Symbolic politics continues with this in el Graun
UK insists it will not grant EU ambassador full diplomatic status
Foreign Office says EU should not be treated as nation state, despite 142 countries granting bloc this status
Seems very petty, no?
A Barnier threat also appears, in the form of cosmo wisdom, of course:
I think it would be very wise in my view for the UK to find a clever solution.” [fleshed out with this] The EU mission in the UK is active in trying to explain EU thinking, including most recently on how the City of London will be treated post-Brexit. The emphasis of the mission since its inception has been on building cooperation between the UK and EU.
A different angle appears in the Times today (subscription):
The EU is prepared to ease post-Brexit border friction if Britain drops its plan to create a “Singapore on the Thames”, according to senior diplomatic sources....Brussels is open to talks on freeing up trade but only if Boris Johnson abandons plans to tear up EU rules such as the working time directive. “Of course we can in future discuss how to have less friction,” a senior European diplomat said....“Discussing further facilitation or ways to reduce friction would depend on what the UK is doing and where they want to go. Initiating that conversation and negotiation will not be made easier if the other side of the table is talking up deregulation or Singapore on the Thames.”...The EU will not discuss easing customs measures or making paperwork easier if Mr Johnson embraces the high subsidy and low regulation Singapore model. European sources said that creating a “Singapore on the Thames and increasing the working week” beyond EU rules would politically rule out any negotiations.
Even talking of planning deviating from EU rules brings this sort of petty retaliation!. Delays,shortages sandwich confiscations and lorry turn-backs were not down to teething problems. Nor were they because of overlooked issues of paperwork. It is deliberate EU obstruction!
The background has been investigated in a substantial series of articles in London Review of Books, of all places by P Anderson, veteran founder of the New Left. It is a lengthy but devastating critique of the democratic deficits of central insitiutions of the EU, the European Council, the Commission, the Parliament , the Central Bank and the ECJ.There is a brisk summary in this week's Briefings for Britain by the redoubtable R Tombs ( who also has a new book out)
The Anderson piece itself traces the ways in which the notion of an integrated 'Europe' developed over the decades. What conceptions of a social and political entity was it based on? Several were involved, from US federalism to notions of society in ancient Greece, via Machiavelli and the discreet oligopolies of early Holland. But none of them really involved any notion of representative democracy. It was always about effiicient management via compromise between the interests of the various elites, with the interests of 'the people' catered for in various ways economically and symbolically.
The symbolism was always seen as the weakest strand in the EU, says Anderson, despite the sad flags and anthems, and political unity especially was compromised by the lack of an obvious political theatre, a process with competing programmes discussed in public and ultimately decided by vote. This would offer a kind of bread and circuses for thinking folk.
It all works by publicly agreed consensus (where the major powers have all the influence in practice) with no disclosure of any discussions or disagreements. There have been tensions -- eg between cultural notions of European civilisation and Anglo-US notions of rational management of modern economies -- but largely compromises between, say neo-liberalism, civilisation and bureaucracy.
Anderson agues that the real problem posed by Brexit has always been to this political notion of Europe as secret compromises betwen elites, and unaccountable institutions like the central ones are (uniquely,the ECB answers to no-one and its proceedings are secret, the Council never discloses its arguments, the ECJ only publishes its agreed findings and so on) . Hence the disdain for or sheer incomprehension of concepts like sovereignty of nations or Parliaments. They had to punish the UK for withdrawing. They were prepared to risk even the hard economic cost of Brexit to minimise any political costs is how Anderson puts it.
The most interesting bits for me have been how the legal bureaucrats have come to dominate politics in a familiar way. Politics is vague and non-specific and the details have to be thrashed out. In the EU the lawyers in the ECJ played a major role, facilitated by politicians advancing the cause of the ill-defined 'Europe' over national interests, beginning with modest cases like permitting Europe-wide trade despite local restrictions, and ending in permitting Central Bank financial policy against the interests and policies of national governments (especially Greece). Agreed treaties became interpretable by the ECJ. Political procedures became legal matters. As an example of the massive advantage this conveys, the legendary acquis communitaire, the collection of regulations to which trade needs to conform, apparently runs to a completely inaccessible 90,000 pages -- only teams of EU specialist lawyers can possibly manage it. Apparently the Irish PM admitted he had never read it even though he signed a treaty accepting it.
All this is a marvellous example of the trends described in Weber's excellent studies of the march of purposive rationality and bureaucracy in the 1920s. It would end in an 'iron cage' he foresaw.
How wise the UK Government were to be so suspicious of the appraently innocent proposals advanced in the last few weeks of the talks. And how wise they are now not to trust the bastards an inch.
Minor interests in Anderson also include the real backgrounds of the politicians central in forging the European visiion -- not comso liberals at all as in the imagination of the Graun but former Nazis and corrupt Italian politicians.
Even the blessed Ursula was charged with plagiarism! Here is a bit from Wikipedia:
In 2015, researchers collaborating at the VroniPlag Wiki reviewed von der Leyen's 1991 doctoral thesis and alleged that 43.5% of the thesis pages contained plagiarism, and in 23 cases citations were used that did not verify claims for which they were given.[33][34] Multiple notable German academics such as Gerhard Dannemann and Volker Rieble publicly accused von der Leyen of intended plagiarism.[35] The Hannover Medical School conducted an investigation and concluded in March 2016 that while the thesis contains plagiarism, no intention to deceive could be proven.[36][37]
The university decided not to revoke von der Leyen's medical degree.[36] Critics questioned the independence of the commission that reviewed the thesis as von der Leyen personally knew its director from joint work for an alumni association.[37] Various media outlets also criticized that the decision was nontransparent, not according to established rules and failing to secure high academic standards.[37][38][39]
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