Just what is the point of the European Union?
For the
best part of the last 30 years, support for the European Union (EU) and
Britain’s role within it has been a badge of honour for the left. Just why is
this?
Time was
when – until around the mid-1980s or so – much of the British left favoured
withdrawal from the then European Economic Community (EEC), while the
Conservative Party was split. So much so that pro-European Tory MPs and
ministers, infuriated by Margaret Thatcher’s mounting antipathy towards the
European project, brought the Iron Lady down in 1990 for reasons which now
appear bizarre. After her fall, the whole issue of Europe would poison the
party, root to tip; while the highly Europhile New Labour grasped the political
nettle. Even entry into the euro seemed likely at one point.
Yet the
British left’s quarter-century-long enthusiastic support for all things Europe
is at odds not only with UK public opinion, but increasingly, the facts on the
ground. The euro experiment has been a political, economic and social disaster:
impoverishing huge swathes of southern Europe, tying it to a currency with no
escape, and robbing member states of anything resembling democracy or control
of their own destinies. Freedom of movement, the dream of so many
pro-Europeans, is imploding in tandem with the Schengen agreement. EU political
institutions not only profoundly lack democratic legitimacy, but are inert,
helpless, in the face of the greatest refugee crisis since 1945. National
governments cannot agree on what day of the week it is, let alone how to
collectively respond; anti-immigration sentiment is rising across much of the
continent. Is the very thing which was designed to help bring peace and
stability to a region so often ravaged by war now unwittingly serving to
provoke not unity, but mounting anger and division?
By the
end of 2017, perhaps as soon as next year, the British people, denied a voice
on their country’s role within the EU for over four decades, will go to the
polls to decide whether the UK should remain… or leave. This article challenges
my fellow travellers on the left to do what they have so often neglected: to
scrutinise the EU’s very many failings, think long and hard, and ask
yourselves: is staying in really worth it?
The
forerunner to the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC),
was the brainchild of extraordinarily enlightened French and West German
ministers. Twice in the preceding 36 years, their countries had subjected one
another to untold levels of human suffering; and Europe’s longer history had
involved constant cycles of violence and misery. The peace we all take for
granted now was a dream to statesmen such as Robert Schuman of France and
Konrad Adenauer of West Germany: both of whom displayed immense courage and
remarkably far-sighted vision. Countries which trade with one another do not
fight each other. The European project, based on supranationalism and
interdependence, was born.
Yet given
how recently the two countries had been at war, and the natural mistrust of
both their peoples, what would have happened had the ECSC, founded in Paris in
1951 (where Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands joined France and
West Germany as co-signatories), been put to a democratic vote? And where
Europe was concerned, lack of demonstrable popular consent would prove a
constant and ever-mounting problem.
Monnet and Adenauer. Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.Jean
Monnet, founding father of the ECSC, has often wrongly had the following apocryphal lines attributed to him:
Europe’s nations should be guided towards the super-state
without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished
by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which
will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.
In fact,
these weren’t Monnet’s words at all – but those of the Conservative politician
and author, Adrian Hilton, in The Principality and
Power of Europe,
published in 1997. Yet this is almost by the by. That so many have ascribed the
quote to Monnet is because so many have been so shocked at what the European
project has since become.
The ECSC
morphed first into the Common Market, then the EEC. Britain joined in 1973, and
its public approved membership by two to one in the 1975 referendum: where
recently elected Tory leader, Mrs Thatcher, campaigned passionately for a ‘Yes’
vote. But what the public were sold then – a mutually beneficial club based on
free trade and nothing more – was not remotely what would transpire; and
gradually, the penny began to drop.
Contrary
to her reputation for fire and brimstone (and especially, the myths she
indulged following her downfall), Thatcher went on to sign the Single European
Act: the first substantive revision of the Treaty of Rome since 1957, which
codified not only economic, but political co-operation between member states.
With the sole exception of the Lisbon Treaty, no single piece of legislation
did more to accelerate the EEC’s transformation from free trade zone to
political behemoth.
Under
pressure from various key Cabinet ministers – Nigel Lawson, Sir Geoffrey Howe,
Douglas Hurd and John Major – and greatly against her better judgement,
Thatcher even acceded to Britain’s membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism
(ERM): where sterling would shadow the deutschmark, as events would prove, at
entirely the wrong rate. But when it came to proposals for a single currency,
the Prime Minister balked.
