Labour’s flirtation with Euroscepticism could have dangerous consequences
By Steve Race
—The Labour party has now joined the ranks of the Eurosceptics – or so some may see it. Last month’s vote in the House of Commons on reducing the European Union budget was won by a curious alliance of the Labour frontbench and the most rightwing Tories. For Labour there might have been the opportunity to stake out a real position on the EU and graciously give David Cameron some breathing space at the negotiating table – after all, we hope to be doing the negotiating in 2015 and a damaged relationship with Brussels is not a great starting point.
On the other hand, there was the tantalising prospect of a tactical victory over the Tories, causing Cameron a headache by forcing a very public wedge between him and his backbenchers. Strategy over tactics or tactics over strategy: the eternal conundrum for politicians. On this occasion tactics won the day, and the Labour party stepped open-eyed into the Eurosceptic lobby.
The more ideologically unsubtle wing of the Labour party is now in the process of taking a settled view of the EU – in short, it believes that the EU is a neoliberal institution that oppresses the good peoples of southern Europe. This is nonsense, of course: the EU that introduced many of the workers’ and consumer rights that exist in Britain today is also the EU of bailouts and austerity. It is a wide-ranging and pluralistic institution and as such contains both leftwing and rightwing elements.
Despite this, the core purpose and structure of the EU is something every Labour member can support, based as it is on problem-solving, unity and cross-border relations through discussion.
The problem for Labour in finding a way to articulate a strategy on the EU stems from the mendacity of politicians from across the political spectrum over the last 30 years. In 13 years in office, Labour did not make the case for the EU convincingly, made no efforts to explain the symbiotic relationship between the nation-states and the union, and often used the spectre of the EU as a bogeyman to defend national positions. Nor was the argument made for the UK’s place at the heart of the EU – on decision-making and on shaping the direction of travel.
It now falls to this generation of Labour politicians to properly articulate a full-hearted case for the EU to avoid the UK sliding further towards withdrawal. In the short term, it may result in opprobrium. But the debate is dominated by the anti-EU right, and as such the public is not used to hearing about the EU in a positive light.
A Labour strategy on the EU should be based on pragmatism and reform. The party’s leadership needs to articulate the case for membership whenever possible – the case for jobs, for investment, for peace and security, for being a part of the largest trading bloc on the planet. The problems the world faces can only be solved by ever-closer working relationships between nations, even as ‘the state’ becomes, in many ways, increasingly meaningless, with pollution and climate change failing to recognise national borders and corporations playing the nation-state game to avoid tax.
Alongside this should be a strong case for reform – for cutting the waste, for stopping the travelling circus between Brussels and Strasbourg, for simplification and democratisation of the structures, and for stemming the over-reach of the commission and the British knack of goldplating EU regulations.
A referendum on withdrawal of the UK from the EU is coming; Ed Miliband was right last month to warn we may be sleepwalking to the exit. When the poll happens, on the one side, promoting withdrawal, will be the proponents of isolationism, with emotion and ‘patriotism’ at their back. On the other will be the leaders of all three main parties, allied with the majority of business leaders, calling for various ‘degrees’ of membership. The pro-withdrawal advocates have been making their arguments for years, while the pro-membership advocates have spent that time vacillating rather than making the case.
When the time comes, if the pro-European lobby has not already made its case for membership, the voters may already have made up their minds.
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Steve Race is chair of the Young Fabians and leads their activity in the south-west
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Couldn’t agree more. A referendum is coming, and Labour needs to get ahead of the curve on this one. The long lead-in for the Scottish independence referendum has meant that there’s been time to debunk many of the falsehoods around that issue, but we can’t rely on necessarily having a similarly lengthy campaign period to put our points across – we have to start standing up for the EU now.
Absolutely – the combined forces ( although not united) of the Conservatives, UKIP and the rampant Tory Tabloids led by the Sun will be a massive force to eject the UK from the EU and it will be a political distraction for them if their popularity looks problematic in 2015. Labour was wrong, wrong and wrong again to be associated with anything that gives power to this alarming spectacle.