Europe is losing its way. It is no longer a bastion against tyranny but has become a post democratic technocracy that has been overrun by tyrants at the very top. As a card holding lefty, the latest news from Europe is telling me one thing – we need to leave Europe regardless of David Cameron’s ‘negotiations’ in 2017.
A majority in Portugal refused to form a government
This week the Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva refused to let a left wing coalition with a clear majority in Parliament form a government after being elected in the country’s general election.
The Telegraph article reporting this suggested, “He deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign financial markets.”
Portugal has been getting a dose of austerity that the Portuguese people saw as being over the top and their response has been to vote it out by voting in an anti austerity coalition. The President, in fear of Europe’s financiers, refused to let them govern. This amounts to a revolutionary act sanctioned by bureaucrats.
The UK equivalent, and now realistic proposition would be for Jeremy Corbyn to win by a landslide in 2020 and the Queen instead telling the Tories to continue ruling. There is precedent for this in Europe now.
TTIP
The Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a terrifying treaty designed to give multinational corporations primacy over national government. Car companies could sue governments for penalising diesel engines now that they are deemed more polluting than petrol engines.
The fear that is overwhelming people is that TTIP could lead to the widespread privatisation of the NHS. Green taxes and even tobacco taxes could go up in smoke just to benefit the shareholders of a few companies in the US.
3 million people in Europe, 800,000 of whom were from the UK, signed a petition to stop the negotiations. The Independent reported on the 12thOctober that the EU Trade Commissioner didn’t feel that she had a mandate from the people of Europe, but was serving European corporate interests.
This challenges the very foundations on which Europe was built. It was founded after World War 2 to bring people together and prevent another war. It should be very much focused on the will of the people as winding us up could only lead to widespread problems.
Greece, poor old Greece…
Greece chose an anti austerity government led by Syriza in 2014. The people had hope as they rejected the governing dominant ideological belief in austerity. Europe disagreed. The EU bullied and beat the government into a pulp, threatening to chuck it out of the Eurozone unless it accepted austerity. So a few German bankers could buy their yachts that year, old age pensioners starved on tiny pensions.
The bureaucrats have primacy over Parliament…
Traditionally, a Parliament instructs a bureaucracy as to what it needs to do. This is not the case in Europe. Here, the European Commission brings up laws and tells the Parliament to push them through. After that it tells the Council of Ministers (our elected governments) to sign them.
I have always had difficulty with the primacy of bureaucracy over people. The TTIP will be forced through the European Parliament after the bureaucrats signed it off. I listen to Liberal Democrats say on one hand that they are democrats yet are vigorously pro Europe. Those two don’t sit well together. How can you both be a democrat and pro a post democratic technocracy?
A two speed Europe?
To his credit, Gordon Brown set up a two speed Europe by refusing to let the UK join the Eurozone. He did an awful lot wrong, but he got that bit very right. I have long loved the idea of an economic bloc without borders to trade or its citizens. People from poorer countries going to work in richer countries, doing jobs we don’t have the human resources to fill on the one hand, but also allowing a great mixing of cultures and people throughout the continent. Variety is the spice of life!
Where I worry is the idea of ‘ever closer union’ whereby the endpoint is countries’ governments having the same sort of powers that our councils do today and a post democratic bureaucracy run by corporations running all of the other affairs. We are already seeing tyranny on a massive scale with the people in Portugal and Greece, as well as those affected by TTIP getting the smelly end of the stick over the overarching ideology of the day.
Is it time to leave?
To my mind the time has come to leave Europe. It has gone down the wrong path and the festering stench of tyranny is overwhelming. It isn’t achieving what it set out to do. If a project fails you as a person, you get the hell out to protect your interests. That applies to us as a nation too.