Every one of the changes for which Cameron is arguing in Europe will make both the UK and the EU worse. It is undoubtedly true that these reforms are marginal, and not in any sense worth the drama with which Cameron seeks to imbue them in the run-up to a pre-cooked mainstream media acclamation of significant victory. But even though Cameron’s proposals are highly marginal, and all possible without treaty amendment, insofar as there is any effect, it is a bad effect.
Cameron’s primary focus is on preventing much needed regulation of banking and financial services. He wants a veto in what is currently recognised as a qualified majority area. The banking system is at the heart of the channelling of most wealth to a tiny elite. 70% of all the money in the world is tied up in derivatives markets, which is terrifying. Deutsche Bank holds derivatives equivalent to 21 times German GDP, to give a striking example. There have been continued attempts by the EU to introduce a transaction tax on every derivatives bet, as a move towards calming this market. Cameron is determined to make sure the City of London remains a great casino, safe for his banker mates. That is the primary question at issue today.
The other issues involve Cameron’s attempts to pander to xenophobes by putting a brake on in-work benefits and child benefit to migrants. This is economically insignificant. It affects less than 40,000 people in the UK, and in the case of child benefit would only bring a marginal reduction anyway. It is simply an effort to join the Duncan Smith stigmatisation of the low-paid to racist sentiment.
I wish to state loudly that I believe that the existence of the European Union with a common citizenship, where we all enjoy the common rights of citizens, from Bucharest to Dublin, is a marvellous thing. It is undeniably the greatest political advance of my lifetime. As a continent with a free flow not only of people, but of trade and capital as well, it is a fantastic field of economic potential. As the political expression of the wonderful civilisations of the European nations, it has the capacity to be a force for good in the world, and is so more often than not.
I look forward to ever closer union becoming a reality, and the day when the EU encompasses all of Europe, including Russia. I look forward to Scotland being one of the nations within a federal European structure, contributing to a common foreign and defence policy. I fully expect these things to come to pass, while Cameron and his charade of renegotiation will be long forgotten.
Habbabkuk,
I have personally witnessed and contributed to Southern Europe trading successfully since 1963 when Italy seemed to me exceedingly wealthy compared to, for example, Paris.
Portugal, Spain and Greece too were all trading highly successfully (or certainly appeared that way to me) whilst they still had their own currencies.
The rapid decline, only really started a few years after these countries dumped their own currencies, as then a country no longer has any control of its economic destiny.
The devastation has been exceedingly sad to witness.
But witness it I continue to do.
Tony
Craig: “I don’t think the incredible scientific, industrial or social democratic achievements of the European peoples post renaissance can be denied. are you advocating Luddism?”
I wish people would gain some knowledge of what the Luddites actually were, and what they stood for, before wheeling out their name as a figurative slap-down against anyone apparently not liking scientific achievements.
Much of the Luddite’s actions were in bringing legal cases. One case alone required £40,000 which they raised – not bad for a bunch of mindless savages at the start of the 19th century. They were the most skilled professionals and craftsmen of their day. They weren’t against any form of progress for its own sake, rather, they took on businesses who introduced technology to cheaply make shoddy products at the cost of the livelihoods and workers, regardless of the dangers and loss of craftsmanship incurred.
It is quite infuriating to listen to the EU negotiating with Cameron about slightly reduce internal migration, rather than getting an explanation why UK cannot participate in a more significant way in helping with the external migration crisis. The optics is really bad here.
“I look forward to ever closer union becoming a reality, and the day when the EU encompasses all of Europe, including Russia.”
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Yes Craig, that would be a great achievement, I wonder if the man or woman has been born yet, that could broker such a deal.
Those who’ve made their fortunes from the Great Game and Cold Wars with Russia would, rue the day.
Russia has had many allied countries in Europe over the centuries, and many enemies as well.
Russia getting around the EU table and adhering to Schengen would be a milestone for those who advocate peace.
Will it happen? I’d like to think so.
David
19 Feb, 2016
I don’t think you get the system, Camron backed TTIP, our government is totally beholden to corporate power, corporate power that is just the same.
