiators are on the same side of the table. 364 00:43:35,260 --> 00:43:39,490 Are the Brits up to this competition challenge? Are the Europeans? 365 00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:55,140 So. The age old practice of doing something terrible for the sake of higher purpose is supposed to be the moral, the mark of our superior species. 366 00:43:56,580 --> 00:44:06,660 But in his great wisdom reminded us, argued that God's decision to allow sacrifices was a concession to the psychological limitations of humans. 367 00:44:07,290 --> 00:44:17,220 Do we need ghosts? If we believer in this brilliant demonstration that this is what Jesus revealed, 368 00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:26,220 that somehow the scapegoat mechanism could be made visible and explicit the self sacrifice. 369 00:44:26,580 --> 00:44:32,490 So the self reflective sacrifice serves as a sacrifice to end all sacrifices. 370 00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:36,930 So can breakfast live up to the category of self-reflective sacrifice? 371 00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:45,549 As we realise the future of this blame game. Perhaps European citizens as well as their leaders, 372 00:44:45,550 --> 00:44:52,300 can mobilise the narrative of exodus and reckoning as primary material and a sort of sacrifice made good. 373 00:44:53,670 --> 00:44:59,340 And then doing that by honing a very British fashion pluralism, 374 00:45:00,270 --> 00:45:08,490 but a radical agonistic pluralism mediated by democratic contestation as much as technocratic rationality. 375 00:45:09,450 --> 00:45:14,160 It really means that the freedom to me defines the very essence of the EU. 376 00:45:14,550 --> 00:45:24,440 Then the irony would be to say the sacrificial victim and make it less palatable all at the same time call this interruptus. 377 00:45:25,690 --> 00:45:34,980 So Athens interruptus is about redefining all of the various parts you exit that are creative, legal and political mind. 378 00:45:35,460 --> 00:45:41,280 And the minds we've had this afternoon speaking in our seminar can offer and opening 379 00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:45,450 spaces for pluralist of all countries to fight over what this exactly mean. 380 00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:48,630 And we can come back to this in the Q&A. 381 00:45:49,300 --> 00:45:55,040 For above all, we could start by celebrating the dramatic increase in political engagement that Brexit represents. 382 00:45:55,080 --> 00:46:00,450 As we discuss this earlier, instead of castigating referenda. 383 00:46:00,870 --> 00:46:03,930 But of course, let's create the conditions for this to work. 384 00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,590 We may even dare to embrace for the sake of our digital native children. 385 00:46:10,650 --> 00:46:21,270 End in markets cold or chaotic liberalism under sexy labels such as networking bags, distributed intelligence, high interconnectivity. 386 00:46:21,840 --> 00:46:27,330 There is democracy there, but perhaps not love. Let's not ask too much when we are in the EU. 387 00:46:28,740 --> 00:46:33,149 We can be more traditionally institutional talk about public cloud and all 388 00:46:33,150 --> 00:46:38,700 the conversation we have about differentiated integration and flexible union. 389 00:46:41,100 --> 00:46:46,680 As well as the idea that somehow the EU could allow more derogation from its ethics, 390 00:46:47,310 --> 00:46:52,550 more move away from one size fits all in the name of the public interest, 391 00:46:52,570 --> 00:47:02,190 of course, precisely to compensate for how seriously certain national traditions take the law in the first place, this country included. 392 00:47:02,220 --> 00:47:08,670 So the irony then here is that the UK is leaving the EU at a time when many of its leaders 393 00:47:08,670 --> 00:47:15,540 are starting to appreciate the need for a much more subtle interpretation of European law, 394 00:47:15,540 --> 00:47:23,350 including on free movement. And the need for thinking about what a legitimate opposition is. 395 00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:32,620 Now, as for the rest of the world, the EU is unlikely to embrace of a philosophy of more radical pluralism would be good news, 396 00:47:32,980 --> 00:47:36,820 leaving it to abandon once and for all talks of Europe as a model. 397 00:47:36,850 --> 00:47:44,049 The obsession with speaking with one voice and the resort to othering and euro nationalism to make up for air insecurity, 398 00:47:44,050 --> 00:47:52,410 albeit we didn't hear any call you from for other in the U.S. that the US can handle it the pursuit of others in the world. 399 00:47:52,420 --> 00:47:59,709 Now, if we do so, I think the rest of the world is more likely to receive the British sacrifice not as a sign of decline, 400 00:47:59,710 --> 00:48:09,260 but as a sign of Europe's welcome maturity and continuous relevance as a fascinating pluralist transnational governance expert. 