Does the European Union still warrant the support of “progressives”

Left wing circles in Britain such as Jeremy Corbyn have never deviated from the view that the EU is a bastion of capitalism. One week after the UK has ceased to be a member of the EU, I wanted to explore whether “progressives” can still argue, as did a Dutch friend recently, that-

“At this point the EU is the only world player that at least tries to set some norms to protect the environment, restore equality, maintain product safety, provide some protection against the abuse of power by governments within and beyond the EU zone”. 

It was some time ago that people started to suggest that the European Commission had been poisoned by neoliberalism. Danny Cohn-Bendit, for example, would jokingly call EC Chairman Barrosso and his colleagues “the Chicago boys” and the “neoliberal Taliban”

I have, therefore, been remiss in this blog in not giving more coverage to the extent to which corporate interests have infiltrated the operations of the European Commission. The last post on the subject seems to have been years ago when I referred to a 2010 study Bursting the Brussels Bubble – exposing the corporate lobbying at the heart of Europe

So I am delighted to be able to update that analysis by encouraging readers to look at Captured States – when EU governments are a channel for corporate interests (Corporate Europe Observatory 2019)

But at this point, I have to confess I got slightly distracted by the Netflix series The Crown each of whose episodes focuses on a specific incident – whether political or personal – and nicely captures how the “Establishment” tried to deal with it. 
Anyone wanting to get a sense of the Key Players and Events in Britain’s post-war period could do a lot worse than view its (so-far) 30 episodes.

Last night I watched the first 3 episodes of the latest series (number Three) – the first dealing with the rumours that Harold Wilson (who had, in October 1964, just won a narrow victory) was in fact a Soviet spy.

Some mystery had surrounded the sudden death of Wilson’s predecessor - Hugh Gaitskell – in 1963 and some in MI5 actually thought this was part of a Soviet plot to plant Wilson. The irony is that the Kremlin spy was not in fact to be found in Downing Street but rather in Buckingham Palace in the person of Sir Anthony Blunt who was the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures. The tensions between the royal and political leaders are superbly caught in the performance of the two actors – particularly in the third episode which deals with the Aberfan disaster of 1966.

As someone who graduated just a few months before Labour finally won office in 1964 - ending 13 years of Conservative rule - these were stirring times.

Discussion about the country’s future role was at its height – and the mood for “modernisation” widely felt. 
The “European option” was being actively explored and I was by no means the only person who adopted a fairly utilitarian approach – asking basically whether it would benefit us or not.

I still have a vivid memory of Hugh Gaitskell’s voice coming from the radio in the family living room in 1962 as he delivered his powerful and emotional anti-European speech about such a step representing the end of a thousand-year history. 
The Labour party in those days had real “heavyweights” – and Peter Shore, Barbara Castle, Douglas Jay and Tony Benn were strong voices against the idea of European membership. But they were not strong enough to convince us younger modernisers although 20 years later their opinion did prevail and the official Labour policy, for a few years from 1983, was one of withdrawal from the EU. 

In future posts I hope to –

- Indicate how the EU cannot help but stifle democracy

- investigate the extent of influence of neoliberalism in Commission policies and how much freedom this still leaves left-wing governments
- Explore how anyone can hope to make sense of the overwhelming amount of text which has been written about the nature of the European Union – and where the Union might be heading

- ask why there is so little public and journalistic interest in the scale and purpose of European funding and its effects on both employment patterns and, in newer member countries, the integrity of its state bodies and public trust

How do we know what we think?

I notice that I have recently started to use the phrase „corporate interests” – as in "politics in deep thrawl to corporate interests”. I generally don’t like politically-loaded words since, as Orwell memorably expressed it, they so quickly lead to the death of thinking and the tyranny of words and slogans. It also means that we alienate others and end up talking only to those who agree with us. So why have I started to use the phrase – and what exactly do I mean by it?
It started, I suppose, when I first realised the extent to which both the media and political parties have been penetrated by multi-national business money and its perspectives.
It was obvious from the beginning that New Labour policies were shaped to keep the party safe from the attacks of the Rupert Murdoch media empire – but the infamous Bernie Ecclestone scandal at the very start of New Labour rule in 1997/8 was a shock to many (demonstrating so vividly how business people could purchase policy and access to legislative power – on the American model). But I suppose I thought this was just a bit of anglo-saxon distinctiveness.
As, however, other governments followed the path of neo-liberalism - and money and greed became more respectable, scandal after scandal followed (eg Enron). The global financial meltdown opened everyone’ s eyes – not only to the immorality of the big players but their utter shamelessness. And the growing centralisation of the media – and its unreliability – has also hit me hard recently. When I developed my type of gentle socialism (under the influence of Tony Crosland’s writings of the late 1950s and 1960s) we really did have a "mixed economy”. Power was reasonably balanced then in the UK (and the rest of Western Europe) between the various forces of labour and capital – and capital was not so monolithic. The word "„corporate” is another word for multinational (or big) business – and my use of the phrase "corporate interests” was shorthand for my disgust for the extent to which such corporate power is now, literally, out of control.
And its grip of the media means that the onus is on those of us object to the imbalance to demonstrate how little competition actually exists now in huge swaithes of the "market” at whose alter we are all supposed to worship. I’ve mentioned already on the blog a couple of recent publications which have exposed the extent of big business influence on the EU - Bursting the Bubble (Alter EU 2010); and Backstage Europe; comitology, accountability and democracy (2010) by Gijs Jan Brandsma.
Today I came across a summary of an academic treatment of the subject – Quiet Politics and Business Power – corporate power in Europe and Japan.
This is on Daniel Little’s excellent blog – and the article led me on to a previous post of his which is very important in answering the basic question of „how we actually know that things work the way in society that we think?”

The Guardian has an interesting piece about a new European left initiative. But I'm not holding my breath!

And, at last, we have one of the female Bulgarian painters represented! This is one of my favourites - Alexandra Mechkuevska who painted mainly in the 1930s and 1940s(I have two of hers). Not one of her best - but too few of the paintings I show have figures!