It’s going to need transformation of the system. On a large scale I imagine, certainty beyond the nation state. Reverting back for perceived wealth and democracy in this system? Goodbye human rights. Hello 1930s.
No. Of the two visions of Europe we need the social one, for the uk. The majority of Europe is (and has been) far more progressive, egalitarian than the uk. We even benefited from US influence. The only thing that moves this government is embarrassment to neighbors, people are always worthless cattle to the establishment, and many I see look so degraded, unhealthy and low. The EU isn’t causing this, it’s our rigid class system that “requires” it.
Europe will change. And those changes WILL effect us. Hugely. So the question is what role are we going to play…Not are we for or against, about the level of “politics” in the Uk.
Obviously all the actual business is out of our hands…”democracy”…
“Are we going to get a ‘good deal’ or a ‘bad deal’..”
The whole thing is framed in exactly the terms that continue the crap. I reject the whole framework.
David; ” Sorry Craig but the Europe you have in your head simply does not exist in the real world any more.”
That’s eaxctly the crux of the matter, but did it really ever exist ? Tony Benn saw the problem right at the begining and opposed the Treaty of Rome back then; others, especially on the Left, still hung onto a mythical vision of what they wish the EU was representing. For some it took the treatment of Greece & Cyprus, before the illusion was banished from their wishful thinking, prime example George Galloway. but incredibly there are evidently others still clingling to their comforting make-believe fantasy, despite all the evidence to the contray.
Re European achievements etc, Tony has already posted something from Andre Vltchek iro MSM brainwashing, but Andre Vltchek recently also gave a speech to the Italian Parliament, in which he delivered some home-truths about European achievenments;
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/05/europe-is-built-on-corpses-and-plunder/
Uphill,
I particularly like your ferocious comment @3.35 pm, but this is a very recent phenomenon. I first really became aware of it in Athens in 2009. I know that Athens has got very much worse since then, and it really is as if much of Europe is rapidly reverting to the 1930’s with outright Fascism, of the nastiest kind as the very next step.
The UK is rapidly heading in the same direction, but much of the rigid class system in the UK, at least from my perception had been largely dismantled / destroyed as a result of the devastation of Two World Wars. When I was born it was eminently possible to receive an excellent education, even from a very working class background, and be treated on equal terms with absolutely anyone from a far more privileged background. Social Mobility was real. That has now, almost but not completely been destroyed.
Yet all we can do, is blame our own generation for that destruction. Maybe we were simply working too hard, and took our eye off what was actually happening to our society.
Personally, I think it was a deliberately long planned infiltration, and the same thing has happened throughout Europe and the USA.
Tony
Thanks for posting that Counterpunch article Macky.
No one will look after your interests better than you will let independence for Scotland mean just that no E.U. No N.A.T.O. No union with England be free of them all
Glenn UK
Actually I do happen to have a very detailed knowledge of the Luddites. But at base they were against the replacement of skilled labour by new production technologies. We can acknowledge the dreadful effects of economic dislocation on these skilled workers, without wishing that textiles were still produced by hand weaving.
Aurora you seem to be a bundle of prejudices. It is commonly acknowledged that the mathematical and scientific knowledge of the Islamic world was pre-eminent from approximately 800 to 1500. And that the absorption of that knowledge kick-started the Renaissance. But that in no way removes the European achievement in science, medicine, philosophy and technology of the modern age. To deny its existence is to put ideology before fact.
@Tony 5.04 PM,
Whilst I share your sentiment that todays disasters in many of our major global economies was planned, we must remember that our dear neoliberal friends began their activities directly after WWII in both Europe and the USA, essentially a few groups emerged around the likes of Milton Friedman and F. Hayak, who’s thoughts were taken up by gusto by the business and economics department of the University of Chicago who pumped out economists with views the polar opposite of Keynes, and this group became highly influential the late 60’s, particularly within the IMF and World Bank.
At the same time, circa 1971 Nixon removed the USA off the gold dollar and made agreements with ME oil producing nations to churn their wealth via the USA, thus was born the petrodollar. However, at the same time an obscure Lawyer was penning what became known as the Powell Memorandum, its significance becomes clear when you understand Nixon appointed F. Powell a Supreme Court Judge in 1972, hence the memo, which reads like a blueprint is basically all about Corporations turning back social reforms implemented by Roosevelt and continued by his predecessors in the Whitehorse – essentially we see three distinct strands converging, on the one hand what is now referred too as neoliberalism, which became the total predominant orthodoxy under Clinton, and neoconservativism, which became the predominant geopolitical orthodoxy after the 9/11 attacks.
