Thursday 3 March 2016

Full marks for Sturgeon - yet again.



In an earlier post I have applauded Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon for by far and away the most sensible and constructing economic policy in last year's General Election.

Once again, amid the dreary claims and counter-claims of economic ruin or prosperity beyond compare bandied by the mainstream  "outers" and "remainers"  in England,  M/s Sturgeon has hit the jackpot.  In a speech on Monday she castigates David Cameron for running a "miserable , negative, fear-based" campaign in the referendum and pleads for a "positive and constructive case" for remaining in the EU, and in particular for the protection and improvement of "social benefits and employment rights."

Well, it's certainly wishful  thinking  to expect even a self proclaimed "compassionate conservative" to extol the virtues of social benefits and employment rights, but the rest of us in the "remain" campaign should be doing just that.  Indeed I believe we should go further and extract ourselves from a sterile debate on the economic effects of "in" or "out" and look to the wider implications.

These are set out in a wide-ranging article by  Charles Grant (like Springford and Telford, authors of Prospect article, summarised here, a member of the Centre for European Reform) in the New Statesman  (19th to 25th February, 2016).  Whilst recognising that the EU is far from perfect, indeed a "muddled and messy organisation  but in essence a community of law, [whose] chief mission is to spread the rule of law," Grant highlights that::

  1.  The EU is committed to "democracy, liberal values and the rule of law, at home and in the wider world" in a "model of development based on pluralism and human rights."
  2. The current refugee crisis clearly demands a co-operative approach which will require [decent] "reception centres. . .[a] scheme for sharing out bona fide asylum seekers" whilst "sending home swiftly" those rejected (unless war is raging in their countries)
  3. "EU  leaders must do what they can to tackle the root causes of the refugee flows." 
  4. The EU leaders are strong believers in global governance.  The US, because of its greater power, is less enthusiastic.  Hence:
  5. European leaders take a pre-eminent role in the UN, WTO  and international financial institutions.
  6. "[T]he EU has pioneered global efforts to limit carbon emissions" and on other environmental issues.
  7. "The EU and its member states have taken the lead in forging a host of arms control agreements. (The US, Russia and China have boycotted those on landlines and cluster munitions.  The US has not ratified  either the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea).
  8. The EU has played an important role in trying to resolve many foreign policy issues:  Serbia v Kosovo (the UK's Catherine Ashton, as EU High Representative, played an important part in this); Somalia; Mogadishu; abandonment (we hope) of Iran's nuclear programme; Burma.
  9.  EU members' internal security is bolstered by Europol and the European Arrest Warrant.scheme.  (From another source I know of something called  Prum. a EU policing database from which can be accessed information, sometimes in seconds, which could take to UK force alone months or even years to discover).

    Well, those are some non-economic areas in which  membership of the EU enables us to achieve rather more effectively than we could do on our own.

    The article also asks us to consider what so far has not entered into the UK debate to any extent, the effect on the rest of the EU if the UK left.

     Clearly Eurosceptic, and often unpleasantly right wing,  factions in other countries would be energised, and, even if they did not succeed in "exiting" their countries,  the Union would be weakened. Whereas I think the declaration George Osborne says he had no part in engineering at the Shanghai summit of the G20, that a  Brexit could produce a sever shock to the world economy, is ridiculous hyperbole, it is not too fantastic to suppose that our departure might, just might, precipitate the disintegration of the European Union.

    So, just 71 years after we congratulated ourselves on playing a noble part in the rescue of Europe from tyranny,  by our selfish chauvinism we could  successfully torpedo  the enlightened  attempts to build a more law abiding, peaceful, co-operative  and creative continent.

    Even if the Union survives our departure, without us it will be more politically lopsided.  From the beginning Germany, for understandable reasons,  has tried to avoid a dominant leadership role.  At first a dual leadership of France and Germany was the norm.  After Britain's accession this became a trio (maybe a quad as Italy grew stronger).  But, after re-unification and as a result of their incredibly successful economy, Germany has become immeasurably stronger, and the leadership dominance they have struggled hard to avoid will be thrust upon if the  UK were not  there to help keep the balance.

     "Keeping the balance of power in Europe" has been the object of British foreign policy for centuries.  We should not opt out now.

    So rather than a "miserable, negative, fear-based"  campaign, I'd like to see we reaminers adopt an adaptation  of John F Kennedy's famous and inspiring call:


    "Ask not what the EU can  do for the UK, but what the UK can do for Europe."

    12 comments:

    1. "Ask not what the EU can do for the UK, but what the UK can do for Europe."

      Oh please do: I think at the moment 'Remain' will probably win because most people fear the consequences of disentangling from the EU; but if you can frame the debate loudly and strongly enough in terms of wanting us to put the interests of the EU ahead of Britain then I think you might, as well as showing your true colours, just about get enoguh people to change their minds that 'Leave' will score a convincing victory and, in a few years, we will be out of the EU.

      (Kennedy, of course, was appealing to patriotism, that nobility of spirit which puts the good of one's country above one's own interests; nobody is patriotic about the EU).

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      1. I firmly believe that what's good for the EU is good for Britain, so there's nothing unpatriotic about this stance: indeed the refers.

