Conversations with several people over the last week have made me reflect on the meta-narrative of right-wing thinking that so dominates our news at present. The conversations began about what motivates the right wing of the Tory party. It extended to Trump.
The conclusions are that the motivations may be similar in their desire, but are not the same because the national contexts are different.
In the UK the sense is that the core desire is to dismantle the effect of 1945. The aim appears to be the destruction of the welfare state. The object is to recreate the raw brutality of inter-war Britain where poverty was used as an economic and social weapon of control. It did not work. But that does not matter. Ending the idea that the state should provide any form of safety net or have a role in society would appear to be the goal of the Brexiteers and their libertarian funders.
In the States this message is already easier to deliver because welfare provision never made such progress. As a result the nuance there appears to be different, even if the goal of taking the country back to a supposed better era is also present. But in the US the target is not the state. It is women. Everything about Trump seems dedicated to this process of destroying the role of women in society by subjugating them to men.
The overlaps are obvious. The underlying goal in both cases is to reclaim the supremacy of the white, rich male. And it sickens me to my core.
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Old probably as well.
the raw brutality of inter-war Britain where poverty was used as an economic and social weapon of control.
I cannot find myself unable to resist saying that that is quality writing. There were quite a few other nations that used the poor as a weapon of control during that period too.
Thank you
But it would help if you used a real name
Hal O’Domore says:
“the raw brutality of inter-war Britain where poverty was used as an economic and social weapon of control.”
But when I copy it and paste I don’t get it in italics.
How did you get that to appear in italics?
It seems that the earlier, brutal dystopia, The Iron Heel, is coming to fruition in the US. One would have thought that, at the heart of the social media industry, the somewhat kinder 1984 would have prevailed. But I guess the US neocons are not clever enough for that.
I forgot about the more recent Handmaid’s Tale – I don’t recall The Iron Heel being particularly misogynistic. I shared a post on Facebook showing photos from the Kavanaugh ‘court’ and below a still from ‘Handmaid’ – very similar males in judgement against women.
https://news.gov.scot/news/uk-welfare-cuts-pushing-more-families-into-poverty
Compelling stuff.
I’m reading ‘Citizen Clem’ by John Bew at the moment and the parlous state of the men supposed to go into battle in WWI and WW2 for the country is what pushed forward the view that more needed to be done for the population by the Government (Attlee’s view of what socialism was all about – amongst other things) . In other words, a State that ignored the needs of its people might see this deliberate policy back fire on them during crucial periods of the nation’s history.
This seems to make more sense at the time of war but given that it is the population at large that produces the GDP, it makes sense to look after your nation’s people 24/7, 365 days of the year.
As for the situation in America I cannot say for sure what is going on. I know that some of the most vocal Senators and HoR members pushing for social and economic reform in the US seem to be women (Bernie seems to get all the attention however). Is that the problem? The perceived threat from women?
I do not really know how patriarchal US society is. We have had a black (male) president. Is it really out of question that a female president will come about? Considering how Hilary was undermined at the last election – was this due to her gender or her association with her (not very bright and morally weak ) husband?
She’d be a pretty good start for me…
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/29/elizabeth-warren-presidential-run-2020
On a separate note I shared your original post around Richard. Someone replied observing that the level of detail on your headline is sub-optimal. It should be…
Brexiteers and Trump have the same goal: reclaiming the supremacy of the white, rich, heterosexual male
Fair comment….
Regarding the Clintons, they are both very intelligent and Bill was an excellent politician regardless of his moral weaknesses (which are shared by many other successful politicians for some reason). Not accurate to claim he wasn’t very bright. He did a pretty decent job when in power though obviously aided by the relative stability of the world economy at the time, Tech crash aside (i.e. neoliberalism hadn’t quite started to eat itself).
The problem with Hillary was that she didn’t have the common touch of her husband and the whiff of financial/politicial scandal had followed her around for much too long. Most of this whiff came from the false Republican claims and attacks on her over decades, not to mention from her time as Secretary of State under the hated Obama, but the adage that there is no smoke without fire sticks in the mind of most and she was a poor candidate. When you factor in the way the Democratic establishment clearly fiddled the system to ensure her candidacy and it is easy to see why she didn’t receive the support in the election that you would have expected, allowing Agent Orange to take the Presidency.