In the
House of Commons, Thatcher focused on the obvious threat which a common
currency would pose to national, economic and parliamentary sovereignty. Yet
with stunning levels of prophecy, her autobiography, paraphrased by The
Telegraph in 2010, set out her broader fears:
(Thatcher) warned John Major, her
euro-friendly chancellor of the exchequer, that the single currency could not
accommodate both industrial powerhouses such as Germany and smaller countries
such as Greece. Germany, forecast Thatcher, would be phobic about inflation,
while the euro would prove fatal to the poorer countries because it would
“devastate their inefficient economies”.
To watch
the famous “No! No! No!” debate in the Commons in October
1990 is to observe two things. First, a Prime Minister in absolute command of
the issues: who foresaw with impeccable prescience that no country which loses
control of its money supply can retain control over financial policy, parliamentary
sovereignty, or even its democracy. And second: support which came across the
floor from figures such as Tony Benn or David Owen as opposed to her own party; especially, her
own Cabinet.
Thatcher’s
increasingly autocratic style – going over the head of Sir Geoffrey, the Deputy
Prime Minister, and ignoring collective Cabinet government in so doing – would
bring her down within weeks. Yet her words have echoed down the years since. The
Iron Lady got many things wrong in her final years in office and divided the
country hugely throughout her premiership; but on Europe, who now could
possibly claim she did not foresee with perfect clarity exactly what was coming?
No. No. No.
The President of the Commission,
Mr. Delors, said at a press conference the other day that he wanted the
European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the
Commission to be the Executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the
Senate. No. No. No.
Margaret Thatcher. Wikicommons. Some rigths reserved.History
carries with it many strange, bitter ironies. Precisely because Thatcher had become
so enormously unpopular by the end of her time, and also thanks to the
fratricidal nature of her removal, instead of these words being heeded, two
things began to happen. Under her successor, Major, the Conservative Party,
descended into poison and acrimony: with the amiable Prime Minister undermined
at every turn by Eurosceptic backbenchers, egged on by an embittered
ex-Premier. The suddenly renascent Labour Party, meanwhile, defined itself
against the hopelessly split Tories: the more the latter obsessed with Europe,
the more Tony Blair guided his unified troops towards embracing Britain’s
destiny at the heart of the European project.
To look
back at that time – and, indeed, the years after Blair entered Downing Street –
is to cringe at how many on the left assumed Tory Euroscepticism was based on
narrow-minded xenophobia or fear of the other. However unelectable the Tories
undoubtedly were, or obsessed with Europe they had plainly become, this meant
that the detail of matters of profound importance – economic, political,
social, and above all, democratic – was never properly discussed. The left
simply embraced Europe as a fundamentally good thing; it never really stopped
to ask itself why.
To be
sure, what had now become the EU appeared to offer the kind of social
protections which Thatcher had sought to remove; certainly, a spirit of
open-minded, outward-looking internationalism chimed in perfectly with the
broad church which New Labour had become. Yet even as it basked in public
approbation, Blair’s government never sought to explain the benefits of the EU
to the British people, nor allow them any say (for example, on the proposed EU
Constitution) via a referendum. There was simply no serious attempt by
Europhiles to set out the merits of their position. Was this because in
practice, there scarcely were any?
During
this time, like so many of my friends and contemporaries, I was an EU
enthusiast too. Beyond some warm, fuzzy sense of peace on Earth and goodwill to
all men – an aspiration of what Europe could be, not what it actually was – and
blinkered antipathy to anything the Tories stood for, I never really thought
about it in much depth. The Maastricht Treaty was so dense, so impenetrable, so
voluminous, it seemed better suited for use as an offensive weapon than a
vitally important document; goodness knows, I had little or no knowledge of the
intricacies of the European Council, the European Commission, or the European
Parliament. Which of these bodies had what powers, I couldn’t have begun to
articulate; nor could anyone else I knew either.
All
except one individual, that is. Alan Sked, founder of the UK Independence
Party, was a highly engaging lecturer on my Master’s course. Each week, he
would warn us of the wholly illegitimate superstate which the EU would
inevitably become; each week, we’d all sit laughing. As befits trendy leftie
students, almost none of us took him seriously; but like Thatcher and many on
the right, Sked, a brilliant man, had long foreseen the direction of travel. If
you’re reading this Alan, mea culpa. You were right.
Freedom of movement
Mind you,
there was one detail I’d parrot to anyone who challenged me about my
Europhilia. Freedom of movement. The idea that, should I so choose, I could up,
leave, live and work in any other member state was marvellous as far as I was
concerned: but in implementing this, the EU had begun to sow the seeds of its
own downfall.
For
there’s a flipside to freedom of movement. Not merely mass immigration but
uncontrollable immigration; nations which lose control of their own borders.
And in a globalised world, that inevitably means those from poorer member
states migrating to wealthier ones.
