This was how, for the first time in my life, I began to feel European
October 7, 2017 5:07 AM   Subscribe

Before coming to Britain I had always thought that the tabloids were like a misanthropic counterpoint to Monty Python. Like many Europeans, I saw these newspapers as a kind of English folklore, laying it on thick in the way that theatrical British politicians conduct their debates in the House of Commons. Newspapers in the Netherlands would carry on their opinion pages articles by commentators such as Oxford scholar Timothy Garton Ash—giving the impression that such voices represented the mainstream in Britain. Watching QI before coming to the UK, I remember seeing Stephen Fry banter with Jeremy Clarkson and imagining the former was the rule, and the latter the exception. Living in London taught me that it is the other way around. George Orwell is still correct: England is a family with the wrong members in charge.
How I Learned To Loathe England; the Dutch journalist, former British resident and former Anglophile Joris Luyendijk diagnoses a neurosis at the core of English society—an entrenched acceptance of arbitrary inequality as the very definition of fairness, a pathologically adversarial, zero-sum world-view with a contempt for compromise, and a hostility to the idea of trying to see the point of views of foreigners—and how, in light of it, something like Brexit was inevitable.
posted by acb (71 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
My thoughts before reading this: "I'm going to agree with this, and it's going to make me feel shit, isn't it?". Let's see how I feel afterwards.

(Also a quick plea to people who don't actually know Britain: no "this confirms all my stereotypes" comments, please.)
posted by ambrosen at 5:36 AM on October 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well written.
posted by infini at 5:48 AM on October 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


After a couple of paragraphs it just fades away like there's supposed to be one of those wretched "click to read the rest of the article" buttons, but none exists.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:48 AM on October 7, 2017 [13 favorites]


I think basic elements of the diagnosis are right, but the conclusion--that it led him to celebrate the Leave vote--is really rather unfair and superficial.

First, it disregards the human cost. Not every EU citizen settled in Britain can just uproot their lives and go. The terrible economic damage of Brexit is going to harm us all and is not going to benefit the EU.

And secondly, I'm sorry, the argument that expelling Britain will save EU from the influence of nationalist pathologies and cultures of inequality is just not true. We are not the only deeply flawed nation in the Union. We are not the only nation struggling with the madness of nationalism and anti-liberalism. Poland, Italy, Hungary, Spain, France, even Germany--Britain isn't such an outlier that expelling us will make everything simpler and remove the virus of nationalism from the rest of the EU. All it does is reduce our chances--Europe's chances--of working together to get through this mess.
posted by Aravis76 at 5:50 AM on October 7, 2017 [43 favorites]


Aravis76, I found this EU listing of myths and the date of their emergence very enlightening
posted by infini at 5:53 AM on October 7, 2017 [13 favorites]


This neatly sums up the change in me from the fervent Anglophilia of my day-glo decade to my current state of oh-just-go-away-you-tiresome-little-island feeling that often accompanies the sense of desolation that descends on my shoulders like a wet rag rug after spending twenty screaming minutes unsuccessfully kickstarting a 1972 Triumph Daytona. Of course, I'm doomed to be interminably caught up in the uncomfortable flux between hoping Scotland will jump ship and leave the English to a state of well-earned woe and the reality that my greatest joy comes from my continual use and creative misapplication of my mother tongue. I hate the thieving, vicious history of my country of origin's pompously regal savage oppressors and yet the possibility of missing a thread in The Archers fills me with an inexplicable horror.

And still, there's a titillating schadenfreude to Brexit that leaves me feeling dreadfully smug in spite of my very best instincts. It's an imp that requires constant challenge and reflection.
posted by sonascope at 6:01 AM on October 7, 2017 [13 favorites]


Yes, appalling. But the fact is that it's taken less than a decade for the same breed of myths and some new variants to sprout in Hungary and Poland, for example. And it's worth remembering that AfD in Germany started out as an anti-EU party. It's unfortunately pretty parochial to see this rubbish as an exclusively British or English problem.
posted by Aravis76 at 6:03 AM on October 7, 2017 [15 favorites]


It's also pretty parochial to yarn on about what England thinks when you are actually talking about middle class London, aside from the oiks down the other end of the playground. I'm also not clear on his Fry/Clarkson thing.
posted by threetwentytwo at 6:08 AM on October 7, 2017 [8 favorites]



After a couple of paragraphs it just fades away like there's supposed to be one of those wretched "click to read the rest of the article" buttons, but none exists.


