EU membership is incompatible with Labour ideology

by Marc Glendening - Campaign director

Ed Miliband's promise to freeze energy prices, whilst simultaneously supporting movement towards a European Single Market in energy, indicates that he, like most of the Labour mainstream, have not thought through the implications of EU membership for social democratic politics.

They refuse to confront the inconvenient contradiction that exists between adhering to certain types of left-of-centre objectives and blind adherence to the EU status quo.

In addition to the Labour leader's commitment to block energy price rises, he recently announced a plan to force UK companies to create a new apprenticeship for a British citizen for every worker they employ from outside the EU. However, it would be illegal under Single Market rules for a Labour government to restrict apprenticeships to UK nationals.

Then there was the vote at the Labour conference on September 25th to renationalise the railways and postal services. Again, not possible so long as Britain remains within the EU.

Brussels is in the process of liberalising these areas of public provision that, on the railways, started with 1991's EU directive 91/440 requiring a division between the operation of transport services and infrastructure management, both with budgets and accounting "separate from those of the State."
[Article 4]

Various EU postal services directives have already seen the most profitable parts of the Royal Mail put out to tender and the latest requires "full market access" to the Royal Mail's business, leaving no realistic option other than privatisation.

Legal appeals

As the Head of Legal website argues, were Labour after 2015 to impose price restrictions on the energy companies this could result in legal appeals by the companies to the European Commission. The EU directives relating to gas and electricity do allow for state intervention in some circumstances relating to 'public interest' and it could be around how this is defined in practice that might open the door for legal challenges.

Whether or not a future Labour government was acting in a non-discriminatory manner (that is to say, not giving certain types of business an advantage over their competitors, in the UK and also across the Single Market) could also be the key to whether price controls in this area were considered acceptable by Brussels. Poland is in the process of being taken to court by the Commission for price regulation.

If the Labour leader seeks to make his price restrictions more acceptable to the energy companies through the offer of state subsidies to cushion their loss of profit, he could also find himself being challenged by the Commission, again on the grounds that this would give UK-based companies an advantage over firms operating from the continent who would not by definition receive this benefit of the freeze in prices. 

Contradictions unchallenged

There seems little inclination on the part of most of those on the centre and right of the party to take on honestly the severe restrictions that EU membership places on Labour to pursue centre-left  polices.

At the Fabian Society debate Preventing a Lost Decade: How Can We Make Europe Work for Growth? at the recent Labour conference, I asked Catherine Stihler MEP how she could reconcile being, as you might expect given her position, an ardent supporter of EU membership and opponent of a referendum, with the Laval and Viking rulings by the European Court of Justice?

These rulings essentially render national minimum wage laws and nationally determined agreements between employers and unions an irrelevance by allowing firms to transport workers from their own countries and to undercut local labour.

The interests of multinational companies now officially take precedence over democratically determined national laws and those of trade unions.

You would have thought, for someone who purports to represent the party of trade unionism and who places the interests of workers over those of big capital, this should not represent such a huge personal dilemma. However, Ms Stihler had no coherent response, that I could ascertain anyway, as to how she resolves this ambiguity.

Ideology hits back

The truth is that all theoretically left-of-centre MEPs have got around this dilemma by, in reality, prioritising the interests of the Single Market and the EU in general over the political philosophy to which they supposedly adhere.

The truth is that, as Karl Marx would have argued, contradictions can't remain contradictions in practice.They get worked out by what people actually do, not what they say.

There are, however, a growing number within the Labour party and trade union movement who do now get it and are prepared to confront the inherent contradiction between desiring social democratic objectives and Britain being in an organisation that is constitutionally committed by EU treaty to the disciplines of the Single Market.

My hope is that more on the left will pipe up and force Mr Miliband to explain what, should he become PM, he will do if Brussels tells him to abandon his energy and apprentice-related promises.

And what will he do if the Commission insists that the EU Services directive is finally applied to the NHS? Does the Labour leader have any political bottom line when it comes to EU membership?

I think we should be told.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
written by Marc Glendening - Campaign director, Democracy Movement  

For the latest campaign news and EU developments, follow us on Twitter: @DemocracyMovemt

Parties must wake up to EU policy opportunities, and threats

When will our political leaders realise that the action they take when dealing with the European Union will have a direct and significant effect on their success at the polls?

