EU – In or Out?

 

If the EU was good enough to join, it’s good enough to fix

The democratic deficit

My first reaction to membership of the European Union is anything reviled by the Tory party, hated by odious Ukip and the illicit Brexit ‘party’ must be good for the rest of us. My second reason is just as uncomplicated. Ireland is a member of the EU giving it 27 friendly nations minding its back. For the first time in its history Ireland is a stronger nation than England. The thought of Scotland not rejoining the EU, isolated while negotiating a new accord with England, doesn’t bear thinking about.

I am a European

I have no doubt Scots feel as European I do, at home in Italy as much as in Spain, or Holland, or Germany. Had we never travelled to Europe, nor outside Scotland, we cannot help but see ourselves surrounded by European cultural influences, in architecture, money systems, design, art, music, and our language.

I see Roman architecture everywhere. I look at a red pantile roof and know we traded with the Netherlands, pantiles used as ballast in ships, their use as roof tiles a Spanish tradition. I love the art of Spanish painters Goya and Picasso, Dutch painters like Van Gogh and his depiction of sunflowers, the French Claud Monet and his garden, and I see how Scots artists met and mixed with them in their day. I like Italian cars. I eat at Italian restaurants. I work with Polish craftsmen. I listen to German classical music.

Our English cousins are, like us, all the richer for European influence on their culture – St Paul’s Cathedral designed as a miniature Vatican by Sir Christopher Wren.

Sad to say, some English are born Tory. I find the Tory party, its concocted neo-con ideology, its class system, it’s suspicion of anything ‘foreign’, repulsive, anti-life.

Euromyths

‘EU To Issue “One-Size-Fits-All“ Condom’. That is one of the hundreds of Euromyths – lies to you and me – the right-wing press concocted out of malice, or by twisting an innocuous fact into an absurd negative, a factoid, a tabloid exploitation of a half-truth.

Let’s get the Euromyth out of the way immediately. The British press has been denigrating EU membership since the United Kingdom joined the Common Market, acceleration the assault from the start of the Millennium, and in top gear by 2013 prior to the Scottish Referendum. They’ve lied about things to scare us off the EU ever since.

It went ballistic on the feckless David Cameron referendum when the lesser of British voters troubled to visit the ballot box. And yes, whisky got it in the neck a few times, beginning with the scare of 1995: “Whisky – Scotch whisky must be handled as a dangerous chemical.”

If I listed all noted in the last few years it will take readers at least an hour to read.

Let’s put the first lie to rest

Contrary to the dross tossed at us by Brexit enthusiasts in the hope we’re deaf as well as dumb, we do elect representatives to the EU. Those are the MEPs whose name we don’t know, and who always poll low attendance figures at European Parliament election times. That’s how much we care about democracy, we give Europhobes a free hand.

What we don’t elect are the many bureaucrats that serve them, rather in the same way we don’t elect the officials in Whitehall, or the Scottish office, or for that matter, the House of Lords which rules over Scotland and the UK, or the civil service which shows itself ready to plot against Scotland’s legitimate self-determination.

But as one alert reader points out: “It should be noted that the unelected piece of the EU is the Commissioners. However, unlike the members of the House of Lords, they go through a process which includes review by MEPs. How many know what that is?”

Tories say they dislike Brussels bureaucrats composing new regulations and laws. They also don’t like the House of Lords when that body defy a vote of the House of Commons. Above all, they despise the electorate – us – imposing our will, full stop.

We have a veto

As for the EC stamping all over ‘our’ democratic rights, on many of the really big issues, such as the admission of Turkey, well, that’s another lie. Britain can exercise a veto.

A veto is a massive protection. And even where there is qualified majority voting, EU records show that Britain has been outvoted in only 2% of cases since 1999.

The European Union, then called the Common Market, was sold to us by Edward Heath as an attainable ideal – peaceful co-existence, renewal, cosmopolitanism, no borders, sharing scientific enquiry, medical advances, common institutions, and equal prosperity. That’s what I see as its obvious benefits.

Europe has been spectacularly successful as a peaceful continent – internally.

What are Europe’s weaknesses?

Europe’s two weakness are financial. Though a single currency is a sound practical ideal at first successful, the Euro was established too early in the Union’s framework. And second, nations within the Union have embraced harsh neo-liberal economics imported from, and imposed by, the USA.

Both weakness can be reversed, indeed are getting addressed in the shape of the formation of a new political party with that goal in mind, (which I discuss later) but neither problem, in my view, demands withdrawal from Europe, or the extreme solution, the inherently racist argument – disintegration of the European Community.

That said, it’s EU millions that are being used to help refugees fleeing from war torn, drought ridden Syria. We could not intervene in this human tragedy without group unity.

How did Britain evolve separate from Europe?