At the
time, to my shame, I thought the mounting complaints surrounding this,
especially following EU enlargement in 2004, were barely concealed racism. They
were anything but. Migration on such a scale – the largest wave of inward migration ever to hit the British Isles –
pushes wages down and local people, especially those living in poorer areas,
out of jobs: generating anger, resentment, alienation, atomisation. The
political and media narrative in Britain began to change. In line, it should be
noted, with much of northern Europe.
Yet as
public frustration grew, still the British people were denied any say on
anything to do with the EU. And even in places where referenda were held – in France, the Netherlands, or
(twice) in Ireland – rejections of the Nice Treaty, European Constitution, or
Lisbon Treaty were met with studied indifference on the part of EU leaders.
Their project was now such a runaway express train that no mere member state
could be allowed to derail it; so the Constitution was turned into the Lisbon
Treaty, and when the Irish people – the only national electorate anywhere in
the EU to be allowed a vote on the most far-reaching, seismic piece of
legislation in its history – vetoed this, they were simply asked to vote again.
Democracy? What democracy?
Why was
Lisbon so important? In amending and consolidating
the Treaties of Rome and Maastricht, it:
- Moved the Council of
Ministers from requiring unanimous agreement to qualified majority voting
in at least 45 areas of policy - Brought in a ‘double
majority’ system: which necessitates the support of at least 55% of European
Council members, who must also represent at least 65% of EU citizens, in
almost all areas of policy - Established a more powerful
European Parliament, which would now forms part of a bicameral legislature
along with the Council of Ministers - Granted a legal personality
to the EU, enabling it to agree treaties in its own name - Created a new long term
President of the European Council and a High Representative for Foreign
and Security Policy - And made the Charter of
Fundamental Rights, the EU’s bill of rights, legally binding.
Whether
you agree with these changes or not is beside the point. The point is: the
peoples of Europe were never given a vote on it. Instead, all this was just
pushed through over the European public’s collective head. In the twenty-first century,
how can such profound constitutional changes – which impact on all Europeans,
whether they realise it or not – be allowed without democratic consent?
Unelected bureaucrats and
apparatchiks
In any
polity, if leaders or legislators do not accede to their position through the
ballot box, this lack of accountability breeds out-of-touch, unanswerable
governance about which the public can do nothing. Yet that is the reality of
the European Union. The President of the Commission is approved by the Parliament;
except this happens unopposed. All Commissioners – who together, comprise the
executive of the EU – are nominated by member states.
The
President of the European Council – that is to say, the de facto President
of Europe, the EU’s principal representative on the global stage – is
chosen by the heads of government of the member states. And even the European Parliament, whose members are all directly
elected by the public, (1) has overseen constant falling turnout ever since the
first elections in 1979 (of below 50% at each of the last four European
elections, and a miserable 42.5% in 2014); (2) cannot formally initiate
legislation; (3) does not contain a formal opposition.
In terms
of genuine democracy, most of the above is unrecognisable. If more and more
people believe that powers are shifting away from their hands and national
legislatures towards a group of illegitimate, unelected bureaucrats and
apparatchiks, that’s probably because they’re right.
One such
apparatchik was Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council’s first full-time
President. An individual less cut out for the position of global ambassador for
Europe, it’s impossible to conceive of; and following his appointment, one man
in particular wasn’t about to allow him to forget it.
As the
EU’s institutions have steadily fallen into disrepair, and publics across
Europe grown more and more infuriated at the acquiescence of their national
assemblies and established parties, populists have increasingly flourished.
Ugly, lowest common denominator populists, in many cases; but when it comes to
Europe, that doesn’t mean they don’t often have a point. So it was that as the
sheepish Van Rompuy, who probably isn’t even a household name in his own
household, presented himself to the Parliament, UKIP leader Nigel Farage gave
it to him with both barrels:
Who are you? I’d never heard of
you. Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you. I would like to ask you,
President! Who voted for you? And what mechanism do the peoples of Europe have
to remove you?
Nigel Farage. Wikimedia. Public domain.
Farage is
wrong about most things; his opinions on the refugee crisis, for example, are
abhorrent. But like Thatcher, he’s been proven spectacularly correct on the EU again and again and
again; and in any case, he’s only gained a position of such influence because
of the enormous disconnect between Eurocrats and European voters. Which in
2008/9, was highlighted in no uncertain terms by Václav Klaus, then President
of the Czech Republic.
Václav Klaus
In
December 2008, Klaus met with the leaders of various European Parliamentary
groups at Hradcany Castle, overlooking Prague. His country had yet to sign the
Lisbon Treaty. You might imagine this would have been a convivial meeting, with
full respect shown towards a democratically elected head of state. Quite the reverse.
