So I advocated voting to leave the EU. In some left-wing circles this admission is rather like owning up to necrophilia, but for all that I stand by it. In particular I stand by my judgement that the Leave vote would have caused major upset in the Tory government, possibly bringing it down, were it not for the fact that the Parliamentary Labour Party decided to buy a reprieve for the Tories, deflecting attention from them by attacking the Corbyn leadership and forcing a second election.
Be that as it may, we're now on track for, what people insist on calling, Brexit. Much left-of-centre opinion is now advocating a 'soft Brexit'. This is often taken to involve ongoing membership of the Single Market and Customs Union. To this end the SNP have invited Corbyn to a 'summit' apparently intended to focus the fight for Single Market membership.
It is certain that some Labour members will be tempted to advocate Corbyn's taking up the invitation. They are wrong for at least two reasons.
First, the invitation is a trap, intended to put Corbyn in an impossible position, trapped between Leave and Remain supporters in his own electorate. The proper response to it is to say that Labour are the largest opposition party and don't need invitations from anyone.
Second, the Single Market is not a good thing. Leave aside discussions about free trade and protectionism. Built into the rules governing the Single Market are a barrage of neo-liberal measures which would tie the hands of a future radical Labour government. In particular they would prevent it from seriously reversing the privatisations of the past three decades (the lazy response here, that plenty of EU countries have nationalised railways (say) is beside the point - the issue is about returning railways to public ownership, outside of exceptional - East Coast -circumstances once they have been privatised, as they have in Britain). It is unconscianable that the Labour front bench would want to frustrate its own programme by lining up behind the Single Market.
So far, so good. And Corbyn agrees. But does this mean that Labour should simply line up behind the right-wing Brexiteers? So, and for a tediously left-wing reason, class. For whilst we - the great majority of people - have nothing to gain from the neo-liberal regime of the single market, large sections of British capital, including crucially the City of London, do. And whilst we shouldn't place too much faith in those mainstream economic forecasters who failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis, the 'experts' the British electorate were chided for ignoring at the referendum, we have to realise that disinvestment on a massive scale is likely to be the default result of the UK exiting the Single Market. The consequences of this for working class people would be catastrophic.
This means that the parliamentary left can't afford to be passive spectators in an EU exit process steered by the right. There needs to be an alternative programme, and it has to tackle questions of ownership and control, particularly in the financial sector. This, to my mind, is the only way a Labour government could secure a decent basis for a radical programme and protect the living standards of ordinary people in the next few years.
Nor ought Labour to buy into the lie, which I'm afraid has been encouraged by some on the front bench, that the Single Market and free movement stand or fall together. There is no reason that a UK outside of the Single Market couldn't open its borders to EU migrants and negotiate free movement for British citizens throughout the EU. The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is necessary.
Richard Seymour's book on the Corbyn phenomenon is well worth a read. Or at least, this is my judgement on the basis of having read two chapters earlier today. His take on the matter, which whilst being utterly supportive of the Labour leader is more pessimistic than is fashionable on the left , corresponds broadly to my own.
That said, Richard brings out some genuine reasons for hope to which I think I've paid insufficient attention. The mere presence of Corbyn in the public sphere introduces left-wing ideas to a popular debate that has been dominated by neo-liberalism in recent decades. Meanwhile, his position as Labour leader and the related growth of groups like Momentum provides a context for a beleaguered British left to regroup and organise. We have more opportunities now, albeit ones we approach from a position of historic weakness, than we have had at any point in my adult life.
To state the obvious, this remaining the case depends to a large extent on Corbyn staying Labour leader. And there are people who have other ideas about that. From before his election as leader the knives have been out for him within the Parliamentary Labour Party and the structures and staff of the party. If the threat of a coup against his leadership seems less immediate after last month's election results (which, outside Scotland, were not too bad for Labour), this should be understood as a stay of execution, rather than a reprieve. Corbyn knows this; his parliamentary allies and advisors know this.
It is against this background that Corbyn's support for a Remain vote in this month's EU referendum should be understood. Let's be honest about this: he does not support the EU. Nor does John McDonnell. Nor does their most prominent media ally, Owen Jones, who is currently vocally advocating a remain vote. Jones has acknowledged the volte face: his line is that Labour must make the left case for a reformed EU and that the pro-Exit case will be dominated by anti-migrant racism. This does not wash: since last year, when he advocated exit, neither the prospects of a left reform of the EU (namely zero) nor the nature of the anti-EU forces in Britain have changed. Indeed, to the extent the left critics of the EU, like the Jones of Columns Past, have silenced themselves, they have gifted the pro-exit case to the nationalist right.
