To my own astonishment, and after a full 36 hours of hard thinking to try and escape this conclusion, I am in intellectual honesty obliged to reconsider my lifelong support for the European Union, due to the unqualified backing of the EU Commission for the Spanish Government’s dreadful repression in Catalonia.
This is very difficult for me. I still much favour open immigration policy, and the majority of Brexiteers are motivated at base by racist anti-immigrant sentiment. Certainly many Brexiteers share in the right wing support for Rajoy’s actions, across Europe. I have been simply stunned by the willingness of right wingers across the internet, including on this blog, to justify the violence of the Spanish state on “law and order” grounds. It is a stark warning of what we might face in Scotland in our next move towards Independence, which I have always believed may be made without the consent of Westminster.
But not all who oppose the EU are right wing. There are others who oppose the EU on the grounds that it is simply another instrument of power of the global 1% and an enforcer of neo-liberalism. I had opposed this idea on the grounds it was confusing the policies of current EU states with the institution itself, that it ignored the EU’s strong guarantees of human rights, and its commitment to workers’ rights and consumer protection.
I have to admit today that I was wrong, and in fact the EU does indeed function to maintain the global political elite, and cares nothing for the people.
The Lisbon Treaty specifically incorporated the European Charter of Fundamental Rights into basic European Union law.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the Spanish Guardia Civil on Sunday contravened the following articles:
Article 1: The Right to Human Dignity
Article 6: The Right to Liberty or Security of Person
Article 11: Freedom of Expression and Information
Article 12: Freedom of Assembly and Association
Article 54: Prohibition of Abuse of Rights
I would argue that these were also breached:
Article 21: Non-discrimination
Article 22: Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Diversity
The European Commission is obliged to abide by this Charter by Article 51. Yet when the Spanish government committed the most egregious mass violation of human rights within the European Union for a great many years, the EU Commission deliberately chose to ignore completely its obligations under the European Charter of Fundamantal Rights in its response. The Commission’s actions shocked all of intellectual Europe, and represented a complete betrayal of the fundamental principles, obligations and basic documents of the European Union.
This is the result. The disgusting, smirking Margaritas Schinas of the European Commission refuses to face up to the intellectual vacuity of the EU’s position. He is also lying, because he claims to be limited in matters beyond the Commission’s competence, when he knows perfectly well that the EU Commission is ignoring its obligations under the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
That video was a key factor in persuading me, after 44 years of actual enthusiasm for the EU, it is no longer an organisation which I can support.
900 people were so injured by the Guardia Civil that they had to go for formal medical treatment. Officers, in full riot gear, baton charged entirely peaceful lines of voters, smashed old ladies on the head with weapons, pulled young women by the hair and stamped on them on the ground, threw people down flights of stairs, fired rubber bullets into people sitting on the street and broke a woman’s fingers one by one.
To take the “legalistic” argument, even if you accept the referendum was illegal (and I shall come to that), that in no way necessitates that sort of violence. It could be argued the referendum’s result had no legal effect, but the act of the referendum itself is in that case a form of political demonstration. If that involved abuse of public funds, then legal consequences might follow. There was no cause at all to inflict mass violence on the voters. The actual violence was absolutely disproportionate, unprovoked and undoubtedly met the bar of gross and systematic human rights abuse by the Spanish state.
Yet the EU reacted as if no such abuse had ever happened at all, and the world had not seen it. The statement of the EU Commission totally ignored these absolutely shocking events, in favour of an unequivocal statement of absolute support for Rajoy:
Under the Spanish Constitution, yesterday’s vote in Catalonia was not legal.
For the European Commission, as President Juncker has reiterated repeatedly, this is an internal matter for Spain that has to be dealt with in line with the constitutional order of Spain.
We also reiterate the legal position held by this Commission as well as by its predecessors. If a referendum were to be organised in line with the Spanish Constitution it would mean that the territory leaving would find itself outside of the European Union.
Beyond the purely legal aspects of this matter, the Commission believes that these are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation.
We call on all relevant players to now move very swiftly from confrontation to dialogue. Violence can never be an instrument in politics. We trust the leadership of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to manage this difficult process in full respect of the Spanish Constitution and of the fundamental rights of citizens enshrined therein.
I speak fluent diplomatese, and this is an unusual statement in its fulsomeness. It contradicts itself by saying “this is an internal matter” but then adding “these are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation” which is an unequivocal statement of opposition to Catalan independence.
The Commission later claimed that to comment on the violence by the Spanish Authorities is beyond its competence, a plain lie due to Article 51 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. But what was in fact outwith Commission competence was this statement of opposition to Catalan independence.
It was also extremely unusual – in fact I cannot think of another example – of the EU Commission specifically to endorse by name Mariano Rajoy, let alone immediately after he had launched a gross human rights abuse.
Condemnation would have been too much to expect; but these gratuitous endorsements were a slap in the face to anybody with a concern for human rights in Europe. Also, in diplomatese, I should have expected the mildest of hidden rebukes in the statement; I would have been annoyed by “The Commission is sure the Spanish Government will continue to meet its obligations under the Charter of Fundamental Rights” as too weak, but it is the kind of thing I would have expected to see.
Instead Juncker chose to make no qualification at all in his support for Rajoy.
Perhaps as a former diplomat I put much more weight on these little things than might seem sensible, but to me they are the unmistakeable tells of what kind of right wing authoritarian institution the EU has become, and why I can no longer offer it my support.
I now want to turn to the wider question of whether the Catalonian referendum was indeed illegal. This argument must always come back to the Charter of the United Nations , which states at
Article 1 (2) To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
It is worth noting that there is no qualification at all on “self-determination of peoples”. It is not limited to decolonisation, as sometimes falsely claimed. The phrase is repeated in the separate UN Declaration on Decolonisation, as the principle plainly is applicable in that context. But it is not limited to that context and appears in the Charter outwith that context.
