In terms of share of the electorate, ‘none of the above’ were the
runaway winners. There’s been the usual
snotty whining from the Left about non-voters failing to plump for the least
worst option and so letting UKIP in. The
London cartel
are all in favour of greater turnout just as long as they benefit. They’re not in favour of re-writing electoral
law to remove the barriers to smaller, alternative parties getting a foot in
the door.
So much for votes, what about the seats?
We have 6 UKIP MEPs (including Nigel Farage), 5 Tories, 2 Labour, 2
Greens, and the one surviving FibDem.
Among those not retaining their seats this time was Sir Graham Watson,
the ‘Southwest’ FibDem most memorable for thinking that Wessex is another name for Dorset. (So clearly no great loss.) Compare these results with 2009, when we had
4 UKIP, 7 Tories, 3 FibDems, and one each for Labour and the Greens.
The media frenzy has focused on UKIP’s gains. Most unfairly. The hard core of Euroscepticism has run at
about 25% for the past 40 years, so all that the results achieve is to give it
unmistakeable party political expression for the first time. The pro-EU bloc won the election, both within
the UK and across Europe generally.
The Tories are only upset because they didn’t do it
single-handedly. Be assured, come next
May’s Westminster election the protest votes will return to the Tory fold as
quickly as you can say ‘oh no, Labour government ahead’.
Which may be true. But that’s not
to say that a protest vote can be dismissed as such. The fact that life-long Tories can cast a
protest vote at all is bound to chill the air at Tory Central Office. In Wessex the UKIP vote leapt by 10
percentage points in ‘The South West’ and 13 points in ‘The South East’, in
both areas passing 32% of votes cast. (Within Wessex,
district by district, UKIP did best in the far west and the far south, the
areas of more restricted prosperity.)
Why? Black propaganda, of
course. Regulations for straight bananas
and all that. But also a refusal to open
up European politics to the possibility of reform. Of the major London parties, only the Greens really
attempted to get that debate moving. The
other contenders appear locked in the Punch-and-Judy-show politics that views
the EU as either the Fourth Reich or as a set of sacred texts, without which
the sky would fall. (Nick Clegg went so
far as to say that the EU in ten years’ time will be like the EU today, which
is hardly a stirring vision.) Even David
Cameron can get things right sometimes, more by accident than by design, but in
questioning the doctrine of ‘ever closer union’ he has both hit on the truth
and made many enemies among an unthinking elite of continental politicians.
The commitment to ‘ever closer union’, however much sense it made in the
1950s, has outlived its usefulness.
Either it goes or Europe will
fail. Either it is to be interpreted
literally – as an unalterable trajectory towards a European unitary state whose
regions have no power to choose their own destinies in isolation – or it is
meaningless waffle of which we need have no fear. It isn’t satisfactory that it hangs in the
balance, either as something very sinister indeed or as really nothing at
all. Whichever it is, it has become the
greatest obstacle to reasoned discussion on the future of Europe
because it mandates, in theory even when not in practice, a one-way street from
which there is no escape. We should not consider
ourselves bound by this dictatorship of the dead.
The EU wields huge judicial and financial power, but ultimately it all remains
delegated power. The judicial power
could be curtailed by amending section 3 of the European Communities Act 1972
to make European Court
rulings advisory rather than binding.
The financial power? Stop sending
the money. If the EU is worth 1% of what
it claims, send 1%.
It’s always been assumed that such things are impossible because of the
diplomatic storm they would generate.
But a more Eurosceptic Europe creates an environment in which such
storms are more easily weathered. No-one
is going to be expelled for unilaterally re-writing treaties that no longer
work; others don’t always believe in ‘my word is my bond’. Someone has to do the job of reforming Europe and it may as well start here. Let the rest catch up when they’re
ready. In every way, a two-speed Europe: one stuck in the centralist past, the other
forging ahead into a largely decentralist future.
Eurosceptics generally assume that you can only be ‘in’ or ‘out’ because
they WANT to see the world in such stark terms, ones that re-inforce their own
ideas about nation-state sovereignty versus regional and local autonomy. The realpolitik is a lot more complex than
that and will probably get a lot more so.
Europe is already many different Europes
– the Council of Europe, the EU, the eurozone, Schengenland, etc – and no-one
but a Jacobin would get upset over that.
A focus on pragmatism rather than uniformity might actually deliver some
surprises. Would the euro be a stronger
currency if backed by the combined strength of Germany
AND the UK? Is the debate over whether economic union or
political union is more important actually the wrong debate? Should we look to cultural union instead, a
celebration of Europe’s Graeco-Roman,
Judaeo-Christian and Enlightenment heritage?
Would that create more opportunities for small nations and historic
regions, as the practical bedrock of that pan-European culture, one long divided
by centuries of war, imperialism and stereotypical mistrust?
Overt Euroscepticism has been on the rise not only in the UK but elsewhere
across the EU. As the UK has turned to UKIP, so France has turned to the Front National, which
has condemned the EU for its failure to protect Europe
from globalisation and, indeed, for being complicit in rolling it out. The Left appear not to have any credible analysis
of what’s going on (because they have no long-term historical memory), so let’s
take a look at what the Right have been up to (because they do).