I tried in chrome with ublock - the above happened.... then tried safari. Safari works.
posted by lalochezia at 6:11 AM on October 7, 2017


I tried in chrome with ublock - the above happened.... then tried safari. Safari works.

Turning off ublock works too. Annoying.
posted by octothorpe at 6:21 AM on October 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


So I have to turn off adblocking or buy a Mac? Hard pass.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:25 AM on October 7, 2017 [5 favorites]


I've never really got this kind of sentiment.

And you're quite correct—it's an ugly thought and I'm well aware of that, in the same way that it's wrong when US progressives cross their fingers for a new Southern secession…leaving out all the people who'd be hurt by such a thing. Still, the feeling that brings on that sort of sentiment is worth pondering, because it's only by meeting and beating the challenge of feeling that way can we get started trying to unwind the knot we're in.
posted by sonascope at 6:38 AM on October 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think it's a very good time, as well, to start challenging and breaking down our national narratives. I'm in a place where people actually, seriously, with a straight face, call ourselves a "shining city on a hill" and prattle on endlessly about our vaunted American Exceptionalism™ despite the crap we do both to the world and our own citizens. The horrors wrought on the world by rampaging empires are the roots of almost everything that's wrong with the world, but we're still so desperate to hang onto the narratives that built those empires. I think the fatigue from listening to a lifetime of hearing that drumbeat feeds the sort of exhausted sense that Arthur Dent expressed when the Grebulon cannons fired on the Earth, wrapping up things with a tick in a box—"Well, thank Bob that's all over."

Still, I express the sentiment mainly to let it see daylight and remind myself that it's just a dodge, and another way for us to all sidestep the insanely complex task of making things better, because what would feel better than karma on a national level? We can't do it from the outside, though, any more than sternly worded critiques from outside will beat back the tangerine menace in my own realm.
posted by sonascope at 6:53 AM on October 7, 2017 [6 favorites]


The EU is a dilemma full of trade-offs. But what I do think is that if the EU is to become truly democratic it needs to conduct an honest and open debate about what it wants to be, and then build the structures to go with it. An existential debate of that kind followed by either dismantling or reinvention requires good faith. This is almost entirely missing from the English side where “Remain,” too, campaigned on the promise that the UK could veto any further integration. Hence my support for Brexit.

That is such tosh I almost don't want to tell him about Morrissey.
posted by hawthorne at 7:45 AM on October 7, 2017 [6 favorites]


as a foreigner who lived in England, married an Englishman, studied English history at grad school - I love England. It's green, the people are nice (but not too friendly - great for a Canadian), the pork pies are stupendous and the tv excellent.

It's not perfect, by any means - and the elite have a toxic culture of entitlement and ignorance (as they do in most places). But this is also the country that gave us Michael Young (The Rise of the Meritocracy), and other great socialist and liberal thinkers.

In conclusion, England is a land of contrasts - and pork pies.

I miss the pork pies.
posted by jb at 7:52 AM on October 7, 2017 [11 favorites]


and amen! to being annoyed at media types who generalise from middle (and upper) class London to the rest of the country. It's a disease that doesn't just infect the British-located media but is especially bad there - the media are completely isolated from life outside their bubble.
posted by jb at 7:58 AM on October 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


That said: I agree with his diagnosis - England has gotten sick due to a diet of too much Tony Blair and not enough Michael Young (who campaigned against selective schools). The education system has been poisoned by league tables, and the entrenched power of Oxbridge (in politics, media, finance) is something which needs to be chopped off at the needs.

When I lived there, I mostly thought that I would make independent schools illegal, and the media should stop recruiting from Oxbridge for a generation or more.
posted by jb at 8:10 AM on October 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


There is an EU country that shares a long land border with the U.K., that is, Ireland. That border has caused a near century of woes for Ireland and those could come flooding back if this is not handled correctly. Which even the UK seems to keep forgetting. So it is very much not possible for millions of EU citizens to just wash their hands of Brexit and sail away - and that's without forgetting the various other regional factors in the UK, including the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland did not vote for Brexit.

