Symbolising nothing

Every evening at 8:00, buglers assemble under Menin Gate in the Belgian town of Ypres to blow the Last Post.

Last Post at the Menin Gate. You can listen to it too, if you want

That’s the call sounded to mark the end of the day in the British Army. It’s also used at military funeral. Ypres, or Ieper in Dutch, is known as Wipers in English. The Menin Road was taken by tens of thousands of men marching out to the killing fields of the Ypres Salient in the First World War. The Menin Gate is covered by the names of some 54,000 who vanished but have no known grave.

The Last Post is a moving tribute to the memory of all those who died at that time. Symbols are like that: they move us because they conjure up sentiments we associate with significant moments, whether tragic or triumphant. Sometimes, though, the symbolism is all there is – there simply is no substance behind it.

In December of last year, the British government, which has achieved precious little in the Brexit negotiations so far, announced that the country would be reverting to blue passports. This was greeted by Nigel Farage, former leader of the ‘United Kingdom Independence Party’, UKIP, as a ‘happy Brexmas’ present. Because, of course, it would be a reversion to the former colour of the passport before we joined the European Union.

The old British passport.
A tradition denied by the EU. Or was it?

That sounds like an assertion of tradition, and a proud tradition, of Britain as an independent nation. Except that it quickly emerged that there had never been any obligation from the EU for Britain to switch passport colour to the present colour – there are other EU nations with blue passports. Even in Britain, the ‘iconic’ blue passport dates only from 1921.

In other words, as a tradition, it’s a pretty shallow one.

However, it mattered to Brexiters. Possibly because they’re struggling, as the reality approaches, to find anything much else positive to say about our departure from the Union. The symbolism seemed important.

But now we’ve discovered that the contract to produce the new passports has been won, in an open tender, by a Franco-Dutch company, Gemalto. It beat a British competitor, De La Rue. It did so because it could guarantee the same quality for £120 million less over the five years the contract is due to last.

Five years: that’s well into Brexit.

Now that's potent symbolism. What that’s saying is that the British taxpayer – and indeed consumer – can at times (I’d say often) get a better deal by shopping abroad. And that’s what Brexit’s really about: putting up protective walls around uncompetitive industries.

De La Rue is appealing the decision to award the contract against them. If it wins, that will say something powerful about what we’re trying to achieve with Brexit: it will mean that we are telling British citizens to pay more to protect inefficiency. Which is very much in line with what Brexit is promising generally: higher food prices, higher prices on a wide range of goods we currently import, higher prices to find workers in key industries for which the British apparently have no taste.

You may say, at least by taking such a step we protect British workers.

Well, no. Because workers are taxpayers too. As Brexit Britain finds itself financing more and more inefficiency of this kind, it will find that more and more workers are being forced more and more often to dip into their own pockets to protect such jobs. Inevitably, that can’t be sustained indefinitely.

The protection that was supposed to preserve jobs will be impossible to fund in the long run and unemployment will grow – as will poverty.

So what can one say about the precious blue passport? Adapting Shakespeare, I’d have to say it was a tale, told by an idiot, and symbolising nothing.

He wrote ‘signifying’. And he was talking about life. But, hey, this way it seems to work just as well for blue passports and Brexit generally.