Timothy Garton Ash has become a bishop. In Free World, he has written something which is less a work of political analysis than an extended sermon about the value of political liberty and international co-operation between Western states. Of course, no one is against these admirable things, but they sometimes come at too high a price. Yet there is not much about the price in this worthy and rather parsonical volume, which manages to fill 250 pages while paying only the most perfunctory attention to the difficulties or the side-effects of our good intentions.
The argument goes like this. Britain’s political classes are divided into two camps: the Europhiles and the Atlanticists. This is profoundly tragic and unnecessary. Britain, says Garton Ash, must belong to Europe, because we share a European culture. Are not our high streets full of pizza parlours and our football clubs full of Dutchmen and Italians? One day the European Community will be a great economic power block of 40 nations living in mutual interdependence, the first political power in history not to be defined by armed force and a common language. It will be in the interest of this new Europe to live in harmony with the United States, which shares a European vision of political freedom dating from the 18th-century enlightenment. It will be in its interest to live in harmony with the Islamic states on its southern borders, on whom it will depend for immigrants if it is to maintain its relative wealth in the face of a declining birthrate. And so, as we discover the real extent of our interdependence, we will learn to live in peace with our neighbours. In short, all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
The trouble with Dr Pangloss was that his vision of the world discounted prejudice and took no account of earthquakes.
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