To sum up: it's bad enough that the English keep forgetting about Ireland and the fact that we are a separate country with a land border, now we're going to have to remind the EU about it all the time too.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 8:24 AM on October 7, 2017 [17 favorites]


His point about fairness is an interesting one. Which is most fair: A system where who goes to the best schools is chosen by lottery? A system where the best students go to the best schools? Or a system where the worst students go to the best schools?
posted by clawsoon at 9:08 AM on October 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


Or to have all schools, as I'm sure he mentioned in the article, to be at the same level where is no best/worst school.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 9:19 AM on October 7, 2017 [7 favorites]


So I have to turn off adblocking or buy a Mac?

View Page Source shows each paragraph. Just scroll past the code.
posted by maudlin at 9:20 AM on October 7, 2017


Primary admissions seem to be an absolute shitstorm for parents. Most people quite simply want their children to go to their closest school, and they want that school to be good (I'm excluding the sort who automatically consider schools with a high proportion of EAL or FSM pupils to be bad schools, cos they can fuck right off).

Instead, in the latest round of admissions, I know people who for example have ended up in schools halfway across the county, because all the other schools had religious criteria, and people who are having to take four year olds on lengthy bus journeys across the city. A lottery wouldn't solve those issues.
posted by threetwentytwo at 9:35 AM on October 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


Eliminating league tables is the first step. Stop putting schools in competition against each other. If the government wants to track school score, fine, but make it private and make funding decisions favour the worst performing schools.

And for primary admissions: geographic catchment areas based on transit is the best way. Get the kids to the closest schools possible. Put effort into making school quality even across schools, so that school choice at that age doesn't matter and you don't get housing bidding wars about schools.

For secondary students, school choice can be a great motivator when it's about speciality programs (against arts), where pupils feel invested in their own education.

But school choice for quality is a mire that sinks us all, whether done directly or indirectly through housing purchases.
posted by jb at 10:00 AM on October 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


Oof. As someone who has worked in NL and now works in the UK (and is native to neither), I am violently ambivalent (oxymoron!) about this piece. He diagnoses some systematic things that drive me nuts here (e.g., acceptance of inequality, belief in meritocracy and the deservedness of privilege), but overlooks issues that would be glaringly obvious to non-EU citizens and visible minorities. And I could've written a similar screed upon leaving the Netherlands…
posted by LMGM at 10:14 AM on October 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm also not clear on his Fry/Clarkson thing.
posted by threetwentytwo at 6:08 on October 7 [4 favorites +] [!]


Stephen Fry is considered by many to be what we want the English to be; mannered, urbane, educated, witty, FUNNY. You can go to YouTube and find videos of him hosting QI, exploring his love of that most complicated composer Wagner, examining mental illness and his own experience of being bipolar, his history with Fry & Laurie.

Jeremy Clarkson is the anti-Fry. Swaggering, foul-mouthed, racist yobbo obsessed with loud, fast cars. I wish the bigots in the Alabama episode of "Top Gear" actually caught up with him and his lackeys and put a beatdown on them for being trolls.

Clarkson is the worst of Englishness the way Trump is the worst of Americaness; classless, racist, misogynist, self-satisfied asshole who punches down.

The author is saying Clarkson is the rule, Fry the exception.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 11:35 AM on October 7, 2017 [11 favorites]


The author is saying Clarkson is the rule, Fry the exception.

Yup. I assume the irony of saying that Clarkson and Fry represent the entire possible spectrum of Englishness is accidental but it reveals the superficiality of the picture of the country that the article offers. Fry and Clarkson do have a fair bit in common, after all, in terms of their background: prep school and public school men of a certain generation, who both had to struggle to fit into their public schools but who both came away with that invaluable public school accent in the end. Their joint demographic is a tiny fraction of the country's population. Meanwhile, where does someone like Josie Long fit into this rule/exception classification? She doesn't sound like either Fry or Clarkson, but she does sound like quite a bit more of the actual country.
posted by Aravis76 at 12:11 PM on October 7, 2017 [13 favorites]


Yeah, exactly what Aravis76 said, far more eloquently than I would manage. Clarkson and Fry represent an incredibly narrow strand of society.

