The Lisbon Treaty, at least to my eyes, looks much like the EU constitution dressed up in the political equivalent of a fur coat and Trinny and Susannah Original Magic Knickers.
For the uninitiated, T&S Original Magic Knickers – available from Littlewoods here – promise instantly to transform the larger lady into a svelte beauty who will knock the guys dead as soon as she dons her little black number.
But there’s just one snag, girls; a backside the size of a small planet, even when crammed into doubtlessly wonderful elasticated underwear, remains a fat arse.
There is simply no way for New Labour to get round the fact that it promised Britain a referendum on the EU constitution document; not even rebranding what was once brie and cucumber on ciabatta as a plain old cheese and Branston pickle sarnie removes this obligation.
Making such a point is not indicative of any latent UK Independence Party sympathies on my part, either. If a referendum did take place, I would listen to both sides in the debate, but as things stand, I would be minded to vote ‘yes’.
Of course, the British left has traditionally opposed the European Union. That line has pretty much been set in stone since the UK’s referendum on Common Market membership back in 1975. It’s just a bosses’ club, right?
And yes, there is much to dislike in the EU as things stand, from its pervasive bureaucracy and lack of democracy to the entire Fortress Europe bunker mentality.
That’s before we get to the entrenched neoliberal economic orthodoxy. Maastricht comprehensively rules out nationally-based Keynesianism policies for full employment.
Currencies – in around half the member states, anyway - cannot be depreciated, because they are subsumed into the Euro. Public expenditure is capped by European law. So even social democratic governments are forced to ‘restore competitiveness’ by cutting costs and axing jobs.
The Common Agricultural Policy, which takes up 40% of the EU budget, is an ongoing fiasco. With the varying weight of agriculture across the continent, there cannot be a ‘one size fits all’ policy on support farm incomes.
Yet – dare I say it? - the old left mindset sometimes panders more than a little to nationalist sentiment, to the point where certain Campaign Group MPs happily make common cause with rightwing Tory eurosceptics.
The EU has its progressive aspects, too. A lot of the pro-employee regulations New Labour routinely boasts of bringing in have not been introduced of the government’s own volition, but largely at the behest of Brussels.
To some extent, the EU has served as a popular front for social democracy by stealth, a consideration not unimportant at a time when British trade unions lack the weight to secure such reforms.
The EU must rank as one of the dullest topics that anyone can conceivably blog about. But then, there are virtues to dullness; read any history of Europe in the 1930s and you’ll see what I mean. Today, it is inconceivable that France and Germany could go to war. And that is a clearly good thing.
The 2004 enlargement marks the definitive end of the cold war division of the continent, and is another step towards a united democratic Europe.
However much it suits some politicians in Britain and Scandinavia to deny it, it is quite clear the EU’s founders explicitly envisaged it as a superstate in the making, as do its principle protagonists today.
The very least that can be said is that the EU seeks to transcend the notion of exclusive national sovereignty. It is already a federal system. A weak federal system, perhaps, but a federal system nevertheless.
That is not something socialists should automatically be against. It is the left that has historically called for a United States of Europe, remember. The key question is the class interests such a polity would be based on.
Taking the balance sheet as a whole, then, the socialist left should oppose the EU as currently constituted. But the way in which we express that opposition is crucial.
We are not Little Englanders and we are not irreconcilables. We shouldn’t lend credibility to hard right Tory and UKIP fronts such as Better Off Out. Instead, we should put forward positive demands for a more democratic Europe.
Comments (20)
Whatever the greater arguments don't you think that the DNA comparison that matters most is not between the Treaty - or seamless segue, even let's say "compositing" of existing Treaties - and the proposed constitution but between the composite and the old part-works?
Well said, dave! The left should be positively for a federal, united states of Europe. The "traditional", anti-European stance of what passes for the "left" in Britain is simply reactionary, nationalist nonsense. There may be a case for a referendum, on purely democtatic grounds (labour pronised one in its last manifesto): but we should campaign either for a "yes" vote or an abstention. No way should the left line up with little-england reactionaries and nutters like Bill Cash, the racist 'Unions Against Euro-Federalism' campaign and the 'Morning Star'.
Most unions presently have a wholly incoherant position: against the 'constitution', but also against Britain's 'opt-outs' on the right to strike...well, you have to make your mind up, don't you? For the left and the working class (never mind the "peace movement"), it's clear that European integration is progressive. british "left": break with the anti-European Stalinists and reactionaries, once and for all!