My point in saying this is not to accuse Corbyn and his circle of hypocrisy. They are in a genuine bind. Their support, lukewarm as it is, for Labour Remain is a calculated concession to the Right, much like their retreat on Britain's NATO membership. The hope is that by deferring to the post-Blair consensus on these issues they can broaden their coalition of support and secure their position. I do not share that hope.
The Labour leadership's advocacy of a Remain vote has been less than wholehearted. This matters because Labour voters could hold the future of Britain's EU membership in their hands and, if recent research is to be believed, hearly half of them are unaware of the Party's official position. Pressure is being put on Corbyn to be more vocal in his support for the Remain cause.
Whichever way the poll now goes, it will be used against Corbyn. If Britain leaves the EU, he will be blamed, and the indignation of the overwhelmingly pro-EU PLP stoked. On the other hand if, as is most likely, the vote is to stay this will be in spite of Corbyn. The Right will point to the example of the charismatic new mayor of London who, unlike John McDonnell (whose attitude on this will no doubt be that of a 'sectarian dinosaur'), was prepared to share a platform with the Prime Minister in defence of the national interest. He looks, they will say, like a leader in waiting.
Corbyn is in a double bind, and there is nothing he can do at this late stage. He will discover that he will never be able to concede enough to satiate his opponents in the PLP. But nor is he in any position to take them on directly; he lacks sufficient parliamentary support. If there is to be a future for this leadership, the task of fighting his corner rests with party activists and our ability to build a coalition of support for the leadership outside of parliament whilst exerting pressure on MPs.
...not, you will note, Brexit. The sullying of our political discourse with this silly coinage manages to annoy me more than pretty much anything else around the sorry excuse for politics that is the current EU debate. Anyway.
The force for non-chauvinistic internationalism that is the red-white-and-blue clad Britain Stronger In Europe Campaign are putting about the claim that Britain leaving the EU would cause problems for the NHS. Here they are doing precisely that. They have two reasons for saying this. The first can be dismissed swiftly:
A series of experts have predicted our economy would fall into ‘recession’ if we left the EU, meaning cuts to public services like the NHS.
Now, far be it from me to disagree with un-named 'experts' about the possibility of a post-exit recession (after all, there is going to be a recession sooner or later, quite apart from Britain's relationship to the EU). But it simply does not follow that this would mean cuts to the NHS. That would be a political decision. This is basically what those of us who have opposed cuts made in the wake of the 2008-9 crisis have being saying about those. Their other claim is straightforwardly true:
And Vote Leave, the campaign for Britain to leave Europe, is run by people with a history of campaigning against the NHS.
They have campaigned for:
cuts to NHS spending and ending the NHS ring-fence
cuts to NHS staff pay
an increase in prescription charges
allowing NHS trusts to fail
increased NHS privatisation
Vote Leave is, there is no doubt about the matter, run by a shower of bastards. The only problem with this otherwise watertight strategy for getting the socially conscious to vote In is that exactly the same can be said for Britain Stronger In Europe. Although the list of members of their board is not displayed on BSE's website, it includes such luminaries as Peter Mandelson, Danny Alexander, and Damian Green. These are people who in various ways have contributed towards the privatisation and cutting of the NHS. The token non-bastard, Caroline Lucas, is not in a position to have much influence. In this respect she epitomises the position of the left more generally in the referendum debate.
As this might suggest, the referendum campaign is being conducted from the right by both sides. As far as I'm aware, nobody is actually running on a 'Our Position on the EU Makes It Easier to Clobber the Health Service' ticket. But both sides are certainly making the case that they are better placed to be tough on immigration and are advocating what is 'best for business'. With the Labour leadership half-heartedly falling behind a Labour In campaign headed up by Alan Johnson, again prioritising business as well as 'security', the prospects of any left voice being heard effectively during the next few months are precisely nil. Not, of course, that the perpetually over-optimistic British left will believe this in any numbers.
Now, I don't care terribly about all of this. Or rather, I don't care very much whether Britain stays in the EU. I care deeply that this debate is pitching politics to the right, and distracting attention from far more important issues. In actual fact I think that the impact of EU exit would be pretty minimal. The debate is basically a family row on the part of British capital, being conducted through the medium of politics. Those sections of capital whose markets are predominantly within the EU want to remain, others take a different view. And, as we saw with the Scottish referendum, the moment there is the tiniest threat that corporate profits might be under threat, out comes the hyperbole, out comes Project Fear. On the other hand, I don't think exit would pave the way for a British road to socialism, as the Stalinism re-enactment societies heading up the 'left' pro-exit case seem to think. Capitalism is a global system, and needs ultimately to be fought at a global level.
