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The clash of cultures that exists at the heart of the EU is between the French way of doing things and the British way. One is the culture of Centralisation, the other, the culture of Diversification. It’s not that one way is better than the other, they’re not. They are just different, but it is important to understand how they are different in order to understand how we go forward.
The way to explain the difference between the French and British way of doing things, is to look at a typically mundane piece of public policy and observe the approach of the two countries. The example I will use is Domestic Recycling.
In France, the whole country puts out their recycling using the same system. The recycling bags are a different colour for glass, paper and plastic. This ensures that wherever you are, you know how to do your recycling. Centralisation makes life simple.
The British choose not to impose a central system upon the people, for fear that central planning will quash the inventiveness of policy makers and service providers. This means that each of the 600 Local Authorities across the country have adopted their own system for recycling. If you go to stay in a different part of the country, or even, another London Borough, you will find a different system that you are unfamiliar with and you will become confused. This is bad for recycling, since the ease of recycling is proportionate to the amounts of rubbish that get recycled.
However, because of the lack of central control, the diversity model allows the system to change and adapt. In Britain, a new processing-plant invention came along. All the rubbish is chucked on a conveyorbelt, and lasers identify which item is plastic, glass, and paper. Then jets of air fire the plastic into one hopper, the glass into another and the paper into its own hopper. So councils began to request that households put out just one bag containing all recycling, rather than separating it. This is a better way, since the ease of recycling is proportionate to the amounts of rubbish that get recycled. So the Diversity model adapts.
This is not a devolution argument. I’m not talking about local or national government. It’s simply a question of when it is appropriate for policy makers to micromanage or not. A good example of Centralised and Diversified policy existing side by side is in British Education policy. The National Curriculum is imposed by National government, yet schools are given incentives for their management to opt out of government control through the Grant Maintained policy. So the curriculum policy is Centralised but the management policy is Diversified. So the British recognise when it is useful to Centralise.
The different philosophies affect wider policy. The French wish to centralise makes a smaller Europe more desirable, since centralisation becomes increasingly burdensome the larger the community. The British desire to diversify tends to encourage an expanded community, since diversity, by its nature, has no boundaries.
The current predicament of wavering between the Centralised and Diversified systems does tend to cause confusion and fudge. We end up with a constitution that’s really just a tidying up exercise. A free market, with massive subsidies. A diplomatic unity, that can be divided by the will of a single southern African dictator. We need to decide when it is appropriate for Centralisation and when is it appropriate for Diversification, before we can counter the bigger threats facing the European Union.
Dan McCurry practices as a Solicitor in East London
The voters of Broughton Astley in Leicestershire, Crigglestone in Yorkshire, and East Stoke in Dorset are, apparently, leading where the rest of the country now wishes to follow.
Each of the three villages have exploited a little-known provision in the 1972 Local Government Act in order to stage their own referenda on the EU Reform Treaty. Support for a nationwide referendum is now running at 73 per cent, according to a recent poll for the BBC's Daily Politics.
But how much do voters really care about Europe? David Cameron is no doubt hoping that his vocal support for a referendum puts him in a win-win situation: just over two-thirds of voters told the Populus/Daily Politics poll that the issue of Europe would be important to them when it came to casting their votes at the next general election. At the same time, the issue allows Cameron to curry favour with those elements of the Eurosceptic media which have hitherto been least impressed by his leadership of the Tory party.
Cameron should, however, beware - and not simply because, as Steve Richards argues in today's Independent, he risks being saddled with a commitment at the next general election to hold a referendum even after parliament has ratified the treaty. Rather, as Anthony Wells of UK Polling Report suggests, Europe may not have the potency which the Populus poll suggests. Wells believes that if voters are asked whether an issue is important or they care about it, they almost invariably say they do. He believes that a more reliable measure of the importance that voters attach to an issue comes about when they are actually pick it out as more important than other issues. Mori's monthly tracker poll, which asks voters, unprompted, to come up with what they believe the most important issue facing the country is, thus provides probably the most reliable source about what's really bothering the public.
By this measure, Europe's salience is somewhat more limited. Mori's September poll, for instance, found that only 4 per cent of voters cited Europe as one of the most important issues facing the country, as against 43 per cent for immigration, 41 per cent for crime, 36 per cent for health and 22 per cent defence and international terrorism.
That's not to say that political leaders cannot drive issues up the agenda and onto voters' personal list of concerns. Throughout 2000 and 2001, when William Hague's Save the Pound roadshow was hitting the streets, around one in four voters said that Europe was one of the most important issues facing the country. Not, however, an entirely happy experience for the Conservative party or one that David Cameron might want to replicate.