The actual English public are far more Sarah Millican or Peter Kay than they are a pair of public school educated presenter comedians.
posted by threetwentytwo at 12:40 PM on October 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


As an Englishman, one of the things I regret about Brexit is the torrent of insightless lectures it seems to have authorised.
posted by Segundus at 1:50 PM on October 7, 2017 [10 favorites]


I can see that Clarkson is the English version of Trump. But as an American, I can enjoy Jeremy because he's not in charge of anything.
posted by lhauser at 7:07 PM on October 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Clarkson is about as benign a TV star as Trump was. He alas has a column where he gets to spew his bigotry as well. Not to forget the Irish member of his staff he assaulted. So it's a bit more complicated than just kicking aside his vulgarity I personally feel.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 7:57 PM on October 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


There are some interesting things about this article and I haven't lived in the UK. I have, however, lived in the Netherlands for 20 years and on reading it I found my eyebrows raising nearly through my scalp in a couple of places. And I kiiiinda get his point about schools, but if I look at the wealthy Wassenaar parents who send their kids to the American school, or others who send their kids across the border to Belgian boarding schools and the rather extreme differences in life choices between students with a HAVO/VWO and the ones who don't-- well, I think he should be a little bit quieter about equality.
posted by frumiousb at 8:04 PM on October 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


This whole conversation, everywhere, from the papers to mefi to Facebook to cabbies, has always centred the poor, poor British. There is little acknowledgement of what is actually being inflicted on the people whose lives were being voted about. And it's constant. The subtle to outright erasure of the place of EU citizens in the UK, many of whom are in similar situations to me - effectively no rights at all in our home countries because of having not lived there, effectively no rights in the UK because of Brexit, and all the concessions the UK got in the run up, largely targeted at stripping rights from EU nationals. I've been on the breadline for years. I have no way out of that situation. I've spent an awful lot of the last few years looking at people on the pathetic 70 odd quid a week unemployment benefits, and wished I might have such riches. But if course I can't. Nor any housing benefit. Nor any ESA when I was too sick to work. And nowhere to go.

And all I ever hear is how awful this is for Brits, how we mustn't blame anyone, how it's the UK and its citizens that are the real victims here. No. There is a collective responsibility, not merely for the vote, but for the way the entire country has related to the EU, allowed and encouraged it to be used as an easy scapegoat in public discourse at all levels.
posted by Dysk at 2:42 AM on October 8, 2017 [11 favorites]


Mod note: A few deleted. A) Please flag stuff like the weird pronunciation derail rather than draw it out, B) anger over Brexit, especially for the most vulnerable, is understandable, and it's fine to talk about the issue from your perspective, but attacking/blaming those who actually agree with you here isn't a great way to discuss.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:43 AM on October 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


And am I in favour of collective punishment for those sins? No. But complaining that the EU fella who wrote the article might be suggesting that overlooks that that is precisely what he is being subjected to. Collective punishment. For being foreign.
posted by Dysk at 2:44 AM on October 8, 2017


Except that he was in favour of the Leave vote, he says. He wanted them to win, because his respect for your rights was trumped by his desire for collective punishment of the British. I appreciate your anger, here, and the valid reasons for it, but this guy is not on your side. He's buying into the toxic worldview that drove the Leave outcome, to the extent that he actually wanted it.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:48 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I get it. This guy's a shit. But railing at the idea of collective punishment for Britain doesn't happen in a political vacuum - it's a constant drumbeat in the press and in conversations at the shops. There's some fucked up notion that the EU is punishing Britain. Nobody who did not hold a British passport has one ounce of responsibility for this. We had no way of influencing it. We had zero agency in this whole mess. And we're getting fucked to the sound of "but what about Britain? What about Brits?" continually, again, still.
posted by Dysk at 2:53 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Oh right, we agree about that. The idea that EU27 are "punishing" the UK by holding on to the basic commitments of the EU order and refusing to give us some kind of made up trade deal that has full access to the single market, minus any obligation to stick to the rules of the single market, is an idiotic lie and a dangerous one. It's really a separate point that British people will suffer from Brexit, in any form, and that's bad and a reason, among many, why Brexit is bad.
posted by Aravis76 at 3:04 AM on October 8, 2017


Except that he was in favour of the Leave vote, he says. He wanted them to win, because his respect for your rights was trumped by his desire for collective punishment of the British.