401 00:48:10,510 --> 00:48:27,430 So. To include. I have invited you and I apologise for for a rather long journey through the Mexican ecology in the hope that 402 00:48:27,790 --> 00:48:35,710 ultimately we can reinvent ways of conducting our democratic conversation by invoking our political myth. 403 00:48:35,740 --> 00:48:44,470 I could easily be accused of ignoring 2000 years of political philosophy, which develop precisely as an empty myth from Plato to poker. 404 00:48:45,780 --> 00:48:48,140 But it was in the currency of politics. 405 00:48:48,150 --> 00:49:00,000 Men are the currency of our political imagination and resources for collecting diverse, democratic praxis by appealing to our fundamental intuitions. 406 00:49:00,870 --> 00:49:06,870 They can counter or at least supplement the hyper masculine idea of democracy, of deliberative rationality. 407 00:49:07,110 --> 00:49:16,769 Not because we cannot be rational, but because to be so together, we need common languages across lingua disciplines, 408 00:49:16,770 --> 00:49:27,929 ideology or national cultures, languages in which we can more we can disagree more with greater civility at the same time. 409 00:49:27,930 --> 00:49:38,790 And perhaps, paradoxically speaking through the prism of middle may help us recover the period of modernity by supporting a critical distance, 410 00:49:38,820 --> 00:49:47,969 smiles and question marks around our collective self-righteousness, which so often pervades debates or in atomistic politics, 411 00:49:47,970 --> 00:49:57,680 reminds us that conflict must be handled rather than denied that values can remain incommensurable and thus amenable to liberal compromises, 412 00:49:58,170 --> 00:50:04,860 then may appear as better templates for the conversation than technocratic blueprints. 413 00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:10,770 By merging with tragic choices, lip service and the desperate ironies, 414 00:50:10,770 --> 00:50:17,940 entangling human beings may contain their own epistemic limits, at least in our contemporary eyes. 415 00:50:18,300 --> 00:50:24,570 And they remind us that ambivalence is our birthright, not just as individual, but also as collectors. 416 00:50:25,710 --> 00:50:28,950 Like like with an Escher drawing. 417 00:50:28,950 --> 00:50:32,850 Because simultaneously see the meaning of Brexit through many prisms. 418 00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:37,580 There are many more you can come up come up with than I have. 419 00:50:38,460 --> 00:50:44,880 And yet none of the three stories I have told offers us valuable thoughts or views 420 00:50:46,110 --> 00:50:50,760 that we can harm to nature in order to claim that we were betrayed or vindicated. 421 00:50:51,150 --> 00:50:55,710 We must accept the incompleteness of our narratives and open them up to each other. 422 00:50:56,070 --> 00:51:01,550 Now you ask me. On my part. I didn't push you on your part. 423 00:51:01,640 --> 00:51:07,290 On my part. I do admit to being partial to some variants more than others. 424 00:51:08,190 --> 00:51:17,280 I do dream of the adoption of a do no harm principle to the way Britain and the EU deal with each other in the coming years. 425 00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:19,980 As you may have noticed, 426 00:51:20,130 --> 00:51:30,150 I do have friends travelling so this light in the hope that the bright side of British exceptionalism will continue to live in our European space. 427 00:51:30,660 --> 00:51:34,200 I do not believe that this moment is our last judgement, 428 00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:41,730 but I believe that the EU will be saved because embracing this transformative potential offered by its detractors, 429 00:51:42,580 --> 00:51:51,330 enough people on both sides of the channel possess the meanings of greatness with gracious humility and self-deprecation. 430 00:51:51,840 --> 00:51:57,720 The sacrifice, perhaps, would not have been in vain, in vain, or perhaps not even for ever. 431 00:51:58,410 --> 00:52:02,780 There are critical sounds in India. 432 00:52:02,790 --> 00:52:10,890 Then we hear the ultimate message of our tragic stories that we must choose hope against optimism. 433 00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:20,790 We may have some solace from another mythical figure, Penelope, who, as you know, ennui that night. 434 00:52:20,790 --> 00:52:25,830 Her days they are to hate her suitors while awaiting Ulysses. 435 00:52:26,970 --> 00:52:38,400 In our 21st century now version of the story, we can count on our heroic Brexiteers to frantically on weave the ties that bind. 436 00:52:38,730 --> 00:52:44,550 In broad daylight, as we see them do this on TV and on the radio every day. 437 00:52:44,610 --> 00:52:57,480 But perhaps, just perhaps, the spirit of pan-European mutual recognition will linger forcefully enough here, there and everywhere, 438 00:52:58,050 --> 00:53:07,020 so that in the dark, when they're not looking, we will continue to weave and release the fabric of our shared future. 