The question of what constitutes a “people” is a thorny one. NATO were sufficiently convinced the Kosovans were a “people” to go to war for their right to self-determination, while in terms of domestic law of Yugoslavia or Serbia their independence was every bit as illegal as Catalonian independence is under Spanish law. The purveyors of the “illegal” argument, in Spain and in the EU, have never deigned to us why the Kosovans are a “people” with the right to self-determination whereas the Catalans are not.
In this limited sense, NATO and the EU were right over Kosovo. If the Kosovans are a “people”, their right to self determination under the UN Charter could not be nullified by domestic Yugoslav or Serbian legislation. The same is true of the Catalans. If they are a “people”, Spanish domestic legislation cannot remove their right of self-determination. The rights conferred by the UN Charter are inalienable. A people can never give up its right of self-determination. Indeed, those arguing that the Catalans contracted into the current Spanish constitution are heading into a legal ambush as they have already admitted the Catalans are a people with the right of self-determination.
Indeed the Spanish constitution already admits Spain contains separate nationalities. The preamble of section 2 to the Spanish Constitution reads:
Section 2. The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards; it recognizes and guarantees the right to self-government of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed and the solidarity among them all.
Remember, the right to self-determination is inalienable. Once you have acknowledged the existence of different nationalities, the Spanish Constitutional Court cannot legitimately deny their right to self-determination. What it can legitimately do is to judge on their constitutional arrangements within Spain. It cannot legitimately prevent them from determining to leave.
I do not see any doubt that the Catalans are a “people”. They have their own language. They have their own culture. Most importantly, there are over one thousand years of written records of their existence as a separate “people” with those attributes and an extremely long, if in some cases occasionally broken, history of their own institutions.
I do not think it is seriously arguable that the Catalans are not a “people”. It is also the answer to the frankly childish comparison, made by right wingers, to the South East of England breaking away. There is no legitimate argument that the South East of Englanders are a separate “people” in the sense of the UN Charter. The same applies to Northern Italy. Belgium, however, does include different peoples with the right of self-determination, should they choose to exercise it.
The fact that a “people” has the right of self-determination gives them, of course, the right to choose, including the right to choose to remain within their existing state. That right to choose was all the Catalonian government was seeking to offer. The Spanish government and courts are implementing a domestic law, but that domestic law is incompatible with overarching wider rights. As journalists point out in that EU Commission video above, the Turkish courts are correctly implementing domestic law in jailing journalists and academics. It is not enough for Spain to say it is implementing law when the law itself is illegitimate. Jews were “lawfully” rounded up in 1930’s Germany. Gandhi and Mandela were “lawfully” imprisoned.
I will never forget working in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as the South Africa (Political) officer in 1986, when the policy of the Thatcher government was explicit that black activists jailed under the apartheid laws were lawfully detained, and that apartheid forces breaking up illegal Soweto demonstrations, in precisely the manner seen against voters in Catalonia, were acting lawfully. Over thirty years, the acknowledgement of the overarching internationally guaranteed basic rights appeared to have made progress. But the EU Commission has just turned its back on all of that.
It is not just the Commission. Macron, May and Merkel have all declared unequivocally against Catalonian independence, while refusing to make any comment at all on the state violence as an “internal affair”. This from Guy Verhofstadt is as good as EU reaction gets, yet it is still entirely mendacious:
I don’t want to interfere in the domestic issues of Spain but I absolutely condemn what happened today in Catalonia.
On one hand, the separatist parties went forward with a so-called referendum that was forbidden by the Constitutional Court, knowing all too well that only a minority would participate as 60 % of the Catalans are against separation.
And on the other hand – even when based on court decisions – the use of disproportionate violence to stop this.
In the European Union we try to find solutions through political dialogue and with respect for the constitutional order as enshrined in the Treaties, especially in art. 4.
It’s high time for de-escalation. Only a negotiated solution in which all political parties, including the opposition in the Catalan Parliament, are involved and with respect for the Constitutional and legal order of the country, is the way forward.
Verhofstadt accepts without question the right of the Spanish Constitutional Court to deny the Catalan right to self-determination, and like every other EU source does not put an argument for that or even refer to the existence of that right or to the UN Charter. He claims, utterly tendentiously to know that 60% of the Catalan people oppose independence. That is plainly untrue. In the last Catalonian assembly elections, 48% voted for pro-Independence parties and another 5% for parties agnostic on the issue. On Sunday, 55% of the electorate voted. A quarter of those votes were confiscated by police, but the votes of 42% of the electorate could be counted and were 90% for Independence. There is no reason to suspect the confiscated ballots were any different. Verhofstadt does at least acknowledge the disproportionate violence to stop the referendum, thus correctly attributing the blame. This is the only statement I have seen from any EU source which contains any truth whatsoever.
To withdraw a lifetime of support for the EU is not a light decision. I have delayed it for hard consideration, so that the emotions aroused by the Spanish government violence could die down. I am also very confident, knowing how these things work, that Rajoy had briefed other EU leaders in advance that he was going to close down the referendum, and their statements of support had been pre-prepared. Diplomatic wheels grind slowly, and I assumed there would be some rowing back from these original statements once bureaucracies had time to react to the excessive violence. In fact there has been no significant softening of the hard line.
In itself, even this incident would not be enough to make me denounce my support for the European Union. But it illustrates, in a way that I cannot deny, an argument that has been repeatedly urged on me and which I have been attempting to deny. The principles of the European Union and indeed the content of its treaties are something I continue strongly to support. But the institution has in fact been overrun by the right wing cronyism of the neo-liberal political class, and no longer serves the principles for which it ostensibly stands. It is become simply an instrument of elite power against the people.
Today, and with a greater sadness than you can imagine, I withdraw my support for membership of the European Union.