Daniel
Cohn-Bendit, leader of the European Greens, complained bitterly that the EU
flag was not in evidence above the castle, and plonked his own flag down on the
table. He then informed the Czech President: “I don’t care about your opinions
on the Lisbon Treaty”.
After the
appalling Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the EU Parliament, weighed in on Cohn-Bendit’s
behalf, it was the turn of the Irish MEP, Brian Crowley: who fulminated against
Klaus’ apparent support of the successful ‘No’ campaign in the recent
referendum. When Klaus replied: “The biggest insult to the Irish people is not
to accept the result”, Crowley bawled: “You will not tell me what the
Irish think. As an Irishman, I know it best.”
If this
was bad, it would get worse. Far worse. Two months later, Klaus was invited to
speak to the European Parliament as head of a member state. Europe’s MEPs –
supposed servants of the people – were clearly very unused to being told
anything other than how wonderful and important they all were. Instead of
engaging in the standard empty platitudes, Klaus took the opportunity to
deliver perhaps the most important speech ever made in the continental
legislature:
Are you really convinced that
every time you vote, you are deciding something that must be decided here in
this hall and not closer to the citizens, ie. in the individual European
states?… In a normal parliamentary system, a faction of MPs supports the
government and a faction supports the opposition. In the European Parliament,
this arrangement is missing. Here, only one single alternative is being
promoted and those who dare think differently are labelled as enemies of
European integration.
As if to
prove Klaus right, jeers and whistles now began to ring out around the chamber.
Undeterred, the President continued, reminding his audience of his country’s
tragic recent history under Communist rule: “A political system that permitted
no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition… where there is
no opposition, there is no freedom. That is why political alternatives must
exist”.
At
length, Klaus arrived at the coup de grace. In a few softly spoken paragraphs,
he not only punctured the pomposity of the delegates as no-one ever had before;
he also set out exactly what was wrong with the European Union, and why this
fundamental problem could not be resolved:
The relationship between a
citizen of a member state and a representative of the Union is not a standard
relationship between a voter and a politician, representing him or her. There
is also a great distance (not only in a geographical sense) between citizen and
Union representatives, which is much greater than it is inside the member
countries.
Since there is no European demos
– and no European nation – this defect cannot be solved by strengthening the
role of the European Parliament either. This would, on the contrary, make the
problem worse and lead to an even greater alienation between the citizens of
the European countries and Union institutions.
This distance is often described
as the democratic deficit; the loss of democratic accountability, the
decision-making of the unelected – but selected – ones, the bureaucratisation
of decision-making. The proposals… included in the rejected European Constitution
or in the not much different Lisbon Treaty would make this defect even worse.
There
followed a quite extraordinary spectacle. Unable to bear the laser guided truth
missiles raining down upon them from the lectern, 200 MEPs rose to their feet
and walked out. In a dispiriting sign of just how impervious the British left
had become on the whole question of the EU, many of those doing so were Labour
MEPs. As demonstrations of the farce that is European ‘democracy’ go, it will never be bettered.
Vaclav Klaus. Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.
In his
speech, Klaus had set out just how counter-productive the European project had
become. Something designed to bring Europe closer together was, in fact,
threatening to drive its peoples apart: because without democratic consent, and
in the absence of a European nation, how had the public agreed to what was
being implemented over their heads, in their name?
It was
also increasingly clear that Europe could only be a superstate, or a collection
of sovereign states. It could not be both, operating under the same
institutional umbrella. The former required Europe-wide consent which had never
been asked for, let alone provided; the latter would only lead to paralysis,
with the various members unable to agree on common policy and pursuing often
wildly diverging national interests.
Leftist
supporters of the EU, even when noting many of its deficiencies, often argue
that Britain must stay in to pursue and lead calls for reform. But the point
is: for the reasons Klaus set out, it is impossible to reform. The democratic
deficit has been spoken about with deepening alarm for 20 years and more; not
only has nothing been done to change this, but the Union’s institutions have
accrued considerably more unaccountable (in many respects, illegitimate) powers
over that time. Uncontrolled immigration has continued across the continent;
but in the face of an unprecedented refugee crisis and the emergence of right
wing populism in Denmark, England, France and elsewhere, Jean-Claude Juncker,
President of the Commission, describes freedom of movement as one of the EU’s “greatest
achievements”.
Jean-Claude Juncker. Wikimedia. Public domain.
