Tuesday, March 15, 2016

The nation state is not dead: either here or in the USA

IF UK VOTERS vote to leave the EU, the whole pack of cards may tumble: so say many Brexit supporters, and more than a few of the remains; but both camps will have very different opinions on such an outcome. The Brexit's who see themselves as the EUs nemesis would be dancing in the street. The remainers would be distraught to the point where they would not accept the result, however huge or marginal.
                
                I am with the Brexitiers and will vote to leave, and I will have little compunction in so doing. At the moment the debate is being ostracised by the fear factor; what has become known as 'Project Fear' by the Brexitiers. But economic arguments are coming to the fore, and will work in tandem on the remainer side with Project Fear. If the economic arguments for remaining were overwhelming which they certainly are not; and if the Brussels' commission were elected which it certainly is not; and if the EU parliament was a legislative body which it certainly is not; I would sill vote to leave this very unsavoury bureaucratic concoction that has only one destiny, a kind of Napoleonisation of the continent, and as such it can only function with an emperor like figure at its head.
                
                If you think me insane and that I am composing this piece from within a secure unit in a mental institution; at least read my argument for such a suggestion[1]. At the moment in this minimalist democracy we call the EU, who's many bureaucrats use such terms as the post democratic age to describe this continents way forward; democracy will no longer be set at the premium any democratic nation state believes in. Democracy does not need to be handcuffed but liberated from such a restriction.
                
                A bureaucracy is encumbered by a very slow process, it pours out unhurriedly dictum after dictum; it reminds me of the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit where time is languid and policy is of course long in its eventual application. This describes perfectly the EU, a reversal to a totalitarian bureaucratic age; an age blighted by tortoise-like indecision until the decision that eventually manifests itself is impractical to all but the bureaucracy that gave it its place in the world.

THE EU IS OVERWHELMED by lengthy officious procedures turning out vast amounts of; in many cases, minor and inconsequential rules and restrictions that undermine Europe's competitiveness. The EU is submerged in red tape; be it to do with all forms of manufacturing or the individual. I predict that if we vote to remain a member of the EU at some point in its future it will look to a single figure to oversee the continent and to have the final say overriding all other pseudo-democratic institutions. As was the case in the Roman republic: when Rome was under direct threat from an enemy a dictator was appointed (usually a successful general) until the threat subsided at which point he handed back his sovereignty to the republic.
               
               It will sooner or later be proven impractical for 27 nations with 27 different cultures to work in harmony except (as during the Roman Empire) through duress. Each nation will have at some point have cause to complain to the commission over some proposal or other that the commission has dreamt up which is opposed by one or several member states; thus will begin the circumlocution process causing further months and even years of reflection by the bureaucrats before the aggrieved member(s) nation can be given a favourable or an unfavourable decision.  By then the whole purpose of the legislation will be forgotten, even by the Commission. The bureaucratic adagio-like progress will sooner or later threaten the whole system of the EU. It will become a laughing stock; it will become a cause for much satire across the continent until; it will become unworkable and institutions ever more sclerotic.
                
                Corruption once barely tolerated will become the norm and be treated with a shrug of the shoulder, has as happened in Greece over decades; as well as, so it seems within the European 'parliament', with the MEPs allowance scandals. If the ideal of a European Federal Union is to continue; then the only way it will continue to function will be through a powerful Napoleonic-like strongman who will need unlimited power to keep these 27 diverse cultures and traditions in check. Call him a dictator; but if this is what is required to keep this idealistic dream of a United States of Europe alive, I am sure the political classes will readily agree – but of course, a dictator can also be incompetent, and more ruthless, than the great unelected European Commission.
                
                Such a dictator (let us call him an emperor – an EU emperor is more fitting historically for the continent) will be accepted because we will be in the post-democratic age; and the people of Europe (by the time this EU project is well into its adulthood) will have little knowledge of a true functioning democracy where an elected parliament make the laws by which the people are governed. Such a concept once the norm throughout Western civilisation will have been displaced in the European Union. The price of a European Union will be forgoing (as we already are beginning to) democracy, sovereignty, and the nation-state.

BUT THIS GRAND PROJECT is now being put under threat. The great European ideal dreamed up after the Second World as a purely free trade area; has evolved into the concept of a European super state. Who would have believed that this concept could or would lead to a federal union? There were a few at the time in the 1970s who were against such a project and they came mainly from the Left; some even speculated as I have done that this project would not stop at free trade but would lead to some kind of superstate . They were however disparaged by those who wished us to become part of Europe, as swivel-eyed loonies. Ted Heath a Europhile, extemporary insisted that such an outcome was ridiculous. But it was the socialist Delors who persuaded the Left that they could turn Europe into a social democratic paradise (the same Delors who has since questioned the sanity of a one size fit all single currency for every single EU member regardless of economic differentials). The Labour Party became enamoured with Delores and now are supporting the remain campaign.
                
                The more I think about this scheme for federal union, the more I perceive it to be madness. Like all political ideas that sound reasonable and attractive in theory;[2] they eventually lead to one form or other of human misery: as far as the EU is concerned we see the embryonic beginnings of that human misery in Greece today. This whole edifice must be broken up. It must lose its political idealism and become less swivel-eyed in its defence of the grand project. The EU is not the future, but a replicant of previous attempts to bring about yet another utopian paradise that misunderstands human nature.


                 





[1] Well in truth the argument for a dictator to oversee what will eventually become a federal union was suggested by my brother, a suggestion which at first I naturally pooh-poohed. After all, for such a provision to come about there would have to have been a kind of petrifaction of democracy by bureaucrats – surely that cannot not happen?


[2] Socialism, communism, and fascism for instance. 

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