I have had quite a bit of debate over the last week with comrades who should know better about Labour’s position on the EU. In a nutshell, the centre-right of the Labour Party seem to take the view that what we have got is the best we are going to get, therefore we should shut up and put up with the current relationship with the EU.
Paul Cotterill at Though Cowards Flinch builds on a proposal from Caroline Lucas to suggest an amendment to the current, predominantly Tory, motion which, if defeated would allow Labour to vote against the substantive resolution on a principled position rather than the current ‘don’t rock the boat’ position. Paul suggests something along the lines of…
renegotiate the terms of its [the UK's] membership in order to create a new relationship based on peaceful co-operation, democratic accountability, citizen rights, economic and environmental sustainability.
That’ll do for me!
What a load of piffle and waffle!
In no particular order:
“Peaceful co-operation” – nobody’s at war with anyone else so we already have it.
“Democratic accountability” – we already have a rough and ready version of it in the UK so who needs an even rougher and unreadier one in Europe?
“Citizens’ rights” – or legal blx,as I think of it because there has never been a legal construction that some crafty lawyer can’t find a way of changing it – anyway, we’re ‘subjects’ not ‘citizens’ in the UK!
“economic and environmental sustainability” – or, how to let a load of ignorant, mouth-breathing socialists interfere with absolutely everything.
Is that seriously the level of thinking in socialist circles these days? Poor old Marx must be spinning in his tomb!
‘Peaceful co-operation’ – and why would we not want to see it continue.
‘Democratic accountability’ – because where decisions are taken on a cross national basis, the people who take them should be democratically accountable for their actions.
‘Citizen rights’ – citizens because unlike you, socialists don’t wish to bend the knee to someone who became a head of state on the basis of accidental sperm fertilisation. The reference to lawyers is a piss-weak argument for not guaranteeing rights.
The final point about the economy and the environment just shows that you couldn’t find a sensible argument against so reverted to type.
If this is really the depth of free market economists analysis these days, we should take heart.
As Caroline Lucas argues for an amendment on “pro-democracy” grounds, her amendment needs to to stress the need to tackle the European Union’s major shortcoming – its democratic deficit. An amendment which incorporate such an element would allow some Labour MPs to vote for it if it is selected, then to vote against the original motion if the amendment either isn’t called or is defeated. It would enable them to show a pro-democracy stance that is not anti continued membership of the EU. This could be done on the back of a suitable amendment from either Lucas or Labour back-benchers.
Any amendment calling for renegotiation is fundamentally dishonest. There can be no significant renegotiation or repatriation of powers. The EU is what it is and our choice is between being members or not. Although a strong opponent of our EU membership I do respect those who strongly favour it. I have no respect for those who pretend that we can renegotiate to any significant degree..
Which is quite amazing when you consider it is forever being renegotiated. My view is they either agree to negotiate to address the democratic deficit, or we give a timetable for withdrawal. That leaves the member states with a dilemma. Do they explicitly say they are opposed to democratic reform, or agree the issue has to be addressed.
But the renegotiation only ever goes in one direction and and it never involves diminishing the EU’s powers. Your call for democratic reform would be welcomed because it would be seen as a way of taking even more powers from the nation states.
If they wanted that so much, why have they resisted any steps towards democracy so fiercely. The bureaucrats who run the EU are not going to hand over power to the people of Europe.
This motion seems to me to provide further evidence that the Greens are taking over the wishy-washy mantle from the Lib Dems who’ve successfully moved on to a no-attempt-to-hide-our opportunistically dishonest position.
There’s no one to negotiate with.
Despite all the worthy talk, we have only three choices viz.:
- stay in the EU and try to shift it towards more democratic ways
- leave the EU but remain in the EEA (if they’d have us) and thus be in the same awful position as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway that have to abide by most EU rules whilst having zero influence over there composition; or
- leave the EEA and trade with Ukraine…
The first of those choices is interesting… if there is “no-one to negotiate with”.
Shifting the entire thing ain’t the same as negotiating a unique position for our country. The latter is something that none of the other 26 countries is remotely interested in discussing. Several of them aren’t a million miles (or even kilometres) away from sense re the former.
PS Sorry ’bout my ghastly homophone in the previous, I hope you’re not homophobic (feeble attempt at a joke).
Excuse me, but who said anything about negotiating a unique position? You’re inventing my point of view and then arguing against it. Labour should be supporting Lucas’ amendment (or even Paul Cottrill’s) with a view towards a future Labour Government taking the lead in negotiating with the other member states to address the democratic deficit.
Incidentally, going back to your previous point, why the Ukraine? Don’t we trade with the US? India? China? Or have they been moved in to the EU while I wasn’t looking?
I refer the hon gent to the wording of the amendment and in particular “renegotiate the terms of its [the UK's] membership”.
I wondered if you’d missed my deliberate exaggeration in point three. My attempt to satirise the sorts of crazy exaggerations about the wickedness of the EU that UKIP and much of our “free” press are apt to engage in.
A very 1980′s amendment Bob.
To quote something useful:
“It’s the economy, stupid!”
It must be so embarrasing for you Bob to be in such a miniscule anti EU rabble.
To top it all, your friends appear to be barking Tories.
Us Labour supporters have humiliated you at long last.
Oh, the joy of it all.
Gary, unlike you I don’t change my opinions depending on what other people’s opinions are. Therefore, when you were brown-nosing the Labour leadership in the pathetic hope that they would let you become an MP, I held my views based on my own thoughts. Now, when you throw your rattle out of the pram because the Labour Leadership wouldn’t let you in to their playground, I can consistently hold my views based on socialism, democracy and internationalism.
