Ideas on Europe Blog

maybe ‘train driver’ instead?

Perhaps the most infuriating questions to ask a young child is “what you do what to be, when you grow up?” Well, I found it infuriating, at least.

The question supposed that you knew what the options might – did I even know that ‘social media pundit’* was a thing back then? – and that you cared in any case: why do I need to set a goal now, when I’d rather be getting back to Top of the Pops (more innocent times, certainly)?

This might explain why my kids are currently offering ‘shark investigator’ and ‘ummm’ as their responses, when asked by others.

To generalise massively from this, forward planning is one of those things we know is probably important, but also a drag. That’s as true for politicians as it is for children (insert punchline here).

It’s even more true for organisations, because not only do you have to be bothered, but you also have to organise others to be bothered and then to do something about it. The burden-sharing that organisation brings is partly offset by the motivational aspect, especially when it’s something quite nebulous.

And Brexit is nothing if not nebulous. It requires not only an idea of what you want from a Withdrawal Agreement, but also what you want from a future relationship with the EU, and also what you want the UK to look like as a society and as a member of the international community.

‘Shark investigator’ is sounding a bit more appealing now, right?

None of this is to excuse the chronic inability of the Conservative party to settle on a course of action for Brexit, but rather to provide some context: any governing party would have faced the same difficulties and hard choices.

But as the Cabinet packs their bags for a weekend at Chequers, it’s helpful to consider how Theresa May has decided to tackle this challenge, both generally and specifically.

The first key point is that May’s general mode of making decisions is to keep things tight. As those of you who’ve read Tim Shipman’s excellent volumes All Out War and Fall Out will know, both in the Home Office and Number 10, May has tended to discuss matters with a few key advisors and then tell everyone else what’s happening. The merits and demerits are neither here nor there, but her success in her former role has evidently made it harder to adapt it to her current one.

In particular, May’s relative weight in decision-making is less now than it was pre-Premiership, especially since the 2017 General Election: the weight of the Cabinet sits relatively distinctively away from her own tendencies.

And those tendencies have been a mix of a more instinctive soft Brexit with a pragmatic desire to hold the party together, which points in a harder direction. Given where we are on policy, this suggests that party unity is the priority issue, even if opportunities to soften are pursued regularly. That the EU is also a source of softening provides a degree of cover on this.

Ultimately, that has tended to make May conflict-averse to a degree. Whereas her more general model has been to decide-and-stick, on Brexit issues she has hedged her language from her first days in office, to avoid having to collapse ambiguities and compromises that have enabled the party to stick with the programme.

All of which suggests that Chequers will not be a big break-through moment for the process.

It’s important to note here that one key strategy that May has employed in her management has been to avoid some issues (typically the more pressing ones), and focused on others. The customs arrangements is a case in point: it can only ever be a small part of a future deal, but it has occupied minds in London for many months, apparently much more than the question of the Irish dimension.

As I’ve discussed before, this is partly because customs has become a proxy for other battles about hard-/softness, but also it’s because by resolving a position on customs (which is less ‘high politics’ than borders) it is then possible to work backwards to a position on, well, borders. The fundamental interlinkage between domains in Brexit means that decisions in any one part can and will shape decisions elsewhere: that’s one reason why progress has been so hard, as those linkages become clearer and doubts are sown.

However, even if Chequers can produce a consensus around a model for customs, that will not immediately resolve the Irish dimension, which is now the very large elephant in the room: unless and until that can be addressed, there will be no customs arrangements of any kind, because there won’t be a Withdrawal Agreement or a political declaration on the future relationship.

That everyone knows this suggests one of two things.

Either London thinks that Brussels (and Dublin) is biddable on the Irish dimension, despite absolutely no objective evidence to support this: it is a hill the Commission and European Council appear fully prepared to die on.

The alternative is that there is a move to reframe the issue, in part by using the customs debate.

A recurring theme that is emerging from the debate within the Tories is that none of the exciting options can be ready for the end of 2020. That means there’s a gap between then and the implementation of whatever model it is, and no one is making a very hard bid on what that gap should look like.

