{"id":1983,"date":"2013-01-26T22:15:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T22:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=1983"},"modified":"2013-01-27T13:26:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-27T13:26:23","slug":"in-out-in-out-shake-it-all-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=1983","title":{"rendered":"In-Out, In-Out, Shake It All About?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hokey Cokey seems to possess the same level of serious reasoning as did last week’s\u00a0\u00a0unconvincing and desperately tactical David Cameron \u00a0speech<\/a> on an \u2018in-out\u2019 referendum on British membership of the EU. His gambling with the country’s political relationship with its nearest neighbours and biggest trading partners infuriated and depressed me but it may not be such a bad thing for my novel \u00a0Contrary to his short-termist intentions, I suspect he\u2019s raised the political profile of one of its main themes.<\/p>\n

While there’s little overtly political in the novel (or this blog), the plot and characters unavoidably raise issues regarding\u00a0Britain\u2019s relationship with Europe (and, to some extent, the rest of the world). The novel\u00a0also goes further \u2013 highlighting the differences between London and the rest of the UK \u2013 which are probably more marked in many significant ways than between London and other European capitals. That London is both an amazing cosmopolitan city as well as the country’s capital is something that Cameron is likely to be aware of himself. \u00a0But this is a realisation that the engineering of this referendum is designed to disguise in its simplistic pandering to the those holed up in the Home Counties who see London in terms of bearskins and red phone boxes.<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/a>
The Angel’s Near Neighbour — Chequers — Where The Referedum Wheeze Was Probably Thought Up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, if Cameron’s speech provokes a prolonged debate the differences between \u2018us\u2019 Brits and \u2018the foreigners over there\u2019 then the novel might happily chime in with the cultural zeitgeist (how backbench Tories and UKIP must hate that word) \u2013 at least in the run-up to the election.<\/p>\n

The Angel\u2019s <\/i>two protagonists, Kim and James, are German and English respectively. She sees herself primarily as a European, influenced by her university experiences in Berlin, but like many Europeans I\u2019ve met myself recently in London, she\u2019s also a committed anglophile who loves the city\u2019s cultural diversity and unrivalled artistic opportunities. Being absolutely fluent in English, there\u2019s no reason she sees to prevent her living here for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n

James could only be English \u2013 on one hand a rugby-playing bloke but intelligent and enquiring with a self-deprecating attitude to British culture that’s led him into a fascination with the sophistication of Europe. In his case he has a voracious appetite for the techniques of French and Italian cooking and is beguiled but intimidated by modern art.<\/p>\n

In a reflection of its setting and the times, the novel also has plenty of other ‘foreign’ characters — Poles, a Romanian, an American and others \u2013 and they aren\u2019t just confined to London. \u00a0However, Kim finds that attitudes can be quite different in the English commuter countryside \u2013 the kind of seats represented by the Eurosceptic Tory MPs who sadly seem to have forced Cameron\u2019s hand into the current bodge.<\/p>\n

(In reality, the setting for The Angel<\/i> could well be David Lidington\u2019s Aylesbury seat. Ironically he\u2019s the current Minister for Europe and will be tasked with the thankless task of trying to dream up what on earth to renegotiate with the EU.\u00a0 I know he\u2019s not actually a rabid xenophobe, having met him in person quite a few times \u2013 I know him well enough to have exchanged hellos in St. James\u2019s Park.)<\/p>\n

She is at first amazed, but quickly becomes accustomed, to being quizzed by amateur enthusiasts about German military strategy in the Second World War \u2013 a conflict she thinks has as much relevance to her as the Battle of Hastings does to the English.\u00a0During the novel she develops a deeper understanding of English character and how that has influenced the culture of London she so value. But, equally, with her \u00fcber-liberal Shoreditch and Hackney beliefs and behaviour she challenges and changes the reactionary UKIP sympathies of the middle England types — not just towards Europe but also towards their other traditionalist cultural mores.<\/p>\n

