Yes-campaign blog - May 2005

By Richard Laming

30 May 2005
Oh shit

Whatever you think of the outcome of yesterday's referendum in France, you have to admire the process. Millions of men and women went to the polls to express their opinion on the future of their continent and the relationship between their own country and its nearest neighbours. It is hard to think of an occasion when so much turned on the actions of a single day. The decision about the direction taken by the country was taken the people and not by the political class. Even in a general election when a government is turfed out of office, there is another political party waiting in the wings.

On this occasion, it was different. Instead of the European constitution, there is nothing planned, nothing at all. No-one knows what will happen next.

Sunday 29 May in France saw our own version of people power. The opinions of the citizens outweighed the opinions and recommendations of the political elite, for good or ill. Democracy can be like that sometimes. Sometimes you get an answer that you didn't want. P J O'Rourke had this to say in his book "Peace Kills":

"Don't you hope," my friend said, "that all this has been thought through by someone who is smarter than we are?" It is, however, a universal tenet of democracy that no one is.

So, if the vote was a No, what happens now? It will be apparent from what I have just written that I don't think that the ratification process can carry on in the other member states as if nothing had happened. Maybe it will, but it would seem more sensible to me to recognise that the French No vote changes the future course of European politics. If it doesn't, why hold a referendum in the first place?

All the neat plans for ratification have been upset. The glidepath to the constitution clearly has to be rethought. The fact is that the pro-Europeans haven't yet won the argument.There is no short-cut or way of avoiding the hard work that winning this debate will involve.

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22 May 2005
Gorgeous George

Last week's visit by George Galloway to the US Senate has provoked a lot of coverage in the British media, but hardly for the right reasons. He was a noted and forceful critic of' the Iraq war, who was thrown out of the Labour party for the tone of his opposition to it. His parliamentary seat in Glasgow disappeared in the redrawing of constituencies at the end of the last parliament but he stood against a Labour supporter of the war in an east London seat with a large Muslim population and was elected. His campaign against the war and the continuing occupation will, he has promised, continue.

That's the background; what happened last week?

There were allegations that he had received illicit funds from Saddam Hussein during the period of sanctions. A Senate sub-committee had declared him guilty. He wanted to defend himself. Now, I am no fan of George Galloway and even less a fan of some of the company he keeps, but I think I may on this occasion salute his indefatigability. The great thing about the Senate hearing wasn't the rhetoric nor the debating style, whatever the media commentators might have said, but because it brought national parliamentarians together.

One of the continuing difficulties in international decision-making is the infrequency with which the people who have to make those decisions meet each other. National governments leaders have their regular summits of course, but that is hardly enough. They meet in secret, and can't really be accountable for what they have done if the parliaments to which they might be accountable have no sources of information other than what those same government leaders tell them.

For example, members of the US Senate might opine about the world and vote for the invasion of a foreign country, but have they any idea of the broader consequences. What will the impact be? Who was able to tell them?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, and this blog is not really the place for that discussion, the world clearly needs a better way of taking decisions. This point is even more clearly demonstrated in the case of trade discussions. In this instance, most of the countries involved are democracies in their own right so that the invoked need to protect the Iraqi people from their own government does not apply.

A sensible and rational means of taking collective economic and trade decisions is long overdue. WTO summits involve only trade ministers: their national parliaments are told to take or leave the decisions that are reached. Much better would be to involve national parliamentarians, too, so that those who are defending protectionism in rich countries can explain their case to those in poor countries who lose out as a result., The route to a managed liberalisation of trade depends on a mutual agreement and that in turn depends on politicians (and citizens) being able to talk to each other.

Back to Washington DC. Not only did George Galloway have to defend his actions, it also fell to the US senators to defend theirs. It is a welcome step that American politicians had to account in public for their actions. Governments talking only to governments is not enough.

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18 May 2005
Supranationalism

One of the first things I learned about the etiquette of debating politics on the internet was that the first person to mention Hitler is deemed to have lost the argument. When you think about the kind of debates that go an, you can see the sense in it. Look at the some of the comments on this blog, for example.

Where this rule breaks down is if we are discussing the issues of peace and war and the lessons of the 1930s and 1940s. It is hard to have a meaningful conversation about these questions without mentioning the H word.

The debate about intergovernmentalism versus supranationalism, in the wake of Margot Wallström's speech in Terezin last week, is a perfect example of the kind. (You can read it here.)

Back in the 1930s, international relations in Europe were conducted on a purely intergovernmental basis. The only people involved were the heads of government meeting and talking at their summit meetings. There was even the invention of shuttle diplomacy when Neville Chamberlain flew to Bad Godesberg.

As Herbert N Casson wrote in his book "Post-Hitler Europe" in 1939:

"The big fact to notice is that Mr Neville Chamberlain has started a new method of securing cooperation between nations - Conferences between the Heads of these nations This has proved quick and effective, and as every intelligent person can see, it has at once rendered the League of Nations obsolete."