Then, the euro
And then,
of course, there’s the euro. Nowhere has the intransigent, indifferent, fanatical
nature of the Union been displayed more openly than over the ongoing economic
catastrophe it proudly oversees. As Thatcher noted in her autobiography, tying
so many hugely different economies together under one monetary unit was bound
to lead to disaster. Yet this was compounded by (1) no public mandate for this
in any of those countries; (2) eurozone states, in theory if not, as we shall
see, always in practice, keeping control of their budgets and tax affairs; (3)
German monetary discipline in the face of appalling repercussions elsewhere;
(4) despite all being part of one currency, member states remaining responsible
for the debts they accrue.
The
latter point has meant that far and away the euro’s strongest member, Germany,
has been able to have its cake and eat it: flooding the market with cheap
exports, while deliberately holding wages down at home, and building up the largest trade surplus anywhere in the world. That
surplus automatically grows simply as a result of prices being artificially low
in Germany, artificially high elsewhere. Its own domestic and political
priorities have trumped those of many other euro members.
Meanwhile,
when others get into difficulty, they don’t have the option of devaluing and
recovering. Instead, all they can do is put taxes up again and again
(destroying their competitiveness in the process) and cut, cut, cut: with
profound social consequences. The result has been youth unemployment across
southern Europe of eye-watering levels: a whole generation has been written off
just to preserve a currency which nobody with an ounce of economic literacy
believes can work.
The euro
has been such a disaster that since its launch amid much fanfare and bureaucrat
backslapping, Italy has scarcely
grown at all: and
recently experienced twelve consecutive quarters of contraction. As the
Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan, has noted, even outside the single
currency, Britain is now part of the only trade bloc in the world which is
actually shrinking: a bloc most of whose members (but not so much the
UK) face mounting demographic timebombs too.
Meanwhile,
member states trapped inside the euro’s economic prison have found themselves
unable (or rather, not permitted) to change course, even if they wanted to.
Ireland was told it would have to have its budget approved by the EU and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) before it could hold
elections. In Italy,
euro architect, Mario Monti, appointed as a lifetime senator just three days
earlier, was parachuted in to lead an entire government of wholly unelected
technocrats in implementing harsh austerity reforms, regardless of what the
public wished. And in Greece, the cradle of democracy, events have had to be
seen to be believed.
Greece
Greece,
of course, is the ultimate example of an economy which should never have been
part of the euro to begin with; and whose then leaders conspired with Goldman Sachs in cooking the books to gain
admission. The moment it was accepted into, in William Hague’s famous words, a “burning building with no exits”, its fate was sealed.
A great
deal of nonsense has been spoken about Greece somehow being responsible for the
unmitigated economic catastrophe in which it finds itself: how, in the parlance
so beloved of austerians, it “maxed out the credit card, then expected others
to pay the bill”. In practice, Greece has been the world’s most enduring victim
of the 2008 global crash. This was caused, of course, by the toxic sub-prime
mortgage bubble bursting; in consequence of which, the private exposure of the
banks was piled onto the public across the developed world.
For
Greece, already a weak service economy hugely dependent on tourism, the
downgrading of national bonds via the corporate sector and credit rating
agencies was especially crippling: piling up interest payments to the point
where they became a noose around the country’s neck. Greek government 10-year
bond yields, generally sailing along at around 5% until 2010, soared to an unthinkable 48.6% by March 2012.
This
meant of the so-called European Central Bank (ECB)/IMF ‘bailout’ loans which
Greece received, fully three-quarters went towards debt and interest
repayments, paying back the IMF, and recapitalising the banks. Just 11% was
used for government cash needs. The loans barely went towards stabilising the
Greek economy at all; and were accompanied by austerity packages so lunatic,
they should have come with a public health warning.
When
George Papandreou, the Greek Prime Minister, announced the government’s desire
to hold a referendum on the 2011 ‘bailout’, he was forced out, and replaced, as
in Italy, by a technocratic, puppet administration. There was no election; and
Lucas Papademos, the new Premier, was a former ECB
Vice-President. The Greek people had been warned.
Entirely
predictably, given skyrocketing repayments and strangulating austerity, the
package failed; and in the meantime, Papademos had intensified the mass sell-off of
public assets. Pushed
almost beyond breaking point, the public had had enough: voting in a government
led by radical leftists, Syriza, earlier this year; then rejecting another
draconian bail-out via referendum on July 5.
Since the
new government’s accession, it had frantically sought a sensible accommodation
with the group of euro finance ministers. Any such agreement would
self-evidently feature an enormous write-off of debt. But as the maverick Yanis
Varoufakis, Don Quixote himself, quickly discovered, the Eurogroup wasn’t
interested in helping a stricken member along the path to sustainability and
any kind of viable future. Instead, for nakedly political reasons, it wanted
its pound of flesh. Papandreou had been punished for insurrection; so too must
the new Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras.
