Thread by @mdouganlpool

Twitter’s great for slagging off Brexit. But even better when you learn something new. Especially from collective wisdom. As I did from responses to yesterday’s thread on the EU’s “existential challenge”. So: quick follow-up with some reflections, inspired by replies/comments:

1) Worth clarifying: idea of “existential reflex” is not that large numbers of people want their MS to leave EU, or for EU to cease existing. [Though if don’t mind me saying: seems bit complacent to say “noone thinks like that in my MS"; let alone forget there are other MSs too!]

2) Instead, idea behind "existential reflex" is whether significant numbers of citizens have really *internalised* what it means to be a Member State of the EU, in the same way as they take for granted the institutions / roles / powers of their own state.

3) If I don’t like something the national government does, I don’t say “Bloody Republic!”, just "Bloody Government!". But strikes me that in great many cases, if someone doesn’t like something that happens at EU level, they will say “Bloody EU!”. That's our existential reflex...

4) Is it just a linguistic thing: "Brussels" = easy shorthand, but we all know better? I suspect not. Language reflects something deeper: the EU as “other”, to the state and citizen; failings are a problem with “the EU”, not of particular policy choices made within its framework.

5) Of course, part of problem might be that EU has no “government” as such, in sense of a clearly identifiable group of people who we can rightly blame for particular policy failings. For many people, it’s often not clear / obvious who is responsible when something does go wrong

6) Important to stress: that is often a real strength! There are many benefits to identifying complex cross-border problems, then extracting them from the domain of purely national politics, and addressing them instead as collective, collaborative, cooperative endeavours

7) But there's no doubt that such benefits also come with an important cost: pooling of power can blur lines of political responsibility and democratic accountability, if citizens don’t “get" the system / how it relates to more traditional national structures and domestic powers

8) Be that as it may, fair enough to ask: does it really matter, this “existential reflex”, if people are happy enough being in the EU, even if they tend to blame a general ”it” rather than a specific “them” for policy problem X? I still think it does, for following reason:

9) So long as a significant part of population has instinctive reaction of saying “bloody EU”, in both language and substance, EU as organisation is not accurately integrated into citizen's basic understanding of where public power is really located and how it is really exercised

10) And if EU membership as such is not properly internalised into our ordinary constitutional consciousness, the risk is: EU is challenged and contested, not for what it actually does / achieves, but simply for what it is / its very being as such

11) In which case: both we as citizens, and the EU as an integral part of our constitutional arrangements, risk missing something very important: the "existential reflex" acts as a barrier to real debate, criticism, accountability, betterment - on the real issues & substance?

Anyway: that’s my Saturday afternoon's tuppenceworth. Merci bien to all those who sent such interesting replies / comments. But time to practice the Bach Chaconne: now, *that* is much more difficult to get one's head around...