“No”! “No”! “No”! He thumped his fists on the table and stared hard at his mother. This was a battle of wills. At the terrible age of two and a half he had suddenly discovered the power of imposing his will. “No”! “No”! “No”!
He thumped his fists again, his resolve gaining momentum. His mother looked at him aghast, not quite sure how to deal with this public show of defiance. It reminded me of a comment by a French waiter. When I asked him why the French had voted “no” in the referendum on the European Constitution, he had replied: “For the sheer pleasure of saying ‘no’!”
Of course this is a rather simplistic analysis but I could see his point. There is something so powerful in the word “no”. Just look at how children use it.
They learn the power of refusal from a young age, refusing to eat, refusing to sleep, refusing to do as they are told. Suddenly the tables are turned and parents forced to bribe, bully and cajole children into doing what’s good for them.
Women have also long understood the power of saying “no”.
Wise old women taught me that when you don’t have the power to make decisions, you have the power to refuse to implement the decisions of others. It’s a sure sign of society gone wrong when even this right is taken away. When women feel they cannot say “no”, when they feel they have no choice but to comply with the wishes of others — for whatever reason — they are essentially being denied the right to express their will. The caveman theorists have told us that women are programmed to stay at home whilst men need to get out there and be active.
Again this is a simplistic argument, and one where biology, and evolution in particular, are often taken out of context to come up with conclusions set in stone. But I like simplistic arguments, I trust them; by stripping away the overly intellectual or theoretical you come down to the bare basics, the underlying building blocks of how we think and feel.
In the case of the European “no” vote, the bare basics are that the voters took this as an opportunity to impose their will on the political elite, the “no” vote was essentially the same as the child stamping his fists on the table and saying “no”. In fact you will hear the word “elite” again and again when people refer to the European project as it is usually called.
There is an enduring image of a group of aristocratic intellectuals getting together and formulating a grand project for a brighter Europe, one that could challenge the economic and political supremacy of the US and any other potential contender to the throne of global influence. It’s a vision of Europe that I wholeheartedly support. Had I been a Dutch or a French citizen, I would have voted yes.
I am deeply saddened by the “no” vote, yet at the same time part of me applauds the process. It is an instance of the weak imposing their will on the strong, they had the power to throw a spanner into the European machine and boy did they do so. I was surprised to find out that these were their first referenda on Europe, never until now had the French or the Dutch been directly consulted on European integration.
Previous treaties — which were much more extensive in their scope than the constitution they were voting on — were ratified by parliamentary vote alone. Part of the message the “no” voters were sending back to the politicians last week is that this is our call, your role is to consult and execute, not to decide and impose.
The tide can change very quickly in politics. It’s something that fascinates me in human nature, the way we can switch sides so easily.
Yesterday’s hero is today’s villain. It is no coincidence that both France and the Netherlands were one of the six founding nations of what is now the EU. They have always been among the strongest supporters for Europe, but that was when Europe was being built in their image. If you scratch a little you find a recurring theme in the “no” camp: A feeling of being threatened. The immediate threat is what they have termed the Anglo-Saxon model, essentially free-market liberalism. It contrasts with their view of a Europe based on social rather than economic values, what they term the social or European model.
But the deeper threat is the potential membership of Turkey. Both in France and in the Netherlands, the sheer idea that Turkey could become a member of the EU triggers some of people’s worst fears. It’s not politically correct and you will notice mainstream politicians arduously avoiding using language that could be construed as racist, but it is there, it is a palpable fact. If you speak to anyone long enough, the fears begin to surface, and the deeper you dig, the more you notice how these fears relate to feeling threatened by Islamic culture and a belief that Islamic values are incompatible with European values.
The French said “non” and the Dutch said “Nee”. The Brits have decided not to even vote on it, pronouncing the constitution dead and buried. I sincerely hope that Phoenix rises from the ashes. My reasoning is simple, a united Europe is better for the Arab world than a fragmented Europe. A unified foreign policy will be more effective than the sum of its parts and is likely to be more Arab friendly than that of the other power brokers of the world.
On the surface of it, the “no” vote is bad news for Europe; it has plunged it into a deep crisis. But a crisis is often a catalyst for change, and when it comes to Europe, it has a history of being catapulted into action by crisis after crisis. I would not so easily write off the European project, sometimes “no” is a better road to “yes”.