This also overlooks the fact that half the collective punishment we EU citizens have been subjected to predates the Brexit vote. We've been second class citizens here for some time now, as exemptions were sought, rules tightened, and EU nationals increasingly frozen out of any kind of assistance. I do not agree with it, but I can understand a position that looks at the UK already betraying reciprocity and the fundamental freedoms and equality of EU citizens at the time when the Brexit vote was called, with the two options being "leave" and "undermine the EU project further still with more exemptions and fewer obligations" and decided that the first was better on balance.

I was frozen out of any kind of public assistance well before the Brexit vote happened. I was a sacrifial lamb, one of many, freely offered up to no outrage, no cries that it was unfair, nothing, to hopefully prevent this Brexit thing. We were an offering from the Remain camp. The fact that it did no good for them is neither here nor there - we were already bloody on the altar of Brexit. And nobody would hear it, nobody said a fucking peep.
posted by Dysk at 3:07 AM on October 8, 2017


But now everyone is clamoring over themselves with concern for poor Brits. Where was that concern for poor EU citizens? We're already suffering, we were already suffering when the Brexit vote happened, but all we hear is concern about the potential future suffering of Brits.
posted by Dysk at 3:10 AM on October 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yes, Remain was a badly fought campaign because the campaigners conceded the Leave framing of the issues. This is because Labour has been toxically afraid to stand up for the rights of immigrants--EU and non-EU--for over ten years. Anti-immigrant hostility is huge here and has been used to justify discrimination in housing and welfare for years; part of what the right are so angry about is that the EU placed some limits on their ability to discriminate against immigrants, both from the EU and from third country states.

But again this isn't an exclusively British disease--anti-immigrant feeling, and a desire to discriminate against and scapegoat immigrants, is common and spreading across Europe as a whole. It's awful to be on the other side of that hostility, I've experienced it and I remember it well. But pretending that Brexit is any kind of solution to that trans-European problem is a mistake. Expelling us will not make Hungary any more hospitable to foreigners.
posted by Aravis76 at 3:19 AM on October 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


Like I said, I don't agree with the position. But the general response to the fellow has been "how dare he be so vindictive! How could he get a knife!" as if he hadn't just been vindictively stabbed. Nobody's shouting about his unjust that first stabbing was, nobody's demonstrating any understanding of the injuries that led us to this point. Is he right to seek revenge? No. Is it some incomprehensible impulse of evil? No. You use someone as a punching bag for long enough, eventually they'll try to strike back, however impotently, however ill-considered.
posted by Dysk at 3:25 AM on October 8, 2017


What I'm saying, I suppose, is that your situation and the unfairness of it is a good reason to be very angry with the anti-immigrant right. Identifying the anti-immigrant right with Britain as a whole, and being angry with the British as a whole, is completely understandable. But it's a mistake, because it ignores the global reach of the enemy--the anti-immigrant right are only anti-foreigners at home, they love cosying up with each other in the EU Parliament and online--and your allies at home, who are both British and not.

I also think you have far more reason to be justly angry than the writer of the article, who says he hoped for Brexit to happen, cheered when it did happen, and then calmly went back to the Netherlands in what sounds like a spirit of total contempt for the people left behind who can't get out as easily. He reminds me far more of some comfortably well-off pro-Brexit and pro-Trump elements on the left, who hoped for catastrophe because it would shake things up. I don't know why you identify with him, your own arguments are both stronger and more sympathetic.
posted by Aravis76 at 3:32 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Except the British anti-immigrant right has met an opposition hell bent on appeasing them, by throwing EU citizens under the bus (gradually, and quietly). Nobody ever stood up for us, opposed stripping is of rights.

And we don't need Britain to solve Hungary's problems. But I can understand the appeal of getting rid of the British problem, especially when even the "good guys" or Remainers are a problem for the EU, with all the special status and exemption they demand. No accelerationist principle is at play here, just the desire to remove a tumour before it spreads. Maybe Hungary is also sick. Hopefully some intervention can happen there, from someone in the country, before it also gets too far gone.