Looking at lists of the issues people prioritise when it comes to voting in general elections, concern about Britain's relationship with the EU tends to linger some way behind the economy, schools, hospitals and crime.

But politicians make a huge mistake if they believe this means that people don't care about the issue.

The most recent evidence that EU policy can have a critical impact on a party's level of support is the bounce in the polls that the Conservatives appear to have enjoyed since David Cameron last month vetoed EU plans for a 'fiscal union' treaty.

Veto boost

An ICM survey for the Sunday Telegraph has given the Tories their highest rating since last year's general election and a six-point lead over Labour, up from two points before the pre-Christmas summit.

The poll puts the Tories up two points since the start of December on 40%, with Labour support sliding by two points to 34%, opening up the widest margin between the two parties in 18 months.

Other polls have confirmed the trend, with a post-summit BBC report highlighting polls by Ipsos Mori and YouGov that also put the Conservatives ahead of Labour for the first time this year.

Questioning people about the EU summit's outcome exposes the overwhelming public support for the Prime Minister's actions that underpins this poll shift. A Populus survey for The Times showed 57% felt Mr Cameron was right to use the veto while only 14% disagreed and another, for the Mail on Sunday, showed that 62% supported David Cameron's actions, while only 19% said he was wrong to use the veto.

Ed Miliband's response in the immediate aftermath of the summit, accusing the Prime Minister of being "out of touch", couldn't have been more ill-judged.

Poll threats

But this latest shift is far from the first time time polls have reacted sharply to how politicians act on the EU.

When, back in October 2007, Gordon Brown confirmed his support for the Lisbon Treaty and it became clear that he would not extend his party's previous promise of a referendum on the EU Constitution to the revised document, the result was an abrupt end to his honeymoon as the new Labour leader.

Brown actually increased his party's support through the September 2007 eruption of the Northern Rock crisis, when polls showed a three-point Labour lead mid-month widened to nearly eight points by the end of September. Even the events of early October that year, when the Conservatives unveiled a new inheritance tax policy and Brown was accused of having 'bottled' an early general election, resulted in him conceding only a slight lead to the Conservatives.

So far, not so bad for Mr Brown. Until, that is, later in October 2007, when he agreed to the final text of the Lisbon Treaty and made a statement to Parliament on the 22nd of that month. By the end of that week, Conservative support was growing again and Labour's ratings started a precipitous fall, ending the year at a punishing ten point deficit on the Conservatives as Gordon Brown turned up (late) in Brussels to sign the treaty.

The fact that this poll gap then remained broadly the same until late April 2008 shows that Labour's hair-raising fall in public support over a few short weeks between the end of October and mid December must have been due to some very particular event after both the peak of the Northern Rock bank run and the fallout from the party conferences.

It's impossible to dismiss that this was the period during which the deceit of the process of re-naming the EU Constitution as the Lisbon Treaty became crystal clear and Gordon Brown confirmed that he would not grant us the EU referendum we had been promised.

But Brown has been far from alone in suffering at the polls as a result of his EU actions. Later, in November 2009, David Cameron suffered a similar fate when he also dropped his "cast iron guarantee" of a vote on "on any EU treaty" emerging from the negotiations that came up with the Lisbon Treaty.

The Conservative leader also suffered an immediate drop in public support that, as we speculated at the time might turn out to be the case, did indeed re-balance the polls in a way that resulted in Mr Cameron's failure to secure a clear majority at the general election, forcing him to form accede to coalition government.

Arguably, the Liberal Democrats have suffered the worst of all from this trend in public opinion. Languishing in the polls and seemingly looking down the barrel of an electoral gun, the party's leaders still don't seem to realise where they have been going so wrong.

Referendum opportunity

This clear and growing pattern in how EU policy moves public support to an extent that affects electoral fortunes should provide much food for thought for any party aiming to improve its chances of obtaining a clear majority at the next general election.

Obvious focus should be placed on where party policy is at stark odds with public opinion and where better does such an opportunity lie than over whether there should be a referendum on Britain's EU membership?

The Sunday Telegraph's ICM poll also confirms that people do not back Mr Cameron's decision to rule out a public vote on whether Britain should stay in or leave the European Union. A majority of 59% to 25% (pdf, Table 5) say that there should be a proper in-out vote and most (51%) wish to see one in this Parliament.

