On Tuesday, Le Monde published a piece it had commissioned from me to explain why, from a British point of view, Brexit is not mad. (I was told that all the paper’s readers think it is.) I enjoyed doing this for two reasons. The first was seeing how my English came out in French. Le Monde sent me its translation. I was delighted to sound so much brainier and statelier, though French feels less flexible than English. The second was that writing for an intelligent audience which knows little of the background is an interesting exercise. It forces one to distil. I no longer had to analyse, say, the intricacies of the Northern Ireland backstop or the merits of the Malthouse compromise. I had to work out what this is all about. When you do that, you realise it is almost entirely about history. Humiliated in the second world war, France almost had to sign up for a new European order. Victorious, though much weakened, Britain did not. Our independence as a parliamentary nation had been vindicated. It followed that, although European integration might have practical advantages for Britain, it could not be an existential necessity. It follows to this day, more insistently as the EU centralises further. If continental Europeans understand this, they may still think us mistaken, but will surely see we are not insane.
The sad announcement of John Humphrys’s departure from Today has provoked once again the suggestion that the programme has dumbed down. There is supposed to be too much showbiz. The implication is that news people who, in their own phrase, ‘know their onions’ (almost always, perhaps not coincidentally, men) are being pushed aside by others (usually, perhaps not coincidentally, women), who are fluffier. Despite my own lack of interest in showbiz, I think this criticism is wrong.
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