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This blog tends to be highly supportive of Scottish nationalism and is frequently keen to smear large swathes of the population as racists/right wing/fascist/extremist etc etc.
Consider this: Scotland has announced a permanent ban on fracking.
Scotland is home to the giant Grangemouth facility which employs some 3,500 people – mostly at above average wages for the local area. Grangemouth utilizes fracked gas. This gas needs to be imported – which necessarily makes it more expensive than locally produced gas.
The reasoning for the ban is underpinned by environmental concerns.
If the environmental concerns are valid then Scotland should move not only to ban fracking in Scotland but to the ban the use of fracked gas irrespective of source by any Scottish based entity. This failure to do so implicitly sets up Scotland as some kind of supremacist entity – too dirty for us to produce, but not too dirty for the foreign man. Ah exploiting the resources of the foreign man is some kind of colonial legacy, except when Scotland does it and justifies its decisions on bogus moral grounds.
…and so here we have it. So concerned is Scotland for the environment that it is willing to pay any price in virtue signalling but absolutely no price in economic hardship.
Loony
I agree, fracking is morally wrong because it will pollute water courses. This is the same as Tory feeding offal to sheep. Not only bonkers but wrong. I applied for a job teaching English in Inner Mongolia, but when I checked I found it was a city enveloped in smog and with a toxic lake. Why does Trump keep whining like a jet plane about China not being fair? Scotland might be hypocritical but at least it doesn’t whine.
Was that in Baotao, one of the most polluted places in China?.There have been many stand -offs between Mongolian herders and Han Chinese developers in that area as in Tibet. Settlement/colonisation by Han Chinese of other areas and the exploitation of minerals, rare earths and water-sources have been actively used to crush ‘splittist’ movements, as I am sure you well know from Sinkiang.In this way China hopes to patch over the ethnic problems of other countries with a veneer of democracy.
I was born and raised in Grangemouth. Long before North Sea Oil ever became available, or was ever even suspected to exist, Grangemouth refinery, which was established in the 1920s, was refining imported oil that came in tankers from the Gulf. My own father was a ship’s master who brought oil tankers for refining to Grangemouth in the 1960s. It’s a total red herring the idea that the refinery and petrochemical industry at Grangemouth somehow needs a LOCAL source of oil. The refinery and associated petrochemical business is based on the skill set of the employees and the plant that is already there, not its location or closeness to a source of oil. If fracked oil is now being brought in from the US it is only because this is currently the cheapest source available. Part of its cheapness is no doubt founded upon the fact that in extracting the oil from poor and downtrodden communities in the US, there is minimum attention paid to the environment. The poor of America are being poisoned and forced off their land by this appalling fracking industry.
Bringing goods and materials by sea transport is the cheapest way to transport raw materials long distances. That is another factor that makes Grangemouth viable, as distance from raw materials or export markets is not a major consideration.
Since energy policy is reserved to Westminster, might it possibly be the case that the Scottish Government’s competency in the matter is limited?
What utter rubbish.
The Scottish Government has no power to prevent Ineos importing fracked gas (or anything else for that matter) to process.
It is only able to prevent fracking in Scotland through the use of planning law and it has had to undergo an exhaustive process to ensure that this position is secure from legal challenge.
So there is no hypocrisy here, there is only a devolved Government using the limited powers it has imaginatively to protect the welfare of its people.
Quite!!
The first shipment of US shale gas to be delivered to the UK remains anchored in the Firth of Forth, unable to dock because of strong winds.
It arrived amid a fierce debate about the future of fracking in Scotland and the rest of the UK.
The tanker, carrying 27,500m3 of ethane from US shale fields, is bound for the Grangemouth petrochemicals plant owned by Ineos.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-37474396
Whoa!
There is a great deal of confusion about what the EU is and what it can and cannot do.
We are expecting far too much just now from the EU in response to what happened in Spain.
Agreed, it is not living by its lofty words.
The EU is a trade organisation with a limited albeit useful people’s dimension and an important expression of european solidarity. The people’s bit is a national competence.
We all know that it is a neoliberal project but then so are the projects of the democracies that comprise the EU.
Despite its flaws and the disappointments we all feel about the EU’s timid response to what happened in Spain, dumping the EU is an extreme response. Certainly trading support for an independent Scotland with EU membership for one with EFTA membership is a heavy price to pay. We would abide by EU rules, pay for doing so and have no voice. For the same price we would have a voice.
The EU is a democratic institution. By being part of it we are a part of conversation about what it is. Part of that conversation is how we respect national sovereignty and define, share and endorse values. That is a tough haul. It took long enough for the EU to creep to where it is now.
If all European countries quit and join EFTA in response to the EU’s timidity, for surely we are not alone within Europe in feeling disappointed, we are all diminished. EFTA would be a meaningless cipher, a conduit to WTO trading rules.
Please, let us not throw our toys out of the pram or express our glorious exceptionalism yet again.
A democracy offers a manifesto to the electorate and asks for a vote. If it doesn’t stick to its manifesto, it’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship.
Clearly words don’t mean what you think they mean: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dictatorship
My own feelings too. My concerns were first triggered when Junckers anounced his support for a EU President and EU Army….these neccessarlily imply a political EU as a unit. In fact the integrationists in the EU are detrermined to have an USE. I believe our future is in smaller States in aloose Confederation of sovereign peoples…floated by George Reid in his book Europe of a hundred flags. Or to quote Mau tse Tung in a defferent contect…let a thousand flowers bloom. Perhaps the EFTA/EEA offers us a way forward and indeed enlightened States like Sweden may join and we could form a truly respectful model. Its hard to see Poland acceping moves to throw away its independence….hard won from the old USSR. Anent your comparisons to Kosovo and Yugoslavia….the baltic states of Estonia Latvia and Lithuania I am sure must have broken USSR Law by declaring Independence.
