If Dickens had invented a character called “Mark Reckless”, it might have looked a little contrived. The Conservative MP for Strood and Rochester has argued that Britain should withdraw from the EU, and claims that over half his Conservative colleagues support him.
And not since such Dickensian figures as Sir Leicester Dedlock or Artful Dodger has a character lived up to his name with such enthusiasm. For think how reckless it would be if Britain were to withdraw from the EU, a scenario which even Margaret Thatcher considered suicidal and which was once the lonely position of the lunatic, Bennite left.
Amid the understandable enthusiasm of the right to develop new markets in the East, there is a simple point often overlooked: Britain conducts more trade with Ireland than with China or India. Perhaps Conservatives, casting off their xenophobia, might wish they could float Britain to the Indian Ocean, but alas geography dictates that we are in Europe.
Our cultural and historic links with the Continent are obvious. Supporting the EU doesn’t mean slavish adoration of every outmoded social and economic policy in Greece. But many of the problems we face, such as impending environmental catastrophe and the global banking crisis, can only be tackled through powerful international institutions.
My book The Clegg Coup is an attempt to show what British government would be like without the sane influence of the Liberal Democrats –- yet even I would not have dared predict that A MAJORITY of the parliamentary Conservative Party would really be mad dog enough to contemplate total withdrawal from the EU. This is no longer a “flapping white coat” mad fringe, this is now Conservative orthodoxy; and it is deeply scary.
Yet I am actually very grateful to Reckless – for showing us just how dangerous the government would be for Britain without the safer hand of Nick Clegg.
* Jasper Gerard is a journalist, author of The Clegg Coup, and a long-standing Lib Dem member and activist.
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10 Comments
I fail to see how this argument, which centres on apocalyptic predictions about Britain’s future should it leave the EU, has any grounding in reality.
Neither Norway nor Switzerland are members of the EU. Their economies are in rather good nick, all things considered. The former is a particularly good example of Nordic-style social democracy based on citizenship and solidarity.
Greece and Ireland are members of the EU. They’re in dire, DIRE straits. Why should this be? I thought the EU was the answer to everything?
The truth is that every member of the EU joined for different reasons. France and Germany decided to pool sovereignty in order to eliminate the threat of yet more war on their soil. Spain, Portugal and Greece joined to consolidate their transitions to democracy. The former Eastern bloc countries joined to assert their independence from Russia. We joined joined for no other reason than to kick-start our economy after a period of post-war decline. That’s it. The British people were never told of plans to creep towards political union and they don’t want it. The fact is that we can keep the preferable trading arrangement – which is all we ever wanted – without being members of the thing.
The fact the European President has openly stated his opposition to the very concept of the nation-state says it all.
It seems that the ability of the nation-state to ensure that global capitalism behaves sensibly is, to put it mildly, very limited. Global capitalism can, and does, take its toys away when any regulation it doesn’t like is passed, unless there’s nowhere to take them to. At least the EU rules make that a bit more difficult. The nation-state is just a particular way of organising politics, and it only really works when both capital and labour are relatively immobile – once capital has escaped, the nation-state become less and less relevant.
@Alex “Greece and Ireland are members of the EU. They’re in dire, DIRE straits. Why should this be? I thought the EU was the answer to everything?”
You are mixing the European Union (EU) and the currency, the Euro.
Those nations foolishly ditched their national currencies and joined the Euro. One of the reasons why I have always been against the Euro is the fact that interest rates are set in Frankfurt for the entire Eurozone.
The UK for years had required interest rates higher than the Eurozone because that is what was required for our national economy. I imagine we would have had a similar Irish type HUGE boom if we had had the lower Eurozone interest rate.
[n.b. the mods – more temperate version]
“For think how reckless it would be if Britain were to withdraw from the EU, a scenario which even Margaret Thatcher considered suicidal and which was once the lonely position of the lunatic, Bennite left.”
Let me stop you right there, for before you read me chapter and verse on the many virtues of the european project for ever-deeper-union I would like to remind you of these words from Clegg himself:
“The euro has done more to enforce budgetary discipline in the rest of Europe than any number of exhortations from the IMF or the OECD. If we remain outside the euro, we will simply continue to subside into a position of relative poverty and inefficiency compared to our more prosperous European neighbours…”
The euro-enthusiasts have been wrong on everything to do with ever-deeper union.
Do you recognise that growing dissatisfaction with the EU is the direct result of advocating a form of governance for europe that is not percieved as legitimate, because it can never be both representative of, and accountable to, all the different peoples of europe?
Not only have the peoples of europe never assented to supranational government, in the majority of cases they have never even been asked, that is why people are rioting on the streets of athens.
So forgive me if my response to you sneering rejection of EU-skeptics as xenophobes is intemperate, because to my eyes it is the arrogance of the EU-enthusiasts that has resulted in the growing rejection of the eu across the polities of europe. This is not a Tory problem, it is a failure of representative democracy in that political parties are failing to represent the will of the majority, and in adopting a common platform rendering themselves unaccountable to the democratic process. Your want to now why the populist right is increasing across europe from Finland to France, the sentence above is why.
If the purpose of the European project was to create a happier Europe, more at ease with its neighbours and less prone to industrial warfare, at what point did the means become confused with the ends?
That is to say, to the point where ever-deeper-union is deemed to be a good thing regardless of the fact that it is now leading to a less happy Europe, because the model of governance is perceived to be unrepresentative and unaccountable!
To end with a final question:
Do you understand that the Lib-Dem’s are a political-party in a adversarial & majoritarian electoral system, and not a pointy-headed pressure-group within a PR system?