If one veto, to unknown effect, can deliver a four-point boost in the polls, it's not hard to imagine the electoral rewards awaiting the party that grants that EU referendum.

Now double standards on democracy

Suddenly, Gordon Brown is a convert to holding referendums.

In 1997, we were promised a referendum on the euro, should the government ever decide to recommend membership.

There was much talk of '5 economic tests', but most could see that the real reason the vote was never held was that, contrary to the government view, people would have voted overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the pound.

In 2005, we were promised a referendum on the EU Constitution.

But when, having been rejected by the French and Dutch peoples in their own public votes, it was renamed as the Lisbon Treaty - "substantially equivalent" to the EU Constitution, according to the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee - the government nevertheless played out a charade that it was a completely different document and shamefully wriggled out of their election promise.

Here in 2010, another referendum 'promise' is now being dangled before us by the same people who have repeatedly failed to deliver such promises in the past.

In a speech to Centre Point yesterday, Brown proposed a public vote on reform of the electoral system for the House of Commons and on changing the House of Lords to make it elected.

Necessary changes, you may think. But why does such a domestic rearrangement warrant a referendum if transferring the actual decision-making powers of those institutions to external bodies beyond meaningful democratic control apparently doesn't?

Brown's double standards are exposed once again.

As a result of his plans, "Britain’s democratic future", he said, "will not belong to any politician or party. It will be up to the people."

Mere months after handing over a range of new decision-making to EU institutions and denying any of us the say on that fundamental shift of power that he promised us at the last election.

Actions, not words. Brown has already shown very clearly his real attitude to democracy.

There has indeed "been a fundamental rupture in the bond of trust between those who serve, and those who they are sworn to serve."

Gordon Brown's problem is that he himself has acted so shamefully, and so conspicuously, to diminish our democracy that it is now far too late for him to hope to regain that trust.

In truth, those who act to degrade democracy deserve only to lose their position within in.

Brown's double standards on jobs and public spending

It's day two of the general election campaign and the usual suspects are already trying to take voters for fools.

Business secretary Peter Mandelson was first on the stump this morning, making a speech to the Foreign Press Association.

Mandelson, a powerful yet unelected government minister, seems to enjoy inexplicable credibility from the media - even when talking about trust and honesty in politics. Can the media already have forgotten how Mandelson's own actions twice previously caused him to be sacked from the cabinet?

His latest argument about an opposition party being too 'inexperienced' for government is nothing more than an argument that government must never change - that only the experienced should govern. An argument against democracy itself.

Admittedly, not an entirely unexpected point of view, coming from someone known for his enthusiasm for the European Union. His favouritism for technocracy over democracy has long been clear.

But sadly the media seem to be letting the public down by reporting such anti-democratic sentiments from a senior government minister completely uncritically.

Brazen Clegg

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg also joined the fray early in the day, to claim that this election 'isn't a two horse race'. Despite presumably knowing what the rest of us do - that in reality, unlike Gordon Brown and David Cameron, he is not likely to become Prime Minister.

A much more remarkable claim, however, was his assertion that only the Lib Dems are untainted by corruption and can therefore restore trust in politics.

Firstly it's plainly clear that, like the other parties, Lib Dem MPs were also caught up in the expenses scandal and had to apologise and pay back misclaimed expenses.

But Clegg's claims about trust are especially brazen, given it assumes people have such short memories that we will already have forgotten how he led his party to break a clear 2005 election promise to support a referendum on the EU Constitution / Lisbon Treaty.

Worse, during that process, Clegg engaged in precisely the dodgy backroom deals he accuses the other parties of employing to ensure that his party quietly voted whichever way it took at each stage of the Lisbon Treaty's progress through Parliament - abstaining in the Commons and voting against a referendum in the Lords - to prevent people being given a say on something as important as who decides new laws.

Hardly very trustworthy, or democratic. So who does Clegg really think he's fooling with his 'holier than thou' rhetoric? In reality, such claims just serve to make himself look something of a joker and badly out of touch.

Commenting on the euro today, Clegg also reinforced his party's enthusiasm for handing power over to the EU.

