Pie in the sky if we stay in...

A number of last-minute projects to persuade people (or MPs) to stay in the EU have appeared recently. The two major ones -- promoted by G Soros on the one hand and W Hutton and Lord  A Adonis onthe other, propose that we stay in an EU which will somehow magically be transformed to be more democratic, and less dominated by finance capital. But if the land of milk and honey promised by some (only some) Brexiteers is fatuous, so is this alternative vision -- there seems not the slightest prospect of the whole EU reforming in this way nor any strategy that would produce this result ( to be fair, I am reading only the press coverage of the pubications).

Soros is an interesting person, sanctified by G Miller in the Grudian. HIs decision to fund a new initiative via the group Best for Britain suggests a campaign to win over MPs first, to press for a 'meaningful' vote on the final negotiations (already partly successful he claims) and then to move to some sort of new popular referendum (Graun). However, he admits the EU is hardly an attractive option at the moment,with a looming financial crisis (he is very good at predicting those). There is an '“addiction to austerity” at the heart of Europe',and the EU should reform:

First, it would clearly distinguish between the European Union and the eurozone. Second, it would recognise that the euro has many unresolved problems and they must not be allowed to destroy the European Union.... Simply put, the EU needs to reinvent itself,” he said'.

Soros has gone on to urge the EU not to bully the new Italian Government (a coalition of left-and right-wing 'populists' who are both sceptical about the EU): 'George Soros has called for the EU to compensate Italy for migrants landing there' (Guardian). A german financier ominously warned initially 'In an interview with the German news network Deutsche Welle, aired on Tuesday night, [Oettinger said]: “My concern and my expectation is that the coming weeks will show that markets, that government bonds, that Italy’s economic development could be so drastic that this could be a possible signal to voters not to choose populists from left and right.”. Worried by reports that the EU is telling the Italians how to vote [heaven forbid! they never did that to British voters!]  Juncker has been more conciliatory. However:

Jean-Claude Juncker has said Italians need to work harder, be less corrupt and stop looking to the EU to rescue the country’s poor regions, in comments unlikely to ease the fraught political battle over Italy’s future relationship with Brussels. ( Guran)

and when it comes to responsibity for chaos and corruption, unbelievably, the Great European has said: 'A country is a country, a nation is a nation. Countries first, Europe second.”'

Turning to the Hutton/Adonis proposal, the Gurdianan reports that:

The economic warnings are there for those prepared to see them. Inward investment has collapsed by some £130bn over the last 12 months. The car industry fears “Carmageddon”. There is no open-skies deal with the US. Being frozen out of the Galileo project endangers our space industry. Universities fear being cut out of EU research budgets. It is the same in sector after sector.

Hutton/Adonis also argue that economic and social chaos 'could even begin the day after Brexit next year, with widespread shortages of medicines, fuel and food as the port of Dover collapses with no Brexit deal – according to Whitehall departments’ risk assessments leaked and paraded in the Sunday Times yesterday'.


Today's Guardian also offers a more 'balanced 'account, reporting Brexiteer scepticism about this leak. It reports  'spokesmen' for Whitehall: 'the port of Dover will collapse on day one. The supermarkets of Cornwall and Scotland will run out of food within a couple of days, and hospitals will run out of medicines within two weeks,” a source told the paper.' On the other hand: 'A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the European Union dismissed the reports, saying: “These claims are completely false.' Guardian 'balance' is completed by blaming the May Government for its indecisvenes

Back to Hutton/Adonis, on the social front:

The 30 social mobility “coldspots” identified by the Social Mobility Commission all voted Brexit. So did areas where property prices were stuck, where life expectancy was falling, where antidepressants were widely prescribed and where life chances were thin. In too much of the UK beyond London and the south-east, economic performance is mediocre or downright bad. The social contract has become for many people effectively nonexistent. Unemployment may be at a 40-year low, but so are savings to maintain living standards: insecure, poorly paid work is at a record high. Real wages are 7% lower than they were at the time of the financial crisis – an unprecedented squeeze.

The answer is to reject austerity, a renewed Thactherism,and isolationism. We need to build a Britain: 

populated with repurposed businesses, motivated by a desire to produce goods and services that better humanity. New technology needs to be mobilised for the public good, while great institutions that serve the mass of people – such as trade unions, public-benefit companies to run utilities and building societies – must be reinvigorated and reshaped...A refashioned social contract should invest public money where desperately needed and raise the necessary taxes fairly...A Great Charter for Modern Britain would hand power from Westminster to the cities, towns and counties of Britain so as to transform their localities, represented in a senate to replace the House of Lords, located in the north of England. This should be the foundation of a fully fledged written constitution...It is the Labour party – firmly pro-European and credible in its commitment to social reform – that could rally the country.

However, somehow, all this requires us to remain in the EU. The EU has at the very least presided over the dreadful effects of UK austerity if not encouraged or led them. Nonetheless, Brexit will only bring further economic decline. When it comes to the benefits of EU membership, though, there is no confident assertion that EU economics will halt the decline. Following Juncker's unexpected conversion to nationalism, the UK Government still has reponsibility.  The British electorate still have to reject austerity and Thatcherism by electing some idealised Labour Party who, this time, really will modernise and democratise Britain. If we can do that anyway, why remain in the EU? We need symbolic and cultural reasons, NOT just economic ones:

Europe’s achievements have not been driven solely by an economic calculus: they belonged to a bigger, nobler cause of representing European values, rooted in democracy. This is why any form of Brexit is a mistake. We want to share a continent where Europeans don’t fight each other, don’t prevent trade and where we allow its people to live and work wherever they like across their region. Never has Europe been so peaceful, democratic and prosperous as in the era of the EU.

Whether the economic calculus might contradict the drive towards the noble values, and, if so, how we decide between them is not discussed: at hteorganizational level it is just assumed that the actual EU apparatus can stand for noble. 'Europe'.Hutton and Adonis are real traitorous clerks here -- they both have argued elsewhere that expansionist economic policies weaken precisely those noble values of solidarity

Let's not worry. Let's wave a wand and assume the economic decline has been halted by a solid reforming Labour Government who are also able magically to pursue the noble values inside the EU. OK, there are small problems of getting that first, but leave that to one side --perhaps the idea is to persuade the left behind on the grounds of economic reform then to work on the economically secure metropolitan elite with cultural stuff?.