I respect your right to change your mind and the EU has sinned more than once due to the way it has been conceived. If Commissioners are unaccountable civil servants, ex politicians open to all moneyed ‘persuasions’ only, regardless of what happens to the right of its citizens, a hollow term after what happened the last few days, then we, sitting at the table opposite them, should make it clear that only changes at the top and adherence to its own human rights regulations could persuade us stay in the EU.
I feel that Spain’s hard liners, the tax avoiding elite and royal family have not had enough yet. The similarities with the Basque people’s repression will forge new alliances between the two and it is not inconceivable that the whole of Northern Spain, with some parts of southern France will unite in their struggle to get self determination of some kind or other.
If this escalates, then N_’s prediction of a Spanish banking crash might come true.
One of my main bugbear during 34 years of active Green party politics was that we had almost no support for our discontent with an UNELECTED Commissioner class, unaccountable lobby fodder for the establishment and beyond reform.
We always maintained that the top jobs in the EU should be elected by EU voters, not appointed by its member states, almost guaranteeing that we were faced with yes man to industry and establishment.
Not a single elected politician here or elsewhere,afaik, has ever questioned this equation or made it known that they would work to change it.
The malaise of trust and lack of will to change the EU for the better, has led to the current dissatisfaction with it, and it is not just here, the same is felt everywhere in Europe, it has become remote controlled by its elite. If all its constituent parts fall away, as we are planning, well one day maybe, leave these unelected elements to fester some more, then we have failed the idea of Europe as it was envisaged in the statute of Rome.
That’s why I maintained that getting in there and, for the first time ever, change it at the centre. Support for change is now widespread, running away is the easy option, but it would open us up for a much closer relationship with the US and its practises.
From the rain of despair into the shower of doom…..I despair….
It seems to me that the Green Party,having started out in Germany as a relaxed group where we were free to drink and smoke at meetings while campaigning against nuclear power and acid rain, was quickly taken over by career politicians and zealots as it gathered popular strength. In coalition it became under Josh Fischer an anti -Russian group going along with a German presence in Kosovo and Afghanistan and pressing for an EU defence force . Along with Verhofstadt,Fischer is a leading member of the Spinelli Group seeking to reboot a strong federal EU.
So from my experience of the German Greens , I am wary of such initiatives and find myself closer to Die Linken’s drive for a Europe close to the people.In Britain and Ireland, perhaps, idealism may still prevail among the Greens but some can be a wee bit dogmatic at ttimes.
“…..the majority of Brexiteers are motivated at base by racist anti-immigrant sentiment.”
That is a shocking statement from someone like you. The UK cannot support the population of the world which is the theoretical end game of your position. Britain is a small island, so what figure would you put on it’s capacity to house, feed & employ people?
Our benefits system couldn’t cope with unlimited immigration, neither could our hospitals, schools, roads, energy supply, water treatment and on & on.
We are not RACISTS, we are REALISTS.
Scotland has not experienced mass immigration for over 150 years and is actually losing population. The issue is viewed completely differently if you are living up there.
That doesn’t answer the question from David Gunn, which was quite reasonable. What’s the upper capacity of the UK in terms of population?
“What’s the upper capacity of the UK in terms of population?”
There are limits to the life-sustaining resources the UK can provide us. In other words, there is a carrying capacity for human life in the UK. Carrying capacity is the maximum number of a species an environment can support indefinitely. Every species has a carrying capacity, even humans. However, it is very difficult for ecologists to calculate human carrying capacity. Humans are a complex species. We do not reproduce, consume resources, and interact with our living environment uniformly. Carrying capacity estimates involve making predictions about future trends in demography, resource availability, technological advances and economic development.
http://worldpopulationhistory.org/carrying-capacity/
Malthus FTW!
The UK is already a net importer of all sorts of food products. Are you saying that that is a bad thing? And/or that all States should strive for autarky?
Scotland has experienced more immigration than any other part of the UK with 20% of the population born outside Scotland.
That has been balanced out by young Scots having to leave the country for work due to Westminster negligence in managing our economy.
What do realists do when they are faced with whole sale tax evasion, year after year, by an unaccountable selfish elite, large multinationals and companies that should show social responsibility towards the citizens it serves with their goods?
Joining them is not an answer, but a capitulation to an elite that cares nothing about us at all, who use us merely as a means to profit.
What do realists say to robot labour taking away their jobs, never mind immigrants, are they concerned? have they asked their unions? what if they can’t afford a holiday in Skeggy once they’re made redundant? or a home? Do realists think that food prices will decrease once we have left? What off the predictions by scientists who look at the soil, climate and weather, their conclusion is that we’ll have approx. 60+ more harvests before our ability to feed ourself is diminished, harvests fail?
Sustainability has bitten us in the bum, whatever we are called by Craig.
Finally, do support free speech, as you are not a racist this should be of some value to you.
The billions that are bypassing the exchequer could do fare more for society than whining from the sidelines about being marked together with racist bigots. To run away will not change the capabilities to feed and support a system as it is now either, it a recipe for hard liners to do as they like, to implement laws from 1539 that allow parties in power to usurp us as they wish.
But what is the EU to DO Craig? The only sanction is a Section 7 suspension but that requires unanimity amongst the other members and Hungary would certainly veto it, Poland probably would veto it and Greece might veto it.
So if they say something then do nothing because there is nothing they can do they look like paper tigers.
The time to assess the EU is what they do when or if Catalonia declares independence as they say they will. They are presumably getting their ducks in a row, parallel payment systems and the like so if Madrid tries direct rule the government accounts will be empty, nobody will obey them and it can be ignored.
If the EU leaves them hanging out to dry, that is when we decide the EU is worthless, not now.
Catalonia is rich, it will be a net contributor to the EU and it is filled with Euroenthusiast EU citizens. If the EU turns down that carrot I too will say to hell with them.