I feel no joy about your sorry decline though. I just feel your pain seeping through every word.
But Bob………..
I well remember travelling to Sandwell for my interview for the panel of potential Labour Parliamentary candidates and a question of the EU popped up.
What luck that a pro EU member such as I could speak volumes.
The problem was that the interviewing panel had no idea what I was on about.
(heard all the jokes Bob).
I am pro EU before, during and after and still my colours do not change.
Enjoy your friendship with the Tory rabble who want to “Bring powers back to England” (scrap human rights).
They are shite Bob, but my class defends us against their class (and it appears you also).
I’m enjoying this.
They are not my friend Gary, let’s face it you couldn’t get a fag paper between you and wee Gideon on economic policy… of course you were pro-eu in your interview, you wee sucking up to New Labour… you always did… until…
Bob, my friend Gideon and his Tory mates now run this Country (they ran you out).
Ed and Ed say they (your anti EU Tory friends) are cutting “too much too fast and too soon”.
At the end of their Tory five year term the debt will rise by at least 25% more than it is now.
Your lot need a new strategy on the economy as their current one is incredibly stupid.
Is there any chance you could arrange another interview for me so I can run out a couple of thousand ideas to re arrange the economy on behalf of the working classes?
Not that I would want to be successful in the interview, its just that I’d like to see that bunch of West Midlands numpties sit with their mouths wide open as they see how easy it really all is and coming from Stoke, (I don’t know what you’re on about Gary, the chair said). Had the CLP roaring did that one.
“Is there any chance you could arrange another interview for me…”
I don’t have any influence with the Conservative Party Gary.
Says the man who agrees with the biggest internal dispute of the Conservatives in 20 years plus.
What a shocker.
‘Not new Conservatism, not old Conservatism, just Conservative’.
‘For a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power (and anti EU human rights) in favour of the ory classes and their idle rich families’.
Not worthy of a response. Must try harder.
81 Tories reckon THEY are the true voice of the Conservatives (anti EU/anti human rights/sack workers).
They didn’t reckon on Sandwell’s own though, did they.
Yes, my view we should have a democratic EU was shared by those well known Tories Denis Skinner, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Cruddas, John McDonnell. Presumably you were in agreement with Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Michael Gove, David Cameron… and the honourable member for Stoke-on -Trent Central!!!
See, Peter Mandelson knew what he was doing… Lol!
We shall se over the next few Months where the 81 reckon they and Britain have been wronged by a majority so vast in tn Parliament it was frightening even for me.
We shall see once the smoke clears and cases for democracy and freedom have waned wheren the real land lies.
And then we shall have talk of executing workers rights, hamsters and guinea pigs (excuses for non deportation) being shelved instead of butchering human rights.
All on the nonce of independence and Sterling superiority in place of gauchos running a gulag of Euro bankruptcy.
Have pride in your England Bob, for it is superior in this island Kingdom needed to be rid of the pestilence that denies your rightful place as a Utopian economically Independent State the envy of the corrupt world.
They are having a little rest today Bob, but the 81 sure as hell are going to kick off very soon.
Polish you boots and riding crop Bob.
Englands is calling you. England wants you.England needs you.
Rule Britannia
Ps. Downton Abbey is a fictional load of shite put out by Julian for Villa fans the world over to overcome any nonsense that the Upper classes actiually gave a f@@@ about anyone downstairs.
The 81 adore its truthfulness.
Calling the referendum “a device of demagogues and dictators” was Thatcher’s only ever favourable quotation of a Labour Prime Minister. Yet to those who worship at Thatcher’s altar while wholly ignoring her record on this and so much else, the demand for that deeply flawed and wholly foreign device has become a nervous tick. They honestly cannot see how Pythonesque it is to demand a referendum in the cause of defending parliamentary sovereignty. The Lisbon Treaty is self-amending, so there can never be another treaty. What is needed is legislation with five simple clauses.
First, the restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, and its use to repatriate agricultural policy and to restore our historic fishing rights in accordance with international law. Secondly, the requirement that, in order to have any effect in the United Kingdom, all EU law pass through both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them. Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard. Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights (or of the Supreme Court) unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons.
And fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons. Thus, we would no longer subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, neoconservatives such as now run France and Germany, people who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, or Dutch ultra-Calvinists who will not have women candidates. Soon to be joined by Turkey’s Islamists, secular ultranationalists, and violent Kurdish Marxist separatists.
The appropriate person to move this amendment is the Leader of the Opposition, with a Labour three-line whip in favour of it and the public warning that the Whip would be withdrawn from any remaining Blairite ultra who failed to comply. The Liberal Democrats set great store by decentralisation, transparency and democracy, and they represent many areas badly affected by the Common Fisheries Policy. The Liberals were staunch free traders who were as opposed the Soviet Bloc as they were to Far Right regimes in Latin America and Southern Africa, while the SDP’s reasons for secession from Labour included both calls for protectionism and the rise of antidemocratic extremism. (Both the Liberal Party and, on a much smaller scale, the SDP still exist, and both are now highly critical of the EU.)
The SDLP takes the Labour Whip, the Alliance Party is allied to the Lib Dems, the Greens are staunchly anti-EU, so is the DUP, and the one other Unionist is close to Labour. The SNP and Plaid Cymru can hardly believe in independence for Scotland, greater autonomy for Wales, yet vote against the return to Westminster of the powers that they wish to transfer thence to Edinburgh or Cardiff; the SNP also has the fishing issue to consider. Even any remaining Conservatives who wanted to certify the European People’s Party as politically acceptable might be brought on board.
Leaving those fabled creatures, backbench Tory Eurosceptics. It is high time that their bluff was called. This is how to do it.