Paul MacInnes had a good piece in yesterday’s Guardian, making the case for Europe. Former Lib Dem head-honcho and sometime TV megastar, Charles Kennedy, has been appointed President of European Movement UK, which must be a bit like being President of the United States, only completely different.
But seriously… the case for Europe does need making. Desperately. The Europhobes made hay while Europe stagnated in the early days of the single currency – forgetting it took many, many decades for the dollar itself to be taken seriously. Yet now, with the Anglo-Saxon economies facing an immense credit crunch, likely to slow growth and throw internal banking systems into flux, Europhiles are not pointing at the recovering German economy and waxing lyrical about a healthy trade balance and the benefits of prudence (remember that, Gordon?).
I know that the rump of the British media is anti-European (they prefer the more reasonable “Euro-scepticâ€, but I can confirm conclusively today, that a large landmass does indeed exist about 30-miles south of Dover), but that doesn’t mean that we should allow the British people to be bullied into acquiescence. We need to bang the drum for Europe. We need to challenge the bullshit and propaganda being peddled by the rightwing press. Every time they write a story about “Europe’s crazy new lawsâ€, we must challenge them. When they insult and belittle the Human Rights Act – we should be vocal in its defence.
But, at the same time, we must also challenge the EU itself to get its house in order. The Common Agricultural Policy, the annual accounts fiascos, and the myriad of niggly issues that continue to provide the Europhobes with an arsenal of bad-news stories. It’s in the Europhiles interest to improve the Union’s systems and procedures, and to address some of the waste and piss taking in Brussels and Strasbourg.
Of course the economic right are afraid of reality. They’re afraid of alternative market economies. Successful Danish and Scandinavian models, harnessing a social contract between employees and employers, and between citizens and politicians, prove that a progressive social model doesn’t have to mean an uncompetitive economy. After all, what is the European Union, if it isn’t a glorified free-trade zone with harmonised legal frameworks?
BTW. Really busy over the next couple of days, so I’ll probably not post again until Tuesday.
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There’s a fascinating blow-by-blow insider’s account of how Britain repeatedly missed the European bus in “Missed Chances” by Sir Roy Denman, who was one of the British negotiators when we finally entered the Community in 1970, and in the 1980s served as Ambassador of the European Communities in Washington.
He ascribes our negative attitude to Europe to ignorance,chauvinistic disdain for ‘Continentals’ as opposed to our Commonwealth ‘brethren’ and American ‘cousins’, and a mistaken perception of our actual strength and where our real interests lie. The British political classes, he says, wrongly believed that Britain would punch less weight in the world as a full and willing member of the EC than by preserving her - in fact fast dwindling - traditional role as leader of the Commonwealth and ’special friend’ of the USA.
A 1952 statement by Anthony Eden which he quotes is typical: “Britain’s story and her interests lie far beyond the continent of Europe….That is our life; without it we should be no more than some millions of people living on an island off the coast of Europe, in which nobody wants to take any particular interest.”
Quite so. And what are we now?
Well, anticant, I don’t think those prejudices have subsided. Still the political classes are unwilling to lead on the subject of Europe. During the latter days of Chirac and Schroeder, Blair had a unique chance to lead on the European stage, and he fluffed it.
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