You are being too hasty. Wait and see.
The figures say it all: 2.3 million votes (so 2.3 million “illegal acts”) and not one person arrested. 893 beaten up. That’s the action of a police state, not one ruled by law.
It was also obvious that the Catalan response was non-violent, and showed remarkable restraint.
Robert,
you put quotes around “illegal acts” – is there anyone who can tell us who was committing illegal acts in this illegal referendum.
If the would-be voters are not committing an offence (and it seems unlikely that they were) then what justification can there be to use force against them? That seems like police state behaviour – to send the police out to attack people who were committing no crime.
Matt
Whilst I take your point about declaring UDI for Scotland, never forget that if it came to the bit, we haveour own fifth column in the form of the Orange Order and its thuggish adherents. Westminster wouldn’t need to look far for people to be a militia.
The this is a no win situation for the EU. If they had come down against the governent they would have been accused of meddling in the internal affairs of a member state.
A gift to euro sceptics whatever response the EU makes.
Indeed. Nigel Farage has already been complaining about the lack of EU involvement. (I guess it’s not just Julian Assange that he and Craig agree on.)
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/915251624766980096
I doubt if they would meddle. The Catalonia is an internal matter, and not directly an EU affair.
They don’t have to “meddle”, but something better than “meh” would be a great improvement.
By the spread of Catalan Cultural bonds, a cross border issue, it makes it an EU affair, imho.
So then! Use the EU to launch protest against this… The EU has a Europe wide citizens forum. It is silence that makes this acceptable.
Give it a little time.
I’m afraid that on this occasion, after steering between Scylla and Charybdis, you’ve ended up in … The Galapagos.?
Best wishes in any case!
I think you should do another 36 hours heavy thinking.
You chuck over the EU and 70 years of peace because a break away region in Europe holds Referendum which is illegal under the Constitution that Catalonia signed up to. The Guardian Civilian in Spain protect the integrity of the State and stop illegal activity. They are not and never have been ‘ Dixon of Dock Green’.
My immediate feeling is -grow up.
I like The Saker who is always worth a read. I part company with him on this but, of course, I could be wrong. He likens the Catalan move for independence to the Maidan protests and thinks it could be part of the US plan to destabilise Europe. One commenter has pointed out that George Soros has put money behind the move towards independence.
http://thesaker.is/maidan-in-spain-and-some-new-dog-whistles/
Wow, that is the trifecta: A conspiracy theory involving the US (presumably: the CIA), Ukraine, and of course George Soros. Were no Rothschilds available?
https://www.ft.com/content/7f93856e-9c55-11e7-9a86-4d5a475ba4c5?mhq5j=e5
I had a look, I’ve occasionally read the Saker for stuff on Ukraine and Syria, but his analysis of Catalonia has completely blown his credibility for me. He pretends Catalan nationalists are going to make territorial claims as far away as Greece. He spots the red and black flags of the Anarchist CNT trade union in footage of Catalan independence supporting crowds and claims it’s related to the red and black flags (with a horizontal line between) used by the Ukrainian far right. Then that Catalan crowds jumping up and down again shows their relation to the Ukrainian far right … absolutely ridiculous!
Craig, I suspect that you’re not very familiar with the context and background of Catalan independence, which is really not analogous to Scots independence.
Your argument seems to be based on an assumption that Catalans want ‘independence’ (the majority don’t) so what do you say to those of us who did not want the (minority of) the Catalan government to even conduct its illegal referendum – the fact that it was going ahead meant that we were faced with a stark choice – either vote ‘no’ in an illegal referendum, thereby approving it, or stay away from it, thereby allowing a massive vote for ‘Yes’?
Further, what do you say to the mechanisms of the election – no scrutiny of the count, people printing off their own ballot papers at home, no mechanism to prevent multiple votes?
How can you not agree that (however unwise and cruel the manner in which they did it) the Spanish was quite right to try to protect the rights of the majority by preventing the referendum, and the EU is quite right not to break its own treaties and get involved?
How can you not agree it is always wrong to hit old ladies with clubs?
If what you say is true, then why not have an agreed referendum on the Scottish precedent? You cannot just declare yourself the majority and refuse to vote on it.
Reading the comments so far,state violence against it’s own non-violent people is not the focus,preferring the law&order,constitutional aspect.If a state using violence against it’s people,who are not being violent,is not robustly criticised,it implies that other non-critical states endorse such violence and will use such disproportionate violence against it’s own citizens.
If EU law/constitution is such that natural outrage against disproportionate violence by a state against it’s people,who are not being violent,is subsumed to legal discussions,then the EU constitution is inadequately written.
This state-sanctioned brutality cannot be excused,tolerated or ignored.
While I do not agree that it is right to hit old ladies with clubs as a general rule ( though some may invite it), I question the wisdom of old ladies joining street protests at which it is reasonably predictable that energetic policing will occur. I searched Google images and found one picture of a woman, not in the first flush of her 60’s perhaps, bleeding from a scalp wound – the scalp is notorious for copious bleeding – and another of an older woman, looking unperturbed if not content, being carried by a GC at each corner. But squads of GC battering the shit out of screaming crowds of grannies there were none.
Have we any idea how many old ladies were hurt, and how? Was this a major theme of the event? Is Craig exaggerating for effect?
Xavi,
perhaps you can answer a question I raised above: what recourse to Catalans have to achieve independence within the current legal framework?
Matt
In its 2010 judgement, the Spanish Constitutional Court said that the provisions of the Catalan Statut that it was finding unconstitutional or that it read down could of course be regularised by changing the constitution, but that an amendment under s. 167 would not suffice, but that it would require a constitutional revision under s. 168. (Because the sections that would have to be changed were in the preliminary part, which is protected from amendment by section 168(1).)
http://www.congreso.es/portal/page/portal/Congreso/Congreso/Hist_Normas/Norm/const_espa_texto_ingles_0.pdf
Section 168
1. If a total revision of the Constitution is proposed, or a partial revision thereof, affecting the Preliminary Part, Chapter II, Division 1
of Part I; or Part II, the principle of the proposed reform shall be approved by a two-thirds majority of the members of each House, and the Cortes Generales shall immediately be dissolved.
