Now we've left the EU, I thought I'd write a bit of a blog post on what I think should be the priorities for being able to re-join the EU at some point in the future. I want to start with an assessment of how we got here, as well as a step-by-step manifesto for how we get back. This will take a long time, perhaps a decade or two (it took nearly five decades for Euroskeptics to engineer our exit) so we need to plan strategically for that kind of distance.
Why We Are Here
The easiest explanation for why the UK has split from the EU is that we're following a parody of the 1930s. In a much earlier blog post from 2008 on the subject of the global crash. Here I wrote:
"The 1929 Crash was a culmination of 5 years of massive stock market growth which was ultimately boosted by heavy speculative investment. The market initially recovered over the next several months of 1930, but this was not enough to prevent the subsequent Great Depression and corresponding global recessions in Britain and more importantly in Germany (where the economic (and social) instability lead directly to the the rise in power of extreme political parties and subsequently the Nazi dictatorship and World War II)."
"So, when we come to look at the Crunch we actually see the hallmarks of previous crashes all over again. We see deregulated markets leading to a financial boom and subsequent serious bust."
"What we can predict is that this is only the start of the problem"
You can read the rest in the actual blog post itself. My concern at the time - although I didn't state it directly, because I didn't think that governments would actually do it, was that we would follow the same path as the 1930s, because we know what happened then.
However, I was wrong. In reality we followed pretty much exactly the same path, with the exception of the US for the first 8 years and the UK for the first two years which implemented a half-baked Keynesian solution which refinanced banks at the expense of refinancing people. In the EU they followed the path of austerity.
The Five Steps Of Failure
The 1930s followed a basic pattern which we've been roughly copying. This can be summarised as:
- A global crash which lead nations to..
- Implement austerity in order to 'manage' their finances. This is a classic right-wing economic approach which treats national economies like domestic economies. It cannot be emphasised enough that it doesn't work. I have a blog entry from 2015 which explains why they are not the same. Nevertheless, the EU imposed austerity (or SAPs) from 2009 and the UK imposed it on itself from 2010. In reality austerity causes..
- People to react by becoming more politically extreme, in particular by shifting towards right-wing Nationalism. I think the reasons for this are pretty simple. When people are faced with austerity, they spend far more of their time looking after their immediate needs and so their cognitive horizons shrink. In essence austerity prevents people from looking at the wider problems and so people are lead to more populist, political thinking: simple immediate solutions rather than complex wider solutions. But right-wing nationalism has the edge, because the shrinking of horizons forces a more nationalistic viewpoint. What happens outside of those horizons is threatening. This leads to..
- The destabilisation of Europe. In Austerity Europe of the 1920s (post Versailles) and 1930s (post Wall Street Crash), both phases lead to destabilisation from Fascist governments. Italy broke away in the 1920s under Mussolini and Spain entered a (partly Nazi supported) civil war in the early 1930s. And of course Germany went Nazi in the very early 1930s. But the same patterns of political destabilisation appeared across Europe and the US; ranging from Oswald Moseley's Black Shirts to the America First movement in the US. Europe was destabilised.
- Ultimately, because Nationalist governments have a relatively local focus, they are lead into conflict with either themselves or other countries. So, the whole process ended with War.
Now, it's understandable that the EU, if lead largely by Germany (which I think essentially has control of the Eurogroup) would choose austerity, rather than Keynesianism. And the reason is that from the German perspective in the early 1920s, the reaction to the conditions for the Treaty of Versailles was to print money. It was this printing of money that lead to hyper-inflation and the emergence of Nationalist and subsequently fascist groups like, obviously the National Socialists. Thus Germany, in particular its Ordoliberal school of economics has a deep aversion to non-austerity: they believe in keeping a tight control over money, but this is, at least in some circumstances, like this one, the wrong lesson.
With the final step of Brexit under a hard right, nationalist government we are fully into Stage 4. It's taken a whole decade of austerity to get there (cf 1919 to 1929) and there's been a lot of resistance, but it's safe to say we're at the beginning of step 4 now.
The important thing to note in all of these, even above the individual steps is that the further we progress with them, the harder it is to turn around and recover.
So, in the 1930s, the US recovered first because it didn't go very far down step 2. It pursued poor policies during the Hoover period (Dust Bowl, great depression), but then FDR was elected and he instituted the New Deal, which dug the US out of its mess, thus avoiding steps 3 to 4 (though there were plenty of elements of 3 in the US of the 1930s).
The UK managed to take some steps in the late 1930s towards economic recovery, but was still partially in the grip of appeasement (i.e. Nazi Sympathy) at the outbreak of World War 2.
The Manifesto
1. A Common Understanding Of The Root Problem
Without being able to agree on the five steps above, we cannot agree on the root cause of the problem. At the moment the pro-EU movement has literally no agreement. The consequence of this, for example, means that because we don't think austerity is the primary cause that lead to World War 2 (and there are other, specific concrete political critical events and causes), we have no insight into the underlying forces that drove Brexit and no map for where we're heading. For us, Brexit came out of nowhere - just individual Euroskeptics who forced a decision on the Conservative party. That was something we wouldn't have predicated. Also, we don't know what's coming next, because we only see the problem in terms of the issues Brexit presents us as a country, in other words, we have a Nationalistic view of Brexit where the EU plays the part of the good guys and we're constantly reacting to the situation.
And our myopic view of the EU as "the good guys" is what also prevents us from criticising the EU (or rather in this case the Eurogroup) where it is part of the problem. i.e. because the Eurogroup is pro-austerity, British Europhiles are pro-austerity. This position has to be rejected. By rejecting austerity as reasonable reaction to the crash of 2008 Centrists will be able to work together with left-wing Europhiles (though it'll be harder to work with right-wing Europhiles).