According to Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, the EU is just not strong enough and needs strengthening. In a piece for the Tory grassroots website ConservativeHome Mr Kawczynski argues that the EU:
"needs to become a bicameral institution, with an Assembly with Members appointed in proportion to population size, plus a Senate, with each state granted an equal number of Senators."
In other words the EU constitution should mirror the US constitution. The logical implication of this argument is that we should seek to create a United States of Europe. I wonder what some of Mr Kawczynski's colleagues will think about this?
As ever, the issue of Europe raises his ugly head in the Conservative Party. Tory donors are threatening to vote and support the UK Independence Party (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6262325.stm) with Stuart Wheeler saying his vote was "in doubt" because the Tories had "not been nearly strong enough on Europe". He was joined by former party treasurer Lord Kalms who told the Daily Telegraph "the option remains open for me... to vote UKIP."
To shore up support, Cameron has made reference to returning to “the ideas that encouraged me as a young man to join the Conservative Party and work for Margaret Thatcher" rather than follow Blair on the issue.
All of this follows allegations that the UKIP Leader has been promised a safe Tory seat (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6209386.stm) and the defection of two former Tory Peers who have given UKIP their first representation in Westminster (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6243807.stm). While joining, they said UKIP was the "only party telling the truth" about Europe.
All this makes the Tory’s policy on Europe a mess – the right within his party are not going to leave the issue, and Hague has failed in his attempt to form a new political group in the European Party. This leaves them in a group of Pro-European Centre Right parties, which must serve to antagonise the right and the UKIP-friendly party members.
The opportunity this offers Labour – if the Tories run yet another election having to be hard line on Europe to keep Euro-sceptics on side – may look attractive if it squeezes the Tories' support, meaning they don’t win crucial seats. But for progressives, the launch pad in Westminster and growing credibility for UKIP might be cause to re-group and redouble our efforts. Pro-European policy was important in the creation of New Labour but not something the British public have kept with us on. Labour needs to once again be seen as pro-Europe, but also pro-reformed Europe, in a way that seems meaningful.
People in the South East will be appalled to here that one of their MEPs has joined a grouping in the European Parliament headed by the French far-right politician Bruno Gollnisch - currently awaiting a verdict on charges of Holocaust denial - a member of the French “National Front” Party (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6251561.stm).
This former UKIP MEP, expelled from the Party, has caused controvocy amongst former colleagues with a UKIP spokeswoman saying UKIP were, "shocked and horrified" that Mr Mote would be sitting "with people like [French National Front leader] Le Pen's supporters."
This news should mean outrage across the British Political Spectrum – the British people have never voted for such far right politicians with such an overt political agenda who have friends such as Alessandra Mussolini.
Motivations for the new grouping, known as "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty", is their ability to now access more funds and take a more active role in the Parliament’s proceedings. The new group includes the Austrian Freedom Party and the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang from Belgium.
It has seven French MEPs (National Front), five Romanians (Greater Romania party), three Flemish MEPs (Vlaams Belang) and two Italians, including Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the former dictator Benito Mussolini.
On policy toward Europe the Labour party faithful have no better example of an issue that offered such hope yet provided so little. The lack of an open debate on the Euro, EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, The EU Constitution, and now the retreat on the right to free movement of labour to name just a few. Yet for some within the Labour party, progress on the UK relationship with Europe could take an all the more depressing turn next year with the predicted ascension of Gordon Brown to number 10.
In a one-day conference at Chatham House, a foreign affairs think tank in London, foreign policy analysts, think tankers, politicians and journalists met to debate what a future Brown Prime Premiership might look like for Europe. Gordon Brown has never been seen as a Europhile in the same way as Tony Blair has. Yet a future Brown policy toward Europe seems to be more nuanced than many believe. Beginning the conference Philip Stephens, Deputy Editor at the FT, commented that Brown’s foreign policy thoughts are couched in an exceptionalist view of the UK. In other words Brown sees the UK as neither European nor Atlantatist but as neo-imperialist in its ability to act as a powerful, independent driver of change providing the world with direction. In relation to Europe this translates as Brown wanting to keep his distance from the EU in a perceived effort to avoid being co-opted by it. On the theme of control Stephens also spoke of his belief that Brown is highly deliberative and sees the EU as an organisation which threatens to take control of policy decisions out of his hands.
