Clear and Progressive EU Vision, soon; and UK re-vote

EDITORIAL

Clear and Progressive

EU Vision, soon; and UK re-vote

The EU has been the most important force for social,

economic and environmental progress and peace, in

Europe – no petty agendas - for sixty years

he people who brought us Brexit didn’t

know what the effect of the breach would

be. No one did; or does.

Leading British Leave campaigners, including

Boris Johnson, appeared to consider that Brit-

ain could retain access to its single market but

implement some limits on free movement.

In fact, if Britain is to be in the internal market

for goods then it will have to accept, on all exist-

ing precedents, free movement of people, the

application of EU rules that it will have no part

in framing and the continuing surrender of sub-

stantial financial contributions to the EU

budget.

Even then it will not have full access to the

internal market in services such as banking,

hammering the British economy.

Unfortunately for the UK, a lethal blend of

ignorance, racism and manipulation of an

undereducated and vulnerable working class,

genuinely threatened by globalism and immi-

gration (which on balance serves the country

well) by opportunists in the Tory Party and

UKIP, threatens the fundaments of the country’s

economy and polity.

It is primarily because it is a class-riven soci-

ety with low educational standards that the UK,

or more particularly England and Wales, has

chosen to exit. Anyone with an understanding

of history or economics would not want the EU’s

collapse or Britain’s exit. It turns out that aver-

age levels of education of the people in a region

correlate strongly with their Brexit orientations.

People in areas where many residents have col-

lege degrees were far more likely to vote

Remain, particularly in central London, where

more than two thirds of the city population has

a bachelor’s degree. Ironically but encourag-

ingly, hosting a sizeable immigrant population

seemed to sway communities against Leave,

and denser cities tended against Leave,

overall.

Other factors mattered less. The median age

of a community, despite the much emphasised

youths-versus-retirees clash that many said

would deﬁne the referendum, ended up corre-

lating only slightly with how the vote actually

went. Nevertheless it appears that of

18-24-year-olds, the age category that’s going

to have to live with the consequences of this

vote for all of their working lives, 75 percent

voted to stay. Among over 65s the ﬁgure was

only 39%. Britain is ﬁssured to the detriment of

the most dynamic, outward looking and young.

Behind the now spreading turmoil, Europe

faces extraordinary crises: from immigration to

terrorism, from declining competitiveness to

inequality to climate change and species loss.

In the Netherlands, once a bastion of toler-

ance, at the moment Geert Wilders is topping

the polls. He is “channelling” Donald Trump,

with slogans like “Make the Netherlands great

again!” He is preparing for a general election

early next year – promising that, if he becomes

prime minister, his ﬁrst act will be to call an in/

out referendum on EU membership. Prime min-

ister Mark Rutte’s Liberals, with 47 per cent in

favour of staying and 45 per cent in favour of

going it alone. Marine Le Pen, ascendant in

Presidential polls, is promising a referendum in

France. In Italy the populist Five Star Movement

has emerged as Italy’s leading political party,

overtaking Matteo Renzi’s ruling Democratic

party and promising a referendum. There is a

dangerous democracy-light nationalist govern-

ment in Hungary and a court-ordered

Presidential re-election in Austria that may

facilitate the ultra-rightist Norbert Hofer of the

Freedom Party.

In the face of all this, the EU, led by second-

raters cynically put up precisely because they

are second-raters, has no plans beyond regur-

gitated schemes to boost EU economic growth

through investment, to agree greater co-oper-

ation to boost security, and to work on creating

job opportunities for young people. Above all

no simply-stated fresh Vision for a volatile

continent.

The EU, if no other institution, needs charis-

matic and accountable leaders with big and

popular egalitarian ideas.

Let’s hear more about an agenda of people

not capital or bureaucracy, of equality not com-

merce. The EU needs to become an agent of

equality and the environment, driven in every

case by efﬁciency, accountability and the

common good. This institution, once so sharp

and so idealistic, needs urgently to register a

new Vision and a Passion for progress.

In 1992 the Danes voted to reject the Maas-

tricht treaty. The Irish voted to reject both the

Nice treaty in 2001 and the Lisbon treaty in

2008. The Netherlands rejected the Maastricht

treaty in June 2005 by a stinging 61.6 per cent.

There were revotes in every case.

The UK has two years to withdraw from the

EU under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. It is

likely there will be a general election within that

period. Indeed since Brexit has precipitated a

10% decimation in the value of Sterling, extraor-

dinary stockmarket volatility and will lead to job

losses - in ﬁnancial services but more impor-

tantly in the English heartland that voted Leave,

it seems likely that there will be time for a rea-

lignment of British politics to the centre,

occasioning a Remain majority that will have a

mandate to call a new referendum.

It is to be hoped that such a referendum

would concentrate the minds of Britons on the

beneﬁts of the EU, as well as of the EU on the

need for a revamped Vision and Message.

Before it really is too late.