I had some fun on Twitter over the weekend. Here’s a tweet I put out there:
One of my favourite Brexiteer lines is “If you like the EU so much why don’t you go and live there?” Perhaps because Brexit removed my right to do so?
Although I didn’t tweet this to specifically phish for information, what I learned was interesting to me. A lot of people don’t actually understand what a right is and by extension, when that right has been taken away. Many Leavers shot back at me that Brexit hadn’t removed my right to live and work in the EU at all. I could fill in some forms. I could get a visa. What was my complaint? Any British citizen could still work in the EU if they qualified and did the right things.
Except, this just demonstrates a deep lack of understanding of what constitutes a right and what does not. And for the political right to be failing to understand this is interesting in and of itself given rights have been at the centre of so many of their concerns over the last thirty years.
But first, let’s define the difference between a right and a privilege. A right is something that cannot be legally denied to anyone who falls within its remit. Basically, if you are a citizen of a country that grants a particular right, no government can legislate to take it away from you without legally removing the right in the first place. A privilege, on the other hand, is something that is legally allowed but is at the discretion of whomever is in a position to dispense whatever is contained within the privilege.
The easiest example of a privilege is the drinking of alcohol. Everyone who is over 18 in the UK and tries to buy alcohol between licensed hours has the privilege to do so – not the right. For instance, if I run a pub and you come in obviously, stinking drunk, I can refuse to serve you. I can do so because the drinking of booze is a privilege not a right. If you had the right to drink alcohol if you were over 18 and it was during licensed hours, I could not legally deny you a drink, no matter how drunk I thought you were. To do so would legally be the same as if I told you to get out because you looked gay or Irish or because you were black.
The best example to use here of how important rights can be is the National Rifle Association in America. They certainly know the difference between a right and a privilege. The crux of their whole campaign is keeping the second amendment of the US constitution in place, which is the right to bear arms. They know that if gun ownership becomes a privilege, even one with few caveats, they have lost the game. The difference between your right to bear arms and a privilege to bear them is strikingly different. This is the little talked about difference between the US and Canada – in Canada, bearing arms is a privilege, not a right. Now, it is much easier to get a gun in Canada than it is in the UK, but you can still be denied the legal ownership of guns for many reasons. This is what happens when something is a privilege, not a right – there will be someone who thinks they should have had a gun when they don’t, I should have been allowed a drink, I’m a grown man, etc. Someone will be denied access, inevitably, and the NRA knows this.
The British right knows this as well. At least, it used to. Remember when they used to rail against the European Court of Human Rights? It was because they understood that when you give people rights, it has consequences. Whether you think the consequence of the rights being given out is a good thing or not, you can’t deny they exist. I could stay on Brexit and demonstrate this point even further – people from the EU27 used to have the right to live and work in the UK, now they do not. Brexiteers mostly seem happy about this fact.
Yet they cannot seem to understand that they, like all Britons without an EU passport, have lost their right to live and work in the EU at the same time. Yes, British people can still work in the EU, obviously – they can buy property there that meets immigration standards, they can get a job and then a visa, they can even pretty much buy a passport from a few member states – but this isn’t the same as having the automatic right to live and work in the EU. The fact that you have to do something proactive, even it is just filling out some forms (which it isn’t, by the way), and there is even a small percentage chance you will be turned down, this turns your former right to live and work in the EU into a privilege.
Now, it is a perfectly reasonable position to say that you either don’t mind having lost this right or even that you are happy about it. I can disagree, but it is an intellectually defensible position. But saying, ‘We haven’t lost our right to live in the EU’ means you either just don’t understand the basics of the Brexit deal or you don’t understand the difference between a right and a privilege. Or both. It’s an important distinction – just ask the NRA if you don’t believe me.
While I’m here, I’ve got a new book coming out in the autumn entitled The Patient. It’s about a woman who goes into the hospital to give birth to her child, being two weeks overdue….and ends up staying in the hospital for a year, still pregnant the whole time. If you want to find out more, here’s where you can have a better look.
We haven’t yet – completely, particularly in a Covid-19 contest – lost our right to attempt to leave the UK without being detained for the act of trying to do so. We have lost any right to arrive in an EU country without agreement.
One of my favourite Brexiteer lines is “If you like the EU so much why don’t you go and live there?” Perhaps because Brexit removed my right to do so?