Put differently, Tories seem to be arguing about the long future rather than the near one: they’ll accept some form of high alignment in return for political commitment to future jam. Given the generally low levels of trust in the political class, and the rifeness of backstabbing, this seems rather optimistic to me, but then I’m just the dad of someone who wants to be a ‘shark investigator’.

This might work, but as so often with the British debate, it’s an idea that’s driven much more by a concern about domestic politics than by an understanding of how the EU works.

If Chequers is to be a credible step forward, then it has to work not only for Tory ministers, but also the country as a whole and for the EU. Manage that and maybe we’ll all have grown up a bit.

 

*For any senior management reading this, this is internet slang for “high impact academic with world-leading research”. Trust me.

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Ten days after the win for Leave in the EU referendum, Remainers were in a state of shock. And we still are.

On 3 July 2016, I published an article called, ‘What next?’

I wrote then:

‘Nobody knows what will happen next, not even those who so strongly campaigned for Brexit.

‘We now know they didn’t – and don’t – have a plan, except to leave the European Union, but precisely on what terms, nobody seems to have a clue.’

And the shameful thing is that we still don’t have a clue. Some two years after the referendum result, nobody knows what Brexit means.

During the referendum, nobody knew, let alone discussed:

How a borderless border on the island of Ireland could be achieved after Brexit.

How our car manufacturers, over half of whose exports go to the EU, will be able to continue to have frictionless access to the Single Market, especially as up to 90% of car parts needed to make our cars come from the rest of Europe.

What would be the status after Brexit of citizens living here from the rest of the EU, and our citizens living in the rest of the EU.

The fact that without a free trade agreement with the EU, our imported food, most of which comes from the EU, would cost more.

Which other countries the UK would be able to establish free trade agreements with, since after Brexit all our existing trade agreements with the rest of the world would have to be torn up.

None of the voters knew the answers in the referendum, and we still don’t know.

Not even our government ministers today can agree with each other how these issues (and thousands of others) will be resolved.

So, how could the voting public have known in the referendum?

The fact is that voters did not know what they were voting for in the referendum.

We still don’t know what Brexit means. When we do know, let’s vote on that (for the very first time).

In the meantime, here’s my article published on 3 July 2016 – ten days after the referendum.

WHAT NEXT? The unexpected has happened: Leave won, and now everything is uncertain.

Suddenly, the country and our futures have been plunged into the dark. Nobody knows what will happen next, not even those who so strongly campaigned for Brexit.

We now know they didn’t – and don’t – have a plan, except to leave the European Union, but precisely on what terms, nobody seems to have a clue.

The government and the opposition are torn apart.

We now have no one effectively running the country. Politicians are betraying each other in a scramble to lead us, but to where we simply have no notion.

The country is also torn apart.

What else could be expected from such a wafer thin majority for the ‘Leave’ win? Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t want to leave the European Union; nor do important cities such as London, Cambridge and Norwich.

Many other towns and cities voted half in, and half out.

The referendum wasn’t even legally binding. It was meant only as advisory, with Parliament taking the final decision.

But what will be Parliament’s decision? We don’t know, except to say that given a free vote, Parliament would overwhelmingly opt for Britain to remain in the EU.

It’s only just over a week after the Brexit decision and the country is in turmoil, with uncertainty and confusion set to be on the agenda for years to come.

It will take several years to extricate the country from the EU in what looks to be a messy, uncomfortable and complicated divorce.

And it could take many more years for Britain to stabilise and find the way ahead.

Negotiating new trading agreements with over 50 countries will take considerable time; so will amending our laws of the past 40 years that are intrinsically connected to our membership of the EU.

It will be a long time before we will have any measure of whether the years of upheaval now facing the country will eventually give us any prize worth having. Many reading this may not live long enough to see the outcome.

If Parliament had meant for the Referendum result to be binding, they would surely have raised the threshold for changing the status quo.

After all, a two-thirds majority is usually required for constitutional changes in many countries across the world.

A motion in our Parliament calling for an early General Election requires a two-thirds majority to be successful – and the calculation is based on two-thirds of all MPs, whether they vote or not.

