Labour is drifting dangerously back to an inward-looking nationalist provincialism. To read the vigorous debate under way – as expressed in conferences, seminars, Guardian comment page articles by Labour prominenti and wannabe future leaders – is to read nothing serious, interesting or thoughtful about the relations Britain has with other countries in the world.
To be sure, there are references to combating global warming, third world poverty, and urgent finger-wagging about the US or repetition of the clichés about the rise of India and China. We are all still Obamarites even, worryingly, as the new hero of planetary progressive politics experiences the fastest slump in popularity ratings ever seen by an incoming US president. Globalisation is condemned without any real thought about where Britain sources its food, energy and consumer products, let alone where Britain exports its services and goods to, if not to the rest of the planet.
The absence of a serious discussion about Europe by the rising wave-makers in Labour’s internal debate is a reflection of this replacement of hard thought about Britain’s and Labour’s relations with the rest of the world.
Europe has been taken for granted as a given, without any real thought about what Labour’s European politics should be in the second decade of the 21st century. In 1997 it was easy. The Tories had turned themselves into a crude, vulgar anti-European party. Labour rightly saw that social Europe was a vote-winner, with trade unions and workers denied core rights under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Labour also articulated the views of the open trade sector of British capitalism, which wanted a positive engagement with the world’s single biggest and expanding frontierless market.
That coalition of support – sustained by the clear pro-European style and charm of Tony Blair and the more reflective pro-European politics of Robin Cook, allied to clear-sighted trade union leaders like John Monks – provided Labour with a fairly clear narrative into the 2001 election. But stories need updating. Europe became problematic as it declared itself a constitutional project. Jack Straw’s famous article in the Economist in 2002 (Why Europe needs a constitution) won applause in Brussels but set alarm bells ringing in Britain’s growing Eurosceptic media and rightwing political classes. The three main parties of the 21st century British right – the Tories, UKIP and the BNP – combined to put into politics the venom spewed out daily by the Murdoch, Rothermere and Black-Barclay Brothers newspapers.
As anti-Europeanism became organised politics, Labour quietly walked away from its pro-European clarity and élan of the Smith and early Blair era. Europe became a moan and a problem. Instead of supporting social Europe, the prejudices of the more reactionary employer class became policy. Labour heaved a sigh of relief when the French and Dutch torpedoed the constitutional treaty. Gordon Brown, ably helped by one of the few ministers who knew Europe – Geoff Hoon – and by Jim Murphy, faced down anti-European hate over the Lisbon treaty and secured its passage into law. But with Irish and Czech procrastinations, all the movement and vigour associated with Europe in the1980s and 1990s faded away. Labour is now on its 12th – or is it 13th? – Europe minister as the status of European politics has faded as part of any current Labour project of government or policy.
Today, Labour has to renew its discussion on Europe. For all its fault and irritations, Europe is where social, environmental, trade union and women’s rights are written into treaty law covering 27 proud independent nation states. From Putin to the resurgent neo-conservative American right, there is a desire to see Europe disaggregated into competing nation states.
Labour should relish the debate with David Cameron as he locks the Tories into an unholy alliance with extreme nationalist rightwing political parties. The Tory MEP Edward Macmillan Scott has denounced Cameron’s links with what the Tory MEP calls ‘respectable fascism’. Macmillan Scott is a true-blue, traditional, freemarket, Yorkshire Tory. But it should be Labour, not a Tory MEP, who exposes and publicises the Tory leader’s alliance with the ultras of xenophobic European politics in Strasbourg. By breaking links with the ruling centre-right parties in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Warsaw, Stockholm, the Netherlands and other EU member states, Cameron is isolating Britain from any real influence to shape Europe’s direction of travel.
Unfortunately, some of the populist, nationalist and quasi-protectionist language over European workers in Britain has been used by Labour MPs in the false view that pandering to prejudices against foreign workers will persuade BNP and UKIP working class votes to return to Labour. There is no evidence that such populist language works, and those who use it find they have a bigger, not smaller, BNP-UKIP problem on their doorsteps.
The next stage of European politics will be tricky. Labour needs to rebuild links with sister EU parties. There is not a single European model, but across the board there are ways of managing economic and social policies in which different EU social democratic experiences may be of help to Labour in the next period.
But one lesson needs to be learnt. Labour in government in 1950 spurned the first efforts at European integration. We went into opposition. Labour, 30 years later, became a fully-fledged anti-European party. Yes, the Robin Cooks, Patricia Hewitts, Jack Straws and others swung round to John Smith’s point of view from 1990 onwards. But their decade-long strident Euroscepticism kept Labour unelectable for 18 years.
Eurosceptic posturing can be attractive. But it is deadend politics. Labour should lift its game and enjoy mocking and attacking the protectionist, isolationism of Cameron and Hague and Fox. And start the hard task of working out how to make a success of Europe as real existing internationalism.