2. The Houses elected thereupon must ratify the decision and proceed to examine the new constitutional text, which must be passed by a two-thirds majority of the members of each House.
3. Once the amendment has been passed by the Cortes Generales, it shall be submitted to ratification by referendum.
Martinned,
so they have no legal recourse without persuading Spain as a whole to change its constitution? Which in turns means they are being denied self-determination. Do I have that right?
Yes and no.
Yes the Catalans can only get what they want by convincing the rest of Spain to back them, and no, they’re not being denied self-determination because they already have self determination. (As a matter of law.) After all, they participate equally in the democratic lawmaking process at a Spanish national level, and they have a significant degree of regional autonomy. They may want more autonomy, or even independence, but as a matter of law they are not being denied self determination.
(Much to Craig’s displeasure, international law – being law governing States made by States – has a strong presumption against redrawing borders.)
I actually think Catalunya has an arguable case that they’re entitled to a referendum, as a matter of the law of self-determination. But even if they voted in a referendum to declare independence, that would still not entitle them to declare independence unilaterally. At best, it would provide them with a legal claim to negotiations in good faith with the Spanish government, whatever that means. Everything else is politics, not law.
Marin is incapable of perceiving that a national judiciary can be wrong (or less than perfect). It’s been hard-wired into his brain.
@Craig: In this case, the question concerned the Spanish constitution. On that issue, the Spanish Constitutional Court is by definition right.
Craig, It’s big of you to do this. I never liked the idea that anti EU = racist. People can have legitimate concerns over the planned homogenization of a big chunk of the world
Thanks Craig. I’m a long time Brexit voting and lurker on your blog. I enjoy your blog but have been getting annoyed when you call me a racist. Thing is, I’ve had 50 years being me and I know that I’m not a racist. I suspect that applies to an awful lot of other Brexit voters too
In the context of Craig’s new thinking, this might be worth a post of its own.
Matt
This seems too impulsive, Craig. Everything you say is right. But you don’t withdraw from your country because it behaves in an imperial fashion and we should ‘withdraw’ support for the EU we fight it. It’s a British sense of self-importance which makes the whole idea seem plausible. Further, it seems clear to me now that Catalan independence is now more likely than not, whatever the EU says. It will become the victim of its own rigidity. The legal form of the reactionary nature of the EU is becoming a growing weakness, not a strength. Withdraw from this fight and you help them by walking away.
A
The EU is unreformable! At its very core is the idea that decision-making should be in the hands of an unaccountable technocratic elite. That will never change until the whole edifice collapses.
At its very core is the idea that decision-making should be in the hands of an unaccountable technocratic elite.
Do you have any evidence for this proposition? Because it sounds suspiciously like you’re projecting.
It is very uncomfortable to admit – and I wish it could be otherwise – but this paper does rest on a misreading of what the “EU” is, can and cannot do, and the roles and responsibilities of its institutions as presently configured. The Commission – which is often referred to as the EU’s executive, but which in fact more closely resembles a civil service on mild steroids – would come down on any Member State government flouting the law like a tonne of bricks (and indeed has recently, very publicly done just that). But the Spanish government broke no laws – while the Catalan authorities did. The rest is politics – and one thing the Commission absolutely cannot do is intervene in internal politics. It does not make anything better to say it, but that is the situation. The only ones who could call Rajoy out on his grotesquely brutal tactics (which are really bad politics, apart from anything else) are his fellow heads of government. And no doubt some of them will have done just that… on a secure telephone line.
If we wanted to change this state of affairs, and have an “EU” capable of intervening directly in the internal affairs of errant member states, then the conclusion would logically be to advocate not “less Europe”, but more. In his recent State of the Union address, Mr Juncker proposed some fairly major democratic governance reforms that, if implemented, would take the EU quite a bit further down the road to quasi-statehood. There is, however, no evidence that the member states have any appetite for such a “deepening” process.
As for the internal politics of the matter, the Catalan leadership is clearly also hugely responsible for this dreadful situation. The referendum was conceived as a manoeuvre to contain and outflank the radical separatists in the ruling party in Barcelona, but (owing to Madrid’s cack handed handling of the matter) the whole thing escalated into a stand-off from which neither party could back down. It will all sound all too familiar to British ears, sadly. What a mess.
But not all who oppose the EU are right wing. There are others who oppose the EU on the grounds that it is simply another instrument of power of the global 1% and an enforcer of neo-liberalism. I had opposed this idea on the grounds it was confusing the policies of current EU states with the institution itself, that it ignored the EU’s strong guarantees of human rights, and its commitment to workers’ rights and consumer protection.
I have to admit today that I was wrong, and in fact the EU does indeed function to maintain the global political elite, and cares nothing for the people.
Well done. And thank you for your concession that not quite all Brexiteers are SS troopers in disguise. From the comments of the nationalist tendency here on the Catalan issue, I’m getting the impression that the concept of an independent Scotland in the EU has just begun to fray at the edges. And a dreadful choice looms. Which is actually more harmful to Scottish interests, identity and even freedom, the EU or the UK?
There were not too many tears for Irish Nationalists who were battered and murdered by Crown forces in Northern Ireland and the UK made clear that it was an internal matter.
There weren’t? That’s news to me.
“There were not too many tears for Irish Nationalists who were battered and murdered by Crown forces in Northern Ireland and the UK made clear that it was an internal matter.”
There was actually.
Throughout the world and in UK too, especially in the 70s.