The aim,
plainly, was to bring Tsipras’ anti-austerity administration down as quickly as
possible. The outbreak of democracy in Greece was a threat to be treated with
contempt. Varoufakis found himself
confronted by the
ultimate blockhead: Wolfgang Schäuble, the ultra-conservative German finance
minister.
The other side insisted on a
‘comprehensive agreement’, which meant they wanted to talk about everything. My
interpretation is that when you want to talk about everything, you don’t want
to talk about anything… There were absolutely no (new) positions put forward on
anything by them.
(Schäuble was) consistent
throughout… His view was, ‘I’m not discussing the programme – this was accepted
by the previous (Greek) government and we can’t possibly allow an election to
change anything’.
So at that point, I said: ‘Well
perhaps we should simply not hold elections any more for indebted countries’,
and there was no answer.
65 years
previously, the ECSC had been born amid a spirit of solidarity: nations putting
aside their differences and working together for the common good. Through no
fault of its own (other than having signed up to the euro, that is),
Varoufakis’ country was trapped in the worst depression seen anywhere in the
developed world since the 1930s – but the EU was now a purely
political project, driven by self-interested nation states. Those governments
which had accepted austerity packages – in Portugal, Spain, Ireland or Italy –
were horrified at the idea of Greece winning substantial concessions, because it “would obliterate them
politically: they would have to answer to their own people why they didn’t
negotiate like we were doing”. Greece was cornered from almost all sides.
What
happened when Varoufakis tried to discuss economics in the Eurogroup?
There was point blank refusal to
engage in economic arguments. Point blank. You put forward an argument that
you’ve really worked on, to make sure it’s logically coherent, and you’re just
faced with blank stares. It is as if you haven’t spoken. What you say is
independent of what they say. You might as well have sung the Swedish national
anthem – you’d have got the same reply.
Yanis Varoufakis. Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.The day
after the referendum, Varoufakis resigned, and rode off into the sunset. In his absence,
the following weekend, the whole world witnessed just what a grotesque
spectacle the EU had become. Far from seeking to accommodate Tsipras, Eurozone
leaders and finance ministers simply piled on more and more pressure; and were armed with the ECB’s
threat of unlawfully cutting off
liquidity to Greek
banks. Even the central bank was now a political tool to be used by politicians
as they saw fit. The Eurogroup – which please note, isn’t even a legal entity – didn’t want a workable
solution for Greece. It wanted dominion.
The
subsequent ‘agreement’ was even harsher than that rejected at the plebiscite:
Varoufakis described it as a “new Versailles Treaty”.
The Greek left now began to split; but Tsipras had been shown where the true
power lay in Europe, and had no way out. On 22 July, he won a parliamentary
vote clearing the way for Greece to agree talks with its creditors on the
horrendous new package; but this was no victory. To this thunderstruck
observer, for all the world, it was like watching a national Parliament vote
itself out of existence.
Tsipras
has since been forced to call early elections: the centre-right recently caught
up with Syriza in the polls. The euro may well be about to
claim its latest victim; the people of Greece will continue to pay an
intolerable price.
Solidarity with Greece
During
his triumphant Labour leadership campaign, Jeremy Corbyn, hero of the British
left, has spoken of “solidarity with Greece”. In practice, what does this
actually mean? This summer revealed as never before how few friends
Greece has within the EU: eastern European states and Finland were arguably
even more draconian in their stance than Germany. There was no attempt to find
a consensus which would genuinely help the ravaged Greek economy recover at
all; instead, the can was kicked down the road yet again. ‘Extend and pretend’,
not real action, was the response to an enormous economic and social crisis
affecting an EU member. Solidarity? What solidarity?
Britain
is but one often isolated voice among 28 member states, and not even in the
euro (despite which, extraordinarily, the European Commission has been trying
to enforce UK deficit reduction ever since 2008. Tory austerity? It comes by express
order of Eurocrats, dear readers). Even in the wildly implausible scenario of a
Corbyn General Election victory in 2020, what could a government led by him
actually do? Nothing. Proponents of the EU argue that this is temporary: that
the right is currently dominant across much of Europe, and the Union will
inevitably rediscover its ‘old values’ when the left reasserts itself
electorally.
But this
doesn’t stand up. Actually, the only way the euro will stand any chance in
future is if a superstate is formally agreed and approved of at the ballot box
by its members; and this superstate, in the manner of the federal US, then
takes on responsibility for all economic and taxation policy, as well as all
debts accrued. The chances of this? Zero. The Eurozone publics and many of its
governments would never stand for it.
The great
mistake of the EU’s architects was to assume that, in a world of ever-closer
interdependence, nation states could gradually be swept away in the name of a
greater cause. In fact, as this important article explains, Europe’s elites knew that disaster was inevitable even
before the euro was launched: “An economic crisis would favour economic
integration”. In other words, the woes which would befall the euro’s southern
states would, or so the Eurocrats believed, inevitably force them into a
federal superstate.