I don’t personally think the gender issue came into it too much as there were plenty of other sticks (real and imagined) for the right to bash Clinton with. A better female candidate, Warren for example, might have done better though it’s worth noting that the Republican establishment have been attacking her character for some time already. The right-wing media in the US are very well paid to smear any left-leaning politician and they do their jobs efficiently, regardless of how bizarre and ludicrous their claims may appear to those of us overseas.
In a more general comment about Richard’s post, I think that it isn’t a great surprise that the various white, right-wing, male billionaires/millionaires who bankrolled Trump, own the majority of the media in the US and the UK and no doubt fund the various secretive TLA ‘Think Tanks’ promoting free market armageddon are in favour of a system which disenfranchises people who aren’t right-wing, male and extremely wealthy (and therefore generally white). I don’t think it is mostly to do with misogyny or racism, just unfettered and shameless self interest. Admittedly with a side-helping of misogyny and racism from some of the American contingent but that is just a side-effect of their plans to take an ever-larger slice of the pie.
Mariner
I think that you are looking back at the Clinton presidency with somewhat rose tinted spectacles.
I call the male Clinton ‘ not very bright’ based on the fact that he allowed Allan Greenspan and Robert Rubin to undermine his initial plans to combat the effects of Reaganism. A real man of principle such as Roosevelt and even Truman would have pushed them away. But Clinton (M) didn’t because – well – he wasn’t very bright and secondly he was a fundamentally weak character unlike some previous presidents. He was a light weight in my view. Sorry.
And you are wrong to say that Neo-liberal tendencies were in their infancy at this period – they had gathered steam and were already doing harm to ordinary working people in the states . Reagan had already eviscerated the unions in America by this time. Even the great and successful (ask the Japanase) industrial theorist W. Edwards Deming could not halt the rot as the US financial system got its claws into american industry (read the book ‘The Puritan Gift’).
Greenspan and Rubin told Clinton (M) there was no money to pay for his social programmes. So they invented another programme called I think ‘Workfare’ (?) where social assistance came with incentives and Clinton (M) also cut welfare budgets. New Labour in the UK borrowed a lot of this crap.
Clinton (M)’s Secretary of Labour was fellow Rhodes Scholar Robert Reich (a man who albeit small in stature was an intellectual giant compared to Clinton (M) ) who in the end got fed up with being ignored and resigned his post in frustration.
I find your defence of Clinton (M)’s ‘zipper problem’ interesting. It would not be more acceptable even if Clinton (M) was actually a decent leader (he wasn’t in my view). If you are saying that being a sexual predator is the price we pay for good leadership then I disagree.
Clinton was/is typical of so many modern so-called progressives/liberals in that his ‘liberalism’ was targeted towards markets whilst his intolerance was focused on the poor and those whom rampant financialisation was chucking on the scrapheap. It should have been the other way around.
As for Clinton (F) I have always found people to be hostile towards her for some reason (some female friends of mine are convinced that she is a closet lesbian for example).
Of the two however, I think Hilary is the more capable. I also feel sad for her because she was forever in Bill’s shadow. She very often had to dress up and look like the typical American wife and do wifey things and it did not sit well with her. I see her as a serious person who – because of her gender – has been caged and held back by the very male dominated polity in the USA.
My only point of agreement with you is that the US Right has continuously and deliberately lied and spread unfounded rumours about the Clintons. But not just at Bill: his potentially brilliant (and troublesome to the status quo) wife Hilary.
“In the UK the sense is that the core desire is to dismantle the effect of 1945.”
The core desire is not just to dismantle the economic, social or political effect within Britain, but in the fabric of the post-1945 European settlement: to dismantle 1948 and 1957 (Treaty of Rome). Brexit entails not just ‘independence’ from Europe (a completely phoney objective), but as an inevitable (and even unintended for those who have failed to ‘think this through’): to undermine the EU. The ‘end-game’ will return Britain to 19th-20th century ‘balance of power’ politics in Europe, that can only be corrosive to the unity of the EU, and to the stability of Europe long-term. Indeed for some Brexiteers at least, this is the intention, or they at least understand that this is the consequence of what they do.