I think you’re being very disingenuous here. Framing the question like this implies that, your right having been removed, you are now unable to go and live in the EU. In other words, you’re excluding the middle: you’re positing two hypothetical situations, one in which you have the right to go and live and work in the EU, and one in which you are completely unable to do so, and ignoring the actual reality (which is they you are perfectly at liberty to apply to live in an EU country and stand a good chance of being allowed to, so claiming that the reason you don’t do so is that you’ve lost your right to is, if true, incredibly childish: it’s like you reached for your Frosties at the breakfast table, and your parents said, ‘don’t just grab for things, say “please”‘ and you said ‘well if I have to ask for something instead of it just being my right to grab it then I don’t want it any more’). Your statement is based on a false premise.
And it’s true that when presented with such ‘when did you stop beating your wife?’ type questions, a lot of people get confused and are unable to express themselves. They know there’s something wrong with the question, and they know what the answer is, but they aren’t sure exactly what, so they end up trying to redefine terms in it to try to make it make sense and to get the correct answer.
This isn’t unique to people who supported the UK leaving the European Union. some quite intelligent people can be caught out by that sort of thing, especially if they’re not paying attention.
What you’ve done is deliberately set a rhetorical trap and are now claiming that the fact that people fell into it proves their lack of intelligence.
I never said anything about people’s lack of intelligence. I just said I think people are confused by the difference between a right and a privilege and that the distinction is important.
I just said I think people are confused by the difference between a right and a privilege and that the distinction is important.
Well, to start off, you didn’t say anything about ‘people’, you specifically targeted ‘Leavers’ and ‘the political right’. Absolutely nothing you wrote even implies that you think this is an issue on which there is a general lack of understanding, or that anyone on your side might also be confused.
And secondly, as outlined above, you are laying into ‘people’ (actually just Leavers) for misunderstanding something that you phrased very confusingly.
If you still can’t understand, how about you take your own analogy, that of getting a drink? Say on a hot day (we used to have those) I was complaining about my parched throat and how thirsty I was. And as we passed a pub, a friend said, ‘if you’re so thirsty why don’t you go in and get a drink?’
And I said, ‘Well, maybe because I don’t have a right to a drink, do I?’
You understand that would be silly, right? Not having a right to a drink isn’t actually a good reason not to go in and get one. Perhaps my friend would try to work out what I was on about:
‘What do you mean? You haven’t any money? I’ll lend you some.’
‘No, I’ve got money.’
‘Aaaah… is this one of the ones you’ve been barred from?’
‘No, I’ve never been in there in my life.’
‘So… why do you think you won’t get served?’
‘Oh, I’ve no reason to think I wouldn’t get served. I probably would, in fact. Dear Lord it’s hot. I think I may pass out.’
‘Then what do you mean? Why don’t you just go in and get a drink, if you’re so thirsty?’
‘Well, say I went in there. I went up to the bar. I asked for a drink. The barman, or barmaid, or barnonbinaryperson, could just say, “No”. Their serving me is entirely at their discretion. I have no right to a drink, you see.’
‘But you want a drink?’
‘Heck, do I!’
‘And you have money? And you have no reason to think they wouldn’t serve you?’
‘Yep. Nope.’
‘So…’
‘… I’m just going to stand out here. Baking. Because I don’t have a right to a drink and if I don’t have a right to a drink I’m not going to get one, even though I want one and there is in fact nothing practically stopping me from getting one, right here, right now.’
… and at this point is it any wonder if my friend is confused about why exactly I am cutting off my nose to spite my face? It is not unsurprising that, in the face of such utter toddler-esque unreasonableness, my friend doesn’t think that I’m making some pedantic point about political philosophy which they should explain to me but am, in fact, just being an unreasonable grumpy git? And responds accordingly?
But he is not able to live and work “in the EU”. He can only live and work in one EU country and his privilege is limited to one particular state where he applied. Every time he wants to move he needs a new visa/permit etc.
He is correct. Brexit has removed his right and ability to work and live IN THE EU.
Brexit has removed his right and ability to work and live IN THE EU.
Rubbish. He could easily move to say, Portugal, and live and work there. Then he would be working and living in the EU, wouldn’t he?
He has lost his right to live and work and move anywhere in the EU without any restriction, true. But that’s a different thing from not being able to move to to somewhere in the EU to live and work, which is what the question ‘if you like the EU so much why don’t you go live there?’ is asking. He absolutely still can move to the EU to live and work, just as much as he could move to, say, Canada to live and work, or to the USA to live and work, or could have moved to Australia to live and work before Australia closed its borders.