Ironically,
this is essentially the same error as another enormous, unwieldy Union – the
Soviet Union – made. Both nationalism and especially its benign cousin,
patriotism, will always be innate and powerful forces; people will always need
a place called home. And when those people have the right to formulate their
own policies and forge their own national destinies at the ballot box removed
from them, they react. It’s inevitable. “Europe’s nations should be guided
towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening” –
but more and more people do understand what is happening, and they don’t like
it one bit.
Thus in
the face of the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War, the response
of a good number of eastern European states – notably Hungary and Slovakia –
has been one of fear. It’s true that leaders such as the appalling Viktor
Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister, have irresponsibly whipped this fear up; but it’s also the case that
peoples across Europe simply did not vote for migration of whatever nature on
this enormous scale.
Meanwhile,
what can other governments do but respond to these fears? The Danish government
have taken to placing advertisements in the Lebanese press warning
refugees of the hurdles they will face should they come to Denmark. The French
government have to keep at times alarming levels of support for Marine Le Pen’s
National Front in check ahead of presidential elections in 2017: where she has
become a genuine threat. The British authorities unconscionably deport 18-year-old Afghan refugees
taken in as children back to their country of origin – an approach which is not
only disgracefully inhumane, but as with its treatment of non-EU graduates, constitutes economic self-harm
– and have not fully clarified whether the same might apply to
the pitifully low numbers of Syrian children being granted asylum now.
Marine Le Pen. Wikicommons. Some rights reserved.
In the fractious Europe of 2015,
Marine Le Pen is on the rise.
Goodness knows
what Monnet, Schuman or Adenauer would have made of Europe’s shambolic response
(or rather, non-response) to this crisis; but a great deal of it is predicated
upon the forces which the European project has unwittingly unleashed. Imagine
if, instead of freedom of movement, the nations of Europe still had control
over their borders, and could decide which migrants to accept based on the
interests of their economies? Would fears about being ‘overwhelmed’ by
immigration be anything like as powerful? It’s more likely, surely, that with
national, points-based, needs-based systems keeping economic migration under
control, European public opinion would be reassured, and refugees from a war as
brutal as Syria welcomed with open arms.
In any
case: with the Syrian conflict having gone on for over 4 years, killed well over 200,000, and
displaced fully half of its entire
population, what is
the point of the EU if throughout that time, it’s never been able to provide a
co-ordinated response? Not only has it taken until now for many member states
to begin to agree on the numbers of refugees to be taken in; but there’s never
been a common approach in terms of aid, demanding Middle Eastern states do
more, or working towards the establishment of safe havens.
As it
does not have an army, and is generally less influential diplomatically than a
number of member states, the latter two points are largely beyond the EU’s
remit: but that again begs the question, what is it there for? What benefits
does it bring? What does it presently do which, if it did not exist, Europe’s
nations would not already be doing?
Brexit to where?
A
favourite trope of the left is that Britain cannot ‘isolate itself from the
world’ or ‘exist by itself’ by withdrawing from the Union. This conjures up the
bizarre image of one of the wealthiest nations and largest economies on the
planet, arguably number one in terms of soft power, somehow
waking up the day after the referendum and finding itself all alone, without a
friend anywhere. War, famine and pestilence would, insist the doomsayers,
surely follow.
Well, no
it wouldn’t. Quite the opposite. The one argument which will be trotted out
again and again between now and the referendum is that concerning jobs: so
many, we are told, are dependent upon EU membership. It might come as a
surprise to learn, then, that Britain is a net loser from the EU in financial terms;
and comically, when the UK economy outperforms the rest of the EU, it finds itself
penalised for success with a huge surcharge. £1.7bn was demanded by Brussels in
October 2014, since quietly paid off.
Is David
Cameron in a position to get these rules changed and follow Thatcher, his
celebrated predecessor, in securing a rebate? Not in a Union of 28 members with
qualified majority voting, he isn’t. Britain might have a voice in the EU; but
contrary to the Prime Minister’s protestations ahead of renegotiation, no longer holds remotely enough sway to make a substantial difference
to its direction. Angela Merkel, the true power in Europe, has declared that
freedom of movement is not up for discussion (Germany’s temporary closure of
its borders yesterday is actually within the terms of the Schengen agreement);
and when Cameron opposed Juncker’s appointment last year, he found himself in a
small minority. Of one.
David Cameron. Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Meanwhile,
as (mostly, though not entirely thanks to the euro disaster) the EU shrinks, so
does its share of British exports: which plummeted from 65% in 2006 to 45% by 2014.