A footnote at this point. The most persuasive 'left' argument on the In side might seem to be based on the impact of the Social Chapter and similar instruments. So, Labour In For Britain, have this to say:
British workers benefit from EU agreements on workers’ rights, including the right to holiday pay, paid maternity and paternity leave, anti-discrimination laws, equal pay and protection for agency workers.
There is a seductive, but damaging, picture of the history of workers' rights at play here. These were not handed down from on high through the generosity of commissioners. They were fought for by workers themselves, organised into unions, in Europe and elsewhere. "No saviours from on high deliver".The struggles of unionised workers established norms for treatment in the workplace and in statute, which could not be transgressed without industrial strife. When standardised minimal conditions across the then EEC began to be discussed, these being needed for the smooth functioning of a single market, those norms had to be incorporated. They were, none the less, won from the bottom up, not the top down. In the presence of strong unions in Europe, the guarantees provided by the EU are irrelevant. In the absence of strong unions, those guarantees will be eroded in coming years.
Now, last year I blogged arguing for an abstention in this year's vote. Read it here. I agree with my reasoning in that post, but I now find myself disagreeing with my conclusion. I will, with little enthusiasm, and more that a little ennui, vote Leave. My reasons are two. First, far too much hope has been invested in the EU: from soft-leftists worshipping before the Social Chapter, to irritating liberals thinking they are a bulwark of cosmopolitan intelligence against their brutish inferiors (who all, you understand, hate foreigners). Illusions need to be laid bare, so that a better politics can thrive. Secondly, exit would precipitate a crisis in the Tory party, and that is no bad thing.
At the end of the day, however, all of this matters a lot less than people seem to think. So please don't spend hours agonising over how to cast your vote. If you want to do something useful, spend that time thinking about how you can support the junior doctors when they strike next month, and about how you're going to get to the Peoples' Assembly demonstration against austerity on 16th April.
However necessary it is to adopt a sober realism towards the immediate prospects in Greece, yesterday's resounding 'No' vote was an example to the rest of Europe. Uncowed by relentless pressure from creditors and the mainstream media, Greece's electorate sent a clear message that they reject austerity. Whatever happens next, they deserve our admiration and solidarity.
Since the result was declared last night, events have moved at sometimes breathtaking pace (see the Guardian liveblog here for updates.) Yanis Varoufakis resigned, giving as his reason that some Eurogroup participants would prefer his absence from talks. This was not before making his feelings known about the No vote - he wrote of the Troika having been confined to its lair. He has been replaced by Euclid Tsakalotos, not obviously more well disposed towards an austerity-based 'rescue' for the Greek economy than was Varoufakis. Meanwhile, Greek banks remain closed and capital controls in force. There appear to be splits amongst the Eurozone leadership, with Merkel opposed to compromise with the Syriza government, and others better disposed. The ECB, as all this goes on, has increased the haircut required of Greek banks (that is, the difference between the amount loaned to Greek banks and the price of the assets required as collateral for these loans, expressed as a percentage of the collateral price: for example, if I lend you £90 but require a £100 IOU as collateral, then I have imposed a 10% haircut) - a sign that Greece is considered an increasingly risky prospect. One thing is certain: things cannot continue without resolution of some sort for much longer. If nothing else, these are interesting times.
Good commentary, from various left-wing perspectives, includes Michael Roberts here, Alex Douglas here, and the inimitable Paul Mason here.
I'll stop there for the time being. Later on I'll say something about how what is playing out in Greece is a crisis of the Eurozone as an experiment in monetary union, complicated by the political ideology of Europeanism.
...so argued Jean-Paul Sartre. He may very well have been right. But I want to advocate something slightly different from not choosing. I want to make a case that in the biggest political debate that the UK will witness in the next five years, the radical left should actively refuse to choose. That is to say, we should go out of our way to broadcast the fact that we reject either of the options we will be presented with, and use this as the opportunity to engage people in debates about political possibilities beyond the bounds of official sanction.
Rewind. What the hell am I talking about? The EU referendum - the returning of a Conservative majority government in last week's orgy of electoral masochism means that we will see one by 2017. I've been thinking about this question since then: neither of the options seem very attractive, yet many on the left feel will undoubtedly feel obliged to pitch their red flags behind either the 'Yes' or 'No' camps. By inclination, no doubt nurtured by reading a lot of Tony Benn at an impressionable age, I feel the pull of the 'No' brigade more. Yet I'm troubled, not least by the prospect of a debate dominated by the jingoistic right. A very helpful session on the issue at today's They Don't Represent Us conference (organised by rs21) concretised my train of thought on this - the left should actively abstain in an EU referendum.
