Europe’s mad, bad and sad made big gains in the Euro elections. Glyn Ford proposes an alliance to thwart them
There is a serious danger that the British labour and trade union movement will give up on the European Union exactly when it is most needed. The tendency within the left that blames the EU for all the woes of society, while exempting the nation state, is at best harking back to the “little Englander” attitudes which died with the British Empire. At worst, it is burying its head in the sand in the face of process-driven innovation that has burst the limits of small nation states to force political integration at a continental level.
In this regard, the only one of the ongoing projects with a democratic centre, however soft, is the EU. It is entirely absent from the North American Free Trade Agreement forced on Mexico, Canada and United States workers, as it is in last year’s Association of South East Asian Nations charter that outlines the path to ASEAN economic unity, and
even the proposals for north-east Asian integration from the new progressive Japanese government.
Yet this unique advantage is undermined by the siren voices of Bob Crow’s No2EU and other anti-Europeans sects. Sadly, they are beginning to find resonance with mainstream trade unionists, as they react to the consequences of European Court judgements that have undermined the Posted Workers Directive designed to protect workers working within the EU, but outside their country of employment. Thanks to the Viking, Laval, Ruffert and Luxembourg judgements, countries are importing inferior conditions.
However, the fight is on – not for British jobs for British workers, but decent jobs for workers in Britain and the rest of Europe. With the countdown to the British general election, battle must be joined in Brussels for a revision of the Posted Workers Directive and the strengthening of other social legislation. The problem is that there is a clear and present danger of confusing lost battles with final defeats.
Without question, the 2009 European election results were a disaster for the British Labour Party. We slumped to a mere 13 seats with less than 16 per cent of the vote. The Tories virtually stood still – up one to 26 seats with less than 28 per cent of the vote. The winners were the mad, bad and sad, with the UK Independence Party, the British National Party and even the quirky English Democrats doing well.
On the continent, it wasn’t much better. In France, the Socialists went from 29 seats to 14. The German Social Democrats had their worst result since the Second World War. Almost the only left progress was in Greece, where Pasok’s increased vote was a harbinger of its victory in last month’s general election.
The centre-right flat-lined. The winners were the anti-Europeans on the left and right. In Germany, Die Linke (The Left), the amalgam of Oskar Lafontaine’s Work and Social Justice Party and the former East German Communists, purged its pro-Europeans. Elsewhere, a clutch of unsavoury xenophobic parties picked up seats.
All this means there are worrying trends that Labour must address. If this is done properly, despite the current shift in the balance of forces, things may yet work to our advantage.
Certainly, the rhetorical battles over human rights in the world and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now firmly in control of the right in the European Parliament. The left is in a minority. However, both left and right are divided by political chasms on Europe.
There may be less of them than before, but the pro-Europeans on both the centre-right and the centre-left can still muster a majority to sideline the hardliners on legislation.
The European People’s Party has 265 MEPs and the Socialist and Democrats group has 184. Although the composition of both groups is very different from the previous European Parliament, an alliance between the two should be the only game in town.
For the socialists, the liberalising tendency is on the wane. The controlling forces in the S&D group are interventionists. They consist of the French, naturally, and the Germans after the experience of being in coalition with Angela Merkel. They are reinforced by the newly self-confident Greeks.
Meanwhile, the internal opposition is in disarray. The European Parliamentary Labour Party is two-thirds of its previous size – not that it ever was reliably “new” Labour on trade union issues in Brussels and Strasbourg. The last vote on the Working Time Directive in December 2008 saw 12 Labour MEPs defy the party leadership in Westminster, four acquiesce and one, then leader Gary Titley, abstain, with two absent.
Gordon Brown and his Government are now regarded as “dead men talking” by Europe’s socialists, as Labour faces what many commentators regard as certain defeat at the next election. The countervailing ideological pressure that came from a decade of unparalleled success and three election victories has been dissipated. The political centre of gravity has shifted towards regulation, aided and abetted by the consequences of greedy bankers and cowardly oversight.
The EPP’s rejuvenation has come from David Cameron’s apostasy. He has betrayed the Conservatives’ erstwhile allies in Europe by abandoning his former friends. They are bitter, contemptuous and some are out for revenge.
Last month, in Strasbourg, the EPP felt it necessary to muster its votes to defend Silvio Berlusconi’s government from a resolution criticising his attacks on Italy’s press freedom. After the British general election, if Cameron wins, the EPP will not expend the same efforts to this country.
The Tories are sidelined as they sit with a ragbag of homophobes, Holocaust deniers and climate change sceptics. Freed from the dead weight of conservatism, the EPP is free to drift to the centre and interventionism, as any need to compromise with neo-liberal nationalists disappears.
Let us not pretend that this is an opportunity to advance a bold socialist programme. Of course, it is not. But it is a chance to relearn the lessons of the late 1980s and early ’90s that Europe can be used to defend the rights of ordinary workers and their families, and even to push forward a social agenda.
There is a new fighting front to open up. With a new European Parliament comprised of those who want to oppose everything and those who want to demonstrate its power to set Europe’s agenda, we can only hope that European Commission president José Manuel Barroso does not back the wrong person as social affairs commissioner. With the bloody-minded intransigence of the President of the Czech Republic and his single-handed efforts to block ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, it would be ironic if Barroso supported the Czech nominee.
Glyn Ford is a former Labour MEP