Britain, the group of nations we know today, evolved through the centuries as political solutions to hold down and contain acquisitive rivalries between tribes and classes, the monarchy constantly at odds with the masses, barons constantly at war with each other, and trading allegiance with the Crown, money merchants, shipping merchants, and in the late 19th century, trade unions.

As an island our political ideals remained reasonably free of interference from European states, but after World War II Britain having spent almost every penny fighting fascism, we had to accept a large loan from the USA called the Marshal Plan. The Marshal Plan was a US contrivance aimed at gaining influence in Europe by keeping us in hock. (We only paid off the loan in 2006.) Greece got nothing because it was seen as too left-wing and has struggled along on tourism ever since. The Plan effectively tied us to USA foreign policies, explained away by our colonial masters as ‘ the special relationship’.

What is the genesis of the EU?

The European Union had a different genesis from Britain’s. It was a gathering of industrialists, steel, coal, nuclear power, car manufacturers, and the like who got together to protect their industries and redistribute their profits through their own approved bureaucracy.

In other words, like the 1707 Treaty, the construction of the EU began as a convenient trading organisation and a way to keep your neighbour docile. Again, like the infamous betrayal of Scotland’s sovereignty by the power elite of the day, the European groups that sat around the negotiation table disdained any notion of genuine people power.

Politicians were easily swayed to support this coalition of European manufacturers, to see it as profitable for them, even when it was not good for the prosperity of their respective populations. One planned result of this cosy grouping was to see Fiat, Italy’s national car company, hard pressed to survive, while German car companies thrived.

Banks and money

Another result of a self-serving group of industrialists was, when a nation’s economy weakened severe austerity was the answer – punish the electorate. Banks have debts? Transfer those debts onto the shoulders of the taxpayer. If anything needs radical change its the EU Central Bank.

Incidentally, the European Central Bank is not allowed to receive bail-outs from governments unlike our own banks, happy to gamble our money knowing the taxpayer will bail them out. So, what does the EU Central Bank do to stay solvent when, like all the others, it got hit by the 2008 crash? It sticks onerous interest charges and artificial austerity conditions (as in the UK) on any country to which it offers a loan – such as Greece – essentially money from one bank into another – with interest.

Those EU member states such as Britain that refused to use the Euro as currency, thinking they were safe from inflation and capitalism’s hard knocks, were shocked to find themselves hit by Europe’s slide into negative growth.

Not using the Euro is no protection against recession.

Where do I stand?

That was then, this is now. Taking everything into account, I regard European unity as a great advance. If you dismiss the lies, the rhetoric, and the alarmist statements there really is only one decision. We should stay in the EU.

We should join with other nations to get rid of autocratic processes that are unacceptable and supplant them with full democracy. The real enemy of the EU are the banks in the grip of neoliberal economics: the European Bank, and IMF.

When we joined the EU we knew we were giving up a small amount of sovereignty in return for all the benefits of membership, exactly the same relationship an independent Scotland was prepared to accept in having the Bank of England (actually the UK’s bank) as Scotland’s bank of last resort.

Surely we can reconcile criticisms of Brussels with our natural identification with European people and their culture?

Now what?

Bar a few King and Country adherents in the Tory’s right-wing 1922 Committee, and screaming unionists thugs that burn Saltire flags, Tories and Labour were quite content to work with EU institutions they knew were opaque, or corporation biased, until Europe met a mass of fleeing refugees from wars it began and encouraged. That triggered English wariness of foreigners.

Brexit is about England’s wish to pretend it is still a powerful nation with an empire, and to make their fantasy seem plausible, appear threatened by successful ‘Nazi’ Germany.

Depending on which politician and English patriot you talk to, the English want border controls, forms of ethnic cleansing, unconstrained xenophobia, unquestioning loyalty to the Royal Family, all in the name of ‘protecting the British people’, whoever they are.

I do not believe any of that is in the Scottish outlook on life.

 

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Post script

There is a new movement for genuine freedom: Democracy in Europe Movement 2025. The organisers, eminent economist, Yanis Varoufakis is a leading exponent among them, are “united by different cultures, languages, accents, political party affiliations, ideologies, skin colours, gender identities, faiths and conceptions of the good society.”

The principles of the movement are summarised as follows:

“One simple, radical idea is our motivating force: to democratise the EU in the knowledge that it will otherwise disintegrate at a terrible cost to all. Our immediate priority is full transparency in decision-making (live-streaming of European councils, Ecofin and Eurogroup meetings; full disclosure of trade negotiations; ECB minutes, et cetera) and the urgent redeployment of existing EU institutions in the pursuit of policies that genuinely address the crises of debt, banking, inadequate investment, rising poverty and migration.

Our medium-term goal is to convene a constitutional assembly where Europeans will deliberate on how to bring forward, by 2025, a fully fledged European democracy, featuring a sovereign parliament that respects national self-determination and shares power with national parliaments, regional assemblies and municipal councils.”