I'll explain what I mean by active abstention in a bit; but first, the cases against 'Yes' and 'No' votes respectively.
Should I stay?
People younger than myself, a distressingly growing proportion of the population, tend to associate support for EU membership with left-of-centre politics. Those older than myself recall clearly a time when opposition to the EEC, as then was, indicated a suspiciously socialist orientation. We'll return to this latter group presently; for the more youthful, the EU is associated with an outward-looking, metropolitan confidence, an internationalist retort to the Little Englandism of Ukippers. It is upwardly mobile and forward looking, an upmarket brunch in the face of Nigel Farage's beans-on-toast. It stands as the Guardian to the Daily Express. You get the idea.
All of this is so much ideology, and like any successful ideology, contains a good deal of truth (albeit partial and one-sided). The EU certainly is a dynamic, relentlessly modernising, entity - and as such appeals to those liberal-minded bourgeois who have little to lose and everything to gain from change - and in this it reflects the capital whose creature it is. Neo-liberal capitalist accumulation is nothing if not international, generously cosmopolitan in its preparedness to exploit anyone regardless of nationality. It is also a regime of accumulation that is characteristically imposed by international institutions. The World Trade Organisation, the G20, the IMF, and the World Bank are the better known amongst these. The EU is another: from its free-trade origins, it has gravitated towards more explicitly liberalising constraints on member economies, passing competition legislation that renders nationalisation difficult, and imposing tight budgetary constraints within the Eurozone. The organisation is utterly institutionally bound up with liberalisation in the cause of its constitutive capitals, the latest manifestation of this being the TTIP treaty proposed with the US. The EU is no economic friend of the left. It is a unity of states in the cause of big capital. This is not our internationalism; we look for an internationalism of workers.
Nor is it, whatever impression the bigoted denizens of UKIP-land might imagine, a soft touch on immigration. Whilst treaties guarantee free movement within the EU (although this can be, and has been, suspended), for migrants from outside the EU, that is - almost universally - from poorer parts of the world, very often ones affected by wars waged by EU member states (and adversely affected by non-preferential trade arrangements with the EU), the story is very different. Hence the term 'Fortress Europe', which doesn't begin to catch the horror of people drowning in the Mediterranean trying to reach a Promised Land that doesn't want them. The EU's response to this relentless human misery has primarily been to increase funding to Frontex, a border agency. Let's be clear, this is not a pro-migrant institution; it simply wants to draw the boundaries of exclusion in different places, and on a different basis, from UKIP and the Tory right.
Yes, but, the left advocate of a 'Yes' vote might urge, doesn't the EU offer benefits in terms of human rights, and in particular workers' rights? Wouldn't exit threaten these? In part, this line of response is based on the misapprehension that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a creature of the EU. It isn't; the UK is a signatory in virtue of its membership of the Council of Europe, a body to which states can belong without being EU members, as indeed several do. The EU Social Chapter certainly does afford workers certain minimal rights, as does the Working Time Directive. The UK, however, already permits an opt-out from the maximum 48h-hour working week of the latter legislation, and it would be naive to suppose that workers aren't put under considerable pressure in some industries to do just this. Meanwhile, increased international competition in a capitalism still struggling to restore profitability combined with the marked core-periphery development of the EU (and especially Eurozone) economy will create intense pressure from government and business to revoke, modify, or ignore social legislation. In the face of this workers will only be protected by our capacity to organise to fight these attacks. Yet, if we had the strength to do that, the EU would no longer appear as a beneficent safeguard against unscrupulous employers. "No saviours from on high deliver".
Regardless of all this, forget the suggestion that the 'Yes' campaign will be some kind of internationalist counterpart to the xenophobic right. Enthusiasm about the EU is perfectly compatible with member-state nationalism, and Cameron -- having negotiated some no doubt deeply reactionary concessions on migration from the Commission -- will go to the electorate claiming to have 'won a good deal for Britain'. He will line up alongside the Labour front bench and the CBI in a union-jack wrapped Better Together revival, promoting 'Britain's interest in Europe'. It is likely to be as much a poisoned chalice for Labour as its Caledonian forebear. The left should have none of it.
Or should I go?