439 00:53:31,720 --> 00:53:45,310 Well, thank you so much for this very remarkable lecture to be part of the kind of literary and psychological exploration embark on your. 440 00:53:46,100 --> 00:53:50,150 I thought we might. We are Brexit. 441 00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:57,740 We could have been worse, Leonardo. Anyway, you can take us back to the original. 442 00:54:00,990 --> 00:54:17,320 Even though I must never be the same Boris Johnson as David Cameron Abrahams at the heart of and Michael Gove it at this point, not to mention. 443 00:54:20,450 --> 00:54:23,670 There is a father in his record practice. 444 00:54:24,410 --> 00:54:28,879 So that was fascinating for a number of reasons, partly because of its contents, 445 00:54:28,880 --> 00:54:36,490 partly because I've never so appallingly followed the broader sense of things, so hopelessly inadequate as a discussants. 446 00:54:37,010 --> 00:54:43,110 It's all going to be far away from getting either a serious intellectual or a philosopher to do this. 447 00:54:43,130 --> 00:54:47,360 There are many people who don't think I'm the first, and even my mother once accused me of being the second. 448 00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:51,979 So you're going to have to get used to something a bit more prosaic. 449 00:54:51,980 --> 00:55:00,700 So we move on from the from the narrative of michaelides to the monosyllabic monotone of the manner that comes across to do with Daniel Hannah. 450 00:55:00,740 --> 00:55:03,760 You literary, literally a knee jerk thing. 451 00:55:04,340 --> 00:55:11,510 I'm going to keep this very brief and just say three things by means of by way of challenging some of the things that Calypso said. 452 00:55:13,580 --> 00:55:16,580 The first is I just think we know, yes. 453 00:55:16,850 --> 00:55:21,679 Enough to come out with that kind of analysis of the nature of a narrative. 454 00:55:21,680 --> 00:55:30,020 It seems to me it takes a long time to crystallise and actually depends fundamentally on who gets to write that narrative. 455 00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:34,490 Now, if we believe the history is written by the winners, 456 00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:42,259 then it seems to me that actually the narrative of Brexit is being written by Theresa may, being written very, very quickly and very, 457 00:55:42,260 --> 00:55:47,600 very softly by Theresa may and the speed with which she's using all the options in this country, 458 00:55:48,290 --> 00:55:54,420 regardless of how you interpret the outcome of the referendum, has been in equal measure, frightening precedent. 459 00:55:55,220 --> 00:55:59,090 So the danger is we will end up with a far more prosaic narrative written by those in 460 00:55:59,090 --> 00:56:04,820 power that will actually reflect the reality of Brexit and its impacts on this country. 461 00:56:06,710 --> 00:56:09,560 The second challenge, I suppose, is I wonder whether. 462 00:56:11,400 --> 00:56:19,100 A philosophical approach is going to grasp the visceral nature of what is going on in this country and elsewhere. 463 00:56:19,310 --> 00:56:28,250 And that's not just the usual criticism you hear of academics rationalising the irrational, which is extreme, but also slightly patronising. 464 00:56:29,510 --> 00:56:35,600 But it's also, I think, the broader points of the danger of us looking across fundamentally different sorts of reality. 465 00:56:35,630 --> 00:56:39,710 Dominic Cummings So another question because of course again roots, 466 00:56:40,100 --> 00:56:48,110 a rather long lasting road along us on the same blog a couple of weeks ago in which you made the interesting claim that actually it's the liberal, 467 00:56:48,230 --> 00:56:51,080 you know, the liberal elite moan about fake news, 468 00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:57,920 but it is the liberal elites are more likely to get reality wrong than anyone else because they are more prone to intellectual abuses. 469 00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:05,420 And is that intellectual criticism that puts them out of touch when they go and talk about their versions of reality? 470 00:57:05,420 --> 00:57:10,970 And actually, you came across this in the aftermath of the referendum in some very, very stark ways. 471 00:57:11,330 --> 00:57:16,670 You came across it with the with the result where a BBC reporter saw him recently 472 00:57:16,670 --> 00:57:20,630 in Hartlepool as they went out desperately trying to discover the real Britain. 