On that basis, the Referendum result fell far short.

Many of those who voted ‘Leave’ have now changed their minds; they have expressed shock and bewilderment at the crisis the Brexit vote has triggered.

Many are now angry, in the growing realisation, that the claims and promises made by the ‘Leave’ campaign were entirely untrue and completely undeliverable.

Yesterday over 50,000 people marched in London to express their protest at the Brexit decision. And over 4 million people have signed a petition requesting another referendum.

But there are also many who remain resolute that Brexit is the right route for Britain, and they relish ‘getting back their country’ and ‘taking control’.

Others of us are still mystified as to what that really means – we miss the country we now seem to have lost, and we fear for who now is going to take control.

Anything could happen next.

There could be an early General Election if Parliament so deems it. The LibDems have pledged to make staying in the EU, or re-joining, their manifesto promise. Would that make any difference?

Parliament might vote against the Referendum decision – but what would that do to peace in our country?

The Referendum result might be legally challenged.

Scotland might attempt to leave the UK so that it can re-join the EU.

 There might be another referendum in a few years on whether we actually accept the EU divorce settlement or, on reflection, prefer to remain a member.

Or we might all have to buckle down and accept that we are on an unstoppable course to Brexit, regardless of the fact that around half of those who voted (maybe more now), and a majority of our Parliamentarians, don’t want that to happen.

Over the past three months at Reasons2Remain, a team of hard-working, highly-dedicated volunteers have produced a series of articles and graphics giving rational and reasoned arguments for Britain to stay in the EU. (See our illustrated portfolio.)

I’d like to warmly thank everyone for their generous support and help for this Community page, which I know from many readers comments has been highly regarded and appreciated.

There now needs to be a short period of reflection whilst we take stock and decide what next with our campaign.

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• Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain

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The post Two years later, nobody can explain Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

It was 90 years ago, on 2 July 1928, that women in Britain finally achieved equal voting rights with men. But it took almost 100 years of losing vote after vote before women won the right to vote.

Every day Brexiters tell Remainers, ‘You lost the referendum. That’s the end of the matter. Give up! Get over it!’

But in a democracy, losing a vote is never the end of the matter.

If women had given up the first time they lost a vote to get a vote, women would never have got a vote.

In Switzerland, women only got the vote in 1971.

In the UK, all women over 21 got the vote on 2 July 1928 – but only after many decades of campaigning.

If you lose a vote, you don’t just give up. You pick yourself up, and campaign to win the next vote, or the next vote, or the next vote, until hopefully you win.

Losing a vote is never a reason to stop campaigning for what you believe in.

In a democracy, losing a vote doesn’t mean losing the battle. You carry on. That’s how democracy works, because democracy is a journey, and not a one-off destination.

Or as the American civil rights advocate, William H. Hastie said:

‘Democracy is a process, not a static condition.’

Just look at the long journey through the ‘democratic process’ that was endured to achieve women’s suffrage in Britain:

1832 – Mary Smith presents the first petition for women’s suffrage to Parliament. But in the same year, the Great Reform Act confirms the exclusion of women from the vote.

1866 – The MP John Stuart Mill presents a petition for women’s suffrage to the Commons. It fails. Consequently, suffrage societies are started in Edinburgh, London and Manchester.

1867 – A Second Reform Bill petition from women is presented to Parliament by John Stuart Mill but it fails. The National Society for Women’s Suffrage is formed.

1881 – The Isle of Man grants votes to women.

 1884 – An amendment to the Third Reform Bill, to include women in the vote, is rejected.

1897 – The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) is established, with over 20 societies across the country.

1903 – Emmeline Pankhurst, frustrated by the slow tactics of the NUWSS, forms the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her daughters Sylvia and Christabel.

 1905 – Militant campaigning begins. Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney are arrested and imprisoned. “Deeds, not words” and “Votes for women” are the new campaign slogans.

 1906 – The Liberal Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and 400 of 670 MPs are in favour women’s suffrage. WSPU members are arrested and imprisoned. A daily newspaper coins the term “suffragette”.

1907 – The NUWSS organises a London march and more than 3,000 women take part. The WFL starts a paper called The Vote.

