Europe and its detractors

Apologies for the lack of posts this week, owing to pressure of work. Here is a canter round current British politics, with reference to the municipal and European elections to be held here on 10 June.

In short: Labour will do badly; fringe parties will do well. For my part, I am supposed to be assisting the campaign of the Independent Martin Bell - who is standing in East Anglia for election to the European Parliament - by offering him advice on issues of European policy.

It is disturbing that an explicitly anti-European fringe party, the UK Independence Party, should be attracting apparently committed support from a significant minority of a generally uninterested electorate. The European Union’s economic achievements are admittedly overstated by its proponents, and the well-known market distortions in agriculture a continuing cost to European consumers and Third World producers. But the single market is an important achievement, and the political benefits of the EU are almost impossible to overstate. One of my particular interests in politics is post-war Germany, of which I am a great admirer (excepting the current Chancellor and government, for whom I have no respect at all). Germany’s transformation within a generation from a defeated and monstrous despotism to a thriving, tolerant, liberal democracy was eased and hastened by the supranational structures of the emerging union. The symbolism of the accession to membership of ten new states that formerly lived under Communist tyranny is of great significance. The EU is both a solvent for formerly intractable political disputes, and a symbolic welcoming of polities that have managed to free themselves from tyranny and become constitutional democracies governed by the rule of law.

It’s a shame that the principal message of the European elections in the UK may prove to be the extent of anti-European feeling. Johann Hari wrote a valuable piece in The Independent this week on the character of the UK Independence Party, which he rightly portrays as a xenophobic organisation with disturbing links to the extreme Right. (One piece of the evidence doesn’t stand up, though: the tiny UK Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, whose web site the UK Independence Party links to, is not the sectarian organisation that Hari supposes. Its opposition to the Northern Ireland ‘peace process’ derives from its integrationist position. Right or wrong - and I think it's wrong - this is a strictly constitutional argument: the former Irish Cabinet minister Conor Cruise O’Brien ran for the Northern Ireland Assembly on the UK Unionist ticket because the party was not sectarian in the way that unionism traditionally has been.)

For all that, I am not in favour of the proposed European constitutional treaty, and will vote against it in a referendum as it currently stands. As the economics columnist of the Financial Times, Sir Samuel Brittan, has shrewdly observed:

The treaty makes sense only on the assumption that there is already a will to create a superstate but that in some areas there is still a lingering need for unanimous decisions. The government is making a mistake in supposing that it is enough to require such unanimity just for tax, foreign policy and defence. The EU has been most intrusive in a dirigiste direction via so-called social policy, health and safety and similar areas; and the existing document lists no areas where power is returned to national governments, despite lip service to subsidiarity.

This argument isn’t a nationalist one; it’s an observation about the nature of government. A consistent liberal would argue that good government, especially in the economic sphere, consists in establishing a framework of rules rather than in discretionary intervention. Without those constraints, governments are responsive to the demands of sectional interests. Brittan’s point, as I understand it, is that a confederation is peculiarly liable to this problem:

The EU functions neither as a union of separate states nor yet a federation. It is a confederation in which different governments can obstruct each other but none has the authority to override sectional interests in the way the US president or UK cabinet can attempt.

The treaty as it stands doesn’t circumscribe discretionary intervention, but appears to envisage its extension. It is in that respect illiberal, and while I deeply dislike the notion of allying with some of the most unpleasant elements in British politics on this issue, I would not support a constitutional treaty that took that form.

I shall, however, be voting Labour in both sets of elections. My reasons are not especially to do with Europe, I just want to support the Prime Minister. As I foolishly said on a local Liberal Democrat questionnaire that asked my voting intentions (for I have since received visits from the local party seeking my support), my vote is determined by the issue of the Iraq war. The Conservative Party seems to me have behaved on that issue in a way that discredits the notion of honest opportunism, while its policy mix on economic and social issues is chaotically populist. A party that imagines opposing tuition fees (or to give the policy its proper name, supporting middle-class subsidies) is consistent with a pro-market approach is not to be taken seriously.

