The European crisis is like a dinner party: it would all be much, much better if Tony Blair had been invited. It is a European problem – and all the crowing over the inevitable weakness of the euro ignores that, in some parallel euro-free world, the Greeks’ way out would be a beggar-thy-neighbour devaluation of the drachma that would almost certainly plunge the rest of Europe into a depression anyway – and it requires a European solution. Fiscal meltdown in Kansas doesn’t precipitate a collapse of the American economy, because the costs are ultimately underwritten by the federal government. But a European solution looks, at present, to be elusive, because there is no great countervailing force that must ‘think European’. Instead, Europe’s destiny hinges on an ingénu French president, a German chancellor with one eye on next year’s election, and a British prime minister with both eyes on his iPad.
All right, it didn’t have to be Blair: but what Europe needs right now is a genuine heavyweight at the heart of Europe, someone who can stop traffic. Someone who has to lead not for individual nation-states but for Europe. Henry Kissinger’s question – ‘which number do I call for Europe?’ – is being asked with increasing urgency by everyone from Barack Obama to Christine Lagarde, by voters in Reading and Rhine-Westphalia, by traders in New York and Zurich. Europe’s position is the same as has always been: we can hang together or all we can all hang separately. The reason why there isn’t a President Blair, or Schroeder, or even an Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is because, as has happened all too often in the history of the European Union, the role was handed out as part of a grubby and uninspiring compromise.
Despite that, the best hopes of the Eurosceptics will be dashed; the euro will survive and thrive, for no other reason than the fact that no one wants to stand for re-election in the middle of a prolonged and painful European recession. The best evidence that the euro will survive can be seen in the remarkable transformation of David Cameron, all too willing to play to his party’s Neanderthal wing with his ‘veto’ only a few months ago, now at the coalface with the rest of the world’s leaders, because the consequences are both economically and politically disastrous. But survival mustn’t be seen as an endorsement of the status quo ante; there has to be a radical rethink of how Europe operates, and how Labour engages with Europe, both in Brussels and in Britain.
Economically, globalisation means that resisting ‘ever closer union’ in Europe is as fruitless as opposing the rising of the sun. ‘Repatriation of powers’ isn’t a solution, it’s a soundbite. That means that the big existential challenge for European reformers is reducing the democratic deficit. The German Christian Democrats officially support an elected president for Europe. Labour should do so as well, because only with a directly elected president will European citizens be able to ensure that there is an accountable and powerful voice for Europe in the event of a similar crisis. The alternative is a European Union that could have sprung directly from the nightmares of the Europhobes. But the economic reality is that there is no way out of Europe: you can have an unaccountable and unelected market, or you can work to secure an accountable and elected EU. Cameron’s isolationism is the economic equivalent of dismantling the nuclear deterrent at the height of the cold war.
This is a crisis born of endless shabby compromises: a failure to close the democratic deficit, a failure to argue for the importance of an engaged British presence at the heart of the European project. Europe will get back from the brink, the challenge for progressives is building a better Europe afterwards.
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Stephen Bush is a member of Progress, works as a journalist, and writes at adangerousnotion.wordpress.com
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