1908 – Around half a million suffragette activists attend a mass rally in Hyde Park. But the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith does not respond. So the protestors smash windows in Downing Street, using stones with written messages tied to them. Some protesters chain themselves to the railings.

1909 – The start of hunger strikes and forced-feeding. Scottish WSPU member Marion Wallace Dunlop becomes the first hunger striker. More and more militant WSPU members are imprisoned.

 1910 – The Conciliation Bill, which would give women the vote, succeeds in the Commons but Prime Minster, Herbert Asquith, doesn’t carry it through.

The WSPU starts protests, including those called “Black Friday” in which many women are hurt, some permanently and later fatally. There are allegations against the police of sexual abuse whilst women are in custody.

1911 – A new Conciliation Bill that would give women the vote passes, but is stalled by the general election.

1912 – The Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill is introduced and defeated by 222 votes to 208. In protest, there is a mass window-smashing campaign.

1913 – A ruling by the Commons Speaker destroys hopes of an amendment to include women in the Reform Bill. There are bomb and arson campaigns.

More arrests lead to the passing of the “Cat and Mouse” Act, under which hunger strikers are temporarily released but then rearrested to prevent them from dying in police custody.

Also in this year, Emily Wilding Davison, was arrested nine times and force-fed 49 times. She decides to draw attention to the suffrage cause and disrupt the Derby by stepping in front of the King’s horse Anmer.

Emily dies four days later of a skull fracture and other injuries. Her funeral is attended by thousands of women. Tens of thousands lined the streets of London as her coffin passed by.

1914 – Violent protests escalate. Suffragettes try to force their way into Buckingham Palace to petition the King.

1917 – The Electoral Reform Bill passes in the Commons. It gives votes to certain women only: those aged over 30, and those over 21 who own their own house or those married to householders.

 1918 – The Representation of the People Act is passed, allowing men over 21 and women over 30 to vote.

1919 – The first female MP, Nancy Astor, enters the Commons.

 1928 – Amendment of the Representation of the People Act entitles everyone over the age of 21 – men and women – to vote.

Women lost vote after vote to get a vote. But they didn’t give up.

Remain lost the 2016 referendum. We won’t give up.

Just before the EU referendum, Nigel Farage said that if the result was 52%-48%, it would mean ‘unfinished business’. He meant if the result was 52% for Remain.

As it turned out, it was just under 52% for Leave. But on this occasion, Farage was right.

This is unfinished business. It isn’t the end of the matter.

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Translation studies is increasingly expanding its disciplinary range. A volume I am editing together with my colleague Kayvan Tahmasebian, the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism, seeks to facilitate this expansion. This volume, which will be included in Routledge’s exciting series of handbooks on translation, will survey the state-of-the-art within translation studies, while opening the field to new domains of inquiry. We are particularly eager to include more contributions relating to the politics of language (in EU and other contexts). Scholars working on refugee rights, court interpretation, and other areas where translation advances social justice, are welcome to contribute.

Please see the CfP below and get in touch if you’d like to contribute!

CfP: Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism

Rebecca Gould (University of Birmingham) and Kayvan Tahmasebian are seeking additional contributions to the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism. Confirmed contributions range across the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Although all regional foci are welcome, we particularly welcome contributions focusing on Central Asia, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and the Americas. In addition to translation studies and literary studies, we welcome contributions from anthropology, political science, and law; our focus is on translation in the broadest sense, and includes oral interpretation. Contributions from scholars, translators, writers, and creative practitioners are encouraged. We are particularly eager for contributions on political theory (Marx, Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, Fanon) in relation to translation and activism, as well as those addressing the following themes:

* Translators as activists

* Translators’ contributions to activism across multilingual divides

* Translating activist and political texts

* Translators as interpreters for refugees and in other immigration contexts

* Translation and political change in premodern, modern, and postmodern contexts (including the ‘Abbasid translation movement, the Mughal translation movement, the Soviet construction of world literature, etc.)