I do not fully agree with the author of the article. I think he's being flip in who he's leaving to it. But I also don't think he's fundamentally unreasonable. There is and has been no meaningful support for the EU in Britain for a long time. Not even the opponents of Brexit were really on board with everything the European project is and should be.
posted by Dysk at 3:42 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


What I want, what I would do, is cancel Brexit and beg to be let back in on equal terms with everyone else, Euro currency and all. But I also fundamentally think that is an unreasonable thing to ask of the EU.
posted by Dysk at 3:52 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Have the eu27 guaranteed the rights of British Citizens living in the eu27? Nothing is stopping them doing so I don't think?

Also
This is almost entirely missing from the English side where “Remain,” too, campaigned on the promise that the UK could veto any further integration. Is the author suggesting that further integration of the EU27 should happen against an existing member's wishes?

How does something like the NHS survive if anyone across Europe can have treatment for free?
posted by 92_elements at 3:55 AM on October 8, 2017


How does something like the NHS survive if anyone across Europe can have treatment for free?

There's something like the NHS across much of the rest of Europe already. Like the NHS, they're also open for any resident EU national to use (including Britons, until they pull themselves out). It survives exactly the way its always survived - tax funding. The UK is not exceptional, the NHS is not unique and there are no hoards of Europeans battering down Britain's doors to get at the NHS. They have their own healthcare.
posted by Dysk at 4:04 AM on October 8, 2017 [11 favorites]


Have the eu27 guaranteed the rights of British Citizens living in the eu27? Nothing is stopping them doing so I don't think?

No the party that wanted the status quo of everyone getting to stay where they wanted has not made any unilateral guarantees to the nation that voted to disrupt that status quo with 'getting rid of foreigners' as part of the rationale. It's been pursuing talks to try and get a mutual guarantee of the same, explicitly calling that a priority to get sorted first, while the British delegation continually tries to get into talking about trade without having sorted the same.
posted by Dysk at 4:07 AM on October 8, 2017 [3 favorites]


How does something like the NHS survive if anyone across Europe can have treatment for free?

I really don't think you know what you're talking about here. Anyone European* who's treated by the NHS will (in theory) have the care provider in the place where they live invoiced. Just the same as what happens if I go to Oxford and get myself hospitalised: B&NES CCG gets invoiced by Oxford Hospitals FT. Whereas when I go to my local district general hospital, the costs come out of the block contract B&NES CCG's paying for. NHS Scotland, GIG Cymru / NHS Wales & H&SC Northern Ireland do things slightly differently.

But I think this is a nice example that the problem is that people have been led to believe that there is a problem when actually, both the EU and the Civil Service are building functioning governance systems to deliver the services that people need. In the face of tabloid and government hostility, especially since 2010. And there's this gish gallop effect where the media comes across a subject for the first time and breathlessly reports it as if their learning experience about it was the actual truth of how it works.

*Or Australian, or, up until 3 years ago, Russian, or,…
posted by ambrosen at 4:10 AM on October 8, 2017 [5 favorites]


As Dysk said, the "drain on our resources" argument for barring EU nationals from accessing our welfare system is nonsense. There is EU regulation in place that allows EU nationals to access healthcare and employment benefit etc across the EU, and the nations of the EU cross-subsidise each other for their nations use of other member state resource. Britain negotiated exceptions principally to satisfy xenophobia at home, not because our system is more in demand than Germany's.
posted by Aravis76 at 4:12 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]


So all the health service are equivalent and free for the end user across Europe? Have to admit I'm surprised and have been misinformed. Eg. Getting health insurance when travelling.
posted by 92_elements at 4:14 AM on October 8, 2017


You would need to get an EHIC card, and that should entitle you to the same treatment as a local.
posted by Aravis76 at 4:20 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]


Across much of Europe, yes. But even if not, nobody is coming over from Germany, or Poland, or anywhere in the EU and getting free treatment on the UK's dime - invoices are being sent to and paid by their governments.
posted by Dysk at 4:21 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]


92_elements, yes, all immediately necessary care is provided equally to all EU nationals across the EU. Care that's not immediately necessary is only available where you live.

Yes, you have been misinformed, although one reason DH recommends travel insurance on top of your EHIC* card is that it doesn't provide repatriation. So if you're ill abroad, you'll stay abroad until you're fit to travel.

Most objections to the EU are based on misinformation like this.