473 00:57:20,740 --> 00:57:28,610 The first time we discovered it in a pub in Newcastle where we were talking about economics and what it might mean for the economy, 474 00:57:28,610 --> 00:57:37,520 and this was said that that's not unless there are different realities at work in this country, and I wonder about the dangers of imposing ours. 475 00:57:39,530 --> 00:57:44,240 And the third thing, and I'm only going to say three things so you won't get a chance to say what you want to say is, 476 00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:51,350 I increasingly feel that this referendum and certainly what followed it has got relatively little to do about the UK and the EU, 477 00:57:51,350 --> 00:57:55,100 but is mostly to do with the UK itself. 478 00:57:55,460 --> 00:57:59,140 And it is certainly, as I said, partly about divisions in our societies. 479 00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:06,860 What was interesting in the referendum campaign is when you went to leave rallies and they talked about they think just means Jean-Claude Juncker, 480 00:58:07,220 --> 00:58:13,250 they they Jean-Claude Juncker, plus the man who sat on his yacht, plus with his bank account plus employees with their expenses. 481 00:58:13,490 --> 00:58:20,000 The the other was domestic. And actually more domestic than EU. 482 00:58:20,000 --> 00:58:24,950 I think by the end of the campaign and certainly in the political debates, the to succeed of the campaign. 483 00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:31,400 This is a British versus Brits story now and the EU is in fact a bit part player in it. 484 00:58:31,820 --> 00:58:37,690 And crucial to the dilemma is what is becoming increasingly clear to be a rather dysfunctional political system. 485 00:58:37,730 --> 00:58:42,320 But the heart of it also I'm going to do calypso, the ultimate disrespect to usual reasons now, 486 00:58:42,650 --> 00:58:49,490 because I think we have a tale of excellent reckoning and sacrifice here at home that has nothing to do with our relationship with the EU. 487 00:58:49,850 --> 00:58:52,370 But the exodus has been happening for a long, long time. 488 00:58:52,370 --> 00:58:58,790 The exodus has been the growing disenfranchisement and alienation of large chunks of the population of this country. 489 00:58:59,300 --> 00:59:07,520 The people who are increasingly in the battle between Notting Hill and listening to liberal policies like represented liberal middle class values. 490 00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:11,030 Both political parties have nothing to do with that. 491 00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:15,950 And you see this in the decline over time of voting turnouts. 492 00:59:15,950 --> 00:59:19,190 And of course, the reckoning occurs until 2013. 493 00:59:19,830 --> 00:59:23,060 Well, let me take Holly Cool again and the examples I used to do. 494 00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:27,560 Well, 50% turnout in 2015, 74% of a vote in the referendum. 495 00:59:27,830 --> 00:59:31,370 This is the reckoning. This is the people who had been, in their view, 496 00:59:31,550 --> 00:59:40,070 disenfranchised by a political system that really thought give them a lot of money for signs of were trouble and came out and said, actually get lost. 497 00:59:40,730 --> 00:59:43,790 This is the sort of revolt of the people who was excluded. 498 00:59:44,060 --> 00:59:46,910 That was the reckoning of this referendum. 499 00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:55,819 And there was a reckoning, of course, that opened a whole raft of unpleasantness in our society and divisions in our society that to our discredit, 500 00:59:55,820 --> 00:59:59,570 we probably been unaware of beforehand, but which has been there for a long time. 501 00:59:59,780 --> 01:00:05,720 The referendum didn't create the Britain we live in now with millions and billions of people being aware of it beforehand. 502 01:00:06,140 --> 01:00:10,640 And that, of course, brings us to the final thing, which is the battle of the sacrifice, 503 01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:14,240 which is what is going on now, because ultimately that's what this referendum will be. 504 01:00:14,240 --> 01:00:20,660 The same system that, it seems to me, is ultimately what is at stake. 505 01:00:20,900 --> 01:00:26,630 I mean, I personally believe we end up in Britain out of the European Union with a smaller economy that is a better economy. 506 01:00:26,930 --> 01:00:30,499 That would actually be a very, very good outcome. I find it very hard to believe. 507 01:00:30,500 --> 01:00:36,890 I mean, so I was talking about 61 years ago to believe, Mrs. May believe, 508 01:00:36,950 --> 01:00:42,350 believes or is intending to act on what she says about just about managing as a muslim in our societies. 509 01:00:42,740 --> 01:00:44,300 But the battle is yet to come. 510 01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:52,190 I think it is still too soon to say with any degree of certainty who will be making the sacrifice and who is looking for.