Indeed it did render the League obsolete, but not in the way that Herbert Casson supposed.

The settlement at the end of the second world war was very different to its predecessor Versailles. It led to supranational institutions, not only intergovernmental ones, to protect the common interest and to represent the citizens directly. That way, countries are knitted together much more effectively than if the only political contacts are those between government leaders.

Compare the experience of the past fifty years in Europe with the previous fifty years to see the difference that supranationalism has made. Let's be grateful.

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10 May 2005
Some notes on the general election

Now that the election has been concluded, what lessons are there for the debate about Europe? Who won, and who lost.

Two items of good news for the pro-Europeans:

(1) a majority of seats in the House of Commons were won by pro-constitution parties, so parliamentary ratification is assured (even allowing for those Labour MPs who will vote no)

(2) a majority of votes were cast for pro-constitution candidates

Two reasons to be less cheerful:

(A) parliamentary ratification is not enough - there will be a referendum, too - so a three figure majority is useful only up to a point

(B) the fact of the forthcoming referendum meant that voters could vote for a party with the "wrong" view of the constitution quite safely. No-one is going to say that all those who voted for pro-constitution Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates are necessarily pro-constitution voters themselves.

The issue of Europe was hardly talked about during the campaign itself. UKIP and Veritas, dedicated to opposing the EU (although the UKIP leaflet I saw was more about immigration than the ELI), got nowhere, and possibly not even that far. Labour and the Liberal Democrats had nothing to hide but no-one was particularly interested in looking.

The Conservatives' policy of withdrawal from the Common Fisheries Policy would probably have led to leaving the EU altogether: their opposition to the 1951 UN convention on refugees certainly would have. However, the Tories gained almost no ground since the 2001 general election so there is no risk that these crazy and immoral policies might actually be implemented. No risk, that is, until the referendum on the constitution comes round.

A defeat in the referendum could be much worse for Britain's place in Europe than the status quo. A lot rests on the manner and tone of any defeat. The only sure way to avoid that risk is for pro-European politicians and campaigners to speak up for international democracy and the idea of Europe.

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3 May 2005
Bananas

A comment was posed on this blog a few posts ago, when I was writing about free trade, asking why the European Union had made it an offence, punishable by three months in jail, to sell bananas which are too curved or which are not in a box with the word "bananas" on the side.

A reasonable question, so I investigated. The answer, it turns out, is that the European Union hasn't imposed such penalties on these offences. The position is rather different.

There are penalties for these offences - the comment on the blog is right on that score - but it is wrong to blame this on the European Union. The penalties are a matter for the United Kingdom, not the EU (the Criminal Justice Act 1982 and Section 143 of the Magistrates Court Act 1980, as amended by the Criminal Justice Act 1991, since you ask).

The common rules about banana trading were agreed by the EU to ensure that a company one member state can sell bananas to a company in another member state as easily as it can to one within its own member state. That's what the single market is for.

But the implementation of these common rules, including any penalties, is a matter for each member state. So, it is the United Kingdom that has laid down the three month rule, not the EU. If I thought the three month was so bad as to require secession, then it is London that should leave the UK, not the UK that should leave the EU.

I suppose there is a libertarian case against trading standards and food law in general, in that what is at stake is a relationship between the buyer and the seller which can be left to simple contract law. Caveat emptor, or buyer beware. The importance of maintaining the value of brands will ensure that the consumer is protected. Indeed, that is how many brands started, as guarantees against adulteration or contamination of food.

There are two problems with this as an argument against the European Union, First of all, it doesn't work. The reason that trading standards and food law were introduced was precisely because the caveat emptor system didn't work. It was too easy to get away with cheating, so redress and punishment needs to be general, not individual. (Think about all that Worcester sauce that was recalled after being contaminated with an illegal dye.) Among the earliest interventions in the marketplace was the creation of weights and measures, after all. The second argument is that, even if it might work, the people of the EU don't think so. It is not some alien imposition that requires these rules: they reflect the way in which Europeans (and the British) think right now. It's not a national versus European debate at all. To pretend that the EU is somehow standing between Britain and libertarianism is rather misleading.

The same consideration arises in the context of the debate in France about the constitution. There is a complaint that the constitution is a neo-liberal imposition on Europe. Again, there are two replies: (1) it is not a neo-liberal document and (2) it was agreed by Europeans, not imposed upon them. It reflects the mixed economy with which the broad consensus of the people of Europe are happy. Over time, the forces of globalisation and technological change are going to bring changes to the European economy. With the constitution, Europeans will be better able to make these changes together.

These blog entries first appeared on www.yes-campaign.net. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of Federal Union or of the Yes campaign.