Sea Changes?

The Left Rethinks a Centralised European State

There are some interesting conversations taking place over the fate of Greece and the EU.  One is in the form of a cartoon, reproduced below, which manages to squeeze the issues of economic and national sovereignty into a nutshell.

A second downstream effect is the conversation that has commenced on the Left.   As we review this, it will pay to remember that in the Left world view there is never any shortage of money at the level of government because the State (in the Leftist view) is all powerful and omni-competent when it comes to funds: it can always find more money either through taxation, or through borrowing, or through inflating the money supply.  In the Left world view money and capital is means to an end and its supply is inexhaustible.  In other words, the Left would not see why the proposition by Table Two above should be considered a joke.  Of course that's the way it should be.

As the Left has viewed events in Europe with respect to Greece with growing dismay, its blinkered Marxist world-view prevents it from seeing any substance or worry over Greek indebtedness.  Money is a fiat creation of the State.  If the EU were to cancel or forgive the debt, the slate could be wiped clean and everything could begin again.  If the road rules were a confusing mess, the State could set things right overnight by writing a new set of rules, and on a given date and time, putting them into effect.

The economic system is like that, according to the Left.  There is an endless reset button available.  Instead the powerful countries (Germany, Holland, Britain, France) have refused to cancel Greek debt and hit the reset button, inaugurating a chapter of fresh, newly minted borrowing.  In so doing, Europe and the European experiment have become instruments of repression.  The EU has turned into a tool for exploitation.  The upshot? Euroscepticism is rapidly rising amongst the Left.

Support for a British exit from the European Union is rapidly growing on the left. Some trade unions and politicians are now even considering forming a campaigning organisation to lobby for an ‘out’ vote in the referendum on membership. The Times has today named Jon Trickett MP, who is a member of the shadow cabinet, his fellow Labour MPs Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer, “senior union figures”, the left wing commentator Owen Jones and “senior figures in the Scottish party” as being amongst those understood to be in regular discussions about the issue. Although it notes that none have definitively made up their minds about membership of the EU; they are all known to be sceptical. [Donna Rachel Edmunds, BreitbartLondon.]

 The Left has favoured the European Union project for tactical reasons.  If it failed to win over the populace in the UK, it could always turn to European institutions to press their case for more rules, regulations, changes, and taxes out of the sight of the British public.  Then, hey presto, suddenly the very thing which the public disliked came into being by virtue of a new EU regulation, law, or rule.  Nick Cohen explains , illustrates why the Left once enthusiastically supportive of the "European Project", but now, not so much:

Europe brings a break from a totalitarian past. Really? It has created a currency system, which offers no democratic means of escape. Europe brings compassionate and sensible politics. Spare me, please. Nothing I believe has been more shocking to left-wing opinion that the failure of the EU’s leaders to stop and say: ‘We are good Europeans who believe in solidarity and common decency. The levels of misery our policies are inflicting on southern Europe are intolerable. We cannot carry on like this.’

I suppose the best you can say is that Draghi’s European Central Bank and Merkel’s Christian Democrats are not noticeably corrupt. But I would rather have a corpulent Catholic mayor, his pockets stuffed with petty bribes for services rendered, than an unbending Calvinist prig, who would drive millions to ruin to placate his merciless god. And I suspect many others would too.

The growing awareness on the Left that the EU is turning everything we thought was true about it on its head will have political consequences. In Britain’s case, the change in perspective will make it is more than likely that there will be significant left-wing support for a ‘No’ vote in the European referendum. [Emphasis, ours]

With euro-scepticism on the rise to the right and left of the Conservative centrists, David Cameron had better mind his p's and q's.  It looks likely that within twenty years the European experiment (as we know it) will lie discarded in history's dustbin. Political union by stealth, through the back door, will have failed (thankfully).  But that is not to say that a smaller "union" of willing nations with similar fiscal and currency strength will not will not be co-operating economically--maybe even with a common currency.