{"text":[[{"start":6.5,"text":"Italians saw seven changes of prime minister in the 1950s. Compared to such upheaval, Brussels officialdom was not so bad. A Spaniard with memories of Franco, or an Irish voter who grew up with an overbearing church, might even associate it with modernity. In other words, some Europeans welcomed the EU as a kind of deliverance from their ropey national politics. The well-run UK had much less to gain from contracting out its administration to foreigners. As an explanation for British Euroscepticism, this is immensely self-flattering, but it at least lines up with the circumstantial facts. "}],[{"start":42.1,"text":"No longer. Since leaving the EU, Britain has become much more European in its political chaos. It might soon have its seventh prime minister since 2016. There are no fewer than five parties polling in double digits, suggesting a German or Dutch level of political fragmentation but with a majoritarian voting model that cannot accommodate it. "}],[{"start":64.25,"text":"The UK’s famed “institutions” were said to make it unusual in Europe. Few have had a good decade. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives pretend the civil service is a Rolls-Royce now. After some lapses, including one to do with coverage of Donald Trump, the BBC has lost any aura of infallibility. The Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor scandal has compromised the royals. If it is true that what drove the European project was not just utopian zeal but also its opposite — deep cynicism about institutions at the national level — then Britain is starting to fit into that continental experience."}],[{"start":100.8,"text":"This political convergence with Europe was hard to see coming. But there has been an economic convergence too, a move to continental welfare, and Britain always had that in it."}],[{"start":110.89999999999999,"text":"Who still believes that British voters are instinctive free-marketeers? Who thinks that a socialist EU was stifling their rugged individualism all that time? The state now has a larger role in British economic life than it did before Brexit — and people voted for it. The flexible labour market that once distinguished the UK from the continent is ever more clogged with rules, taxes and a high minimum wage. Youth unemployment in Britain now exceeds that of the Eurozone. Even before Labour was elected in 2024, the Conservative mandate of 2019 was won on a statist platform aimed at England’s struggling regions, or “red wall”. "}],[{"start":151.35,"text":"Notice that attempts to curb public spending, such as reform of elderly care in 2017 and benefit cuts in 2025, succumbed to the kind of protests that Emmanuel Macron knows well. The British public’s expectations of the welfare state are more French or German than American or Singaporean. The idea that an “Anglo-Saxon” economic model exists was always hogwash. If there were an ethnic or cultural predisposition to free markets, where did it go in the mid-20th century, when unions ruled the UK and marginal tax rates spurred the Beatles to complain in song? Britain’s Thatcherite consensus of 1979 to 2016 coincided with EU membership. It now stands out as a freak interval between two periods in which the nation showed its collectivist nature."}],[{"start":201.05,"text":"The surprise is that anyone is surprised. In essence, Leave was a paternalist movement — its key pledge was to spend EU membership dues on the NHS — led by unrepresentative libertarians from the safety of London’s two or three ghastliest private members’ clubs. This internal contradiction did not stop them winning, but it did make it obvious that no pro-market revolution could ever happen. The politics just did not line up. The question is why Britain has gone so far the other way. Here’s a guess. The Leave campaign elevated retired people and deindustrialised regions over working people (most voted Remain) and productive cities. Ever since, politicians have obsessed over that winning coalition. This has obvious implications for policy, and they aren’t neoliberal."}],[{"start":249.35000000000002,"text":"I don’t suggest that Britain should or will rejoin the EU. In fact, the point of this column is that official membership is an academic question. The revelation of the past decade is the underlying — the increasing — Europeanness of Britain as a society. In its political landscape and economic preferences, the country has converged with the continental average. Even the pound-euro exchange rate is nearer parity than pre-Brexit. Owing to the Russia threat, Britain’s defence arrangements are becoming enmeshed with the continent’s in ways that would once have been seen as a betrayal of Nato. "}],[{"start":285.40000000000003,"text":"It would not be the first time that a formal rupture had surprising consequences. Ireland and Britain are more similar today than when both were part of the same state. Singapore and Malaysia get along better than they did as members of a union. Both of those convergences took time, however, and some divergence took place first. Britain started to become much more European almost as soon as it left the EU."}],[{"start":310.85,"text":"A recurring question nowadays is whether the country is “ungovernable”. If it is, then nothing could be more European. No other region of the west has the same mix of problems. The US suffers from dysfunction of the political but not — so far — the economic kind. Australia and to some extent Canada can claim to have neither. To endure both at once is very Old World. A cycle of low growth and weak governments: the British disease is the French disease, which is the German disease. Join the EU? In the ways that matter, we already have."}],[{"start":351.1,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1779927660_9077.mp3"}