Britannia Radio

This was in the lefty-Guardian by the assistant editor of that pillar 
of the socialist establishment , the New Stateman.

Remarkable

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GUARDIAN 19.10.08 - 'Comment is Free' section
Challenging obfuscation on Europe
People are said to find the issue of the EU boring. But we need to 
decide what Britain's future will be in this body

by . Sholto Byrnes, New Statesman Assistant Editor

It was only last December that Gordon Brown demonstrated his ardour 
for Europe by signing the Lisbon Treaty in splendid isolation, two 
hours after his fellow EU leaders and behind closed doors. Now the 
prime minister is managing to get away with presenting himself as 
being at the heart of Europe, albeit only because in the midst of an 
economic meltdown that nobody predicted - least of all him - his 
period as chancellor in one of the EU's longest-serving 
administrations means that he is credited with greater knowledge of 
the mess than his less-experienced continental counterparts.

The nature of Brown's history with the EU has been explored elsewhere 
(not least recently by my New Statesman colleague James Macintyre). 
But the perceived new placing of Britain in Europe, however cynical, 
is of clear domestic advantage to the government when faced by an 
opposition whose leader has still not fulfilled a party election 
pledge to withdraw Tory MEPs from the integrationist European 
People's Party grouping. His hesitancy is understandable, given that 
the only other grouping feasibly open to his Euro MPs includes such 
voter-friendly charmers as Robert Kilroy-Silk and Jean-Marie Le Pen. 
But with European elections in June, Cameron will have to face - or 
fudge - the issue sooner rather than later.

The truth is that all this obfuscation on Europe has suited both 
major political parties. The less we hear about whether we should 
join the Euro or not (convenient as we may find it when holidaying 
cross-Manche) and about treaties that may or may not be 
constitutions, the better. EU questions cross and divide parties. 
Remember the Maastricht rebels? Or all that fuss about Brown's five 
tests? Playing a waiting game, hoping nothing much changes, putting 
off any firm decisions: that's much safer.

Except it's not really safer at all. People are said to find the 
issue of Europe boring. But I find nothing boring about the fact that 
EU law now supersedes our own (and in matters of far greater import 
than the relative curvature of bananas). Nor do I find it boring that 
one day Britain and France will almost certainly cede their permanent 
seats on the UN Security Council to the EU; nor that the EU is 
already beginning to act as a united foreign policy bloc as a member 
of the quartet, with Russia, the US and UN, in relation to Israel.

Despite Labour's historic Euroscepticism (advocating withdrawal from 
the then EEC in the 1983 general election manifesto, for instance), 
there is a sense that progressives, being internationalists, should 
automatically be in favour of ever closer union. However, there are 
different types of internationalism, and we need to decide whether 
the pooling of sovereignty involved in making any supranational body 
effective is something we want to commit to a protectionist, 
culturally inward-looking EU or to more genuinely international 
bodies: trying to revive the moribund Commonwealth, perhaps, or 
attempting to strengthen and reform a UN we should not and cannot 
give up on.

As global power shifts and ebbs inexorably eastwards these are 
questions of great gravity - far more so, in fact, than the minutiae 
of domestic politics with which we preoccupy ourselves. Entertaining 
though such jousting may be, our long-term relationships, unilateral 
or EU-mediated, with Russia, India and China are more likely to 
concern future historians than the precise details of what George 
Osborne said to Peter Mandelson in a Greek taverna or the vexing 
subject of whether David Cameron sets a bad example by not always 
wearing his cycling helmet.

Rather than let the EU steadily and stealthily accrete power - as 
Europhiles claim that it does not, although the transformation from a 
European Economic Community to a European Union proves otherwise - we 
need to decide what Britain's future will be in this body. We should 
not be lulled into thinking our European future benign merely because 
Brown seems temporarily to bestride the continent like some new 
Metternich.

It should be a cause of outrage that Labour reneged on its promise to 
hold a referendum on the EU constitution that reemerged as the Lisbon 
Treaty. So too should news that Ireland is likely to be asked to hold 
a second referendum next October. The Irish rejected Lisbon in June, 
but this expression of a people's will was not deemed acceptable by 
the Eurocrats. What happens if the Irish vote no again - will they be 
asked to repeat the exercise until they finally come up with the 
correct answer?

We claim to care deeply about the maintenance and establishment of 
democracy in other parts of the world. How curious that we appear to 
be so nonchalant about its practice at home, especially when the very 
nature of what our home is, who rules it, and what say we will have 
in its governance, is changing without us, the voters, ever being 
consulted.