Labour’s leadership election presents an opportunity for a full debate about the party’s orientation. A few years ago, to have suggested that Europe be part of the discussion would have meant a reopening of old wounds. But the party has moved on.
Now Labour must come to terms with the fact that its ideological aims can no longer be fully achieved by victory in national elections. These must be pursued nationally, regionally, locally and in Brussels and Strasbourg. It is no longer meaningful to talk about industrial policy, redistributive and fiscal policies, ethical foreign, defence and development objectives, and the greening of the economy in a purely national context.
In the next five years, events will dictate that European institutions have to come to terms with economic governance, common fiscal policies and new mechanisms and institutions to shore up Europe’s economy and its currency. Although outside the euro for the foreseeable future, Britain will have to deal with the profound effects European developments have on our economic organisation. In other words, Labour needs a new European policy.
We could start by rebuilding relations with other progressive forces in Europe. Co-operation suffered from a degree of arrogance at the heart of New Labour. Too often, our natural allies were subjected to strictures about the superiority of Anglo-Saxon buccaneer capitalism. Markets were to be worshipped, risk-takers revered. Enlargement was an aim in itself, to be pursued almost without condition or frontiers. A constitutional debate about Europe was a largely irrelevant whim to be humoured when necessary, diluted where possible and shut down as soon as practicable. Relations with Washington were all that really mattered. And where European initiatives had to be launched, right-wingers such as Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi were the co-authors of choice.
Now all Europe’s socialist and social democratic parties face the same problems: a declining base, globalisation, lack of a clear identity and how to retain our core values in a very different environment. Labour should participate in a discussion about values and programmes with the other parties of the left. The forum already exists: the Party of European Socialists. However, its scope for action has been heavily constrained by the fear of national parties of losing “sovereignty”. The consequence is that it remains largely an empty shell rather than an instrument for change.
Labour should seek to bring life to the European socialist movement, develop coherent social democratic policies in the upheaval Europe faces, campaign on Europe-wide issues and involve its members in the work of the European party to which at present they belong in name only.
Successive Labour leaders have preferred to keep quiet about Europe and failed to provide a convincing European narrative. This has won no advantage and only contributed to public alienation from the European project. Labour’s new leader must have the courage to focus on the party’s social democratic renewal in a European framework.
Julian Priestley is a former secretary general of the European Parliament and a former secretary general of the Socialist Group