That exhausts the sensible voting options in the elections. On the same day, of course, the election for Mayor of London, also takes place. Having lately acquired a family and hence moved out of London, I do not have a vote this time; this is a great relief to me, as there is no candidate I could support, even for tactical reasons. The Labour candidate Ken Livingstone simply ought not to have been accepted back into membership by the Labour Party, let alone been given its candidature. His fiscal profligacy, philistine and dirigiste approach to urban planning, fascination with courting business interests, and outright-stupid political extremism render him a frivolous politician with a large budget. The Tory candidate Steve Norris has, with astonishing obtuseness, failed to realise that his business affairs represent a conflict of interest with mayoral responsibilities in public transport.

As for the Liberal Democrat candidate, Simon Hughes …. Well, I am thick-skinned and I am not a political naïf, but I am taken aback by the plain odiousness of the man’s campaign. This is a recurring problem with the Liberal Democrats. I recall the 1989 Vauxhall by-election, in which the Labour candidate, the estimable Kate Hoey (for whom I voted), was the target of a despicable Liberal campaign on the subject of the death of a child in care. I also recall the party’s campaign in the Brecon and Radnor by-election a few years earlier, which made sly insinuations about the sexuality of the Tory candidate. This sort of personal campaigning, alternating between the bigoted and the calumnious, has been characteristic of too many Liberal Democrat campaigns to be classed as aberrant in the party’s behaviour.

Comments

[Ciaran]

Actually, in Brecon and Radnor the Liberal campaign was aimed at all parties - they said their candidate, Richard Livsey (possibly the most boring man on the planet) was the only one in a "stable family relationship".

[Oliver Kamm]

You're quite right. The Labour candidate, Richard Willey, had lived with his common-law wife for many years, while the Tory candidate was a bachelor of mature years who lived, as I recall, with his sister.

And every time you write off one of these snide campaigns as the fruit of excitable and immature activists unrepresentative of the wider party, the Liberal Democrats go and do the same again at the next by-election. Even Liberal Democrats ought to recognise that there is a real problem here.

[Chris Lightfoot]

I am shocked, shocked to discover opportunism in a British election campaign! I suggest that the usual suspects swiftly be rounded up, etc. etc.

So you really were joking when you recommended voting for Hughes back in December?

[GrimReaper]

"Germany’s transformation within a generation from a defeated and monstrous despotism to a thriving, tolerant, liberal democracy was eased and hastened by the supranational structures of the emerging union"
The claims made on behalf of the EU get more fantastic every year. So West Germany, prosperous, dependent on Nato and with the ruinous consequence of Nazism imprinted on every memory, needed the EU to keep it democratic? I think I'll vote for the UKIP.

[David Duff]

Oliver,
My gob is as smacked as Grimreaper's up above! I suggest that a quiescent *West* Germany had much more to do with the fact that the Soviets had an unrelenting 40-year grip of *East* Germany, than anything emanating from Brussels.

Now that the two are one again, we shall see exactly how 'tolerant and liberal' Germany remains. It has proved much more difficult for the Eastern territory to be absorbed than was first thought, but I have no doubt that they will succeed; and then we will face the problem that goes back to 1872 - how do we cope with a huge, energetic, wealthy and powerful nation squatting at, forgive the phrase, "the heart of Europe". The French think they can cuddle them into docility - we shall see! Perhaps, as in so many other things, the Lady's suspicions expressed at the time, were well founded.

[David Gillies]

I think anyone who has encountered (as I have) the LibDems at the level of local politics will have been struck by how odious their methods are.

I won't argue about the salutary effects that NATO and the EU have had on Germany. I'm just not sure that the effect has been net-positive on the UK.

[Dave Collins]

If your voting intentions are being determined by the Iraq issue Oliver then I suspect your Father in Law will be relieved that you are confining your role simply to "advising" on "European" issues and don't actually exercise a franchise in East Anglia!

