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Eurosceptics are right, except on what to do next
The euro may collapse, so may the EU as a whole. But eurosceptics should be careful what they wish for.
It is hard to begrudge Britain’s euro-sceptics their moment of triumph.
From the almost ubiquitous admonitions they issued over the imposition (for that is what it was) of a “one-size-fits-all” single currency to William Hague’s colourful warnings about entering “a burning building with no exits” the crisis in the eurozone has shown that they were smarter, more level headed and far more astute over both big picture and small detail than the euro-enthusiasts who derided them as fools.
As George Soros said over the weekend: "The euro had no provision for correction. There was no arrangement for any country leaving the euro, which in the current circumstances is probably inevitable." In other words, to one degree or another, it’s going to unfold.
And if the euro-sceptics were right on their political economy, they’ve also been right on their politics pure and simple.
The absence of a European demos – a unified “people” with a sense of shared destiny – has, just as they predicted, led to clash after clash with basic democratic principles and practices.
If you’d said at the end of the Cold War that just over a decade or two thereafter the European Union would be telling people to vote again in referendums until they gave the right answer (Ireland, twice!), simply ignoring the results of referendums when they didn’t like them (France and the Netherlands), or ramming through an entire treaty based on the blatant lie that it was fundamentally different from a previously rejected one (the European constitution becomes the Lisbon Treaty), you’d have been dismissed as a madman.
But it has all happened. And the European Union will never be the same because of it.
When you observe the people who run Europe, and the people who support them with an almost religious fervour, it’s sometimes hard to work out what, if anything, is going on in their heads.
Do they think that the people of Europe didn’t notice when they were lying about the Lisbon Treaty? Do they believe that Ireland is a place so remote from people’s consciousness that what was done to that country would pass them by? Do they think that people aren’t shaken by Greece, the more so since it is they as taxpayers that are being asked to foot the bill?
What we are witnessing, is the slow but certain self-abolition of the credibility of an entire class of European politicians.
It isn’t the eurosceptics who are destroying Europe, it’s the EU’s most passionate supporters.
But here’s the point where I part company with many of those who will have agreed with my thoughts so far.
Because, the end of the European project (A decade from now? Two decades from now? Two years from now?) would be a catastrophe of historic proportions.
It would pull Europe down and (Eurosceptic Britons be warned) it would more than likely pull Britain down with it, and I am not simply alluding to the interconnectedness of our economies.
The point is this: with very few exceptions, all mainstream parties across Europe have bought so deeply into, intertwined themselves so tightly with, the European project that its demise could all too easily be their demise.
I don’t like the people who sit in the European Commission one bit. The smirking and gloating Jose Manuel Barroso saying, “Thank you Ireland”, after the Irish had been cheated and bullied into accepting the Lisbon Treaty is as repugnant an image of mainstream Europe as you could ever conjure up.
Nor do I have much respect for the governmental leaders across the continent who have participated all too willingly in the practices described above.
But I’d rather have Jose Manuel Barroso, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel than the likes of Jean-Marie/Marine Le Pen. And this is not the kind of scare-mongering you sometimes get from Brussels: back us or face a return to the bad old days.
It’s not about who will or will not back the eurocracts; it’s about what the eurocrats themselves are doing to Europe and what they have become.
The great danger in modern Europe is an implosion of the centre-ground in which parties of the centre-left and centre-right so discredit themselves that their bases of social and political support desert them leaving a vacuum to be filled by the far-Left, the far-Right or whatever newfound version of an old European problem decides to assert itself.
This is not all about the European project as such: multi-culturalism, political correctness, the excesses of social democratic economic policies that have proved themselves to be neither social nor democratic are all part of it too.
But, and here again I part company with the traditional euro-sceptics, the EU represents an especially important part of the fabric of modern Europe because, along with NATO, it has an enormous strategic importance in locking the continent down, holding in check old rivalries and giving everyone an incentive to sort out their differences peaceably.
A European Union dedicated to that, its core purpose, and then building outwards, slowly, on the basis of public consent, and not so far out that it became institutionally anti-democratic is the kind of European Union that all of us should have been able to support.
But that isn’t what we have got. So, what to do?
Given the intransigence of the elites that currently run Europe, saving Europe from itself is going to be a task of gargantuan proportions.
But if those who are so good at criticising Europe are unable to see that they need to become just as good at suggesting coherent alternatives, alternatives that retain what is good about the EU while rolling back or discarding what is bad, we’re in for a desperately difficult future.
I honestly don’t know how we get out of this mess. But I do know we’ve got to try.
NB: Please offer your thoughts in the comments below, or if you have some knowledge of this subject, email us at submissions to discuss writing a piece on the subject.
Robin Shepherd is owner/publisher of The Commentator. His book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel, is out in paperback. Follow us on twitter @CommentatorIntl
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Agreed Mehran.
The UK voted for a free trade area and were promised no outsiders setting laws, taxes or dictating to us.
Back to 1973 - or better off out.
I've always traditionally been very anti-EU, but with regards to free-trade and environmental policy, it really is very positive - to the extent that UKIP argue to keep those aspects. To have our environmetal policies dictated from someone unelected means we can actually make some progress on things like air pollution or emissions, when dealing with them is a generally unpopular idea (see America)
Major parties do what they've always done, which is adapt or die.
Look at Italy. The corruption scandal of the 90s destroyed both major parties, yet we still have a "right" and a "left" there.
The alternative is sharp adaptation, like the GDR's Communists did to form Die Linke. Disown former policies, declare contrition. Die Linke is nowehere near ruling Germany, but given they never won a real election before 1990, they've not done any worse after 1990.
