Disciplne and punish

M Bloomberg, ace financier, thinks Brexit is a bad idea and said so at a conference. Naturally, this became news for the Guardian. If reporting remarks at conferences like this is news, it must make journalism very easy and cheap.


There was one odd phrase that reminded me of some issues though:

But what they are doing [Brexit]  is not good and there is no easy way to get out of it because if they don’t pay a penalty, everyone else would drop out. So they can’t get as good of a deal as they had before.”

This policy of 'pour encourarger les autres' has also cropped up in many EU spokespersons' accounts of the talks, and for Remainers it just seems entirely reasonable and unworthy of comment. But it is odd. Other countries have to be threatened with punishment to stay in? Only the threat of punishment keeps them in?

So it is not just economic self-interest that provides the solidarity but something extra, something moral in the sociological sense, something that will invoke a punitive reaction from the guardians of that morality if there are any attempts at autonomy. It's a rather early form of morality at that.

There are unmistakable undertones of such morality in the hurt and vengeful Oedipal willy-waving that we have seen from EU spokespersons especially Juncker. He usually articulates it via lame analogies -- the EU is a family or gentleman's club bound by mutual obligation and honour. He even tried a more populist example by suggesting the UK was somehow ducking out of standing its round in a pub. At its most dignified, the argument is that the EU has prevented war in Europe -- nothing to do with NATO of course. They used to add that it had brought unparalleled prosperity too -- not so easy to claim these days.

These are feeble moral arguments that could be modernised by even basic liberal/social democrat arguments about a role for a State -- as referee, guarantor of economic stability, representing something above the petty conflicts and narrow self-interests of economic life, something like 'civil society', to use the liberal terms. JS Mill would do. But of course, neo-lilberalism has scornfully torpedoed all these arguments. The State is now openly partisan, imposing policies for the benefit of finance capitalism, and to hell with civil obligation. 

So the EU has to reach further back to archaic moralities. We'll be hearing arguments from the Church or the crowned heads of Europe next.

EU obiter dicta=news

Classic Guradina news coverage today after the joint statements about the progress of the latest round of talks with the EU on Brexit. The EU line is the same old same old that insufficient progress has been made because there are issues unresolved, like the price of the absurdly-named 'divorce bill' . Technically, the other issues like the Irish border and the rights of EU citizens are unresolved too: the British side says these are minor administrative matters as indeed are trade tariffs which can just be agreed to be equal. Citizenship rights have also been seen as technically straightforward --existing EU citizens get automatic rights of settlement -- but the sticking point there is the role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing the exercise of these rights.

However, there still seems to be willy-waving on both sides. The EU is playing the mandate card discussed by Varoufakis and used to frustrate the Greek referendum (not on exit but on demanding better credit). Regardless of any particular claims, the EU claims it has a bigger mandate, from the whole 27 ( but only via their spokespersons, not a referendum or anything) , to proceed in a particular way, in this case to insist that their specified issues of separation are settled before any progress can be announced. No-one doubts for one moment that the EU Council of Ministers and or the Presidency could ignore or manipulate this 'mandate' as they do in so many other areas. The prioritising of the actual demands seems pretty arbitrary after all.

British willy-waving seems to be focussed on the European Court. Surely no-one expects it to confront the UK Government in a major way over any disputed rights of EU citizens? The mostly likely outcome is substantial agreement on matters based on the habitus shared among legal elites in all European countries?

The whole thing just seems like the sort of posturing you always get in negotiations. The standard ploy is to raise the stakes by threatening all sorts of dire consequences, and the Brexiteers have been unleashed to give interviews about EU intransigence hardening the resolve to just walk away. But this has frightened the Remainieri. Poor old E Maitlis on Newsnight last night was in a real flap panicking because 'no deal' suddenly seemed actually possible and her interview turned into a counselling session --for her.

El Graun reports the statements in the usual way, outlining the EU view in the headline and on the front page while offering the UK version on p.16 (There is a different form to the story on the website and a new angle with a demand that Government release some anxious views from 'business' ). The whole thing is seen as threatening chaos, deepening the [moral] panic, by combining the EU statement with additional domestic stories about a tide of amendments put down for the next discussion of the Brexit Bill (as if amendments meant actual defeat), and internal plots against the Chancellor by 'hardline' Brexiteers (they could only summon up a long-retired former Tory Chancellor).

One interesting consequence has been that el Garubdia has had to put some support behind not only the Chancellor, but T May of all people.Having slagged her off for weeks as an incompetent robot (unusual combination but not unknown to fans of Marvin the Paranoid Android), they now see her as the only bulwark against hard Brexitism. It doesn't matter what else she may have done -- Remainers must pack in behind.