We have already seen this sytematically destructive policy programme in operation already, the ‘dress rehearsal’ of a very old political strategy of tough ‘balance of power’ politics that Britain exploited ruthlessly to advantage throughout the 19th century: in the Brexit negotiations British ministers have spent months running round European capitals, trying to discover and exploit fissures in the unity of the 27 EU states, that Britian could exploit for negotiating advantage over Brexit; followed by a British media ramping-up Brexit as a national contest with the EU. They failed, but the tone for a new contested future in Europe for all of us (echoing a past it cost us dear to escape), has already been established.
Beware what you wish for.
Brexit entails not just ‘independence’ from Europe (a completely phoney objective), but as an inevitable consequence (and even unintended for those who have failed to ‘think this through’): to undermine the EU.
I missed “consequence” above; and elsewhere there is a redundant “already”. Hapless editing. Apologies.
Thanks
I think it’s a bit unfair to lump all people supporting Brexit as belonging to the same breed. Bill Mitchell certainly isn’t. He sees the EU as a neoliberal superstate and I am beginning to be persuaded that way. Of course in the hands of Rees Mogg and Johnston it’s a scary future but I don’t think we can become a courageous state by remaining tied to its undemocratic values.
I think the headline did not tell the whole story
But I cannot agree with Bill: revolutions work in theory. In the real world they are deeply destructive.
Leaving the EU will of course be by no means an easy process, but a ‘revolution’? Are you sure? What makes you so sure that the status quo wouldn’t just be death-by-a-thousand-cuts anyway?
Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Davies et al can be flung out and their damage over-turned with one single election victory. There’s little evidence that these characters have any popularity outside the Tory party – very little at all in the North.
The problems that the UK has at the moment are all due to austerity – and the chickens coming home to roost following George Osbourne’s cynical front-load-the-benefits tax policies that essentially tied the hands of his (predictably incopetent) successors.
The key point in your piece, for me, was the plain fact that the desire to demolish our social safety nets between the wars (meagre as they were) did not work – and there’s no indication that they possibly could be so dismantled today.
We are not the USA (whose education and health rankings have slipped globally from 6th in 1990 to the mid 30s now) and who have essentially been given Hobson’s choice since the 1960s.
We have the opportunity, by way of example, to influence the EU for the better in a far more significant way outside the institution than we ever will have constrained by it’s diffuse structure and baked-in, path-dependent neoliberalism.
Knowing this doesn’t make me a Trumpian mysogynist, or a BoJo racist, it makes me an optimist.
I confess I can see no basis on earth to share your optimism
I may be wrong, but I take little comfort from those supporting Brexit from loft or right
And I believe there is more chance of reforming the EU than saving the UK as a decent place for most people to live
“The UK is currently a decent place for most people to live”. Amen to that.
Julie Swetnick says:
“The UK is currently a decent place for most people to live”. Amen to that. ”
Rather a narrow view, I think.
Maybe you reckon as long as you’re on the right side of misery those on the wrong side don’t count.
Sadly you are part of the very large minority that behaves as if that is so. This Is why I don’t agree the UK is a decent place to live and I look forward to its being dismantled ASAP.
The prospect of imminent dismantling seems to be the inevitable conclusion of Theresa May’s cack-handed approach to Brexit. A few other people over the decades behaving very selfishly, stupidly and or incompetently in positions of power and influence have given impetus to the process she seems determined to conclude.
Mistakes have been made in Europe, but the rewards in long term peace and prosperity have been greater for all; and given a choice most Europeans prefer to be ‘in’ than ‘out’; for good reason. With regard to the errors and failures of the EU, these could have been mitigated if Britain had – ever – been a sincere and committed member, interested in the EU’s success; rather than a negative, destructive force that seemed to enjoy the fruits of membership only in order to undermine the enterprise and hold it all in contempt.
In 1945 Britain was in the dominant position to frame the kind of Europe that was created. It chose not to do so, and it has failed to engage with the EU or provide any credible alternative for Europe ever since. Britain’s vision is narrow and solely narcissistic; and for the EU the British vision is Hobbesian ; nasty, brutal and short.