* Life-stories and insights from your experiences and struggles as a translator

* Manifestos for enabling activist agendas and social transformation within translation as a profession and translation studies as an academic discipline

* Case studies that reveal the relation between aesthetics and politics in a translational context

* Translation and revolution (in Cuba, the Soviet Union, Iran, Egypt, etc.; see the work of Mona Baker, Translating Dissent)

* Translation and Eurocentrism/overcoming racism/class-based prejudice and other social hierarchies.

* Other themes inspired by your reflections on translating and your work and life as a translator and scholar of texts in languages other than your native tongue.

Chapters (6000-8000 words) will ideally be completed by 2018 or early 2019 (and then entered into the peer-review process), with abstracts due during the summer of 2018. Please write to globalliterarytheory@gmail.com if you are interested in contributing. Although we will consider all proposals until the end of September please contact us as soon as you decide you are interested in contributing in order to discuss the focus of your contribution and to avoid overlap.

Contact Email:
globalliterarytheory@gmail.com

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Doctors have voted overwhelmingly to ‘oppose Brexit as a whole’ following a vote at the AGM of the British Medical Association, the trade union and professional association for doctors and medical students in the UK.

The medics said that leaving the EU is ‘bad for Britain’s health’ and endorsed a new public vote on the final Brexit deal.

The motion called on the BMA to ‘publicly announce that it is concerned that Brexit poses a major threat to the NHS and the nation’s health’, while supporting ‘open border arrangements with free movement of healthcare and medical research staff’.

Until now the BMA has adopted a neutral stance on Brexit. But after today’s debate, some 76% of representatives voted to remain in the single market, and 91% supported free movement of healthcare workers and research staff.

Following the vote, it will be BMA policy to ‘support the idea of the public having a final say on the Brexit deal, now that more is known regarding the potential impact of Brexit’.

The Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives have already backed calls for the public to have a final say on Brexit.

Dr William Sapwell, who proposed the motion, said:

“The fact is that the government is woefully underprepared to ensure the United Kingdom’s health and wellbeing is secure in time for the self-imposed deadline of 29 March 2019. Brexit is bad for Britain’s health.

“Let’s put that on the side of a big red bus and once we have made that clear, the public should vote on the deal.”

He added that 7-10% of doctors working in the NHS are from the European Economic Area, and 40% of those have plans to leave “because of uncertainty about their immigration status and negative attitudes towards EU workers.”

Dr Sapwell told the conference said that many people were changing their minds about Brexit as the implications of the move became better known. He said:

“If a democracy can’t change its mind then it ceases to be a democracy, and isn’t it right that, as doctors, we inform the debate? After all, we believe in fully informed consent.”

Reasons2Remain has been running a poster campaign asserting that ‘informed consent’ was never given for Brexit, as the electorate was misinformed.

Dr David Strain said that 20% of NHS research and development funding came from European drug companies and a further 23% from European small enterprises.

“If we lose our parity with the European Clinical Trials Directive that money may disappear,” he said.

Dr John Chisholm, of the BMA’s medical ethics committee, told delegates Brexit was “a disastrous act of national self-harm”. He said the EU was better for the NHS, public health, research, science, universities, access to pharmaceuticals and international cooperation in research. He said:

“We need to speak out about the damage Brexit will do to our patients and to healthcare professionals.”

Dr Chandra Kanneganti, who sits on the BMA GP Committee, added, “We oppose what’s happening and we want a good deal to be part of the European Union because we appreciate the enormous contribution of the European healthcare workforce, who work in the NHS everyday.

“That’s the main reason we support this motion and I think we showed a strong message today as well, that the doctors across the NHS support our European colleagues.”

Dr Paul Williams, a GP and the Labour MP for Stockton South, told the Guardian that support for the motion was “a sign of the growing momentum behind the people’s vote campaign”.

He said nobody voting in the EU referendum wanted to harm the NHS but that Brexit was already causing severe problems in staff recruitment and retention.

Dr Williams added:

“Instead of the £350m a week for the NHS we were promised by the Brexiters, we have had cuts and closures as the NHS loses staff and struggles with budgets that are limited by the Brexit economic squeeze.