Anyhow, for those looking at timelines the Powell memo is a good place to start and here’s an essay by Associate Professor Bill Black on the subject matter, Bill being a leading light in the heterodox school of thought in economics: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/04/bill-black-my-class-right-or-wrong-–-the-Powell-memorandum’s-40th-anniversary.html
Regrettably, as we have witnessed since Delors left the Commission, the EU has adopted the neoliberal economic orthodoxy, together with the neoconservative orthodoxy, neither of which is beneficial to European idealism, quite the reverse, they seem to be giving birth to both fascism and nihilism, with myself suffering from the later I’m afraid to say!
“I look forward to ever closer union becoming a reality, and the day when the EU encompasses all of Europe, including Russia. I look forward to Scotland being one of the nations within a federal European structure, contributing to a common foreign and defence policy. I fully expect these things to come to pass, while Cameron and his charade of renegotiation will be long forgotten.”
Let’s hope so. But there is your other point.
“Cameron is determined to make sure the City of London remains a great casino, safe for his banker mates.”
This is what many in this country have to wake up to. And not just his banker mates. The judiciary. Russia is taking Ukraine to the High Court in London for the $3 bn debt that it has not paid. Kiev still has money to bring death, maiming and misery to the poor people of the Donbass, even though it is bankrupt with only IMF austerity-preconditioned loans to keep it going.
There is no way in a proper court that Russia could lose. But it was the High Court that ruled in favour of the extradition of Assange to Sweden as a stepping-stone to the US. On top of that we have the ludicrous ruling in the Robert Owen inquiry into the death of Litvinenko blaming the Russians (even Putin) it makes you wonder if Russia’s cast-iron case could go awry. Lawyers, like bankers, are motivated by money. There is only one country in this case that has any money. Who’s going to pay them. Not Ukraine!
http://russia-insider.com/en/business/russia-versus-ukraine-3-billion-court-case-starts/ri12938?
@David “The EU needs the UK more than the UK needs the EU. I will never vote to stay in an organisation that is undemocratic and unanswerable to the people it governs.”
Does that mean you really think the UK government is more democratic and more answerable than the EU parliament? If so how? I don’t think anyone who wants to stay in is naive about the flaws of the EU. But oddly, nor are they about the same flaws in an isolated UK.
Victoria Nulands “Fu….” EU can regain its legitimacy if it comes up with a robust BDS plan to make the Israelis rampant Judea/samaria nonsense redundant.
“Does that mean you really think the UK government is more democratic and more answerable than the EU parliament? ”
It has the potential to be sovereign. The EU Parliament does not.
The House of Commons can vote to leave NATO, institute a policy of full employment, re-nationalise utilities etc, refound the NHS, repudiate the Private/Public scams and other policies designed to build a socialist society.
The EU Parliament can do nothing without the agreement of the Commissioin and the member governments many of which are even more corrupt than Britain’s and some of which act entirely under Washington’s diktats.
The current “Trade agreements” which are really designed to strip democratic institutions of their powers to legislate are part of a long process of reducing democratically controlled areas of government to relatively unimportant and secondary matters.
This is an excellent take on the subject from the US
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/19/nato-and-the-bananazation-of-western-europe/
Craig; “It is commonly acknowledged that the mathematical and scientific knowledge of the Islamic world was pre-eminent from approximately 800 to 1500. And that the absorption of that knowledge kick-started the Renaissance”
I don’t think that’s qite right or the whole picture; Arab scholars inherited the works from the Greek Classical period when they come into contact with the Eastern parts of the Byzantine Empire, especially Egpyt & the Levant, translating them into Arabic & transmitting them West to Arab Spain; in doing so they not only preserved work that had been lost to the West, but also added important commentaries, and were stimulated into intellectual achievements of their own.