Guillaume Faye is a prominent thinker of the French New Right. As a politician, his opinions are usually
execrable. As a philosopher, his
theories are often challengeable. As a
prophet, he has an uncanny ability to be proved correct, so refusing to read
his work would be unwise. (Besides
which, it’s always good to know what political rivals are thinking.) Here he is, back in 2004, in Convergence of Catastrophes:
“European
institutions, and especially the European Commission, are not defending Europe,
but are destroying it… Here are some
points that underline this perverse trend:
1)
By its directives,
the European Commission arrogates to itself the powers of the Council of
Ministers, completely illegally.
Manipulated by ‘committees of experts’, it systematically corrodes and
undermines state sovereignties without replacing them with a federal political
sovereignty and without being checked by the rump Parliament in Strasbourg. The ‘Convention’ with Giscard d’Estaing as
its President will probably make things worse.
The European Commission represents a technocratic despotism in a
chemically pure state that exists nowhere else in the world.
2)
European
institutions flout the principle of subsidiarity and decentralisation and
practice, on the contrary, a fussy and aggravated Jacobin centralism. What business does Brussels have with the
labelling of products in France
or Italy, the procedures for
making cheese in Normandy,
or the maturing of oysters in Charental?
Have the ‘regionalists’ who support the current European Union not
understood that the EU is in fact totally opposed to all regional autonomy? In the USA, the states have great latitude
in legislating in relevant areas – more so than European states! Recently, several German Länder (regions)
have noticed that the EU is eliminating the powers accorded them by the German
federal state.
3)
In all matters,
the European Commission and the Parliament in Strasbourg are following a
political and ideological line totally contrary to the interests of Europe:
dogmatic global free trade, a low profile in the face of American commercial
injunctions, encouraging the use of English, open borders immigrationism and
militant Islamophilia and Holy Roller humanitarianism, matched by a total lack
of political or geopolitical vision for Europe, which is replaced by the
religious vulgate of human rights.
4)
The expansion of
the EU without any preparation into central Europe (indeed, into Turkey as well)
will make whatever results unmanageable.
And it will cost a lot of money.
The countries that have applied for entry are first of all looking for
subventions. It is absurd to make
countries participate in the same economic and monetary unit when the ratio of
their standard of living is sometimes 1 to 5.
On 1 January 2004, the EU will grow from 15 to 25 members. No one agrees on the size of the subventions
to offer them. A two-tier Europe will be established, and we shall see the unemployed
of ten new countries pour into the West.
The ‘Convention’ with Giscard d’Estaing for its President has not made
and will not make any proposal to revise the EU’s institutions to accommodate
these new countries.
5)
The initial
project of the Treaty of Rome to construct an economy that was to be
self-centred and protected over its large territory has been scandalously
diverted from its objective and has generated a Europe open to the four winds
as a result of immigration and the markets, whose currency is managed by no
political authority. The European Central
Bank of Frankfurt lets the euro fluctuate at
the will of the markets. The result is
that the European Union, stripped not only of its internal national boundaries,
but of its external frontiers as well, cannot claim that it is becoming a
‘federal state’.
We have the worst
alliance that can exist, combining ultra-liberalism and a subventionist and
dirigist bureaucracy, quite the reverse of what should have been done. Anyhow, if the USA has not been opposed to the
ambition of the European Union, there is a reason. This submissive, emasculated, headless
Europe, which scores goals against its own side, suits the USA
perfectly. When asked the question, ‘Are
you for or against the construction of the European Union?’ a high American
functionary answered, ‘In favour, as long as it does not work.’”
The indictment is all too familiar, and has rarely been more boldly
stated. The case for the defence is founded
in fear of the unknown, of the not-the-same-as-now, so don’t you dare. Not in a positive rebuttal of the charge that
the EU works for the destruction of all that variety of little things that make
Europe Europe. Après nous, le déluge. The
EU goes on gorging itself on the emotional capital of 1945 and the argument is
wearing thin. No wonder the parties
viewed as the most anti-establishment are the parties picking up votes. The Right in Denmark,
France and the UK, the ‘alternatives’ in Spain, and both far Left and far Right in Greece.
In the UK,
there could have been a real debate at the heart of this month’s
elections. Instead, for the next five
years, the party of ‘Out’ has staked its claim to provide the sound and fury,
signifying nothing. The party of ‘In’
appears to have shuffled off this mortal coil, while power remains with the closed-ranks
parties of ‘Am I Bothered?’ The parties
of ‘Europe – But Not This Europe’ remain
shoved to the margins in all but a few countries.
We are told, over and over, that the UKIP fire is the only alternative
to the Brussels
frying-pan, and vice versa. It isn’t
true – and that’s a point that needs to be argued a lot more loudly in future. The EU will bend or it will break. It’s time for the tired old defenders of Europe and Britain alike to give way to a more flexible view.
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