“If Brexit actually happens, it seems certain it will only make things worse – with new drug treatments, investment in research and sustainable funding all under threat.”

Responding to the BMA declaring support for the people to have the final say on the Brexit deal, Liberal Democrats Brexit Spokesperson Tom Brake said:

“The BMA’s decision to back a final say on the deal demonstrates the extent to which Brexit threatens our health service.

“With EU nurses and doctors leaving the UK, and an alarming 87% drop in the number of nurses and midwives joining the register from the EU, we are already witnessing the disastrous impact of Brexit on our overstretched health workforce.

“The NHS is our nation’s most treasured institution and it must be protected at all costs. The Tories are not only making a mess of Brexit but are now damaging the NHS. The Liberal Democrats are the only party offering a final say on the deal and an exit from Brexit.”

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The recent wave of government-sponsored referendums in Europe should be read in light of the upsurge of populist movements, argues Cecilia Sottilotta. Based on her recent article in JCER, she analyses the way in which the governments of Greece, Britain, Hungary and Italy strategically used referendums between 2015-2016, and debunks the political risk calculations. 

The Union Jack waves in front of Big Ben © Melinda Nagy / Adobe Stock

Greece in 2015, Britain, Hungary and Italy in 2016: government-sponsored referendums seem to be ubiquitous in today’s European politics.

This phenomenon is not particularly new in itself, as governments  have  often  used  referendums as tools to achieve specific political goals  in  both  democratic  and  non-democratic  regimes. What is new about the recent wave of government-sponsored referendums in Europe is that they have taken place in a polarised political climate characterised by an upsurge of populist parties.

Greece

During the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, Greece was in the eye of the hurricane. On 27 June 2015, after five months of fruitless negotiations with the country’s creditors, recently elected Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called a consultative referendum, asking the Greek people ‘to rule on the blackmailing ultimatum’ imposed by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – the so-called ‘Troika’.

Once it found itself cornered during the financial bailout negotiations, the Greek government tried to strengthen its hand, performing a political risk calculation where the expected payoff would have been a stronger mandate to negotiate more favourable terms with the Troika. However, while the government’s calculation about the domestic dimension of the referendum was correct, and the 5 July vote undeniably reinforced the Prime Minister in his anti-austerity stance, the calculation about the ‘external’ effects of the referendum was not equally accurate. In fact, the position of the other negotiators was hardened rather than softened, in the face of the Greek government’s tactic.

The UK

In the case of the 23 June 2016 referendum held in the UK, the calculation behind Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to offer an EU membership referendum was multifaceted. First and foremost, the promise of an in/out EU plebiscite was directly aimed at attracting the votes of UK Independence Party (UKIP) supporters in the 2015 general election.

Second, Cameron tried to make the looming referendum a bargaining chip with the EU, and the spectre of Brexit a ‘credible threat’, to extract concessions from his European counterparts in his renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s EU membership. Third, holding the referendum and placing himself at the head of the ‘Remain’ campaign were also ways for the Prime Minister to attempt to maintain his party’s and cabinet’s unity. The tensions and discontent within the Conservative party were epitomised by the defection of two Tory MPs to UKIP in 2014 and their subsequent returns to Westminster in by-elections, as well as by backbench rebellions.

Hungary

In  the wake of the 2015 ‘migrant crisis’,  the Council of the European Union approved a plan by qualified majority to gradually relocate 120,000 refugees from frontline member states Italy and Greece to other member states. The Hungarian government, led by right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, defiantly opposed the relocation plan and eventually succeeded in removing Hungary de facto from the scheme. Nevertheless, on 24 February 2016, Orbán called a referendum on the ‘compulsory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens in Hungary’.

From the government’s standpoint, the obvious political gain, hypothetically, from a favourable outcome in the referendum – that was, a victory of the ‘No’ vote with a turnout exceeding 50 per cent of the electorate – would have been a strengthening of the ruling party’s position both domestically (vis-à-vis the radical right Jobbik party) and on the EU stage. On the other hand, the likelihood of a negative outcome was low, considering the relatively high level of anti-immigration sentiment in Hungary and the remarkable campaign efforts put in place by the government. The most likely worst-case scenario for the government was instead the possibility, which in fact did materialise, that the minimum 50 per cent turnout threshold would not be reached.