The Renaissance of the Middle Ages, is generally agreed to have started in Florence in the 14th century, and due both to the patronage of the Medici family, who encouraged scholars to the City, and secondly to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, as the influx of Greek scholars then decame a deluge, as Greek refugees headed West.
Gleñn_UK
“I no longer wish my country to be in such an organisation”
Well done, Glenn. You got there in the end!
Macky,
I agree that Arab scholars inherited much classical learning. But they also much improved on it, particularly in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and medicine. actually they were Islamic rather than Arabic, with many of the most important in the Persiate culture of Central Asia,
“WORSER”
Fixed it.
RoS
“I think you’ve missed the whole point, there old chap. Scottish independence would remove a needless layer of government namely Westminster. It would then allow Holyrood to deal directly with the EU.”
I think you have a rather inflated idea of Hollywood’s and Scotland’s importance there, RoS.
**Holyrood. My Google phone doesn’t recognise Holyrood.
Chris Rogers,
Thanks for that bit of history and attempting to explain the differences between neoliberalism and neoconservatism. I’m not sure I yet understand all the detail, and I certainly do not understand their motivation, nor their leverage on Western Society including the UK.
As I discover more of real history, I find it increasingly difficult with an International Audience, to defend what I still believe the history of the UK to be – even over the last 100 years. Even many Americans, now perceive the British to be on a par with some of the worst Genocidal Evil in history..To debate that then becomes a kind of pissing contest, that John Lennon and Yoko attempted.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/MaciunasGenocide.jpg
Anyhow my first attempt at a Mexican Chicken Burrito turned out rather well – though it was not quite as good as the one I bought at a WOMAD Festival in 1983.
Tony
Craig; “I agree that Arab scholars inherited much classical learning. But they also much improved on it, particularly in the fields of mathematics, astronomy and medicine”
Yes, which is why I stressed “intellectual achievements of their own.”
Craig; “actually they were Islamic rather than Arabic, with many of the most important in the Persiate culture of Central Asia”
Arab & Iranian contact with the Classical World via the Byzantines long predates the arrival of Islam, but yes the apogee of these achievement was indeed under Islam.
Anon1: Very considerate of you to attribute a genuine quote to me for a change. Would you care to explain your own reasons for wanting to leave? Those you set out above (“deeply undemocratic, unaccountable and oppressive experiment that is heading towards disaster”) might apply equally well to the world’s economic system, rooted in dog-eat-dog state capitalism as it is.
“I think you have a rather inflated idea of Hollywood’s and Scotland’s importance there, RoS.”
______________
Anon1.
The legitimacy of your above comment might have held some water, if you’d spelt the the name of the parliament properly.
But how can one take you seriously when you think the Scottish Parliament is in the Hollywood area
However addressing your point, I didn’t claim any overt importance attached to Holyrood. The statement alluded to by-passing Westminster, something that on non devolved issues, Holyrood has virtually no say on.
Independence would cut Westminster out of the equation completely.
I somehow suspect that this thread is going to be a relatively short one (unless , of course, Craig doesn’t post again for a fortnight or so).
It does not offer sufficient scope for the airing of the usual obsessions and, moreover, requires a little knowledge.
Republicofscotland
“But how can one take you seriously when you think the Scottish Parliament is in the Hollywood area”
____________________
Perhaps Anon1 was thinking about the acting abilities of many in the SNP leadership – which are considerable?
Craig, ‘Aurora you seem to be a bundle of prejudices.’ Well, those prejudices also draw me to read your blog as among the very best sources of insights into a very large range of topics (Assange, UK foreign policy, etc.)! And to admire your work and personal commitment to the issues you fight for.
But I can’t reconcile your commitment to Scottish autonomy and self-determination very easily with your idea that the centralist, bureaucratic, remote and fundamentally undemocratic EU is the political expression of European civilization at its most wonderful. (I’d pick some other examples.) Or the idea of expanding Europe to its ‘maximum’ to include Russia. Does that include all the colonized regions and indigenous peoples of eastern and northern Russia or just the European bit? (More prejudice, I guess.) And why the militaristic ‘common foreign and defence policy’? Is that really the most important issue for future Europe? Not working out a non-exploitative economic system that doesn’t trash the planet and its other inhabitants?