[Ross]

The founder of the UKIP, Alan Sked now describes it as "a nasty Right-wing party that has become a dustbin for politically discredited people." He now supports the Conservatives again. Sensible man.

I'm opposed to the existance of the European Parliament, in an intergovernmental system the checks on the E.U. executive should come from participating governments not a pretend 'parliament'. To this end the best way of discrediting the body might be to vote for one of the clown parties like UKIP, RESPECT, or The Greens.

[Oliver Kamm]

My favoured candidate in East Anglia receives my advice on Iraq just the same, and without either asking for it or desiring it. (He's not my father-in-law, incidentally - though we are closely related and consequently can't sack each other, so we might as well make the best of it.)

[Squander Two]

I agree with you, Oliver, about the advantages of the EU over the last few decades. (And, while it is true that the existence of the USSR had a lot to do with West Germany's transformation, I do believe the EU was a great help, too.) But the EU of today is not the same thing at all as the EEC of the 1980s, and the world's situation today is somewhat different than it was then. Yes, the EU did, in the past, solve formerly intractable political disputes, but now it is creating new ones, and making them ever more intractable.

By the way, may I ask whether you agree with Mrs Thatcher that the ten formerly Communist states should have been admitted to the EU as soon as the Iron Curtain came down, rather than being forced to wait so long?

[john b]

S2: the problem with the latter is that

1) the second-best thing about the EU (apart from the whole 'brought peace' thing) is the free movement across borders to live and work.

2) people in eastern Europe in 1990 were far poorer and more desperate than they are now.

3) even now, a large proportion of right-wing types oppose the accession countries because of the "free migration of labour" issue.

This creates an obvious and huge obstacle.

[Squander Two]

I know all that, John. I didn't say I agreed with her; I asked whether Oliver did.

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

How exactly did the EU "bring peace" to Europe? I seem to remember quite a few conflicts on the European continent since its inception.

John, I seem to remember hearing from quite a few socialists not keen on the free-movement of Labour thing as well.

[john b]

AID: sorry, that was a reflexive misuse of "right-wing". Small-c-conservative would have been more appropriate.

As far as "brought peace" grows, most 20th century historians seem to think that forcing close political and economic ties between France and Germany avoided the unpleasantness of previous attempts by both sides to create even closer ties. It's been a long while since Western Europe's gone 60 years without a war.

Admittedly, I should've added "except in the Balkans, which are knackered".

[GrimReaper]

"most 20th century historians seem to think that forcing close political and economic ties between France and Germany avoided the unpleasantness of previous attempts by both sides to create even closer ties."
Do they really?
Close economic ties did not prevent the American Civil War; neither, of course, did the Federal government in Washington.
The EU did nothing to ameliorate the unpleasantness in Northern Ireland; it has not even prevented the harassment of Gibraltar by Spain. Somehow, I just can't believe it saved France from another visit by the German Army.

[Laban Tall]

"It is disturbing that an explicitly anti-European fringe party, the UK Independence Party, should be attracting apparently committed support from a significant minority of a generally uninterested electorate"

I'd question the word 'committed'.

The UKIP look to have attracted the 'plague on all your houses' vote - a chunk of which might otherwise have ended up with the BNP. I think it likely that by squeezing the Tories from the right and the BNP from the left, they can actually make life easier for Blair, given that their local organisation is non-existent and that they will vanish from politics once the elections are over.

The UKIP mailshot in front of me says 'SAY NO TO ...' six times on one side and once in big letters on the other. What we're seeing here is the antimatter equivalent of the 'NOT IN MY NAME' march.

[WJ Phillips]

It was exhaustion on both sides, plus American troops and BAOR, that stopped the Krauts and Frogs coming back for a fourth round-- plus the division of Germany, which evened up the odds somewhat. Nothing to do with a Coal and Steel Community.

Now as America and Britain belatedly reconsider their NATO commitments, and the forced cohabitation in the Holy Brussels Empire highlights their differences and disparity in population, we may see the Herrs and Monsieurs get their old sabres out and rattle them a bit.

"Il faut en finir": the EU, that is.