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.