@ Rod White:
I don’t know about anyone else but I find Bill Mitchell’s aggressive anti-EU stance poses something of a dialectical (probably not le mot juste) problem for committed MMT-ers such as myself. Of course he is 100% right re. the EU’s macro-economic policies, but it’s a whole lot more than the ECB, however damaging the latter is and has been. He rarely seems to take into account the extent to which the UK has become socio-economically regressive, and that ‘Brexit’ under the current régime is ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’. I suppose he’d say that is a matter for the electorate and doesn’t change his core analysis. As he’s soon to be in London (https://www.plutobooks.com/events/bill-mitchell) perhaps he will address the mid-term socio-economic cost to the UK.
Hopefully (optimistically) in the longer term voters will see the light and kick out the neo-liberals, never for them to return to power. But I fear that in the meantime the UK ‘Tea Party’ will have established a solid bridge-head with its American partners-in-crime, making it ever more difficult for the election of a truly progressive, MMT-based government, implementing the enlightened policies that Bill Mitchell has advocated for many years. Thus far the LP hasn’t provided the quality of leadership in which one can place much faith.
Hence, I agree with Richard, the Green Party and other progressives who take the pragmatic view that the best strategy is to remain in the EU and fight for economic reform from within, which at least allows us to maintain the option to vote democratically for an orderly exit should the reforms not be forthcoming. Regrettably for the majority of the country’s population the Tory strategy is the worst of all worlds from which there might not be a sustainable recovery for at least a generation.
People who want progressive policies in the UK must develop the confidence to get them enacted by the UK parliament instead of misconstruing the EU as a protective shield against the Tories. The past forty years of UK macroeconomic policy have been very poor. The EU has reinforced that problem. If you like the EU’s environmental regulations, enact them by statute! It is naive to trust the EU to support progressive goals. Back in the 1970s the mainstream UK Labour position was to oppose the EEC as a mechanism that ruled out socialist policy options. They were prescient. Their advice should have been heeded. Yes, the UK Parliament has adopted neoliberal policies voluntarily, but EU membership has added ill-deserved legitimacy and political cover for those misguided policies. The EU has depoliticised economic policies that are inherently political and that demand democratic scrutiny and debate. The EU puts its thumb in the scale in favour of neoliberal economic policies. This has made it much harder for genuinely progressive policies to be advanced within UK Labour. Getting out of the EU will force UK politicians to defend their economic policies arguments on the merits. That is a good thing.
Brexit offers immense opportunities for the UK if UK Labour and the UK Greens make the case for those possibilities. Unfortunately they remained wedded to the EU for reasons of sentiment and symbolism.
A nation can be cosmopolitan without belonging to the EU.
A nation can trade with EU nations without being a member of the EU.
Interestingly, the other EU nations have since 2006 been a declining export market for the UK. The EU’s growth in trade volume is less than the OECD average. Being a member of the EU has not been particularly helpful to the UK’s capacity to export. People forget that trade liberalisation does not necessarily lead to more trade. Economic growth and domestic tastes in your export markets are much more important to trade volume that whether you are part of the EU. In any event, the UK Government can always use fiscal policy to offset any demand drain caused by a growing current account deficit. People put so much weight on exports and trying to minimise CADs. This attitude is a relic from the Bretton Woods period of fixed exchange rates. The UK issues its own currency. The UK does not need to pursue a mercantilist trade policy. The UK does not need to minimise its CAD. Fiscal policy is your friend!!
Nations can coordinate their air traffic rules without being part of a wide-ranging supra-state structure. Multilateral agreements are more than adequate to the task.
Remainers and Brexiteers BOTH used a lot of hyperbole and falsehood in their campaigns. The economic Armageddon that Remainers said would happen after a Leave vote did not happen. People should be forgiven for treating Remainers’ economic claims with skepticism. Their core claim – that there would be a recession after a Leave vote and the loss of tens of thousands or even a couple of hundred thousand jobs – did not happen. The Bank of England and the Treasury used macroeconomic models that should be thrown out. But Remainers used those dubious models to push their alarmists claims about the economic consequences of a Leave vote.
The right-wing Brexiteers told lies about NHS funding.
The right-wing relied on fear of migrants rather than sound economic arguments.
What a shame that there wasn’t an organised left-wing campaign for Brexit.
There needs to be one now.
In theory these things can be done
But you assume they can be done all at once
That is not true
So how do you handle the consequence in the meantime?
Or explain it to an incredulous electorate?
