In the fuzzy world of European identity and future though unspecified “reforms” the EU can sound great. But I’ll be voting on what the EU is, and what it does, and what it wants to do.
There seem to be two clear camps on the Brexit question: those who loathe the EU, and those who don’t know much about it. Even its highest profile supporters feel the need to list its profound shortcomings as part of their rallying cry to Remain. The most surprising thing about the debate so far isn’t that the left have, in general, sided with Remain. It is that so many of them have shown complete indifference to fundamental democratic rights.
Having followed the EU’s ruthless crushing of Greece and her workers, having watched the shameful and shadowy progress of TTIP through EU chambers, many Remainers have no love for the EU. They see the EU as a least bad option – it is not something to be cheered or romanticised. And I have every sympathy with that position.
The angry liberals, however, the ranty remainers, are another story. The EU is the embodiment of human progress, it has saved 500m people from bitter war, it is the post-national dream made reality; it’s the EU or the gas chambers! There seem to me two chief drivers of this view. One concerns identity. As seen in the discourse on the Scottish referendum, for many English the Scots were their lifeline, their ‘Britishness’, their ‘internationalism’ – their non-Englishness, ultimately. As Simon Hattenstone wrote in the Guardian, a Scottish Yes would “reduce me to my core Englishness. I would be a little Englander – an identity I’d always despised”. The same is true of Europe.
But many voters have more material concerns – wages, jobs, and access to housing and public services. This is why Labour is again being pulled in two directions, and you can’t win an election on the Guardian circulation. In the north of England Leave is a widespread and popular stance amongst Labour voters; it is now estimated 44% of Labour voters are for Leave. The prospect of a collapse in the northern Labour vote is very real, #indyref round 2. It does not help matters that Labour has imposed such discipline on the issue: a scenario which has given rise to the awkward scene of lifelong Eurosceptic Jeremy Corbyn pretending to be an EU supporter.
The second driver of anti-Brexit rage is ‘the Tories’, or more accurately, the notion that without the EU all this country amounts to is ‘Tories’. Just like opposition to an English parliament, three words settle the argument: ‘permanent Tory rule’. If you can’t get democratic support in your own country then simply outsource power to an unelected elite whose outlook you prefer. Never let it be said that Remain are overly constrained by principle.
So this segment of Remain is part identity – Europeanism – and part fear that the witless public will endlessly elect Tory governments. Neither make much sense to me. Europe has been around long before, and will be around long after, the EU. To be a European is a matter of culture, geography and history. It is not something bestowed by an unpopular and undemocratic bureaucracy in Brussels. This is about the EU, not Europe. We are not proposing to hook up an armada of tugboats and haul Blighty out into the Pacific or the South China Sea. As for permanent Tory rule, they have a 12 seat majority from an allegedly illegal election campaign, and have only just returned to power after 13 years in the wilderness. If you don’t like Tories you can vote against them. You cannot vote against the EU Commission.
“There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties” (Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission)
The EU doesn’t deem the little people of Europe worthy of electing their own executive. It is the unelected Commission, not the elected parliament, that makes the laws and wields the real power. Those trying to pass off the Commission as equivalent to our Civil Service are being profoundly dishonest. To forego such a fundamental democratic pillar as electing your own law makers you’d better be getting an awful lot back in return, and you’d better be very sure indeed that your unelected masters will always act in your interests. The former is highly questionable, the latter is demonstrably untrue.
TTIP – Continues…
This will be my last EU Referendum post. Whichever way you want to vote, VOTE. Democracy is not about being right, it’s about reaching a consensus that everyone gains from. Everyone.