The observation about trade with Ireland compared to trade with India and China probably doesn’t help with the likes of Mr Reckless who probably think it should still be part of the UK.
Not all Conservatives think that we should leave the Single Market, but the majority of us believe that European integration has gone too far. The public agree with us.
Fun fact. More LibDem voters trust David Cameron on Europe than Nick Clegg.
A fair point from Cllr Strong. Notice none of the Euro-sceptic (Conservative?) posters had an answer to the point of Jenny Barnes – the public are deeply concerned about the power of global capital. Perhaps it has grown too strong to regulate, but by withdrawing from the EU you would seriously weaken both its and our ability to exercise whatever limited control we have over it.
As to “nonny nouse” – here are two “fun facts” in return: 1) the only other previous contribution of note by Mark Reckless to national debate was when he admitted to being too drunk to vote on the budget and 11) talk to anyone in Cameron’s circle privately and they would far rather deal with Nick Clegg on Europe than some of the loons on the Tory backbenches.
Having met Nick, I would trust him with my life.. not so sure about Dave, he always seems to be looking over his shoulder.
As regards the anti-European Tories, time they splintered off and formed their own party. that would have been a far more likely outcome if we had achieved voting reform.
“As regards the anti-European Tories, time they splintered off and formed their own party. that would have been a far more likely outcome if we had achieved voting reform.”
They did, it’s called UKIP.
On that note I’d recommend this article, not least because it has more than a few lessons for the Lib-Dem’s:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100115144/as-the-landscape-starts-to-shift-ukip-can-create-political-havoc/
He is right that an opportunity exists for UKIP, but wrong to write off the Lib-Dem’s, an opportunity exists for both parties and for exactly the same reason; a potentially fatal failure of the Tories and Labour (respectively) to respond effectively to the interests and expectations of their core electorate on either side of the political spectrum.
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My response to that:
“Had the Lib Dems then made the decision to reflect popular opinion and challenge the European Union, they could have been a genuinely radical party, capable of confronting head-on and overtaking their two main rivals.”
This is of course the project that Clegg is embarked upon now; that of transforming his party from a pointy-headed protest movement pining after consensual and proportional government into a party of government that is prepared to fight and win the mandate of the people in our current adversarial system.
Whether he will succeed is another matter, but there is a second force in play other than the rise of the populist right, and that is the collapse of the traditional left.
The problem with predicting the Lib-Dem’s demise is that it rests on the false premise that Clegg and his Orange Bookers are content to be the eternal bridesmaid of left-wing politics. This is not the case, and the formation of a coalition with the Tories should have provided all the clues that were necessary, most recently by the commitment of the Lib-Dem’s to fight an independent election campaign in 2015.
The less introspective elements of the Labour party are beginning to wake up to the Lib-Dem and Tory ambition; namely that of replacing Labour as the natural home of the progressive-left.
Jon Cruddas has begun this process by calling for a re-invention of what Labour’s purpose and appeal must be. In short, Labour has become recognised as an authoritarian party and that this public perception is enhanced by the libertarian bent of the
coalition, with the Lib-Dem’s returning to their classical-liberal roots and the Tories discarding the the interfering social conservatism that created Section 28.
Labour needs to recognise and repudiate the authoritarianism that marked their last decade in power and do so before the next election, a 21st century Clause 4 moment if you will, because failure risks the permanent loss of chunks of their core electorate to a ‘nicer’ brand of left-wing politics. 2015 won’t be pretty for the Lib-Dem’s, but it may mark the start of a long decline for Labour as the standard-bearer of the Left, and the Tories will help their erstwhile allies because the future will provide a less toxic opposing ideology to compete with. Ironically, the two Ed’s appear happy to act as mid-wife to this Liberal rebirth.
Both UKIP and the Lib-Dem’s have a historic opportunity to move from party-of-protest to party-of-power, but it both cases it relies on the continuing ineptitude of the Tories and Labour respectively, in their insistence on doing as they wish regardless of the will of their electorate.
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it may make uncomfortable reading but there are important lessons therein for parties aspiring to be mainstream parties of power.
“the project that Clegg is embarked upon now; that of transforming his party from a pointy-headed protest movement pining after consensual and proportional government into a party of government ……”
Eh? Come again? Where is the evidence that anyone in the Lib Dems centre presently could transform their way out of a bramble bush, let alone is trying? Ask anyone in the media. Ask anyone in a bus stop or grocer’s shop. Setting aside the limited nature of the actions concerned, the idea that there is any serious penetration of any coherent separate Lib Dem entity is total denial and delusion. It reminds me of ‘Oh what a lovely war.’ We are seen as Cameron’s scarcely-relevant side-kicks, alternately sheltering under his wing and propping him up.
“The problem with predicting the Lib-Dem’s demise is that it rests on the false premise that Clegg and his Orange Bookers are content to be the eternal bridesmaid of left-wing politics.”
The Lib Dems’ partial demise and stagnation owes nothing at all to any premise. It is the problem of the centipede when it turns its mind to the order of its feet. Any half-competent and/or half-honest Labour Party would have made matters much worse by now. Thankfully, there is no obvious sign of either on the horizon.
As for the real question here, of Europe and the Euro, the EC simply has to be made to work but has been shackled by the timid nationalistic tendencies in most of the big nations as well as some small ones. It took a crisis to break down the barriers around a collective approach to fiscal matters.
The Euro is a totally sensible and logical project which, if done properly, we should have been in from the start. But I have never advocated it for one reason. I had this vision of printing presses in Bulgaria ans Rumania running off billions of the new currency in their garages and sheds. I was out by a few hundred miles – and of course they didn’t even have to buy the paper for the banknotes.