Well said, Nicholas. I voted Leave twice, both times without believing that it would happen. You’ve put the arguments much better than I could and I’d like to share on Facebook. There are a lot of LVT and MMT campaigners who would agree. I did, however, have some regrets last time as it is clear that coming out after so many years in is going to cause major disruption to the economy. But we are where we are and I cannot see how there’s going to be another referendum whilst the tories cling to power. They are making an almighty mess. The best thing IMO is for the government to fall later next year. We desperately need a Labour government, which I hope will be able to navigate the storm.
Sickening to see all this happening.
Do not forget that Trump has a mother from Clan McLeod. Blokes like him can be found around the pubs and bars of Glasgow. So the real question is he a Rangers supporter or is he Celtic?
If Murdo MacLeod is anyone to go by then Celtic.
If Murdo MacLeod and Ian McLeod are indicative then Celtic.
Oops. Apololgies. Pressed submit prematurely 😉
it depends on which would help his career the most
Demetrius,
What are we meant to understand by this? I’ve been in and out of Glasgow bars for many decades and have never met anyone quite as comprehensively odious as The Donald. Indeed I’d bet you’ll meet more people like him at the Tory Conference this week than in any Glasgow pub in a month of Sundays. Are you suggesting that his odiousness derives from the Scottish element of his parentage? If so I’d advise you against making that assertion in any Glasgow pub!
And what are we to make of the spurious linkage of Trump with supporters of Rangers and Celtic? My view is that the festering sore of sectarian bigotry would largely have disappeared in Scotland were it not for it being used by Old Firm supporters to give them a reason to hate the other. Quite what that’s got to do with Trump or 90+% of the Scots population is perhaps something you might like to explain?
they certainly look after their own
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-accounts-pwc-moritz/pwc-says-more-tech-is-solution-for-higher-audit-standards-idUSKCN1MB3Y3
With all due respect to you, Richard, this is just nonsense.
There is a cogent left wing case for leaving the EU. Especially for those of us who do do have some understanding of how badly the EU have erred in their economic thinking with the introduction of the euro.
Sorry, but that is to conflate arguments. The euro is a disaster but it takes little wit to notice we are not in it and never would be. So shall we please deal with reality?
It would take even less wit to notice that every other country IS in the Euro. So if the Euro is a disaster, why would the UK belong to an organisation which has its economics so shackled by a common currency?
Oh dear
Every other country is not in the uro, by some way
You really are a time waster
I’m not impressed by your bullying style of argument, Richard.
Every other country is subject to the rules of the euro ie the Stability and Growth Pact. (so-called)
Clearly the fall-out from the euro disaster cannot be confined within the borders of the eurozone.
But the claim made was simply wrong
Rubbish. EU is dismantling the nation state. Read the CJEU judgments. No respect for rule of law.
Not how I read mamy of the more recent ones
Not sure my French relatives or German, Swedish, Irish… friends would even remotely see it like that
Look – it’s very simple (sorry to sound arrogant here but I have to make the point):
The EU has a Neo-liberal problem – WHY? – because the nations that make it up have Neo-liberal tendencies themselves.
Remove Neo-liberalism from the membership, and Neo-liberalism will be removed from the EU.
The only part of the EU where this is an exception is at the ECB (European Central Bank) where I think an institution has been created that has too much power. A mistake has been made. The ECB has to go and so does the Euro.
As for the rest of the EU – stop treating it as some nebulous foreign power. It is not. It is us and our friends and we can change it if we want to as long as we can change ourselves first.
That is just so true
And really, to coin a phrase, bleedin’ obvious
It strikes me as absurd that people do not get it
Adrian D says:
“We have the opportunity, by way of example, to influence the EU for the better in a far more significant way outside the institution than we ever will have constrained by it’s diffuse structure and baked-in, path-dependent neoliberalism”.
I wonder what evidence he has for this?
The UK, before it joined the EU, was showing no signs of being able to do that, and yet it did enjoy some feeling of goodwill among many of the Nations within the EU at the time.
Now, after a bitter and acrimonious Brexit, I doubt this will be the case, at least for quite a long time.
In the meantime, lots more austerity and hardships will have been hitting the most vulnerable.
Neoliberal EU needs to be changed from within.
How, I don’t know. But seeing nationalists threaten to “take back control” around Europe, seeing populist autocrats like Orban and Salvini threatening democratic institutions and defying EU constitutional law, they have started to wake up, several movements within the EU have heard the warning bells.