Italy

In February 2014, former Florence Mayor Matteo Renzi was appointed as Italy’s prime minister and formed a new government whose agenda hinged on structural reforms, including a new electoral law and new constitutional architecture. Nevertheless, the final text of the constitutional reform bill did not obtain the two-thirds majority necessary to avoid the possibility of a confirmatory referendum. A request to hold such a referendum in 2016 was filed not only by opposition MPs, but also majority MPs, confirming Renzi’s intention, expressed on multiple occasions, to submit the reform to a popular vote in any case.

Adopting an attitude reminiscent of de Gaulle’s plebiscitary understanding of referendums, Renzi repeatedly vowed that he would resign and abandon politics for good if the constitutional reform was rejected, effectively turning the referendum into a plebiscite on his administration as a whole. A victory for the ‘Yes’ vote would have consolidated Renzi’s leadership of the divided Democratic Party. It would have also represented a formidable political victory for the ruling coalition over the populist Five Star Movement, whose attacks against the ‘establishment’ embodied by the Renzi government typically rested on the claim that it lacked popular legitimacy. On the other hand, it was clear from the beginning that a negative outcome would have cost Renzi his premiership – a scenario which eventually materialised, after 59.1 per cent of participating voters rejected the government-sponsored constitutional reform on a 68.5 per cent turnout.

Referendums in European States

Different as these countries and their political systems are, the attempts by their executives to use referendums strategically indeed bear some similarities – the most striking of which is the ubiquitous involvement of anti-establishment parties and the role of populism as a discursive frame. In fact, the 2015 referendum in Greece was brought about by the leader of the anti-establishment ruling party. In Britain, Hungary and Italy, the ruling mainstream parties instead adjusted their positions to cater to voters supporting anti-establishment parties. Against the backdrop of increasing distrust in mainstream political parties and the recent trend toward populist decision-making in EU member states, the interplay between anti-establishment politics and resorting to referendums in consolidated democracies deserves more attention by scholars and policymakers.

This article is based on the author’s article in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies (JCER) Vol 13 No 4. 

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Graduate Forum, JCER or UACES.

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Cecilia Sottilotta | @csottilotta
American University of Rome (AUR)

Cecilia Emma Sottilotta is Assistant Professor of International Relations and Global Politics at the American University of Rome (AUR). Her research interests span themes such as political risk, including security issues, state-MNEs relations, trade, regionalism and development, and the current and future dynamics of European fiscal and monetary integration.

 

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The reality of Brexit is now sinking in fast.

But here’s the oddest thing. The UK government is negotiating to leave the EU, just so they can negotiate another arrangement with the EU to give us as much as possible of what we’ve already got, but on considerably inferior terms.

If we don’t get what we want (i.e. the EU benefits we desperately want back after we’ve left), the government has said it will crash out of the EU without any agreement, plunging Britain into deep economic crisis.

Does it make any sense? No, it doesn’t.

The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the net annual membership fee of £7.1 billion a year.

As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost half of our exports go to and over half of our imports come from. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

The UK government is desperate to continue to enjoy similar membership benefits of frictionless trade with the EU after we have ended our membership, because they know that our economy’s survival depends on it.

In Parliament last month, Theresa May said:

“We’re committed to delivering on our commitment of no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and ensuring we have as frictionless trade as possible with the European Union.”

Everything we’ve already got.

But the UK government has also said it wants to continue to enjoy these EU membership benefits after Brexit:

without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union;

without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market;

without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules;

without paying anything to the EU for access.

It’s not going to happen. Mrs May knows this.

Before the referendum she said clearly and persuasively:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

Yet that’s exactly what Mrs May now wants. She says she aims to achieve a new trade agreement with the EU that’s unique to us, that no other country in the world has ever achieved.

Of course, it’s not going to happen.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

So here’s the bottom line. Britain needs frictionless trade with the EU. We need free movement of goods, services, capital and people for our country not just to survive, but to thrive.

We need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now.

Has this sunk in yet?