Nor, of course, should the left line up alongside the other union-jack clad campaign we will have the dubious pleasure of witnessing two years hence. Farage and the Tory right will fight a deeply reactionary front in referendum battle, focused in immigration and a populist anti-bureaucracy directed against the modest provisions of the Social Chapter and similar legislation. It is likely to drag the centre of political gravity further to the right, and may well succeed in cementing UKIP's electoral constituency, winning them new seats in 2020. All the while the hard right will be lurking in the wings; racial attacks will increase, as they always do when the 'threat' of immigration is talked up. In no way can the left do anything other than condemn utterly this coming carnival of reaction; there can be no repeat of the 1975 referendum campaign, which saw left-wingers share platforms with the likes of Enoch Powell. Groups like Stand Up to UKIP will need our support in the run-up to the referendum.
But, hang on, you might say: surely nobody on the left is advocating arguing for a 'no' vote on the basis of the xenophobic and socially reactionary positions of UKIP and the Tory right? We remember the days when the most prominent opponents of EEC membership were figures on the Labour left. Tony Benn, Peter Shore, and their ilk argued that the EEC would make it impossible for a radical Labour government to nationalise industries, and impose controls on capital and trade, in accordance with the kind of programme laid out in the Alternative Economic Strategy. As indeed it would*. Be in no doubt, the kind of reformism espoused in Labour manifestos within easy living memory is incompatible with EU membership. Syriza and Podemos may yet discover this if they ride out the immediate impact of the Eurozone crisis with their principles intact.
Allow me at this point to draw my readers' attention to reality, a region the left sometimes has difficulty inhabiting. The UK is not Greece, nor is it Spain, nor do we live in the early 1980s. We cannot argue that EU membership is all that stands between a radical Labour programme and its social democratic fruition. The most left-wing scenario for Labour in the next few years has Andy Burnham as leader - pause and think about that, Andy Burnham. A vote to exit the EU would not be followed by a latter-day Michael Foot imposing controls on capital and inflating the welfare state, but rather by a right-wing Tory closing borders to people whilst welcoming their openness to money, asa revival of the City of London casino combines with further attacks on social provision. This would bring in its wake a further shift to the right in political discourse and popular ideas, from which only UKIP and the further right would gain. In the current British political context a 'No' vote will only fuel the flames of reaction.
For this reason it is also foolish to propose a left 'No' campaign, separate from the official one. This suggestion fails to recognise with due humility the weakness of the left and the hegemonic state of neo-liberalism, combined with a worrying rightward shift on immigration. We could only run a distinct campaign that didn't simply feed the reactionary whirlwind on the basis of significant pre-existing strength. We do not have that; and we can only do politics in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. In any case, the nature of those elements most likely to push for such a campaign - those behind NO2EU and various Stalinists - does not fill me with confidence that it would be free from chauvinism.
If I go, there will be trouble, and if I stay, it will be double
So I don't think the left should support either the 'Yes' or 'No' campaign. This does not mean I think we should say or do nothing for the length of the referendum debate, tempting though it will undoubtedly be to leave the country as the day draws near. In fact, there's an important message to get out - the inadequacy of these two options: transnational neo-liberalism matched with state-level nationalism, versus Little Englandist reaction married to a more Atlanticist capitalism - points the way towards what I think that message should be, these terms of debate are utterly bankrupt, and this is so because they are dictated by capital. We could argue creatively for active abstention - spoiling ballots, or whatever, the details aren't important - but use the conversations we have and the material we distribute in doing so to argue for a different kind of politics. Against both campaigns, we should argue unabashedly in favour of immigration. Against both campaigns, we should argue in defence of the welfare state, and in favour of orientating the economy to people rather than profit.
Neither is revolutionary. But both are considerably better than anything we'll hear from mainstream politicians, and I think this is probably the best way the left can make a positive contribution to what will be an otherwise absolutely toxic political atmosphere.
-- [ETA] I should add, the above is directed at the English debate, partly because this will dominate the UK polity, and partly because, since I live in England, it's the context in which I have to reach a decision. But let me predict now that the SNP, Plaid, and Sinn Fein - all of whom favour EU membership with varying degrees of calls for reform (about which I'm sceptical, but there we are) find a way to stand back from the fray and thus avoid a Better Together style complicity ('we can't decide for the UK as whole'/ 'we will run a separate Scottish/ Welsh/ Irish' campaign or whatever), I assume that the SDLP will fall behind the Labour leadership.
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*I don't think the AES-style strategy was perfect in its day, prone as it undoubtedly was to degenerating into fortress-economy nationalism. What a future radical left programme (if that doesn't already sound too utopian) would need to build in would be international alliances (with the likes of Syriza and Podemos, for instance).