Dear Comrades/Citizens,Yes I do support European Unity.Those on the xenphobic Left should remember the slogan"Workers of the World Unite".Even those racist right wingers of the Nazi-Fascist inclination are supporters of a Fourth Reich of the European Union,likewise Conservatives support the Holy Roman Empire of the European Union.Why don't we of the Left join forces with those in the former Soviet Union to set up the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.As for the Constitution of the European Union idea I would personally like the to try out putting its various points into the National Constitutions of the member-states of the European Union and only then should the EU Constitution and other Laws be based on the cross-referencing of the National Constitutions,Laws,Acts,Sections,Clauses etc of its Members-States.I also think that EU in setting up its Constitution should have from the start of the 1957 Treaty of Rome been using that and other treaties as working draft constitutions towards what has been proposed-in other words getting their "acts" together.Yours Fraternally,C.Bruce Milne.C.B.Milne.
I agree with many of the points you make Dave. For the life of me I cannot understand how some on the left defend "nation state sovereignty" with all the fervour of the militant right. Perhaps they should read Marx's polemic against those on the German left after 1848 who resisted a united Germany because it was dominated by the Prussian autocrats. A federal, democratic Europe is essential to lay the basis for alternative socialist strategies - although of course the democratic, federal principle will also be necessary in building a progressive global governance too.By the way the left should also get its facts right about EU policy. There is NO law putting a ceiling on public expenditure in any Member State. There is a law about running openended budget deficits to finance such spending. But this is no more than common sense. Higher public spending should be funded by taxation - on the rich.
John Palmer
I think some people would be tempted by a more democratic Europe, but the EU has never introduced legislation that has brought that vision closer - it only moves further away. That's why Conservatives like myself want to cut our losses before it gets any worse and go back to a simple trading relationship with the EU minus the political and social burden.
I see that the little-Englad fanatics and borderline racists of 'Trade Unionists Against the EU Constitution' have a website
www.tuaeuc.org
It contains their usual lies and evasions about workers' rights and the right to strike. It does not (so far) contain their boss Doug Nichols' anti-immigration ranting. It does allow for comments. Internationalists may like to visit and make use of the comments facility.
"Its (EU) effect is to increase, rather than compensate for, pressure on national systems of social provision, as so many impediments to the free movement of factors of production....(Moravcsik)...The salutary truth is that ‘the EU is overwhelmingly about the promotion of free markets. Its primary interest group support comes from multinational firms, not least US ones.’ In short: regnant in this Union is not democracy, and not welfare, but capital. ‘The EU is basically about business."
Perry Anderson ~ "Depicting Europe", LRB, 2007
WELL worth reading the entire piece. Sometimes it appears as if many of the supporters of the "Project" (sic) on "the left" are willfully blind to the EU's core neo-liberalism provided the reality is dressed up in "internationalist" rhetoric and puffery.
"It may be neo-liberalism but its our (benign) European neo-liberalism." Straws and Emperor's clothes etc.
Having said that, the content of the current "You promised us, Dad!" referendum debate is pathetic.
Oi, lay off fat arses. They're nice.
"Sometimes it appears as if many of the supporters of the "Project" (sic) on "the left" are willfully blind to the EU's core neo-liberalism provided the reality is dressed up in "internationalist" rhetoric and puffery."
That can be changed, in fact it would be easier to do so, given the economic clout of the bloc, across the EU that it would be in any single nation.
Besides, it's not like the EU's constituent states are or would be socialist utopias incarnate.
The Common Agricultural Policy, which takes up 40% of the EU budget, is an ongoing fiasco.
It certainly is. But it is also, sadly, a policy created by and defended by the European left (SPD, PS, PCF for instance all effectively or actively defend it).
And, I bet there aren't so many takers here for the answer - namely that we should end all support for landowners.
Instead too many on the left are seduced by the "local production is better" guff that "greens" spout.
Err, no, it isn't. Insisting that we have to use all the orange juice made in the EU before we can even consider importing it from oustide doesn't just mean we get more expensive orange juice, it means we get starving people and under-development too.
(And don't even get me started on the sugar regime, which even after reform is a massive scheme to get workers to pay massive landowners to organise the starvation of the developing world)
Time to have a bit more free market capitalism.
the EU has never introduced legislation that has brought that vision closer
Grow up Tory boy. Have you even heard of the European parliament? some of us are old enough to remember that Thatch used to spend a lot of energy trying to stop it exercising more power and authority.