“Troops Out” etc.
Even Thatcher couldn’t fully stem that tide, though she tried and tried and tried.
The thing you have to understand is that global elites were supportive of the removal of Unionist power and institutions, against primarily English nationalists who were against.
Something similar is I suspect going on with Catalan independence.
I think the Madrid govt are falling into a trap, and should they escalate they’ll be heavily condemned.
At the moment they’re being given as much rope as they need to hang themselves.
British nationalists, rather than English nationalists.
Craig, you are right to reconsider your support for the EU. And looking to Scotland and the prospect of independence I think it woeful that the SNP are linking a vote for independence to amount to tacit approval of a vote for Scotland to be in the EU once independence is gained. I want Scotland to be independent but I feel real resentment at the way the SNP are linking my vote for independence as also being a vote for continuing membership of the EU. Whether Scotland should or should not be a member of the EU really needs to be a separate vote after independence is gained. Any other way is outright abuse of people that otherwise do support independence.
Like Catalunya, an independent Scotland would have to be in the EU if only to avoid running its economy into the ground. However insane Brexit is, trying to take an even smaller territory like Catalunya or Scotland out of a larger country and out of the EU at the same time is a thousand times crazier.
I see where you are coming from and note your quite emphatic insistence that for an independent Scotland to be out of the EU would (a) run the economy into the ground, and (b) be just sheer crazy. These are opinions neither of which you can prove. There are successful countries in Europe that are not full members of the EU and they manage just fine – I can think of no reason why Scotland couldn’t do the same. Where there might be an issue is that Scotland does need immigrants. However, I don’t see how we can’t manage that ourselves outside of the EU, lots of other countries manage to do just that without difficulty.
Also, in the end, I’m not protesting at the prospect of an independent Scotland being a full member of the EU per se. I’m really much more concerned with there being a *democratic* mandate over the issue – not a conflation of two different things; an independent Scotland; and, full membership of the EU. A vote on independence should be just that and not a step further (we can sort the rest out democratically after independence has been gained – and *that* should be made clear during campaigning for the independence vote). To link that vote on independence to tacit approval for full EU membership is democratically wrong. And, I have to say, rankles me no end. Like the pass that Craig has come to – assuming I’m reading him aright – I think the EU was in the beginning a great idea and had some very sound social principles, but, alas, it has just morphed into a big-business club and will sh*t on everything social that gets in the way of the headlong rush to gain more and more of the gut-retching evil that Mammon has to offer.
There are successful countries in Europe that are not full members of the EU and they manage just fine
Firstly, “full” is doing a lot of work there.
Secondly, my point was exactly to emphasise the transition. The Brits can’t even figure out how to make Brexit happen. Imagine what a newly minted state would have to do to exit two long-standing polities at the same time. If Catalunya exits Spain but stays in the EU, a whole pile of laws can stay the same, it won’t have to organise any border checks (except at the border with Andorra), etc. Exiting Spain and the EU at the same time is two transitions for the price of one.
If Scotland is not capable of being economically self-sufficient, it would be relying on support from the EU, and subject to any conditions attached to that. It would be no more independent – I’d argue less so – than it is currently as part of a net contributor to the EU. Solution: become economically self-sufficient, and then move to independence. Get your ducks in a row, ffs.
There is nothing ‘insane’ about a soft Brexit in the form of continuing access to the single market via EFTA (given that the EU says a bespoke Swiss style arrangement is strictly a one off). The fact that the May government has spent 15 months denying that this option is a viable one speaks volumes for its lack of connection to political reality. (Ditto their idea that an election campaign built around the PM’s ‘strong and stable’ leadership would be a vote winner- another example of the disconnect that is now almost pathological).
It isn’t, except that a Soft Brexit is a strictly dominated strategy (in game theory terms), meaning that it involves Britain giving something up (i.e. a seat at the table) without getting anything in return. At least with a Hard Brexit they’re getting more freedom to make their own laws and trade agreements, even if that gain is basically worthless.
Martinned-
Control of our agriculture and fisheries, an ’emergency brake’ limiting EEA immigration, and opting for the jurisdiction of the EFTA Court instead of the European Court is hardly getting nothing in return.
The EFTA Court President was interviewed recently and was clear in seeing his remit as granting more flexibility to member states in the interpretation of European law than is allowed in EU member states. Remember, as an EFTA member Iceland was effectively given a free pass to exit one of the EEA’s ‘four freedoms’ (that relating to freedom of capital movements) for over seven years while it had capital controls in place.
This was a blog post whose title and content I never expected to see here. Craig appears to have joined that select band of EU sceptics who were once enthusiasts but who experienced a Damascene moment; it incudes people who on other issues can hold sharply divergent opinions (confirmed Atlanticist Gisela Stuart being a good example) but who in their guts can no longer stomach the EU’s instinctive doublethink, and craven power worship.
The EU’s statement on Sunday was based on the assumption that the combined weight of Brussels and the Spanish state can smother Catalan nationalism as a pesky irritant- and the EU may well be correct in such an assessment. The next few days will be crucial- IF a UDI is forthcoming from Barcelona the EU will either have to reiterate its support for the Spanish state (which may mean supporting the curtailment by Madrid of such autonomy as Catalonia currently enjoys), or backtrack humiliatingly on the hard line stance it has adopted hitherto. Neither prospect appeals to the Brussels elite, who must therefore be hoping that the Catalan regional government loses its bottle and admits defeat.
Some excellent points Mark.
There are those of on the left who were never seduced by the mighty EU propaganda machine and never saw it as some new sort of new Jerusalem. The EU has never been about democracy, at its heart, it’s undemocratic, it’s elitist and it’s distant from the people. It always has been and always will be as long as it exists. Thankfully it’s days are numbered
Viva La Brexit
Since you clearly object to decisions being made at too large a scale, I have a few questions:
Could you give some indication of how big is too big? 500 million people is too big, apparently. (So India and China need their own Brexits, I presume.) But what about the 300 million in the US? Or the 200 million in Brazil?