In contrast the Observer’s William Keegan, questioned the view that the Chancellor was broadly anti-European. In his view there is actually a growing conversion between Gordon Brown and the EU with Brown recognising the role the EU can play in forming progressive policy on issues such as migration and climate change. This is a point Philip Stephens broadly agreed with, arguing that whilst steering clear of wide-ranging political agreements a future Prime Minister Brown would treat negotiations with the EU on a case by case basis using Europe where it is in Britain’s interest. Something that both Stephens and Keegan also agreed on was the idea that Brown and his team see Europe as returning to be a key dividing line between Labour and the Tories at the probable 2009 election. Europe, Brown believes, is still the elephant in the corner for Cameron’s Tories. His inability to mollify the Euroscpertics in his party and the dithering over the positioning of Conservative MEP’s in the European Parliament all serve to underline the Brown team’s thinking.
So the key message to come out from the conference was that a Prime Minister Brown may look a lot different to a Chancellor Brown when it comes to the UK’s approach to Europe. This message was summed up by the final speaker Sunder Katwala, Chair of the Fabian Society. He noted the core fact that as Prime Minister, Brown would be freed of having to conceptualise policy negotiations with Europe through an economics prism. In a further call for a reassessment of Brown’s anti-Europea stance Katwala reminded the audience that two key Brownites namely Douglas Alexander and David Milliband are still happy to call themselves European Social Democrats and that at Labour’s recent conference Brown’s key economic advisor Ed Balls said at a Fabian Fringe Event that Europe would be one of the key future issues and that it would be framed as a ‘big-issue’ for Labour.
So while Gordon Brown may not view Europe as a grand political project as Tony Blair does, he is not necessarily as afraid of Europe as some political observers believe. As Sunder Katwala pointed out, ‘today you can’t govern’ if you are Eurosceptic. To govern affectively within the EU you must be willing to work affectively with it, something Brown and his allies surely know well. Of course nobody will really know how Brown will treat Europe until he finally settles into Number 10 and if he should be pipped to the Prime Ministerial post then the UK’s future within Europe will once again be up for debate.
Recent announcements of all time profits for Tesco needs to linked to the Immigration debate, especially in regards to Polish Immigration and EU expansion. Tesco has been a huge retail player in Poland since 1995 having over 100 stores with plans to open a further 39 stores this financial year. This means that the company will repatriate millions of profits from Poland that constantly boosts the British Economy contributing to this government’s record levels of investment in schools, hospitals and public services. All services that the right wing press attack the “Poles” for milking.
If capital and multinational companies can move with such ease, we have to be making the case for people having the same privileges . Social mobility on a European scale must continue to be a challenge for the EU and its governors, making clear that protectionist policies imposed by some of our neighbours are regressive and mean that the majority of European people do not benefit on any where near the same scale as business .
This week's news that Nigel Farage had been elected as the new leader of the UK Independence Party, received, to say the least, less media coverage than the leadership machinations of a certain other party the week before. And rightly so.
But it seems premature to consign UKIP to the dustbin of fringe parties with one notable electoral performance (in their case the 16 per cent and third place garnered in the 2004 Euro elections), only to slide back into obscurity thereafter. What with the rejection of the European constitution, any chance of Britain joining the Euro very much receded, and expansion seemingly weakening chances of a federal 'super-state', Europe is seen as very much a dormant issue in British politics.
But there is reason to think that this might not remain so, as well as cause to think that UKIP might anyway be able to move beyond 'single-issue' status.
Firstly, the issue of immigration is once again moving up the list of voters' priorities. Not only that, but it is now explicitly linked to expansion of the EU, what with the government's admission that economic migration from accession countries - notably Poland - has been much higher than it had predicted. In 2004, EU withdrawal and strict immigration controls were easily UKIP's best-known policies.
Secondly, the two main parties' attempt to neutralise the issue of Europe by simply not talking about it. The BNP's recent success showed that seemingly 'fringe' parties of the right can reap electoral dividend, by portraying themselves as an anti-establishment voice willing to address issues neglected by the political mainstream. As Denis Macshane demonstrates in the latest issue of Progress, Labour seems reluctant to exploit clear Tory divisions on Europe for fear of reviving what it sees as a particularly tricky issue. But it is likely to be revived at some stage anyway, whether we like it or not.
Thirdly, with the election of new leaders in several major EU states, fear of deeper European integration may return. See, for example, Nicolas Sarkozy's recent proposal of a new 'mini-treaty', drawn from the embers of the European consitution.
Lastly, there are signs that UKIP may be attempting to broaden its appeal by exploiting the gap supposedly left by Cameron's Tories on school selection, immigration and tax. But that might not be all that good for Labour. UKIP's vote in 2004 consisted of a significant number of ex-Labour votes, and it was UKIP who recently pushed Labour into fourth place in the Bromley and Chiselhurst by-election.
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