When Tories say the EU isin't democratic, what they really mean is that there aren't enough Tories in it. long may that continue.
AIUI the new treaty gives the Parliament more power.
The Parliament is the weakest of three main instituional pillars of the EU, but it is still a thing that all on the progressive left ought to celebrate - the democratically elected representatives of 27 nation states meeting to pass laws.
This'll shock ya, LotB, but I'll take that proposition. Or more accurately, I would argue that whether or how to support agriculture should be a matter of national policy.
And Britain, outside of the EU, would *not* be "about fee markets" and "neo liberalism", Richard?
The delusory claim of the anti-European "left" that British capitalism would somehow go away, or become less exploitative, outside of Europe is not just stupidity on stilts: it sows dangerous illusions in national capitalism, "self-sufficiency", isolationism, etc, etc. It makes as much sense (ie: as little) as the equally stupid and reactionary call for import controls. Funny that you never hear that particular call these days, even though at one time it was an integral part of the anti-Europe "case" put forward by Stalinists and other little Englanders.
Here's a good question, what would be the Franchise fior the referendum, same as Parliament, or same as local government 9where EU citizens can vote). What would happen if the treaty was voted through on EU citizen votes?...
I would argue that whether or how to support agriculture should be a matter of national policy.
Possibly worse than the CAP - imagine whate sort of protection for farmers the auld alliance of the PCF and the Gaullists would dream up for France's landowners!
Im with Janine on this one - lay off fat arses.
Seriously why the need to start the post with that reference? destroys an otherwise good post with an neccesary comment about womens arses that wanders into the sexist territory that the left seem to hold so dear.
The problem with the arguments of left critics of the EU is that they offer no realistic socialist or social democratic alternative. It's all very well listing the faults of the existing treaties, structures, and regulations. But proposals to build up the walls to create a workers' UK, or a Tartan Trotskyist state, strike me as requiems for the Alternative Economic Strategy.
The most intelligent of these approaches, offered at the moment, say, by Bernie Moss, rely on reinforcing national sovereignty. It’s not caving into the One World globalisers to accept the observation that capital flows (I would continue but it’s too hackneyed) have made the economic autarky this requires impossible, even if it were desirable. Which is unlikely, since amongst many of the contradictions of the antis, their programme would mean having controls not just on capital (fine by me) but on the movement of labour and the import and export of products (not fine)
Anderson has got into his sceptical mood (after some of the NLR crew were rather pro-EU), it would appear, because the left doesn’t have much power in Europe. Anywhere. But what’s the cause of the pro-business slant of the EU? Some blame the original Rome Treaty, but more obviously it’s due to the fact that capitalism, in its present stage, is sufficiently powerful to mould any state into a liberal shape. How else can we explain what’s happening in country after country, where no EU has ever trod? The anti-EU crowd seem to think that politics determines economics, rather than capital and class shaping the state and inter-state bonds. The fact is that the absence of large-scale class based social movements, and vigorous free market economics determine the way the Union is going.
As François Holland (French Parti Socialiste’s, General Secretary) argued during the referendum on the Constitutional Treaty, what left has any power in the EU to change its direction? Where are the serious institutional proposals to change it? He was wrong to dismiss the latter: there are genuine left federalist strategies. That there are only a few people on the UK left who support them (including those posting here) shouldn’t blind us: the anti-Treaty French left includes many who have some of the best strategies in this direction, including the left of Holland’s own Party (the gaol of a European Social Republic sums them up). If we could tie this to a class uprising…. Well it’s only a hope. If wan.
Personally I would rather watch Galloway’s underpants dry than have to engage in a referendum on this topic. As Dave says, you have yet to experience true boredom until you have talked to an anti-EU fanatic. But were there one I would be inclined to vote approval just to spite them, the Murdoch Press, and all the leftist little staters who’d be opposed.
What Andrew Coates said...even though (I understand), he's a self-proclaimed "Pabloite"!
This is a battle that has already been fought and lost, what we on the left should be doing is seriously building a Europe wide party or organization and begin demanding the democratization of the EU. If we fail to get our act together will will end up with Blair or his ilk in the Presidency.
To date I have seen nothing progressive within the anti treaty crown.
"What we on the left should be doing is seriously building a Europe wide party or organization and begin demanding the democratization of the EU."
Damn straight.