And finally, what evidence have you that the break-up would damage the main parties anyway? It hasn't happened in Spain or Portugal. Fianna Fail has fallen, but they'll bounce or the Labour Party will replace them; Sinn Fein's nowhere near.
I do not agree with your presumption that with the fall of the EU/Eurozone we would be faced with extreme governments, speaking for the UK only.
We have large minorities in both the Labour Party and the Tory party who are Eurosceptic and with an implosion of the EU we would see these substantial minorities become majorities within their respective parties.
This in turn would result in changes of leader / ministers and to put forward the programmes they have been advocating for many years.
I believe this would be accepted by the electorate.
The rule of Law, fiscal realities nor the ballot box will not stop the growing tyranny that is the EU.
Only concerted action by freedom fighters will eventually free the people of Europe from this monster. If that makes us terrorists then so be it - I am resigned to my fate - going into the shadows to free my country. Those who fought the nazsis were also deemed as terrorists by the 3rd reich.
No democracy? No peace.
Mr Shepard
You still have not understood the EU project. Conceived in the aftermath of WW1, its entire raison d'etre has always been to replace the sovereignty and power of national governments with a central supra-national government. This has now been achieved. The consequences for national democracy (i.e. its total destruction) are a design feature, not a flaw. Perhaps the various architects of the EU supra-state that rules us today originally intended a stronger role for an EU Parliament but now I think the Commission feels that it can get along without these trappings. You need to understand and accept that there is no other type of EU on offer.
J.A.S:
There is a term for your kind of state: Fascist.
If a political entity cannot take the electorate with them on any issue, then there is something wrong with the issue in the first place.
Giving unelected dictators the right to make decisions outside of a democratic remit is sheer folly.
The EU must fall - no matter what the problems that follow because continuing this dangerous farce will increase the dangers for all European peoples
I am glad to see from Twitter in responding to the People's Pledge campaign that the author of this article still supports a referendum, but disappointed that he feels that wouldn't help advance the debate per se...and I'm not sure this article reads any differently that your average liberal Govt. Minister. 'EU has serious problems but needs to (as well as our relationship with it) be reformed.' Hmm....how many hundreds of times have I heard that before?
<> Robin Shepherd says: Thanks for your comments. But the point is to see how the entire European system is constructed, and that the eurocrats risk destroying the lot because they won't accept the need to roll things back. Any half intelligent person (ie. not the European Commission and company) can see the failings of the EU. The point is to understand the dangers of collapse and suggest a coherent alternative. Whenever Europe runs into major problems we ALWAYS get sucked in to sort them out. That's why I think it's worth thinking the issue through more carefully than just saying:"To hell with the lot of them.." tempting as that may be..Not that this has a snow-balls chance in hell of happening, but: The European project (which, fundamentally, I support) needs to be reorientated towards a CONFEDERATION of states - not a federal 'United States of Europe'. For once in my life I find myself in agreement with De Gaulle and his 'Europe of the nations'.
"""But I’d rather have Jose Manuel Barroso, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel than the likes of Jean-Marie/Marine Le Pen. And this is not the kind of scare-mongering you sometimes get from Brussels: back us or face a return to the bad old days."""
You sure, at least its WISISWIG with the LePen's, I'm not sure what Barroso or the rest of the Commissars, Apparatchiks and EU Nomenklatura stand for unless its their own self-aggrandisment
Mr Shepherd (my apologies for misspelling your name the first time around), the project has been designed to only roll one way - towards total political union and total dominance by the Commission. The Commission's entire purpose is to ensure that it only rolls one way. Economic and monetary union was and remains a device to render political union irreversible. The economic effects are very much a secondary effect. Ask yourself why the Commission would want to roll anything back now. They have always created and exploited crises in the past and they are now creating economic protectorates all over the EU. You need to come to terms with the fact that this is working as intended, not a bug.
Isn't it ironic that an institution that planned to end repeated wars between European countries might actually precipitate exactly that outcome?
Repeal all or most of laws emanating from a one size fits all mentality and cutting the organisation off from the knees down i.e. drastically reducing the bureaucracy the central committee the parliament and all other pseudo state building nonsense
Part un Corin sadly has it right and so does Richard Calhoun. Interesting you have it in for Marine Le Penn. Obviously most French people are mad to think she has something to offer -or are they? I was intrigued when I came across her recently and so have done some serious digging. She has refuted her own father's extreme views and moderated the party's lines on many things. She is daily growing in stature with ordinary French people.
Part deux She's a bit like the French version of 'The amazing Mrs Pritchard' and don't deceive yourself that her version of returning France to the French lacks large scale appeal as it would do in this country if we had someone of a similar 'larger than life' character who openly rejects extreme racial intolerance but espouses a return to better times. Plainly you can't wind a clock backwards but you can remove laws and legislation that moved it in one direction only.
I am not convinced that politically independent countries in Europe would go back to fighting - either politically or with arms. Nations change - on the world scene Germany and Japan are two examples of countries which made a determined break with a fascist past. Nor am I convinced that decentralisation will lead to increased power for extreme parties - rather the opposite I should have thought. As far as I can see the only problem with the collapse of the EU will be how to re-employ a lot of bureaucrats.
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Democratising the fundamentally undemocratic top-down EU institutions would be a start. The European project has always been a fraudulent one. Let the people decide if they even want a united Europe. The answer I suspect would be something along the lines of: a free-trade are yes, a federal super-state, most definitely not.