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Hub Of Hope And Glory
Great men throughout history have shared their vision of Britain. There was Shakespeare's sceptred isle, Churchill's promise of "blood, sweat and tears." Even Tony Blair claimed that "The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts, we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth."
So what has the new government, under PM Gordon Brown, got in store for the nation? One might look to this article in the Sunday Times by Foreign Secretary David Miliband for evidence of the New-New Labour "vision of Britain."
Romantics are likely to be disappointed. Rather than some fiery vision of manifest destiny or world-leading mission, Miliband promises to turn Britain into a hub.
A hub.
"A country as much as a company is as strong as its global links. Britain has strong links around the globe and, just as the City has become a global hub for finance, Britain should see itself as a global hub for diplomacy and ideas."
Britain becomes a space in which diplomatic ideas circulate on their way to other zones. A cypher; a history-free Interzone where 2000 years of accumulated wisdom and history are removed at a stroke and replaced with the cold hum of New Labour think tanks laying the ills of the world to rest.
Let's look at another speech by Tony Blair. In his final speech as party leader to the Labour Party conference almost 18 months ago, he listed some of Britain's achievements in the arena of global capital:
"30 million people now come to Britain every year. Visitors, tourists, workers, students. Our economy needs them. 227 million pass through our airports."
The vast majority of these filter through London and the South East, around the transport hub of Heathrow and the financial hub of the City of London. In Heathrow, there is daily chaos as a figure close to the population of a city - and with an ever more multicultural mix - passes through security every day. In the City, fortunes are made for international traders as locals wonder how they're going to make their next mortgage payment or school fee. Despite government bluster about the strength of our economy, it seems to be on shaky foundations: Suggest that certain British businesses might be better owned by Brits, or complain too loudly about Russian oligarchs lording it tax-free over west London with their private armies and you're warned the whole edifice could come tumbling down, as foreign investors and workers flee the country.
Of course, London's success is a remarkable and welcome thing. But if Labour plans to emulate its financial clout in constructing their hub of ideas, the outlook is worrying. Will dissent from Miliband's "ideas" be dismissed in the same way as those who question the underpinning of London's financial hub are shouted down? London as a financial hub needs to appeal to the tastes of the international rich: So, as Britain develops as an "ideas hub", will any ideas that the international diplomatic community find distasteful be dismissed because they risk offending the market for these ideas?
We're simply extending Miliband's metaphor here. What about the provinces? London is rich: The same can't be said of many regions to the north. If Britain is to be a "hub of ideas", will those ideas that don't fit in with Labour's vision be "sent to Coventry", shunted off out of the international limelight to crumble into oblivion?
A hub. What sort of national anthem does a hub have? What sort of history? What sort of government?
Miliband's hopes for Britain's diplomatic status seem as immodest as Blair's boast about the special nature of the British people, particularly since the rest of the world has demonstrated that it is becoming less interested in the liberal tradition that governed Britain for decades. His hopes for the nation - a mere hub - seem modest by comparison. What sort of country has ambitions to become a hub of ideas? Perhaps a city state like Monaco or Singapore, but Britain?
Perhaps the kind of hub Miliband has in mind for British citizens is that of a Panopticon - a late 18th century prison design which had open cells arranged in a wheel around a central guard tower or hub. "The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched," says Wikipedia, "thereby conveying what one architect has called the 'sentiment of an invisible omniscience'."
Certainly, the government's numerous surveillance cameras and data-gathering schemes would suggest this is the case, and laws intended to crush unwelcome opinions add to the troubling sense of a surveillance society.
It is true, too, that a certain strand of thought sees the British, and in the particular the English, as being uniquely wicked both historically and in their contemporary habits. The punishment? The removal of historical identity, the replacement of traditional values with an internationalist "hub" dedicated to the wisdom of Britain's New Labour party. We said Miliband's hub model is both modest and presumptuous: It's also radical, the replacement of the nation state with a borderless, ahistorical entity existing only to facilitate the passage of certain approved ideas and to suppress those deemed unsuitable. This is the final incarnation of Labour's vision for Britain.
EURSOC is surprised no-one else picked up on this: To our mind, this part of Miliband's speech gave a great insight into Britain's future - and also, what is at risk.
NOTE: Despite our horror at the prospect of this new order in British history, we're quite pleased that our introduction of EURSOC's new logo last year was prescient. Cogs, wheels and hubs in motion over London and Paris... welcome to the future.
