If you haven't noticed this is the week when Article 50 is triggered. The process that might result in the UK leaving the EU will begin. As many will know, for all the enormous faults in the EU I believe that this represents a significant error of judgement. That, though, seems to understate the real importance of what is about to happen.
Ignore all the reasons why I carefully included the word might in the second sentence: the lack of resources, vision, technical competence and maybe (when it all begins to go wrong) political will all suggest this process might not end with the UK leaving the EU. I do not think in that case that a foregone conclusion commences this week. And yet it's still true that everything changes.
The change is not the notice that will be given. Nor is it the fact that we could leave the EU. The change is that this is the end of a political economic era. After seventy years where integration and coordination has been the answer to most problems, the direction of travel has changed. Separation, differentiation and barriers are the supposed new order. And we haven't tried this before, at least not in living memory.
There is good reason for that. In that time we realised that rivalries had all too often ended in tears. And things much worse than tears.
What is more, we realised that whatever was said about competition, most good things seemed to come out of quite high degrees of cooperation.
On top of all that, we learned the very definite limits to dogma.
And now we seem to have forgotten all that. This week symbolises that collective amnesia.
So this could be the end of an era. But more accurately the only certainty is that it is the start of something new.
I say that because there are signs of hope. Trump's escapade in the same broad direction is already falling apart at the seams. The EU's intention to be transparent about its negotiating positions with the UK makes a mockery of the silly games British ministers seem intent on playing. And maybe, just maybe, sense might prevail for the reasons I have already noted.
Failure cannot be the basis for hope though. That's impossible. The hope is based on the fact that Article 50 intends to change everything, but the biggest change might be that simply trying this process will prove that there is a better direction of travel than separation offers. What the Article 50 process might prove is that if things aren't working (as many in Europe would agree) then we really do need to talk about constructive change, even if that is uncomfortable. In my optimistic moments I think Article 50 notice might create enough soul searching to lay the foundations for something new, way beyond the UK, and that some good might come of this after all.
So Article 50 notice ends an era. But what it does not guarantee is what the new one is. All we know is that it won't be the same as the one that is drawing to a close. For that most of us will be grateful.
That does not mean that we need not be almightily concerned about the process that starts this week. It just means that all that we can say for sure about it is that things won't be the same again. The revolution begins this week. We just don't know how many turns of the screw will be involved.
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It seems to me that the government will want to try to negotiate for:
* Economic Free access… including banking access to the EU Zone. Free trade, the ability to buy things cheep from europe.
* To limit migration from Europe.
However.
Point 1, The economic free access to Europe is one of the big reasons we are in the shit we are. It has exported capital from the UK, to where its cheeper to make stuff, leaving the UK without a industrial base.
Point 2 – Migration from europe is what keeps us going – many migrant workers are supporting the NHS for example.
What the government is pushing for will cripple the UK. The should be pushing for the opposite – We need more immigration to do the jobs, and less access to a market that destroys the UK’s industry.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38661443
There was 1.6 million people unemployed in January this year. That’s 1.6 MILLION people out of work when unemployment benefits are at an all time low. When benefit sanctions are putting people on the streets.
How much more labour do we need from anywhere?
Unemployment causes misery to individuals and their families. It wrecks communities. It has all sorts of knock on effects and costs in terms of law and order and health. It produces strife over which ethnic group is doing better than another.
It never ceases to amaze me how little noise is made about this, how the ‘left’ has completely forgotten that workers’ power comes with tight labour markets and full employment.
Why is this?
Because the vast majority of the ‘left’s’ leadership is middle class? Because they benefit from the vast over-supply of labour? Because they think they can gerrymander the vote via importing particular favoured groups?
It absolutely blows my mind what is accepted these days. No wonder anxiety is at an all time high.
I agree that the free movement of capital is not a good thing. I believe Keynes agreed.
Regarding staffing the NHS, already many nurses and doctors are employed in the NHS from beyond the EU. This will not be affected. Here’s an idea – why not restore bursaries to young people wanting to train as nurses?
A few weeks ago, I saw the Ken Loach film, Spirit of 45. What struck me most was the belief in 1945, “After the last war, within 20 years we had depression, mass unemployment and another world war. This time we must do better.” The tragedy is that that has been forgotten.
Agreed
”The tragedy is that that has been forgotten.”
And that sickness started in 1979 and culminated in the 2008 crash and now Brexit.
It actually started in 1976 under Denis Healey’s chancellorship.
Largest *ever* cuts in public spending (TME) in real terms, in one year.