The Lib Dem leader admitted that "we think there is a case for, a long-term case for, considering entry into the euro, which needs to be done with a referendum" but admitted that "eurozone interest rates over the last few years would have been wrong for Britain".

In revealing that he believes we should ultimately join the euro while admitting eurozone interest rates can be wrong for our economy, Clegg displays how his EU-statist ideology trumps the economic stability and prosperity on which many jobs depend. Hardly the best bid for a leadership position in our democracy!

Certainly, given his low grade behaviour over the Lisbon Treaty, it would be a brave person indeed who took seriously his purported commitment to holding a referendum before signing Britain up to the euro.

Brown's £6bn gaffe

At Prime Minister's Questions, a major theme was the government's proposed increase in National Insurance, versus the Conservatives' plans to ditch that increase.

Gordon Brown banged on repeatedly about the dangers of "taking £6bn out of the economy" that the NI increase will raise.

As the BBC reports, Brown said "Take six billion out of the economy now and there is more unemployment, more businesses go under and there is less growth."

"Thousands of jobs would then go", Brown lectured.

Yet this is the man who, last year, despite our growing deficit and massive borrowing, was quite happy to take £6.4bn out of the economy and hand it over to the European Union.

This is an institution about which there are regular reports of financial waste and fraud on a grand scale, and whose accounts have not been fully approved by auditors for an unjustifiable 14 years in a row.

According to the recent Budget documents, next year, if Brown remains Prime Minister, at the same time as he is slashing public services, his plan is to increase our cash payments to the EU to a scandalous £7.6bn net.

So, once again please for the record, Mr Brown. How many thousand jobs has taking such sums "out of the economy" and wasting them on the EU already cost?

Who are the real authoritarians, Mr Miliband?

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has in recent weeks launched a typically New Labour, McCarthyite attack on the Conservative party for teaming up with some east European political parties in the European parliament who are alleged to hold anti-semitic, homophobic and ‘neo-Nazi’ views.

However, since the European Parliament is clearly not where significant power lies in Brussels, the decision of the Tories to team up with East European centre-right parties is of little consequence, regardless of whether or not the claims made against them have been spun in some typically New Labour way by the foreign secretary.

McCarthyite tactic

New Labour, throughout its Peter Mandelson-orchestrated history, has frequently attempted to smear its opponents as being ‘far right’ or ‘xenophobic’ in order to distract attention from the actual substance of the inconvenient political position or claim being advanced.

The foreign secretary in making the attacks he has is merely continuing a long, disreputable tradition, characterised in relation to the EU issue principally by former Europe minister Denis MacShane.

David Miliband’s intention now is to distract attention away from his government’s anti-democratic breaking of its promise at the 2005 general election to let the British people vote on the Lisbon treaty (the cynically re-named European Constitution rejected by a large majority of French and Dutch voters in 2005).

Nor does he want us to focus on the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the system of governance that citizens from all the member countries are being placed under the control of without their consent.

EU's fascist backers

Since Mr Miliband has attempted to create this McCarthyite smokescreen, he should perhaps reflect that, as Dr John Laughland’s book The Tainted Source: The undemocratic origins of the European Union so brilliantly demonstrates, the original project of creating a Pan-European political system was actually enthusiastically supported by fascist movements.

The National Alliance in Italy, the successors to Mussolini’s party and partners in the Berlusconi coalition government, are firm supporters of greater European political union today.

The British fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, campaigned post-war on the slogan of ‘Europe a nation’. The original plans for a single currency were drawn up by the Nazis.

Former French presidents and drivers for European centralisation, Francois Mitterand, Giscard d’Estaing and Jacques Delors were all active for the Vichy government in various capacities. Mitterand even received the Francisc medal from Marshall Petain for his service to the fascist regime.

Fascists were attracted to the idea of a politically unified and regulated continent with a non-elected elite at its core.

New euro-authoritarians

The peoples of Europe today are confronted by a new and dangerous post-democratic elitism - Euro-Authoritarianism - of which David Miliband is one classic manifestation.

Euro-Authoritarianism is self-evidently more subtle than Twentieth Century fascism, and it is not motivated by anti-semitism.

The Euro-Authoritarians do not seek to end multi-party elections, but rather to greatly restrict the parameters within which electorates can make meaningful collective choices.