They need to make themselves heard.
As for the question of reclaiming the supremacy of the rich white male, Trump, Johnson, and many like them, have definite issues with their psychiatric make up. They do need to be examined.
I really believe that they are unfit to be in politics, or in anything else where social and economic progress is at stake.
Unfortunately they are not alone in this, and as democracy is rather shaky these days, with few people engaging with politics, they are left to carry on.
Those who could stop them, including the media, are happy with the circus-like atmosphere they create. Sensational.
The media themselves are full of these ‘rich white men’.
The western world is no longer ruled by Church and Crown, but by Corporations, Banks and Press Barons (in some cases they’re the same people), also rich white men.
Trump and Johnson are only pawns, they’re either too stupid,too psychopathic, or both, to stop themselves from being used.
They should be made to step down, but surely they’re useful to someone hiding behind the scenes.
A friend passed me this piece by Umair Haque. Is this where Brexit is taking UK – or has it arrived already with young people paying 60% of average income for rented accommodation. https://eand.co/why-america-is-the-worlds-first-poor-rich-country-17f5a80e444a
I like Umair
If this is the same EU who are trying to find away to trade with Iran despite US trade sanctions without using US dollars then I think the EU is worth sticking with.
The EU policy concerning Iran is a policy for peace. The US does not like this. I wonder how this is going down with the the pro-USA BREXIT mob in the Tory party!!? What will be the consequences for BREXIT and no deal now?
Frederic Bastiat said: ‘When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.’ I know that Bastiat is definitely seen as a forerunner of the Austrian school of economics but he does make a lot valid observations about economic life.
For the Trump regime to point out Iran’s backing of ‘terrorism’ whilst ignoring the USA’s previous under hand support of change by military means in other states trying to be self-deterministic (particularly in South America) is just the sort of hypocrisy we have become used to from the Global Bully that is North America.
Trump and the US are angling for war with Iran. The US has a war economy and when they go to war, the money flows. Forget Iraq at your peril.
I’d rather deal with the EU any day of the week than the American hegemony we are enabling with a No Deal BREXIT.
Another great article! Thanks so much.
You, Richard, are hardly a shining example of respect for women.
And do, I, as a Brexit voter, want the supremacy of white, rich males (like yourself)?
Hardly.
What a load of garbage
I hear what you say Linda
But the problem you have with me is the same as the one you seem to have with most people you don’t agree with
If you have to be aggressive all the time it’s hard to establish mutual respect and I can never recall a moment when you have ever been anything but aggressive towards me. The creates a reaction which is basic, and not to do with gender or anything else
Linda
If I ever felt that Richard or anyone was responding to you on the basis of your gender I would spring to your defence as I feel I must defend Richard now (and he hasn’t asked me to and maybe doesn’t not need it either).
We’ve been here before – you seem to be taking Richard’s questioning of your comments too personally. All I see is disagreement with you based on fact or opinion. I do not see any other motivation. I would not be here if there was. I’m sure others wouldn’t be either.
The EU is not open for change or reform of what it sees as its established gains. Some of the gains have been materially beneficial for some but the gains are not evenly shared within and between member states. The only way changes of direction come about is via the electorate booting out one lot and replacing them with another who seem momentarily less offensive. We cannot boot out the EU Commission and that gaping deficiency is where the democratic deficit of the EU lies. It cannot walk back it’s mistakes because it is a bureaucracy that no one can sack. The fact that we are coming out gives me and several others on here cause for optimism and the evidence indicates it’s wishful thinking to believe the EU can change.
I think your theory of change is deeply deficient and fails to reflect any known reality in international relations
My comment was not a “theory of change”. It’s my practical observation of how radical change has proceeded in Europe since world war 2. Any elite following it’s own agenda which is not responsive to popular demands gets out of step with the will of the people and it’s the elite that ultimately goes, not the people. In the U.K. I’d cite the elections of 1945, 1979 and 1997 where our democracy allowed radical changes of course. The fall of the iron curtain, German unification, the fragmentation of Yugoslavia, the Portuguese revolution, collapse of fascism in Spain and Greece are all European examples of elites collapsing or giving in to the popular will because they couldn’t change. I’d like to hear of examples where the commission has radically changed its course due to popular pressure which leads you to believe it will do so in the future.