What a Silly Billy.
https://www.ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/fiscal_facts/public_spending_survey/total_public_spending
I guess the best thing now is to “fasten our seatbelts”.
Don’t forget France goes to the polls soon. That’ll be the next “resistance test” the EU goes through. More than Article 50, IMO.
My father, Kevin Danaher, studied for his PhD from 1937 to July 1939 at the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig. He saw this first hand and was able to attend the 1938 Nuremberg Rally. He was both fascinated and frightened by the power Hitler had over the crowd; a sort of mass hypnotism. He said that you could bump into Hermann Göring most nights on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin after drinking with his Nazi cronies at 2:00 am and that he had exchanged pleasantries with him on a number of occasions (safest to be courteous). He left Germany in July 1939 to return to Ireland without completing his PhD.
Needless to say I worry deeply about a return to jingoistic Nationalism.
A good Editorial in the Observer yesterday
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/26/observer-editorial-triggering-of-article-50-jeopardises-60-years-of-unparalleled-peace
Europe faces a lot of external stress with Trump in the US, Putin in Russia and Turkey under Erdogan. Not to mention the refugee crisis.
There is some interesting stuff from the European Peoples Party (Christian Democrats)
here is a speech by Esteban González Pons (leader of the Spanish delegation of the EPP) https://www.facebook.com/EPPGroup/videos/10154532798547689/ good for brushing up your Spanish as well.
I do hope some good comes of this; though I did have a rare moment of joy when I heard that efforts to ditch Obamacare had collapsed. Maybe there will be be some good news.
I live in hope
It is the seeming mass hypnotism in play now, the power wielded by Farage and those like him over the crowds today that frightens me. Growing up in East Germany I was both confronted with the dreadful legacy of Hitler’s Germany and the knowledge that otherwise decent people can allow themselves to be so swept away by such rhetoric that they become willing participants in the worst imaginable crimes.
And although I was still a teenager when the wall fell, what we found out about the state we lived in in the immediate aftermath as well as my Journalism studies (at yes, you guessed it Leipzig University) taught me enough about propaganda and populism to know to be frightened today. This goes far beyond my personal fears for my right to stay here, btw, it’s about the changes in the country and the people I fell in love with when I was a child and which in some respects has changed beyond recognition since I first my first visit in 1990.
“Remember the clocks go forward 1 hour Sunday 26th,
and go back 60 years on Wednesday 29th.
Says it all really
Sadly more like 80 years
To be honest as a committed remainer I’m delighted we’ve now got to Article 50 notification.
Theresa May has had 9 months to play to the gallery, cultivating her ‘mutti’ persona and being all things to all people.
On Wednesday that all changes and out of the nebulosity and bluster of the last year the reality of Brexit will begin to take form. The tory rhetoric will now face real challenge. And Labour’s six tests can be used to assess the outcomes and hammer home where the failures to come will hurt ordinary people.
Europe’s desire to be transparent about negotiation is clever. They can see that weaselly Tory ministers cannot be allowed to sneak around the capitals of Europe playing divide and conquer.
This is peak Tory in my view – now it’s all about opportunity.
An interesting take on the situation John; though I would far rather Parliament had done its job properly and refused to pass Article 50, I can see where you’re coming from.
Now the time has come for actual negociations, we’ll see the lies, delusions and bombast of the Brexiteers come face to face with the real world; and I don’t think they’ll fare too well.
I agree the Tories rhetoric will face real challenge, but I can’t see Labour mounting it at present; far more likely to be the way that negociations pan out.
Contrary to the ridiculous assertions of the Britnats that the EU will roll over at the first sign of David Davis thumping the table and shouting ‘now look here Johnny Foreigner….!!!’, the EU holds most of the cards. As Juncker said, the EU doesn’t want to punish Britain, but neither are we going to get an arrangement as good as the one we’ve got now.
Your point about the EU acting to counter the divide and rule tactics of ‘perfidious Albion’ is well made. Like you, I look forward to more of the same, as the Brexiteers ludicrous assertions get dashed against the rocks of reality.
I am glad that we are getting closer to actually doing something because in my view it is the only way we are going to find out what is to come next.
But also, by initiating Article 50, we are also in my view (maybe?) paradoxically starting the route back into Europe in the long run?
Also, given this Government’s mendacity (for example crowing about ‘hard working families’ and doing everything to make them work harder) maybe May and Co are just talking tough but we may still get a good deal with the EU within the spirit that existed within the treaty in the interim – but it is a tall order.
As for Europe itself – I still do insist upon reform there – an EU rebuttal of US based neo-liberal thinking and methodology would be most welcome to me. It might happen given Trump’s behaviour.