        I much prefer a future in which a confident Britain is participating fully and with enthusiasm in a thriving, outward-looking European Union devoted to expanding democracy, liberal values and the rule of law, both internally and externally, rather than a small-minded country looking backwards to an irretrievable and largely imaginary golden past, and secretly, if not openly,hoping for the collapse of the ambitious European project.

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      2. I firmly believe that what's good for the EU is good for Britain

        Seems unlikely, when the EU includes 27 countries with their own national interests, that those interests would always be aligned with ours.

        Indeed they aren't always aligned with each other's: since the Euro began it has been in Germany's interests for the it to remain low in value, to make its exports competitive, but that was directly against the interests of the peripheral countries as it was partially responsible for them being able to borrow far more than their economies were worth.

        Our interests are not the same as Germany's, France's, or indeed Poland's, Greece's, Italy's or Latvia's. Sometimes we simply have different interests; other times our interests are directly opposed to theirs (for example, in areas where we are trade rivals: our car manufacturers are in competition with Germany's, for example, and when they gain market share in exports, we lose).

        So no, it doesn't seem possible to believe that the interests of Britain will always be aligned with those of the other countries in the EU.

        And in cases where our interests and the interests of another EU country are opposed, it will be surely be harder for us to win if we are trapped in the EU with our rival and therefore they can retaliate against us by whipping up support in the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers to either block our plans or to propose regulations that would hurt us.

        It's clear that there are costs and benefits to EU membership, for Britain. Sometimes we will not get our way. Sometimes our interests will be thwarted.

        The question for most people is, do the benefits outweigh the costs?

        If you claim, as you seem to, that we shouldn't care about the cost-benefit analysis because we should act instead out of loyalty to 'the ambitious European project', a project that most in Britain are either ambivalent about or actively antagonistic towards, then if you can achieve breakthrough with that message, that will I think be the biggest boost the Leave side could possibly have.

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      3. Anonymous, you seem to have a zero-sum view of Europe, where UK membership is only justified if we can gain at the expense of other Member States. I understood the post as pointing out that there are general shared European interests (think environment for instance) which are being ignored in the current debate by both sides. Nothing wrong with assessing costs and benefits as long as the vast general benefits of the EU to Europe (which as a matter of geography and history includes the UK by the way) are taken into account.

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      4. Anonymous, you seem to have a zero-sum view of Europe, where UK membership is only justified if we can gain at the expense of other Member States. I understood the post as pointing out that there are general shared European interests (think environment for instance) which are being ignored in the current debate by both sides. Nothing wrong with assessing costs and benefits as long as the vast general benefits of the EU to Europe (which as a matter of geography and history includes the UK by the way) are taken into account.

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      5. Anonymous, you seem to have a zero-sum view of Europe, where UK membership is only justified if we can gain at the expense of other Member States

        Not at all. I focus entirely on the UK: membership of the UK entails costs to the UK, and brings benefits to the UK.

        It is entirely possible that some of those benefits are shared by other member states; for example, it's indisputable that it is true that the bigger a trading block the more raw power it can wield in negotiations, and therefore being involved in such a block benefits all member states, including the UK: so that's not zero-sum, that's a positive-sum gain.

        However it also is true that being part of such a trading block costs the UK: for example, we cannot make a trade deal until all member states are happy with it, so it may be that we have a perfectly good trade deal that we would be happy to sign but we can't because the French are concerned it would expose their cosseted wine-growers to real market competition. That's an example of our interests (get the trade deal signed and begin exporting in earnest) are opposed to the interests of France's instinctive protectionism.

        So the point is not that the EU is a zero-sum game where if we win, the other member states lose. The point is that I don't, and most British people don't, care whether the other EU member states win or lose.

        The point is that if you're going to join a club, you look at the benefits to you (cheap entry to the bar? Free cinema tickets? Whatever) and the costs to you (the membership fee) and you decide whether the benefits are worth the cost.

        Similarly, we in Britain have to decide whether the costs to Britain of membership in the EU are outweighed by the benefits to Britain.

        What the costs and benefits are to other countries is neither here nor there; the question is, do we want to be part of the club? Is what we get for our membership fee, worth what we have to pay (both in money and in terms of ceded sovereignty).

        The is how British people, in the main, see the EU. We will be in it as long as it is in our interests to be in it. We are not committed to the 'European Ideal'.

        To try to tell them they should forget all that and sign up to 'the ambitious European project' out of some kind of multinational idealism that wants to see the eventual absorption of Britain into first a European and then a global super-state, will, I think, so revolt the majority of British people whose primary loyalty is to Britain and who do not feel any patriotic connection to Europe, that it will result in a great majority for Leave so I encourage you please to get that message out as soon and as wide as possible.

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      6. The point is that the EU is not like a drinking-club that you can you can walk away from and forget about if you think the beer is too expensive. The UK will continue to be very heavily involved with the EU even as a non-member; though surely we would have much less influence over what it does. This is not a matter of sentiment or idealistic attachment to some phantom of a superstate, it is simply a hard fact of geography, economics, security, environment, you name it. Any intelligent assessment of the costs and benefits of Brexit to UK citizens needs to put due weight on how it would impact Europe - which like it or not is where the UK is and will remain situated.