But to re-iterate, without a common unerstanding of the root problem, we have no control over Brexit.
2. A Common Narrative
The Remain campaign and Remain movement, to this day, 5 years later is obsessed with economic technicalities as a foundation for EU membership. This is a mistake.
The primary reason why Brexiters won was because they have a narrative about Britain as the plucky buccaneers that can do anything when not hindered by the continent. The EU plays the part of the oppressive King or evil dictator and Brexit is about being free of that. All Brexiter arguments are driven by this sense of identity, even though it's inaccurate.
For us to regain the initiative we have to have a narrative about Brtain as belonging with the EU. We need a narrative that says that our natural place is alongside the rest of the continent: helping to make its decisions; supporting it at every step; sharing with its culture, its history, its people, its languages and its purpose of diversity, responsibility and liberation.
Note how 'belonging with' is emphasised. The 'with' is important because we need to convey a peer relationship, not a subservient relationship.
3. Addressing Media Responsibility and Accountability
This is a short point. 80% of the media by print during the referendum was owned by tax-dodging pro-Brexit billionaires. Unless this changes we'll almost certainly lose again. Basically we need a law that's comparable to media laws in some of the rest of Europe where firstly, the ownership is based on a Trust which provides a remit for the media's general political flavour (it's OK to be right-wing or left-wing, it's not OK to just be a mouthpiece for the proprietor). The paper itself should be worker owned by the journalists and readers. This applies to whatever form of media is relevant in the future.
Secondly, there needs to be some level of accountability whereby the media can play fast and loose with facts the way it happened with the referendum. For example, to force media to redisplay corrections with the same prominence of the original erroneous articles.
4. Guerrilla Ops (Picking Battles We Can Win)
Ultimately we need to get back in the EU, but in the same sense that Euroskeptics fought a number of minor battles, most of which were fabrications or merely symbolic and most of which they lost.
But to keep up some kind of morale we should pick fights we can win. I would suggest that the first fight we pick is one over Metrification. Arch Brexiters want us to return to Imperial measurements. JRM, for example has mandated imperial units be used in all his correspondence. I would have thought that at the earliest opportunity, they will try and revert back to Imperial measurements for general use.
We should stop this and push back, to get everyone using metric in ordinary day-to-day activities and communications as well as all formal information. Dump Imperial at all levels.
We can win this one too. That's because:
- We've gotten used to talking in terms of metres over the past year in a way we never did before.
- Educational establishments in the UK will back us up: they won't be bothered, particularly in sciences, to backtrack on 50 years of progress.
- Industry will back us, because Imperial units have a direct financial cost.
- The NHS could back us, by switching to e.g. only giving out metric weights for children.
5. Building a Shadow EU in the UK
We should start preparing for a future with the EU, and the way to do that is to build business and cultural resilience. Even though the Brexit deal is thin, it provides for British companies to adhere to EU standards. Thus, by building networks of British companies that operate on that basis, these companies will be forced to exclude business that breaks those rules: they gain financially by EU commerce and companies that don't will find it harder to compete, despite the UK government's attempts to tip the level playing field.
My suggestion for a name: BEBA: the British European Business Alliance.
BECA would be the cultural counter part. The New European could provide the basis for educational material to provide holidays, cultural exchanges and language tuition and importantly instil more of a sense of European identity in the young until the point when we have #rEUnion.
6. Proportional Representation
Remainers failed in the General election in 2019 for a whole host of reasons, but the simplest is that we failed to collaborate in our opposition to the Conservative and Brexit party and they went onto win the election on just 43% of the vote.
The next election will be easier for the Conservatives than this one, because possibly Scotland will be leaving the UK by then and constitutional boundary changes will lead to a net loss of over 20 current Labour seats.
Therefore it will be more imperative for Labour to collaborate with other opposition parties in the 2025 (or 2024) election, against an environment friendlier towards electioneering since the Electoral Commission's powers will have been curtailed by the Conservatives in the intervening period.
The only way I can see for Labour to gain the confidence of other parties is to promise proportional representation if they win - and the form of PR must be specified so that Labour can't pull the same trick the Conservatives pulled after the 2010 election, where a PR referendum was held, but only AV was an option. Future edits to this post will include more references and possibly diagrams!
7. A Robust Mechanism For A New Referendum
With steps 1 to 6 in place, we would finally be in a suitable position for a fair referendum, along the lines of the one held in 1975, which was based on facts rather than propaganda. Media balance would be better, representation of the people would be more equitable; relationships with the EU would be coherent and ready for re-admittance; cultural affinity for the EU and Europe would be higher; we'd have a UK narrative that would fit into EU membership and rEUnion groups would be more easily able to work together.
8. A Formal British Constitution
Finally, and within the EU, a reformed UK constitution could be defined to make it harder, much harder for the UK to be subverted in the way it was up through the Brexit referendum. Part of the reason why we belong with the EU is because of the checks and balances it provides, but the same applies domestically. There's never a substitute for active participation in politics, but the mechanisms within the state should facilitate both representation and accountability in such a way as to protect both security and prosperity for the people.
Conclusion
We've lost every battle since 2008, primarily because we lack an insight into the wider picture and a model for what to expect. We can't get to #rEUnion by carrying on as we are, with the same arguments. Instead we need to find a common framework for why we're here; a common EU centric narrative for the UK that embodies us belonging with it and finally a strategy that addresses all the institutional failings that prevented us from being about to mount a robust defence of our existing constitution.
The end result should put the UK on a much firmer foundation for the good of all within and without the UK, for the rest of the 21st century.