Also, I wonder why you think that international agreements on any of a million issues are more democratic than decisions made within a democratic polity like the EU. For example – to take something wildly technical – once upon a time six foreign affairs ministers sat down and signed a treaty called the Brussels Convention on jurisdiction and the enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters, which set out where you sue people and under what law. At some point the parliaments of those six countries were asked to ratify the Convention, but only in an up or down vote.
Now, almost 50 years later, the Brussels Convention has been replaced by Regulation 1215/2012, the Brussels regulation (recast). It was adopted democratically, I can show you which MEPs and Council members voted for and against it.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2010/0383(COD)&l=en
So why is the latter more “undemocratic”, “elitist”, and “distant from the people” than the former?
It was Stuart’s Henry Jackson paymasters who put her on the leave side. Do not be naive.
Many moons ago, when all the free market stuff was in vogue and the Cecchini Report published, “subsidiarity” was a vogue word.
This lefty Leaver believes in people, and has no problem with independence, whether it is Northern Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall or Catalonia. Being one of those “racists” near Thanet, I am nearer France than London.
“cares nothing for the people” – This much was obvious from the treatment of Greece and the mass unemployment, especially among the young, in Spain, Portugal and Italy. If unemployment of 20-50% is the answer, you’re asking the wrong question.
And despite your repeated and obnoxious smears, I have also coughed up for your fund. Wonder whether you’d do the same for me??
Indeed so and we can vote out May but we can’t vote out Juncker!
Sure you can. Just don’t vote for any EPP parties.
(It’s not the EU’s fault that David Cameron took the Tory party out of the EPP, leaving the UK essentially without any EPP representation.)
Also, how am I supposed to vote out May? (Given that I live in a Labour safe seat.)
Though I am pleased to see this scales from the eyes moment I have to be honest and say that I think the EU’s position is dictated by the complexity of their position, not their support for the mooted 1%, though I do think the institution itself has become a very gilded gravy train.
If Catalonia becomes independent they have to face the issue of either admitting them or rejecting them as a member state. So they find themselves in a paradox, signaling either position is an overreach, not signaling is dereliction of duty.
I have suspected Craigs position on the EU was wavering for some time from various comments he has made on previous blogs and his taunting of leavers as racists. He made a reference to this as a “game” at one point. I suspect he knew that many commenters on this blog were Leavers who were not racists and that by taunting them they would provide a series of rational arguments for their decisions to vote leave. He has obviously been playing this “game” for some time now. I suspect Leavers have provided sufficient argument to influence him in his research and deliberations and the Catalonian insident was a relatively small final nail in the coffin for his ongoing EU support and provided him the opportunity to come out of the closet. I think many of us switched our allegiance to the EU project long before, during, or since the referendum debates, I welcome you Craig to our number, whatever your rationale. I wish you every success in your upcoming court case and future endeavours including keeping this blog alive.
HURRAH !
I am for diversity and against homogeneity. I am glad you are too.
Indeed! Everybody should be for diversity and against homogeneity!
It’s a wonder how the Netherlands managed to break free from Spain. ?
They were willing to shed blood to do so. If they had not, they would never have broken free.
It is always good to continuously reconsider ones position you seem to be conflating the EU with ECHR.
The EU is just following the logic of JC Druncker’s recent vision statement – one people, one state, one leader.
Says the guy from the country that recently elected Theresa May as its dictator for the next 5 years. At least in the EU you can have legislation annulled in court.
Also, I could do without the ad hominems against Juncker. (Although it is a good way of seeing which commenters get their news from English right-wing tabloids.)
I’m afraid you are embarrassing yourself Martinned. It is obvious from your somewhat obsessive postings here that you think of yourself as being rather clever, and would like others to share that opinion. But then you come out with “the country that elected Theresa May as dictator”. That ‘poof’ you can hear is the sound of your credibility evaporating.
Seriously, though … you appear to be some kind of lawyer (albeit clearly not a very busy one for some reason) with a vested interest in EU law. That’s lovely, and we all have to make a living, however grubbily. But your technocratic obsessions blind you to the bigger and important issues.
I note that you feel you ‘could do without the ad hominems against Juncker’. In return let me convey to you my indifference. It’s not about you and your feelings. More importantly, only an abject EU apologist would not be concerned about the character, stability, and erratic behaviour of the unelected leader of a supranational bureaucracy.
On the one hand you imply that Theresa May is a dictator, and then you defend Juncker. Do you hear that ‘poof’ sound again?
Frankly, the more that technocrat elitists defend the indefensible EU in these situations, the greater the realisation dawns amongst the wider population of how profoundly important Brexit really is. So please do carry on.
Very angry that I supported your fundraiser now, seeing how ill-considered and fickle thus decision is. Brexit is all about Nationalism – the bad kind and the EU has massively supported regions within member states like Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Catalonia over and above what the states themselves have done.
Individual EU politicians’ comments are not the whole picture – they come and go, it’s rhe institution that matters.
Catalans to declare Catalonia a independent state on Monday.
https://mobile.twitter.com/CatalansForYes/status/915554797243240449
Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair of Refugee Intergration.
Says that many of the Tory/DUP alliance look remarkably like the agenda of Germany’s AfD party.
I say who could disagree with that, watching Theresa May choke on her lies today.
http://www.thenational.scot/politics/15573812.Alison_Phipps__The_success_of_the_far_right_in_Germany_is_nothing_compared_to_the_Tories_and_Ukip_in_the_UK/
I also like this guys trail of thought.
http://www.thenational.scot/politics/15573891.Author_attacks_English_nationalism_s_suppression_of_Scottish_culture_and__lickspittle_journalists__and/