UK EU Referendum Thoughts

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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
So what could be achieved?

Massive investment in green energy and a ban on expansion of fossil fuel extraction? A major programme to renationalize railways, postal services and the like? Safeguarding of public health provision from predatory private health providers that, at present, benefit from laws that unfairly favour them over state providers? A properly funded and integrated system to accommodate refugees so that a handful of countries aren't unfairly burdened?
 
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vimothy

yurp
Suppose Corbyn took power in the UK. What would he bring to the table that would enable a solution to be reached where none is possible now?
 

droid

Well-known member
Varafakis has pretty much spelled it out already in the polemical but ocassionally insightful diem25 manifesto https://diem25.org/

But off the top of my head:

Dismantling and/or reform of the ECB, EU commission, Eurogroup. Draconian Lobbyist charter. Constitutional assembly. Debt repudiation. Rollback on liberalisation in financial sector.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Hi John I was just wondering if you've got any good arguments for leaving cos I haven't come across any yet. I want to hear the out argument

I'm really not the best person to speak to about this, I am just stumbling around trying to find my way like everyone else.

I will say that I utterly do not care about:

1. Sovereignty (Down with Sovereigns, up with Soviets!)
2. The queens head being on coins or whether we have the euro
3. Preserving the british way of life / british values

The main things for me are:

1. The EU is a neoliberal project. Admittedly so is the vast majority of the UK ruling class. (So in many ways this is an argument between factions of capital about how they should run our lives.)

2. Unlike some sections of the UK ruling class there is no way for UK citizens to change what the EU does or to reform it. Indeed - the EU will protect its own values and interests even if an entire country votes against it, as in Greece.

3. The EU is all about free movement of workers, but only within the EU. Perhaps it has to be like that but it there are some shameful examples of letting migrants die, for example by refusing to support the Marie Nostrum project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mare_Nostrum

It should go without saying that this essentially equates to the murderous exclusion of black people.

4. The EU is huge bureaucracy. As a bureaucrat myself I know that this means a lot of making things more complicated than they have to be, working to perpetuate yourself instead of the greater good and general wasteman behaviour.

5. Despite all the panic it would seem that membership of NATO and being subject to the European Court of Human Rights are totally different to membership of the EU.


Most of the arguments for remaining seem to revolve around:

1. Not liking UKIP or little Englanders / oh the French are so sophisticated not like the oiks I see outside Wetherspoons.
2. "Project Fear" type stuff as we saw with the Scottish referendum
3. And mainly "It's good for trade/ business". I don't think that is proven. I also don't see any evidence whatsoever that what is good for the banks and bosses is good for me.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Only the last suggestion addresses Europe.

Laws could be made to address all the others. And EU-level laws already impact on those things, don't they? I think the Royal Mail sell-off was made possible or at least easier because of EU laws regarding the liberalization of state-owned mail services.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
3. And mainly "It's good for trade/ business". I don't think that is proven. I also don't see any evidence whatsoever that what is good for the banks and bosses is good for me.

It's good for employers, this much is obvious. It also totally debunks the dogmatic claims you sometimes hear made that the free movement of people doesn't lead to wage deflation. Of course it bloody does, especially for people who don't earn much in the first place.

But in our hypothetical reformed social-democratic EU, wouldn't it be possible to introduce some Union-wide minimum wage system, perhaps pegged to the cost of living in each member state? That would fix or at least ameliorate the wage deflation problem.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Regarding vim's attachment to sovereignty and independence, and luka's disdain for same:

Isn't it better, at some very basic level, to be ruled by a bunch of self-serving pricks you can (at least in principle) get rid of, than by a bunch of self-serving pricks you can't do anything about at all?

I absolutely reject the lazy "all governments are as bad as each other" pose of the professionally jaded. For all of New Labour's faults, the Blair/Brown regime was measurably less bad than the current lot by almost any criterion. And governments in the past have done things that were actively good and not just 'less shit', such as, you know, introduce universal suffrage, set up the NHS, abolish the death penalty...
 

luka

Well-known member
im not opposed to genuine independence i just dont think thats what you get when you leave the EU. im not sure im more personally powerful and free in an independent britain. i just dont buy it.


I absolutely reject the lazy "all governments are as bad as each other" pose of the professionally jaded.

no one said this
 

vimothy

yurp
Power is always vested in some sort of authority. It's just a question of who.

John said something interesting in his earlier comment:

"I will say that I utterly do not care about ... Sovereignty"

It's hard to take this seriously. At least, it would be hard to take his other arguments seriously if this were true. (Suppose no one has the authority to implement your ideas. Then they are completely redundant and there is no point proposing them.)

He then complains that,

"there is no way for UK citizens to change what the EU does or to reform it. Indeed - the EU will protect its own values and interests even if an entire country votes against it, as in Greece."
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
no one said this

Sure, no-one posting in this thread has said this - and I didn't mean to imply they had. But I've heard it from other people plenty of times.

And it's it sort of implied in taking the position that "the UK out of the EU would have no more independence"? Let's forget the independence of the UK as a monolithic entity and think about the agency of the people of the UK to choose their leaders and the sorts of laws that apply in their country. It seems unarguable that a UK that is not beholden to a supranational polity is a UK in which people have more say about how their country is run.

You are right that the EU as it stands helps temper some of the more reactionary tendencies of the current government (although they're managing to shove plenty of reactionary legislation down our throats nonetheless, clearly). But at the same time, a lot of things the EU and its organs such as the ECB do is obviously not to the benefit of most ordinary Europeans (ask the Greeks - or the Germans, for that matter). So in the end I'm back to a sort of Euro-agnostic stance, I suppose.
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
Power is always vested in some sort of authority. It's just a question of who.

John said something interesting in his earlier comment:

"I will say that I utterly do not care about ... Sovereignty"

It's hard to take this seriously. At least, it would be hard to take his other arguments seriously if this were true. (Suppose no one has the authority to implement your ideas. Then they are completely redundant and there is no point proposing them.)

He then complains that,

"there is no way for UK citizens to change what the EU does or to reform it. Indeed - the EU will protect its own values and interests even if an entire country votes against it, as in Greece."

I was making a joke about the Queen. :)

I still think "democracy" is a better way of looking at it than "independence / sovereignty" though.

Democracy and more of it is a much better aim than choosing to be ruled over by local rich people. (Though better to be ruled over by local rich people you can get rid of than distant rich people you can't...)
 

luka

Well-known member
"I will say that I utterly do not care about ... Sovereignty"

It's hard to take this seriously. At least, it would be hard to take his other arguments seriously if this were true. (Suppose no one has the authority to implement your ideas. Then they are completely redundant and there is no point proposing them.)

i think he means the word, as a fetish object.

edit:hes here can talk for himself
 

john eden

male pale and stale
So more democracy, in principle, also means a demand to abolish the house of lords and the monarchy while we are at it.

And for people to have much more of say than a tick in a box every five years.
 
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