*Of course, if you don't have an EHIC card, then you can phone the DH for a Provisional Replacement Certificate if you're asked for details before treatment is given.
posted by ambrosen at 4:21 AM on October 8, 2017 [3 favorites]


Of course, the fact that the NHS is woefully poor at invoicing for EU citizens* is either a side issue, or an example of how little this debate is actually about the facts and more about the UK wanting to be special.

*IIRC, the 2011 figures were £36 million billed by the Department of Health, and €1 billion billed to the Department of Health.
posted by ambrosen at 4:25 AM on October 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thanks both. Already got a EHIC card somewhere. Will have to dig it out.
I consider you've answered my question now.
posted by 92_elements at 4:28 AM on October 8, 2017


Britain negotiated exceptions principally to satisfy xenophobia at home, not because our system is more in demand than Germany's.

I'm going to have to say that I don't think there are any relevant Freedom of Movement issues that Britain has negotiated exceptions to. The transitional delay in allowing Romanian and Bulgarian nationals full access to the employment market was the same across much of western Europe, and for the 2004 enlargement, the UK was one of 3 countries which immediately opened up its employment market.
posted by ambrosen at 4:30 AM on October 8, 2017 [3 favorites]


I thought we had negotiated specific exemptions that justified Cameron's 2014 changes to the availability of housing benefit and jobseeker's allowance for EU migrants who were looking for work? My understanding is that the new rules made it harder for EU jobseekers to access a bunch of benefits--including housing and unemployment benefits--and that Cameron had got some exemption to permit that.
posted by Aravis76 at 5:03 AM on October 8, 2017


Thanks for the tip Aravis76, here's how it works for us:

When you show the European Health Insurance Card to the treatment provider, you should receive treatment to the same cost as the country’s inhabitants. In this case, you pay a user fee that corresponds to the fee paid by local residents and the country where you received treatment charges Kela for the rest of the costs. Kela pays the costs from state funds.

If the treatment provider does not accept the card, you will have to pay the costs for the treatment yourself. However, you can claim reimbursement for the costs from Kela afterwards.

posted by infini at 5:09 AM on October 8, 2017


The fact that we have had nothing but Conservative governments since 1979 is an undeniable factor in this, too. Entire generations have grown up with the idea that it's a dog-eat-dog world, private enterprise is universally good, you have to constantly be in vicious competition with your neighbour to 'get ahead' in life, and the measure of success is how short your car number plate is.

Neoliberalism has been extremely effective at convincing us all that no matter what happens to us, it's our fault as workers or consumers, we didn't try hard enough, we didn't compete hard enough, we didn't buy enough. When something goes wrong at work, it's never the Jags and Audis that disappear from the car park, it's always the lowest-paid who get the boot. Everything's a zero-sum game and there's no alternative because, er, Venezuela? Or something.


This is a really good point. And they've stepped it up lately due to how close Corbyn came in the election. There were repeated mentions of Venezuela as a bogeyman in speeches in the Conservative party conference. It's such a childish argument - "anyone against permanent austerity, tax havens, and zero-hours contracts is a commie" and the media dutifully reports it.

As for Ireland, a 32-county republic inside the EU seems like a logical solution. But sectarianism and logic sadly do not mix, and with the hard Unionists propping up the UK government it is going to be even harder to find an amicable resolution to the issue. (Which, like many things, would never have been an issue if Britain had kept its nose out of the island all those years ago.)

Yep, the DUP are also against some kind of special status for the North that would avoid the return of customs posts and tariffs, even though the most likely alternative will crater their economy and lead to mass unemployment in communities along the border.
posted by kersplunk at 5:30 AM on October 8, 2017


Aravis76, apologies for the gigantic Wikipedia link, but no,
Freedom of Movement vaguely only includes the right
to reside, without becoming an unreasonable burden on social assistance. There's a few legal cases cited in the article if you want, but basically I think that Cameron's restrictions were both a) Not unusual in their financial scope, and b) Purely for out group signalling, rather than any attempt to actually fix misguided financial or social concerns.

