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Why does the right hate Britain so much? That’s one of the questions arising from both the leaking of Kim Darroch’s diplomatic cables and, more pertinently, the reaction to the entirely unsurprising contents of those cables.
Sir Kim’s appraisal of Donald Trump’s administration are not very different from those made by other sentient beings. Suggesting Trump’s White House is chaotic and inept and all kinds of dysfunctional hardly counts as news. Everyone knows this because everyone can see it.
And yet, remarkably, it is the British Ambassador to Washington who finds himself subjected to an artillery barrage of humbug and absurdity. Nigel Farage, of course, demands that Sir Kim be sacked, presumably because telling the truth is something dangerous. Remarkably, others seem to agree with him.
But then this is the Brexit party’s reason for existence. It is less a howl against the EU than a spasm of anger directed at the modern world and, indeed, modern Britain. Ann Widdecombe’s extraordinary speech in the european parliament last week certainly suggested as much. The Brexiteers were reimagined as slaves freeing themselves from the shackles of their Brussels (and Strasbourg) captivity. Well I suppose that’s one way of putting it, though putting it like that requires you to have lost your mind.
None of which makes the EU an ideal or universally effective force. It has, as many of us who voted Remain know, many faults. But it is not an oppressor in the manner imagined by Widdecombe. Rather, it is a collection of sovereign states who, the better to advance their interests and prosperity, pool that sovereignty on a number of issues of common interest. Conservatives used to know that power devolved is power retained and the proof of sovereignty, in this instance, is the ability to leave.