In common with, I’d guess, the vast majority of most of the EU citizens who fill the tubes and buses in London, Kim would be incredulous that a vote on the UK leaving the EU could seriously be contemplated, especially as it is so contrary to her everyday experiences.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d find the referendum prospect unsettling, as well as irrelevant, grudging and ungrateful \u2013 not necessarily at face value but for the insular, sneering saloon bar bigotry that oozes from the pores of some of its xenophobic proponents. Also, thinking of an episode of German history that she does know well, as an entartete K\u00fcnstlerin<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>she\u2019d worry about the divisive cultural implications of ‘us and them’ attitudes, which could be the thin end of \u00a0a very nasty wedge.<\/p>\n

Not that Kim thinks the core EU countries have got everything right. After all she\u2019s moved to London and likes it here on the periphery outside the Euro and the Schengen Zone.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s more that, as someone who sees the wider picture, she despairs when short-term politicking and parochial, self-delusion threatens the relative harmony of one of the most remarkable achievements in history. A previously fractious continent that spent much of the first half of the last century destroying itself has peacefully worked together — and if the worst thing the Eurosceptics can say is the EU prevents our junior doctors working a hundred hours a week then that can’t be too bad. She\u2019d agree with the Swedish Prime Minister who tweeted in response to Cameron<\/a>: \u2018Flexibility sounds fine, but if you open up to a 28-speed Europe, at the end of the day there is no Europe at all. Just a mess.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"What's<\/a>
All That’s Left of the Berlin Wall in Most Places<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also, part of her predicament at the start of the novel is a result of the huge amount of immigration into London in the past few years \u2013 as an artist she\u2019s being priced out of even the lower-cost areas of the capital.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in a previous post<\/a>, when I told the German organiser of an exhibition in Shoreditch of German artists that I was writing a novel about a German artist working in Shoreditch, the first thing he asked was what she did for money. When I said she lived in Homerton, he said that was still expensive for an artist (perhaps why all of the artists he represented hadn\u2019t made a move to London).<\/p>\n

I was talking about rents for rooms in shared houses with my ex-City course-mates last week (we had lunch at an Old Street restaurant so trendy the chefs wore trilby hats). Apparently in Hackney rooms in unlovely shared houses are going for the upper hundreds per month \u2013 a very significant chunk of a yet-to-be established artist\u2019s income.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Impressive Front Entrance of the Building Where I Used to Have A Desk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Part of the reason the novel has a European theme is that I worked for nine years for the corporate headquarters of a pan-European company. For most of that time it was German owned \u00a0— a member of the Frankfurt DAX30. I mostly had German managers and got to know many German colleagues very well. In fact one of the reasons why I was recruited was that it was thought I\u2019d \u2018get on well with the Germans\u2019.<\/p>\n

For years I travelled on average every other week to Europe, \u00a0\u2013 usually walking into work through the impressive marble lobby in Hanover (it also had a conference room suite featuring modern artworks). But I also visited virtually every other large Germany city and most other large European capital cities (as well as out of the way places like Oostende and Enschede and debauched conferences in Tenerife and Dubrovnik that provided almost enough material for novels in themselves).<\/p>\n

But more tediously, it was often my job to try and sit in meetings and try to get all the nationalities to agree on something — usually a common approach to an IT project. One English colleague compared my job with being an EU negotiator, which to him was his idea of purgatory (there were quite a number who were peeved for years that the British company had been taken over by The Bloody Germans).<\/p>\n

One of my tasks was to look beyond the bluster and try to identify what were true cultural differences between countries\u2019 markets and what was common to all — which where the value is unlocked in multi-national companies and the EU itself but it also threatens comfortable vested interests.<\/p>\n

Often people argued that they should be allowed to do whatever they liked in their countries because they were just so<\/em> unique. At a peer level, there wasn\u2019t much voluntary co-operation and the countries only tended to reach collective agreement when either offered cash to do so or be told so by the Vorstand (the board), who crucially had the power to fire a country\u2019s manager. \u00a0That\u2019s why the idea of a looser, \u00e1 la carte EU seems like a pipedream to me (and most intelligent Eurosceptics know it).<\/p>\n

\"Some<\/a>
Some ‘Quirky’ Modern Art in the German Head Office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was often infuriating but was always fascinating to observe national cultural differences \u2013 which sometimes lived up to stereotypes (often, one suspected, intentionally) .<\/p>\n