A Vote to Remain is a Vote for Authoritarian Globalisation (but then you knew that already).
Last night I had dinner with some friends. The conversation soon turned to this June’s referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. After about an hour of to and fro on the subject, the group decided to vote. We would establish who intended to vote which way and why.
The ‘remain’ vote won by a factor of just under two to one, with, if memory serves me correctly (it was rather hazy after several pints of ‘Kathmandu’ beer) seven voting to stay in and four, myself included, voting to leave. Suffice to say, these things can always change in the constraints of a polling booth.
In itself that result surprised me. After all, I was eating with well-educated, London-based young professionals. Statistically speaking, these are meant to be among the most pro-EU voters in the country, acting as ballast to the Eurosceptics of the Home Counties, the North-East and elsewhere. Maybe, I thought, the votes of this particular demographic — which could have a comparatively low turnout regardless — shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Another thing that struck me was how there was complete agreement, across both sides, on how the EU was completely beyond reform. Even the most passionate advocates of the remain camp accepted this. They felt conflicted about their choice which, rather than being born of the aspiration to change the EU for the better, resulted from a foreboding sense that things would get pretty hairy, pretty quickly once Britain was out. If that is the default view, and I suspect it is, it will be enough to save the country’s membership this time around. In the long term, however, it is a problem for anyone who claims to hold vaguely democratic views.
In most referenda and elections its pretty easy to identify the forces of progress from the forces of reaction. That was obvious enough during the Irish referendum on same-sex marriage last May. Ditto Scotland’s vote on independence the previous September. You might not agree with them, probably because what they want generates risks you’d rather avoid, but you know who is and who isn’t defending the status quo.
This time things feel different. I genuinely don’t know which side of the debate should be viewed as the establishment. People can invoke Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson all they like, but I find the likes of Jeroen Dijsselbloem and Jean-Claude Juncker equally dangerous. What is more they exercise considerably greater power. And over people who never voted for them.
The big question between now and June’s vote, particularly among the left-leaning voters who will vote to remain and possibly decide this thing, is to what extent progressives are willing to defend an authoritarian, undemocratic kind of globalisation. Few regard the EU as particularly democratic (the European Parliament, comparatively speaking, has fewer powers than the Scottish Parliament) and even fewer regard it as capable of meaningful reform. And yet many will vote to remain in, precisely because it is crucial in guaranteeing a certain world order.
The question nobody is asking is “who is empowered if Britain votes to remain”? Doesn’t it send a message to Europe’s various institutions that they can act with impunity, decimating the continent’s weaker countries in the name of the continent’s northern financial interests?
Doesn’t it send a message to the ECB that even the most eurosceptic country in the bloc can watch them instigate a run on the banking system of another member state, Greece, in order to undermine a democratic vote, and they will still won’t vote to leave?
Hasn’t Golden Dawn been empowered in Greece precisely because of the devastating policies of the Troika? Hasn’t the Front Nationale made huge gains in the last fifteen years, contemporaneous with French membership of the Eurozone, precisely because of its membership of a single monetary union which includes Germany? Isn’t that, after all, the major factor in the decimation of its industrial base? And isn’t the same also true for Italy?
The truth is that authoritarian globalisation - of which the EU is a big player - is one of the major reasons behind the rise of the far-right. Globally. It is not the cure, it is the cause.
What must be true for the EU, you would wager, must be equally true for the G8, the G20, the IMF and the WTO. For generations the left has protested against these organisations. The Battle in Seattle - widely viewed as the genesis of the Alter-Globalisation movement - literally shut down the 1999 WTO ministerial conference. Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, was not allowed to leave her hotel room.
It is perfectly possible that these much loathed forums and organisations for global capitalism face existential threat, or at least dramatically diminished status, over the coming years. As with the EU they could, quite possibly, be replaced by something worse. It turns out that if you live in the Global North and earn a decent wage, American Empire and WTO-led globalisation, from a material perspective, were pretty cushty. Even if you protested against them.
The task for the left now, rather than protesting these organisations, is to work out how they can be replaced. For what its worth I don’t hold much truck with the view that multilateral, bourgeois institutions are a sustainable guarantor of progressive values at the domestic level. Quite the opposite in fact. That requires a political fix, transforming public views at the level of the nation-state, rather than an institutional one from above which will always be rather weak.
One thing i’ve repeatedly heard this week is how the time isn’t right for Britain to leave the EU. The left is too weak and Brexit, right now, would only serve to bolster the right. Perhaps that is true, in the short-term at least. But how is that ever going to change without the left being honest about the EU and its limits?
The far-right is on the rise across the continent because of the very architecture, from the Eurozone to the Commission, that the centre-left is happily defending.