Basically, it's exactly the same weakening that the social safety net's been subjected to, but exaggerated because EU citizens requiring social assistance have even less power than UK citizens requiring social assistance. And if you've ever tried persuading someone who doesn't already believe this that benefit sanctions starve people, try persuading them that benefit sanctions starve people who (might) have family in countries where they don't speak English.
posted by ambrosen at 5:36 AM on October 8, 2017


Habitual residence tests in the UK are onerous enough that I can't pass one having lived in the UK for over a decade (my entire adult life) with all over half of that being as either a full time student supported by student loans from another EU state, or in employment sufficient for me not to be in receipt of any benefits. I can easily demonstrate five years of work and tax in the UK - just not five continuous years.

Meanwhile I have no meaningful rights in my home country (where I haven't lived since before I started school, in whose language I have no formal education whatsoever) because similar xenophobia has been enacted by curbing access to benefits based on having long residence periods required to access any benefits for all citizens. So I am effectively a second class foreigner literally everywhere.
posted by Dysk at 5:59 AM on October 8, 2017 [6 favorites]


Thanks for that, ambrosen. Having looked into it more, it seems like the changes discriminating against EU jobseekers didn't require special approval from the EU but that Cameron did need to get Commission approval for his later plan to discriminate against EU workers in their receipt of in-work benefits. In any case, that doesn't seem to me to affect the broader point that the legislation we've seen targeting 'benefits tourism' from the EU is less about solving a genuine resources problem and more about signalling xenophobia to Tory voters.
posted by Aravis76 at 6:27 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Clarkson was pro-remain.

Indeed, not just pro-remain he was for a federal EU: "I long for a time when I think of myself as a European first and an Englishman second. I crave a United States of Europe with one currency, one army and one type of plug"

Facts are dreadfully inconvenient things sometimes aren't they? Because if it was true that Clarkson was the rule, Brexit would not, could not, have happened.
posted by Grimgrin at 7:23 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm going to say that what Clarkson personally thought about remain is a whole lot less important than the xenophobia and contempt that he preached. The fact that he was sacked for a racially aggravated assault against a European, and still widely revered is a pretty good indicator that he's not a force for European integration.
posted by ambrosen at 7:50 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]


I will add that there were also a few pro-Remain arguments--notably that made by AA Gill--that were pretty nakedly racist in how they defined European identity and distinguished good EU migrants from the problematic third world types like me. Clarkson is the type of person who defines "European" more by exclusion than by inclusion.
posted by Aravis76 at 8:19 AM on October 8, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm wondering if the fundamental problem is that we're literally forgetting, as a society, how to govern. There were consequences to that (you'd be invaded) but absent them...it's just the arguing, not the doing.

I don't know that we're there but I'm worried.
posted by effugas at 8:12 PM on October 8, 2017


Effugas this book The Blunders of our Governments in its conclusions makes the argument that many Mps like power but not the day to day governing aspects (which are far more tedious and dull). Can't help but wonder if the authors are onto something there.
posted by 92_elements at 1:03 AM on October 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Oxbridge influence in journalism, from 2014:
A study by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission also found that 54 per cent of the nation's "top 100 media professionals" attended private schools (as opposed to 7 per cent of the population as a whole).
...
It also broke these figures down into tabloid and broadsheet columnists, finding that more broadsheet columnists (25 per cent) attended comprehensive (“or secondary modern school”) than tabloid columnists (20 per cent).

But a higher proportion of broadsheet columnists (45 per cent compared with 38 per cent) attended independent schools. Some 57 per cent of broadsheet columnists attended Oxbridge, and 78 per cent went to one of the Russell Group of 24 leading universities.
posted by asok at 2:20 AM on October 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


You can be a British Citizen who's lived all their life in the UK, and still not have proven settled status, according to the idiots at the Home Office. His fiancée's now been granted permission to come to Northern Ireland to live, but it really, really doesn't say good things about these people's mindsets and competence.
posted by ambrosen at 5:06 AM on October 10, 2017


The logic of racism and xenophobia proudly on display at the Home Office.
posted by Dysk at 5:38 AM on October 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


You can be a British Citizen who's lived all their life in the UK, and still not have proven settled status, according to the idiots at the Home Office. His fiancée's now been granted permission to come to Northern Ireland to live, but it really, really doesn't say good things about these people's mindsets and competence.

I'm in the process of getting a UK passport to accompany my Irish one for pretty much this reason.
posted by knapah at 12:58 AM on October 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


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