Batting for the Bankers

So with great fanfare David Cameron claims he has stood up for Britain's national interests by opposing every single one of the other European Union member states as they attempt to claw their way out of the Euro-crisis. With everyone now acknowledging the arrival of a two-speed Europe - 26 states going at one speed and Britain at the other - the chances of a General Election in the New Year have to have increased. Hoping to ride a wave of mindless xenophobia, "Bulldog" Dave will be watching the polls closely for his hoped-for bigot-bounce over the next few months so that he can call a snap election, pose as John Bull reborn and free himself of the pro-EU Lib Dems, who face oblivion at any polls. Given the long-term economic prognosis, it could be his only-ever chance of forming a majority regime.

And yet, how tragically confused the public mood will be - because the supposed national interests he claims to have stood up for are nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people. What he has vetoed is not any of the daft (though in total relatively few) regulations that emanate from Brussels on standardised food weights or what constitutes Wensleydale cheese, or not. Nor have his efforts done anything the tackle the corruption to be found in the workings of much of the Union's institutions. He has done nothing to stop the EU's ludicrous and damaging pursuit of biofuels, nor anything to challenge the wasteful transportation of goods over huge distances of the Continent. And there is nothing to stop the  dislocation of local communities caused by the single European market (unsurprisingly, that last is the bit that the rich backers of the  Eurosceptics are very, very keen to keep as it is).

Indeed, for ordinary British people, his actions may make things much worse - as Europe faces financial disaster, any economic meltdown across the Channel will inevitably shaft Britain as much as anywhere else, creating unemployment, inflation and misery for millions. By vetoing the proposed international financial regulations, Cameron has at least delayed and probably damaged longer term the struggle to restore economic stability to our key trading partners. Why risk that?

Simple - because for Dave it is worth it.

What Cameron has done is make sure that the City of London remains free of any effective scrutiny. Yep, Bulldog Dave has been out fighting on behalf of the bankers. He has used Britain's veto on this historic occasion to strike a blow against proposed internationally binding regulation of the international finance trade that flows in and out of London banks and City brokers' accounts, fleecing hardworking people of billions in thieved commission and forcing public service cuts through their myriad means of tax avoidance and tax dodging.

He has also put paid to the so-called Robin Hood tax - a tiny levy on bankers transactions that could raise tens of billions of pounds a year to cut deficits and fund public services. Instead, Dave sees it in Britain's interests to let the leeches keep the cash. The rest of Europe may go ahead, but given the importance of the City of London in international finance - a trade with little more than peripheral, trickle-down benefits for Britain - our decision to opt-out will blunt the impact of any transactions tax. This in turn will seriously undermine wider attempts to get the international community to tackle the excesses of the banking and finance cartel that has done so much to bring our world to its knees.

And of course by isolating Britain from absolutely everyone else, he leaves a European Union which will inevitably be dominated by Germany and France - British influence will diminish rapidly in spite (and even because of) all the jingoistic flag waving.

So, I hope Dave is proud of himself. The challenge will be for progressives to expose his claims of fighting for our national interests as a lie and cover for protecting his party financiers and former school chums; yet at the same time to keep advocating for a better, social Europe. The new, more integrated arrangements that every other country seems to be signing up to may not be the right answer either, but at least at its core is an attempt to create some international public control over the currently pretty much unregulated international finance markets which play games with ordinary people's jobs, communities and life chances.

Bulldog Dave? Not likely. Just Bull**** Dave, batting for the bankers.



1946 - and the Eurosceptics mascot calls for a Union of Europe: Winston Churchill's Zurich Speech.

A Europe for People, Not Profit

On Monday, the British Parliament will debate and vote on a motion sponsored by eurosceptic Conservative MPs to hold a referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union. In the midst of the Eurozone crisis, while David Cameron has insisted on a three line whip to keep his fractious right-wingers in line and the Lib Dems will vote against, even although their leader proposed an in-or-out referendum in 2008. But with as many as 85 Conservatives predicted to be ready to break that line, the Coalition will almost certainly need - and get - Labour Party support to vote the proposal down.

And so it is very unlikely that the British people will get a referendum - even although most of them want one. So much for democracy and so much for the three parties that dominate our political world continue to disconnect further and further from the electorate they govern.

The European project was born in the aftermath of the two world wars that dominated the Continent during the first part of the 20th century. The worst conflicts in human history originated in her heartlands. From that perspective, for now at any rate, the EU has played a positive role - with the dreadful exception of the former Yugoslavia, the hot air of Presidents, Prime Ministers and bureaucrats has replaced the guns of Krupps and the Birmingham Small Arms Company.

Yet the absence of war cannot in itself justify the failures of the behemoth that the European Union has become - while its bureaucracy is not quite the bloated gravy train so beloved of the British tabloid writers, the Eurozone project has brought misery to millions of ordinary people as the European Central Bank, like banks everywhere, continues to put the interests of international finance ahead of the needs of European citizens. In other respects too, EU policy focus is very much on encouraging and protecting big business and its decision-making processes are remote and unaccountable to ordinary citizens.

Of course, listening to the Tory and UKIP eurosceptics railing about Europe taking over Britian, including  blatantly lying about straight bananas (why does no one ever wonder where these are?), their reasons for wanting a referendum soon become clear. They accept that Europe is a vital trade partner for Britain, plus perhaps they worry about having to accommodate the half a million or so angry British pensioners who would lose their right of abode in Spain, plus the 200,000 Britons in France who would be heading back to our shores.

Euromyths - according to legend, all our bananas should look like this.

So what do they want instead? A renegotiated relationship - some of them argue for a sort of club class membership, while others want to be completely outside but with special privileges of access.

What these people object to are the regulations that ensure some degree of common social protection and health and safety rules around Europe, so that one country can't undercut another by paying its workers miniscule wages and forcing them to work in dangerous conditions. The EU has for two decades been the main proponent of new safety legislation in the workplace - if it wasn't for the EU, British workers would have no entitlement to a 20 minute unpaid break after six hours of working; pregnant women would not be entitled to protective arrangements for using computer screens; and employers would not have to consult their workers before moving their jobs out of the UK. Small protections and far from ideal, but better than nothing. This is what the right-wingers in the Tories and UKIP are really fretting about - the impact on capitalists profit margins of the marginal improvements in workers conditions through European legislation.

But these motives aside, it is time to have a proper debate on the EU and vote on whether Britain remains in it. It is welcome that the Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas MP, has put forward an amendment to the referendum proposal calling for a national vote on whether the EU should become more democratically accountable and economic powers be devolved back to nation states. By default, this should mean the ending of the ludicrous straight-jacket that is the Euro - if Greece still had the drachma, the current financial crisis would have far less impact.

We need multinational institutions like the EU to be able to tackle the global crisis of climate change - no one country can fight that alone. And in a globalised world where so many international corporations operate above and beyond the writ of any national governments, it is only international public and democratically accountable bodies that will ever have any hope of taming the damage they are doing. But in parallel, the Union needs to focus on the needs of its member societies rather than the desires of  international capital.

The European Economic Community emerged from the gound breaking coal and steel community forged between the former enemies France and Germany just months after Hitler's demise. If its founding purpose of ensuring that European will never again fight European is to be secured, the Union must be one for the people of our Continent and the wider world. If it is run instead for the rich, for the owners of the multinationals, then there will be no social peace and in the absence of a democratic, social Europe, as competition over increasingly scarce resources becomes ever fiercer, the gun factories may soon be taking new orders once more.

Europe past, or Europe future?