Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796)
It was a curious coincidence
(or was it?) that on the same day that David Cameron dressed up as success what
was clearly failure, the USA
announced a quadrupling of its defence spending in Europe. It’s a reminder that Europe
remains occupied, because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The price of Europe’s
defence is paid in other ways, such as submission to TTIP.
An independent Europe would require a European Union that worked, one
that allowed much more to be done locally and regionally, while focusing on
what actually needs doing at European level.
The fear that a European army could be used against dissenting countries
within the EU is real enough. The
rhetoric coming from Brussels about enforcing (western) ‘European values’ on
eastern Member States – that have democratically made different choices –
chillingly demonstrates that. But there
are other reasons why the EU has no comprehensive common security policy. Public debate contrasts two arenas of
independence. If the UK leaves the EU, as UKIP wish, should Scotland leave the UK, as the SNP wish? What of the third arena, the independence of Europe as a whole, independence against the world? Is it too big an ask? Or are we just not seeing the wood for the
trees?
We’ve long argued in favour
of a ‘third option’ for Europe. Our version is one that rejects unhelpful
centralism, whether it comes from the EU or from its Member States. That this requires fundamental reform of the
current institutions is a given. What
the deal negotiated by Cameron does is demonstrate the difficulty of any reform
happening at all. The diplomacy,
designed to retain the UK’s
place in Europe, is likely to have had the
opposite effect, inviting its critics to present the EU as unreformable. The ‘concessions’ are cosmetic, as they were
intended to be. No powers will be
returned to the UK. Few were seriously requested in the first place.
It took the London regime 950 years to become as
inflexible as the EU has become in just 60.
The only thing that could correct that would be a directly elected
European government. One with a popular
mandate to break the costly inertia of government-by-treaty and force through
reform of all the EU institutions.
Eurosceptics would hate that, because their answer to claims that the EU
is undemocratic is to abolish it.
Democratising it is the other answer, the one that no-one must offer.
If Cameron has dealt the
eurosceptics a winning hand it’s a pity.
The EU, by opening an umbrella across nation-state rivalries, has
created an irreplaceable opportunity for small nations and historic regions
otherwise silenced by tub-thumping jingoism.
Those down the west side of Britain can now choose to organise
themselves as part of the Atlantic arc.
Those down the east side can see themselves as part of the North Sea rim, or a cross-Channel grouping. Ancient enemies can be viewed at last as
neighbours, friends and allies. The
Cornish and the Bretons can no longer be ordered by London
and Paris to
hate each other. It’s such an advance
that it could be outweighed only by something monumentally stupid emanating
from Brussels. No doubt that can be arranged.
There’s the problem with the
‘Leave’ campaign. Brussels loses, but who then gains? Wessex
does not, and cannot, benefit from a stronger UK.
The UK, like England, has proven in practice to be mostly a
metaphor for London
financial interests. In politics, it’s an
expensive luxury to have two opponents at once.
A choice of Brussels over London is therefore a logical one to make if London is standing in the way of regional devolution and Brussels is not. It’s also difficult to see how a Europe of
the regions could be constituted without a Europe
to, at the very least, agree collective security against external threats.
Reality has fallen short of
aspiration not because Europe has failed the regions but because the
nation-states have failed both the regions and Europe. Despite some promising signs such as the
Committee of the Regions established under the Maastricht Treaty, the EU
remains eternally the creature of its Member States. It’s been powerless to prevent the abolition
of France’s historic regions
or in England
the substitution of unwanted elected mayors for real devolution. Its only contribution to the debate over independence
for Catalonia or Scotland has been to look for
problems. The EU needs friends with a
broader vision. It hasn’t a clue how to
find them.
Cameron’s negotiations are
but a small part of the big European picture.
It’s easy to denounce them as a distraction when Europe
is grappling with the migrant crisis but the two issues are intimately
connected. With migrant-related crime reported
(inaccurately, but influentially) to be running unchecked in Germany, the
temptation for British voters to raise the drawbridge may prove
irresistible. The very process of the
referendum helps the ‘Leave’ cause. With
the SNP’s amendment of a four-nation lock rejected, the voting unit is ‘the
British people’, about whom we shall no doubt be hearing quite a lot. Among other things, the vote should tell us whether
or not they still exist.
It could be the last
opportunity to breathe life into British exceptionalism, the idea that there is
‘Europe’ and there is ‘Britain’
and the two are as different as chalk and cheese. Never mind that 40% of British DNA is shared
with the French, evidence of a common past stretching back into prehistory. Never mind that English is a Germanic
language, overlain with Latin, closely linked to Frisian and West Flemish. Never mind that the oldest secular work in
Byelorussian is a 1580 version of the Cornish tale of Tristan and Isolde. Never mind that the EU’s chief negotiator,
Donald Tusk, is a Kashubian with a surname that’s the Danish, Norwegian and
Swedish for ‘German’ and a first name that’s decidedly Scottish. Never mind that Ireland
isn’t going anywhere and will be a constant reminder that Europe exists to the
west of Britain
as well as to the south and east. Never
mind that Europe is a web of cultural connections, while the UK is a forced
accident of geography. Never mind. The UK
can run to Washington and Beijing for a pat on the head.
As Norway’s ‘fax democracy’ shows, it won’t make a
scrap of difference to how the rest of the EU makes decisions, nor to its power
over the UK
economy. British foreign policy for
centuries was to maintain the balance of power in Europe
as it built up an overseas empire.
Divide, and conquer. That’s history now, in both respects, but the way the UK is debating disengagement from Europe and planning new forays into the wider world suggests
that a great many folk have failed to notice.
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