This is achieved by transferring ever more law-powers to appointed, non-accountable institutions in Brussels and through so-called Human Rights legislation that enables judges to become policy makers though their interpretations of vaguely drafted articles.

The new Euro-Authoritarians are driven by a post-modernist, Third Way ideology. This represents a direct threat to the liberal, anti-colonialist legacy of the European Enlightenment and the idea that sovereignty should reside with national communities of people rather than unaccountable elites.

Mr Miliband and his associates in New Labour today are working to create an elitist, post-democratic political system based in Brussels that does not accord with the rule of law and can by-pass parliamentary and public accountability.

The Euro-Authoritarians fear the concept of popular democracy, hence their hysterical denunciations of the idea that voters should be allowed to directly determine important issues by referendum.

The New Euro-Authoritarians support…

…preventing the peoples of the EU member states having a direct democratic say regarding whether or not new law-making powers should be centralised in Brussels. When the French and Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected the Lisbon treaty (then named the EU Constitution) their wishes were ignored. When the Irish rejected both the Nice and Lisbon treaties they were forced to vote again within a year in rigged referenda so that these treaties could be forced through.

…the centralisation of more law-making powers in Brussels. Once directives are passed, no national elected government or parliament can opt to reject or reverse them as the unelected Commission retains the monopoly right to initiate new legislation. Because of the volume of laws emanating from Brussels, most of the measures are passed in Britain through the use of statutory instruments. MPs do not even get the chance to debate them, let alone vote to block them.

…the introduction of a raft of measures designed to increase state surveillance and control. Lisbon will lead to the creation of the Committee on Internal Security (COSI) which will share DNA, fingerprint, CCTV footage and internet surveillance material between security organisations. In May, the EU Data Retention Directive was passed. This enables state agencies to find out what all citizens - not just those suspected of committing criminal offences - have been downloading and who they have been contacting electronically.

The Commission is already funding Project Indect which is a mass surveillance project dedicated to identifying "abnormal behaviour" through CCTV footage and a "continuous monitoring of websites, discussion forums, usernet groups… and individual computer systems".

The EU now has an embryonic police force, Europol, whose officers, like senior EU officials, enjoy, revealingly, immunity from prosecution in member states (Statutory Instrument 1997 No.2973). This body will gain powers of "implementation"of operational powers within the member states as a consequence of Lisbon.

EU citizens can now under the European Arrest Warrant be deported automatically to another member country without any hard evidence having been provided by prosecuting authorities. The Commission has been for many years financing various projects designed to result in the introduction of ID cards, though their formal implementation is still a matter of national law.

…the current undemocratic structure of the EU. In addition to the unelected Commission’s monopoly right to introduce new legislation, the Council of Ministers meets in secret and votes are not recorded. In reality, the vast majority of its decisions are taken by civil servants representing the ministers from the member states in COREPER. European voters cannot hold these bodies collectively responsible through the ballot box.

The executive and the key legislative body, therefore, are beyond democratic account. It is illegal under article 108 of the current treaty for elected representatives from the member states to in any way try to influence the deliberations of the European Central Bank.

Under Lisbon, the political leaders, meeting behind closed doors in the European Council, will be able to appoint a full-time president and foreign minister to represent the Union on the world stage.

… an elitist, corporatist system of politics. The mindset of the EU political class is to concentrate power in the hands of elite bodies representing big business and the major trades unions. Hence, the Committee of the Social Partners which affords elite access to the European Round Table of Industrialists.

The EU model of corporatist politics cuts out ordinary voters and gives a massive advantage to lobbyists from big financial interests, as was seen in the decision to outlaw 300 alternative health treatments following extensive lobbying by Pfizer, Boots and other big companies.

Cowardly elite

New Labour have shown themselves to be notoriously cowardly in terms of openly debating the EU issue, as well as virtually every other issue.

They prefer, as good authoritarians, to speak only at controlled, all-ticket events with no or only planted questions from the floor.

Having made his outspoken accusation in the cosy company of the press that EU critics like William Hague and the Tory party are consorting with ‘neo-Nazis’, does the foreign secretary - who claims to be an intellectual - have the cojones to publicly debate the question of ‘anti-democratic politics’ with Dr Laughland?

We would be pleased to make all the arrangements, including finding a neutral chairperson that both participants find acceptable.

So how about it Mr Miliband?