As the single currency continues to strangle most of Europe’s economies, there
is no chance of this trend being reversed: the Greek saga reminding us all of
just how bleak the long term prognosis is. Nothing can or will change; southern
Europe will remain enslaved by debt, austerity will continue, and eventually,
German, Dutch and Finnish taxpayers will face an almighty reckoning. Ageing
populations across much of the continent will call welfare models ever more
into question too.
Britain
doesn’t gain economically from being part of this customs union. It loses. And having vacated
its seat at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and been prevented from making any bilateral free trade
agreement with any non-EU state since accession in 1973, there isn’t an awful
lot it can do about it: unless, that is, it leaves.
Big world Britain
Recently,
concern has grown over the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP), being negotiated in secret by the US and EU. The
UK has no say here; whatever the EU agrees, it will have to go along with.
No-one really knows what the net outcome of TTIP will be – there are strong
arguments for and against – but if it allows corporations to sue national
governments, the worst case scenario is the effective end of democracy
altogether. No wonder, some might say, Eurocrats are so keen.
In any
event, just as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) impoverished and
ruined Mexican farmers, so TTIP’s most pernicious effects would, just like
freedom of movement, inevitably be felt by those least able to absorb them. How
can the left even propose, let alone support, such a state of affairs?
There is
an alternative though. In an ever more interdependent, digital global economy,
freed from the shackles of the EU, Britain would – while still enjoying full
access to the single market via membership of the European Free Trade
Association (EFTA) – be able to make trade agreements with whoever it pleased.
It would have the best of both worlds. And as the EU shrinks economically, so
the Commonwealth grows. The latter overtook the former in 2013; while the
so-called ‘Anglosphere’ of English-speaking countries – the US, UK, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and Ireland – will soon be more populous than mainland Europe. If we
included South Africa, Caribbean democracies, Hong Kong, Singapore and (however
dubiously), rapidly rising India, much more populous.
Highlighting
the potential strength of the Anglosphere no doubt sounds quaint;
backward-looking, even. To a time of Empire long since passed, and Churchill’s
famous line about the three concentric circles. But that misses the point. Its
core members share common legal frameworks, common values, an approach to
liberalism which makes co-operation in business, economics and much else
besides very simple. There’s a reason why English is the lingua franca
of business. Why should the UK look to a union based on geography, rather than
common language, and a colossally successful common approach to trade?
And of
course, this would only form part of British commercial policy anyway. As
Hannan, the most articulate, perceptive, idealistic advocate of UK withdrawal
anywhere – whom, it is imperative, should be front and centre of the ‘Out’
campaign – has noted, the argument here shouldn’t be beloved of Little
Englanders. It should be that of Big Worlders. It’s a big world out there,
in which Britain can play its full part across all spheres: including, of course, Europe.
Daniel Hannan.Wikicommons. Gage Skidmore. Some rights resrved.
Not so much a free trade zone,
more a fiasco
If the EU
really were merely a free trade zone, it wouldn’t be necessary to make these
arguments. It’s not. It’s a political leviathan: which conducts commercial
agreements by itself, arrogates more and more powers to itself, makes and
enforces positively byzantine legislation, and has never sought the consent of
the people in the process. If any object, it ignores them; if the consequences
include economic meltdown across its southern states, it continues blithely
along its oblivious, self-congratulatory path; and in the face of real
humanitarian catastrophe on the edge of Europe, its institutions don’t so much
glide into gear, as clunk. Almost in slow motion.
The
fundamental paradox at its heart – that it acts like a de facto superstate, but
is continually paralysed by the differing interests of nation states – can
never be resolved without democratic consent across the continent, and has
caused its signature ‘achievements’ of the euro and the Schengen agreement to
descend into fiasco. It shrinks both economically and commercially; its top
down, ever more distant nature provokes mounting disquiet and reactionary
populism among peoples who have had the ability to control their own affairs
removed.
To those
on the left reading this who feel differently, I challenge you: name five
tangible benefits of EU membership. Not soft, touchy feely, aspirational
benefits; actual, real benefits. This should surely be a slam dunk given the
frequently unblinking support provided for the EU – but it’s not. I can’t find
a single benefit worth the name. All I can identify is the law of unintended
consequences acting in all its might as never before.
Thatcher
and the Eurosceptics were right all along. Not only are there no real
advantages to Britain remaining, but the EU acts against economic prosperity,
social cohesion, democracy and nation states; and step by step, is creating a
continent both divided and increasingly fractious. If it had never been
created, would anyone seriously now invent it? When the referendum comes, the
British people should vote to leave.
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