The Art of the Hypothetical

The news, to my rather simplistic way of thinking, is about stuff wot happened. Today's headlines make clear just how wrong I am about this. Today's news is dominated not by events but by a speech that didn't happen twice. First David Cameron moved his speech to avoid the tactlessness of metaphorically bombing the EU on the day of the Franco-German love-in; then he postponed it because there was disastrous news from Algeria. Today what has been billed as a 'long awaited speech', although other than journalists it is hard to find anybody waiting with much excitement, will finally be given. It was so unwelcome in Europe that Cameron ended up delivering it in the last place he wanted: London.

I fear that the outcome of the speech will be to show the Conservatives' approach to Europe as weak and misguided. For some of their less informed supporters, the ones who are considering voting for UKIP, it might seem appropriate to adopt a position of superiority, lecturing the 26 other countries of the EU about what is best for them. This is a posture learned on the playing-fields of Eton where the empire is a fond memory for which such schools and their games masters continue to take credit. In the world where the rest of us  live, Europe is a social club where we feel rather comfortable and where most members operate social, cultural and infrastructural systems we find generally superior to our own.

In such a club you cannot make the rules on your own: you make them by agreement or you are forced to leave. This seems genuinely incomprehensible to the Tories who think we can operate our selfish individualist model of neoliberal capitalism, dump on all the systems our 'European partners' have put in place to protect their peoples and our planet, and still be invited to the party. The Tories' attitude to Europe is the ultimate example of the free-riding of the rational economic man.

The question of a referendum that is at the heart of today's speech is an entirely hypothetical one. What will we be voting to leave or stay in? The crisis in the Eurozone and the fiscal pact that the majority of EU members are now signed up to is in itself not in fînalalised. Cameron vetoed our membership but that leaves open so many questions that a wholesale renegotiation is inevitable. The smart move would be to get ahead in those negotiations, which the better players of the EU game are no doubt doing right now, while Cameron is losing friends in Europe in a desperate attempt to keep friends in his own party.

The very sad thing is that the Euro-sceptics inside the Conservative party have totally outflanked the Cameroons. They know that his strategy of hypothesis-testing is bound to fail. They know that they have already succeeded in making a decision to leave Europe a possible outcome for the first time in three decades. Their understanding of Europe is better, and so it their understanding of politics.
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TINA Makes an Unwelcome Return

The voice of authority telling you that you cannot possibly think a certain way or that their view of the world is simple common sense is hard to resist, especially when it is intoned with the upper-class accent that we have learned to defer to. So it is that Cameron and Osborne tell us that we are a trading nation and that the Europe we want is the Europe of markets and competition. So it was when they told us that there was no alternative to the politics of austerity and the destruction of our welfare state. They are deeply wrong on both counts.

Such powerful manipulation of our thinking must be challenged. We must actively resist the 'England Good; Europe Bad' mantras that are issuing forth from both the Tories and UKIP and being fanned into a bushfire of anti-European sentiment by an irresponsible and ill-informed media. So let's start now by recalling some of the policies from Europe that have made our lives better in this country than they would have been had the free market of Beecroft and Paterson.

Let's start with the End-of-Life Vehicle Directive. This is a practical policy devised by European Greens to challenge the throwaway culture of contemporary capitalism. The Directive passes responsibility for the disposal of cars back to the manufacturer, thus putting a cost incentive behind attempts to improve recyclability of components and reuse of materials used in the manufacture of cars. The WEEE Directive achieves similar objectives in the case of electronic equipment.

The REACH regulation is a system for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical Substances. It is an attempt to acknowledge that fact that new chemicals are proliferating in our environment. It is clear that the interests of corporate industry have had too much influence over this regulation, as a critical account by Anne Chapman describes, but it is at least an attempt to gain social and political control over this potentially most destructive of industries. Where would we be without the EU regulating the chemical industry?

The European regulation that is a key target of the marketeers and that working people would miss most is the Working Time Directive. This has been subject to vilification akin to the fictional attempts to straighten out bananas, but in reality it is a system of reasonable boundaries to protect workers against exploitation. Who except the likes of Beecroft could object to requirements such as 'a minimum daily rest period, of 11 consecutive hours in every 24' or 'paid annual leave of at least four weeks per year'?

The very aspects of the European project that the Tories and their business friends would seek to support are the same ones that I deplore: the pro-corporate market that is not obliged to consider the needs of people or the environment. It is only our 'European partners', and amongst them the powerful Green Group in the European parliament, who are protecting us from such a fate, as the three parties who dominate Westminster politics and the strange purple party that dominates the debate on Europe sacrifice everything of true value for the sake of economic growth.
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