tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post5438381574978841564..comments2023-08-31T15:14:58.287-07:00Comments on London Green Left Blog: UK EU Referendum – A Radical Independence Campaign?Mike Shaughnessyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16796480031110991460noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post-58075818962632646212015-07-20T11:27:28.249-07:002015-07-20T11:27:28.249-07:00I have always felt European and favoured a Europea...I have always felt European and favoured a European political entity. I voted for Britain's membership of the EEC because I was seduced by the argument that we could reform it from within. I lived and worked in 3 continental EU states for 12 years before returning to the UK, disillusioned. <br /><br />The EU & ECB are both,, autocratic, undemocratic, corrupt, neo-liberal/monetarist entities incapable of fundamental change. Neo-liberalism and monetarism are hard-wired into the EU Treaties and require the unanimous agreement of all the member states before they can be amended. That is simply impossible. It is not going to happen. <br /><br />The EU accounts have not been signed off for years. It is corrupt. It makes any alleged Greek financial incompetence pale into insignificance.<br /><br />I shall be voting against continued membership of the EU. It will collapse in due course anyway, when it is finally accepted that Greece cannot pay the money demanded. There may well be social unrest across Europe as a consequence of these disastrous neo-liberal policies, which hasten its end.<br /><br />The left must promote a federal/confederal solution along the lines of the original Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). We need to retain minimal, diminishing, national sovereignties while we build consensual European institutions for health, transport, education etc. as well as regimes for workers' rights, health and safety, and environmental standards. <br /><br />The emphasis should be on bottom up agreement rather than top down enforcement. There may be European conventions on particular areas of interest which make proposals which are put to referendums of all voters and adopted if passed by a majority, rather than being filtered through national parliaments.<br /><br />We need to celebrate Europe's diversity and history, and concentrate on preserving its traditional communities in the face of forcible globalisation. With modern technology, mass production is not necessarily cheaper or better except from the point of view of multi-nationals who currently dominate the EU agenda. We can enforce modern, environmentally-friendly, people-friendly forms of production and distribution across Europe, where appropriate.<br /><br />We want an open, democratic Europe which is accessible to all and responsive to everyone, not just the rich and powerful. To that end we need political institutions in which ordinary people are involved, which operate across Europe and feed into the decision-making process, rather than eminently corruptible representatives, remote from their electors, operating a top-down, Mafia-like system for the benefit of global capital.<br /><br />The sooner we accept that the EU is as dead as neo-liberalism, the sooner we can start preparing for, and building a democratic, socialist, environmentally-friendly alternativeAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02628476234524724785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440117683736860632.post-30993340349874645002015-07-18T09:38:14.285-07:002015-07-18T09:38:14.285-07:00You seem to forget that we have the Paris Summit o...You seem to forget that we have the Paris Summit on climate change in December which comes at time when the Conservatives have rolled back their environmental policies. We need to ask what is going to work for the living world as a whole rather than specific nation states and the world as whole does not need any kind of resurgent nationalism that will make any kind of consistent planet wide environmentalism impossible. What is happening with the EU is an absolute disaster, it is stoking up a resurgence of nationalism that no eco-socialist should ever support because the historical timing of the EU vs Greece conflict could not be worse. The good name of the EU, it's positive hopes and values have been utterly destroyed now that it has been exposed as an ongoing neo-liberal trade deal that only favours the rich and the powerful so we now have no choice but to call for its abolition however in the same breath we must passionately advocate a democratic federal Europe demonstrating our solidarity to the poorer EU states by advocating a governmental framework that will implement the progressive internationalist policies that the EU should have been capable of. Anything else is a surrender to nationalism at a time when we desperately need to be moving in the opposite direction. LETS NOT GO THERE!! Even if we re-brand that shift to the right using a form of words that we can be happy with.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02725813395993573441noreply@blogger.com