According to
the media and polls, I’m in the wrong camp. As a 19-year-old university
student and Labour party member, the demographics say I should have a
tattoo of the EU flag over my heart and the phrase “ever closer union”
should send shivers of joy down my spine. When strangers find out I’m a
‘Leave’ campaigner they think I’m a Ukip supporter, when friends find
out I’m met with mostly confusion. This is a testament to how
under-represented the “Lexit” (left-wing exit) argument has been in the
referendum debate.
It is so underrepresented that many forget that the British left was
traditionally Eurosceptic. Tony Benn and Bob Crowe both campaigned
against the EU right up until the end, and if one or both were still
here today, we might have seen a strongly led and listened to Lexit
campaign. As it is we have had a debate almost entirely dominated by the
Conservatives and UKIP. The only Leave arguments many people hear are
those of BoJo, Gove, Farage and IDS - a group to whom Labour supporters
are unlikely to listen. No wonder Remain has such a lead amongst Labour
voters. The case for Lexit is fairly simple, looking at three factors -
the EU’s lack of democracy, its commitment to neo-liberalism and its
record on international issues.
The first is
obvious to see. The major principle behind Parliamentary Democracy is
that laws should be written and passed only by those who are elected by,
and are accountable to, the people whose lives are governed by those
laws. While we remain part of the EU, that principle cannot exist.
The EU
Commission, the group responsible for drafting all EU legislation, is
completely unelecected. Juncker and the Commission are, now in office,
completely unaccountable to the people, decisions in the EU are made
with all the transparency of a concrete wall - making those in power
even less accountable.
The European
Parliament, which is elected, has far less power compared to the
Commission than the Commons has over the UK Government. It cannot
initiate legislation, and in certain areas, including taxation, it gives
only an “advisory opinion” i.e. its decision is not binding.
The EU is not
just undemocratic; it is anti-democratic. When democracy gets in the way
of the neoliberal European Union project, democracy must try again
until it gets results that satisfy the project. There are two very
obvious moments when this showed: the treatment of Greece and Portugal.
In Greece an anti-austerity government was elected, and then the Greek
people voted against austerity in a referendum. They were strong-armed
into following austerity under threats of a liquidity crisis and an
economic collapse, until Prime Minister Tsipras signed a deal
effectively giving the EU the ability to govern Greece over and above
the wishes of the Greek people.
In Portugal, a
left wing, anti-austerity, anti-EU coalition won an absolute
parliamentary majority, and yet have been blocked from forming a
government by the Conservative President, backed up by the European
Commission. Can any left-winger, or anybody who believes in democracy,
seriously continue supporting such an organisation?
The EU’s
commitment to right-wing, neo-liberal economics is also obvious. Not
only has the EU imposed austerity across Europe, with hugely damaging
effects, but the Eurozone has effectively banned Keynesian economics,
with a 2011 treaty committed to eliminating structural deficits and
outlawing expansionary fiscal policy.
There is a
reason that the Remain campaign is funded by Goldman Sachs, Morgan
Stanley and CitiGroup, and that there are nearly the same number of
professional lobbyists in Brussels as European Commission staff.
Brussels is second only to Washington in its concentration of special
interest lobbyists attempting to influence legislation, and some estimates say lobbyists influence up to 75% of European legislation.
Any analysis of
the funding and power structures of the EU shows that this is not a
Union run in the interests of European citizens. Rather, it is a club
for big business to do business - free movement of capital allows large
multinationals to move operations between countries with ease, giving
them much greater power relative to national governments, while the free
movement of Labour has not been part of an internationalist attempt to
remove borders, but rather an opportunity for unscrupulous companies to
bring in lower-wage workers from different regions, leading to greater
wage compression and an undercutting of working conditions in many
areas.
Many in the
Remain camp argue that we need to stay in the EU to tackle international
issues, ignoring the fact that cross-border co-operation does not
require an undemocratic political union. Let’s examine the EU’s record
on three of the most important international issues of this century: the
financial crisis, the migrant crisis and tax evasion.
The EU’s
response to the financial crisis was to impose damaging austerity, with
the euro area facing economic pain far beyond that seen in the UK, while
the ECB’s one-size-fits-all interest rate proved wholly inadequate to
respond to the disparate needs of the different economies within the
Eurozone.
Eight years after the great crash, and the results are plain to see:
The Spanish and Greek economies are nearly completely destroyed,
Italy’s economy is barely bigger than it was a decade ago, France has
economic stagnation and unemployment figures almost double that of the
UK, and even the Eurozone’s powerhouse Germany has seen growth only at
the cost of real terms wage cuts for its workers.
Turning then to
the migrant crisis, probably the largest humanitarian crisis Europe has
seen in the 21st century, the EU’s response has been both incompetent
and inhumane. The inadequate responses of the EU have seen Greece pushed
to the brink of collapse, borders rising across Europe and the return
of far-right nationalism to the political mainstream, with still no
viable solution to the crisis beyond a dodgy deal
with the Turkish President Erdogan - a nationalist dictator with little
regard for human rights or international law - to illegally deport
refugees back to Turkey.
Finally, a look
at tax evasion - something the EU has never seriously clamped down on.
The record on closing down tax loopholes and EU tax havens is abysmal,
and can we expect any less by a body currently led by Jean-Claude
Juncker, who spent most of his political career running an EU tax haven.
Examining all
this, it seems strange to me that so many on the British left are still
banging the drum for the EU. Some argue that it is necessary for British
workers’ rights, to that I would argue that the best defence of the
rights of British workers is, and always has been, the Labour movement.
The idea that our rights and protections were given to us by benevolent
European leaders, and not fought for through workers’ struggles is
laughable. If Juncker is the greatest defence of working rights in the
UK, then the British Labour movement is well and truly finished. Other
say that a vote to leave would strengthen the far right but, in fact, it
is partly the abject failure of the EU to deal with the aftermath of
the economic and refugee crises which has helped fuel the resurgence of
far right nationalism across Europe, and a vote to remain will see us
tied into a political union with increasingly more fascists in
government.
Vote for democracy, vote to unshackle ourselves from a right-wing cartel, vote leave.
HuffPost
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examining what is at stake for Britain’s young people on 23 June and why it’s imperative you register to vote
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