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      8. The point is that the EU is not like a drinking-club that you can you can walk away from and forget about if you think the beer is too expensive

        Yes, it is.

        I meant, geographically, we will remain close to the EU. But geographically Mexico and Cuba are close to the US, and neither of them have felt the need to apply to join the Union. And, to be honest, geography means much less than it used to: these days a lot of our economy is in services, which don't have to be shipped on boats so can be sent anywhere; and even our manufacturing industries which do have to ship their goods use the container network, which is so constructed that shipping charges aren't that much different to go across the continent or to the other side of the world.

        I mean, have you tried ordering something over the internet from the US, versus from somewhere in the EU? There's not that much difference in shipping costs, unless you want it tomorrow.

        So yes, the EU is exactly a club that we can walk away from if the costs outweigh the benefits (and there are benefits: it is undeniable that a bigger market has more clout in trade negotiations. The question is whether those benefits are worth the cost, both in money and, more importantly, in ceded sovereignty).

        Any intelligent assessment of the costs and benefits of Brexit to UK citizens needs to put due weight on how it would impact Europe - which like it or not is where the UK is and will remain situated

        Yes, but that's not the same as saying we should support 'the European Project'. For example, as Yes, Minister pointed out, the UK did very well for several hundred years by making sure that the continental European powers were constantly occupied by being at war with each other, leaving us free to expand our empire to span the globe.

        So it's not always true that what is good for Europe is good for Britain: in that case what was very bad for Europe was very good for Britain, in that it removed (or at least distracted) our rivals in the imperial game, and allowed us to build one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen: something of which all we Brits should be proud.

        Obviously the situation is not the same now: the other European countries are now markets for our goods, or competition for our exports, rather than being potential imperial rivals. Nevertheless, the point remains that what matters is not what is best for Europe but what is best for Britain. It may be, that after a sober cost/benefit analysis, that it turns out that that is to be a member of the EU.

        But it may equally be that it doesn't.

        And so…

        This is not a matter of sentiment or idealistic attachment to some phantom of a superstate

        But phrases like 'the ambitious European Project' and 'ask what Britain can do for Europe' do rather smack of multi-nationalist ideals, don't they? Of putting European interests ahead of British interests? Of an ideological commitment to transferring sovereignty to spura-national bodies, perhaps of even trying to create a single world state, of merging all armies into a single world police force, whether or not it serves our own interests?

        And if you frame it in that way I am sure that we will get a huge majority for 'Leave' so again, please, so promote that message far and wide.

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      9. Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful reply, but I stand by my earlier comments Likening the EU to a club that one can walk away from is a poor analogy, because much of Britain’s engagement with the EU would continue. Brexit would be more like a messy marriage break-up with a long tail of continuing ties and responsibilities, and this should be factored into the equation.

        I agree that the costs and benefits to the UK, or rather to citizens of the UK, should be central to the debate, but insist that this should take full account of the impacts of a divorce both on Britain directly and on our place in Europe. It is not just about us and them, because Britain is also an integral part of Europe.

        I have not used the phrase ‘the European project’ and do not particularly like it because it has no agreed meaning. But if it means the preservation of an area of shared values of democracy, human rights, sustainable development, free exchange, and pooling of sovereignty to tackle common challenges such as climate change then I pray that we do not wreck that project. I accept that some people seem do not value this liberal space in Europe or to think that it is not the UK’s concern, but to my mind it is a miraculous achievement after centuries of conflict and suffering, and one that Britain and its EU partners can be proud of.

        That's all from me.

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      10. I have not used the phrase ‘the European project’ and do not particularly like it because it has no agreed meaning

        I appreciate that, but that was the phrase that I was specifically replying to (well, it was the re-phrasing of the original article, but I think it summed up the original article pretty well), so your other points, while taken (certainly disentangling from the EU will not be an easy not an entirely un-messy process), are kind of tangential to the actual thesis, which is that to try to frame the debate in terms of 'Ask not what the EU can do for the UK, but what the UK can do for Europe' is the best way I can think of to get a Leave vote, so please do that.

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      11. I think I was the one who used the phrase "European project" or something like it and, as Jaime has defined it, "the preservation of an area of shared values of democracy, human rights, sustainable development, free exchange, and pooling of sovereignty to tackle common challenges such as climate change" I stand by it.

        I suspect you're correct, Anonymous, that an altruistic approach to the referendum is not going to win many votes, but I find that rather sad. I look forward to a day when our politicians raise their game a little and, both in this referendum and other campaigns, rise above the "what's in it for me" type of argument. That was the thrust of Kennedy's appeal

        In addition, I think much of your negative analysis of the costs and benefits to the UK is very short term (and I don't accept that it is true, but both sides can bandy economic data until the cows come home and not convince holders of the opposite view.)

        But there can surely be no doubt that it is in Britain's long term interests for issues such as climate change, pollution, international crime, terrorism, immigration and security to be tackled, and they all need international co-operation. So it is important to the UK for the EU to flourish.

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