Balancing sovereignty across the Union is indeed a delicate business, an ultimately undemocratic business since democracy was never conceived on such a wide scale with so many disparate people. In my view the absence of accountability of the Commission to the people will be its down fall. I would like UK to be in step with Europe as closely as we can while allowing the UK electorate to dissent and change course. I know we are already in the outer ring of European integration and what we are looking for is tricky but no trickier than changing the course of the Commission from within. It should be achievable and it remains to be seen where we’ll get to in 6 months time after all the histrionics.
“We cannot boot out the EU Commission and that gaping deficiency is where the democratic deficit of the EU lies.”
Balancing the way that sovereignty is pooled across the EU is a delicate business. Arguably this could be more difficult from a nationalistic point of view if we had elected politicians with more power as part of the EU. Who got voted in to positions of power could (sadly) be mostly related to the size of their country of origin – if people voted along nationalistic lines.
If the EU was reformable, it would have been. But that would be antithetical because the EU Is a neoliberal project.
And its a bit late to be talking about ‘us’ changing it, silly!
Yes, the unelected business-driven Commission is the core, anti-people problem, which is why a huge payment by the UK, essentially to pay the pensions of Commission personnel (which is why they are so worried about it) should be questioned.
When things go wrong in a company, workers pensions are the first victim, even when workers bear no responsibility.
Considering the role of Commission personnel in EU disaffection, said pensions should be penalised.
Wow
Worker solidarity there Linda
Linda
Please see my comment above. Basically reform of the EU has to begin in the member nation states because it is the nation state’s own Neo-liberalism that is the problem – the epitome of that being the creation of the ECB.
What you have said about pensions is a bit silly because you seem to be saying that only the UK pays for them. What about the other members who contribute to EU running costs? So the UK leaving is going to solve that is it?
Now come on Linda – you can do better than that.
The more I think about BREXIT the more I come to the conclusion that the vote is not just a protest against the Neo-lib EU: it is a protest vote against the Neo-liberalism inherent in many a member state’s domestic government. Ergo, the people of this country are actually voting against their own Government’s membership and compliance with Neo-lib principals.
So – the big question is this: if we leave Europe and there is no one else to blame, where will that leave the inherent Neo-liberalistic Tory party?
I think that they will hopelessly exposed – especially if there is hard BREXIT. It could finish them off for a long time. But it will be a high price to rid us of their bullshit.
linda kaucher says:
“If the EU was reformable, it would have been. But that would be antithetical because the EU Is a neoliberal project.”
I’m not sure I agree with that as a diagnosis, Linda.
I’d say it’s inherently a socialist project, but has been hijacked by a neoliberal mindset.
Just because it has not yet been reformed doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be. Though I don’t see much signs of a will for reform; and don’t expect to see reform until there is significant disruption to cause the great and the good to consider their respective positions.
Quite how that disruption will present, remains to be seen. I’m expecting to see financial chaos before spontaneous on street demonstrations (riotous assemblies). If the financial chaos is sufficiently grave that will create the street fighting. Financial authorities will need to be a lot more nimble than they were in 2008, I think.
If they are not in red alert mode at present they really are not paying attention.
PS. I don’t think Westminster is any more in touch with the reality of the current situation than the EU bodies are. The UK is at least as fragile as the EU…probably more so, and enormously vulnerable to disintegration.
Those Commission men in grey suits that I’ve seen too much of, don’t count as workers for me.
The agenda of the Commission has been anti-worker as in the Lisbon Treaty they pushed though, which prioritises the rights of capital to undermine working conditions over the rights of workers to take action to defend themselves, subsequently reinforced in law by ECJ decisions.
Are you suggesting I should also have worker solidarity with those who worked to facilitate the slave trade, or death camps?
Have some sense!
First, that’s sexist
Second, they seem to be paid for a living: that’s work
Third, they have employee rights
Fourth, given that any right winger would be banned for such blatantly anti-employee commentary I have no time for the same sort of comment from you, who claims to be left wing but clearly is not
Funnily enough, like public servants anywhere (PSR et al?), those working for the different areas of the EC and associated bodies are human beings too.
Lose sight of that and one truly has lost one’s own humanity. Which ever end of the political spectrum one is sitting on.