We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left.

We’re going to pay around £40 billion (the so-called ‘divorce settlement’) – money that will come from us, you and me – to try and achieve what we’ve got, but less of it, and on considerably inferior terms.

This is complete and utter madness. It will be much better to just keep the current arrangement. It will be cheaper, and we will all be better off.

As an EU member:

① We have a say and votes in the running, rules and future direction of our continent.

② We have full and free access to the world’s largest free marketplace.

③ We enjoy the right to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent.

④ We enjoy state healthcare and education when living and working in any other EU country.

⑤ We enjoy free or low-cost health care when visiting any EU nation.

⑥ We are protected by continent-wide rights that protect us at work, when shopping and travelling.

⑦ We benefit from laws that protect our environment (and have, for example, directly resulted in Britain’s beaches being cleaned up).

⑧ We enjoy excellent EU trade agreements with around 60 countries, with more on the way, on advantageous terms that Britain is unlikely ever to replicate.

So, we’re going to throw that all away, just so we can get an inferior arrangement with the EU, in which we’d still have to agree to the rules of EU trade (over which we’d have no say) and we’d have less access to our most vital customers and suppliers outside of our home market.

And what are we gaining? Surely something?

No. All the reasons given to leave in the referendum were based on lies and false promises. There are no good reasons to leave.

More sovereignty? Nonsense. We’ll get less. In the EU, we gain a share of sovereignty of our continent. Outside the EU, we’ll still live on a planet and have to obey thousands of international laws and treaties. We share sovereignty with NATO, for example. Is that a reason to leave it?

Fewer migrants? Really? Just think about it. Most EU migrants in Britain are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do. So if they all left, we’d have to replace them with about the same numbers of migrants as we have now to get all those jobs done. What’s the bloody point of that?

More houses, schools and hospitals? Think again. Without EU migrants, we’ll have fewer builders, teachers, doctors and nurses. Migrants are not the cause of our problems. Blaming them just excuses successive UK governments from investing sufficiently in our country.

Get our country back? We never lost it. If being in the EU means losing your country, why aren’t the 27 other EU member states planning to leave? (Really, none of them are: support for the EU is the highest its been in 35 years).

Our own laws? The vast majority of laws in the UK are our laws and passed by our Parliament in Westminster. But in the EU, we benefit from laws for our continent that no single country alone could ever achieve. Could our UK government have got mobile phone companies to scrap mobile roaming charges across the entire EU? Of course not. It took the might of 28 EU countries working together to achieve that, and so much more.

The EU is run by faceless bureaucrats? Another lie. The EU is run and ruled by its members, the 28 countries of the EU, along with its democratically elected European Parliament. The European Commission is the servant of the EU, not its master, and the European Parliament has the power to choose, and dismiss, the entire Commission.

We are leaving for no good reason, not one. We are paying around £40 billion (money the UK has agreed we owe to the EU) to settle our debts with the EU, to enable us to have an inferior deal.

We will be poorer, and with less sovereignty, fewer rights and protections, restricted trade, and diminished power after we’ve left.

What’s the point? There’s no point. The country really has gone nuts.

 

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Perhaps the least remarked aspect of this week’s Parliamentary shenanigans has been the distraction from the loss of another week of time to reach an Article 50 deal.

Important as a meaningful vote in Parliament is, it does not intrinsically produce an increased chance of a deal being reached. Indeed, the confirmation of a push-back of the publication of the government’s White Paper until July means that not only can there not be a report of substantial progress at next week’s European Council, but also that reaching a deal for October’s meeting is also highly unlikely.

The reasoning behind this is simply that Article 50 has not and will not progress by focused moments of progress, but by gradual processes of consensus-building and compromise. Think back to last autumn and the Joint Report: that emerged from a series of negotiations, referrals back to domestic audiences and then confirmation by press conference.

That’s because while the UK government and the Commission might be in the negotiating room, they represent various constituencies, who have to buy into the proposals that emerge from that room. ‘Speaking for’ others isn’t the same as ‘deciding for them’.

In addition, the EU has hived off Brexit discussions to separate sections of European Councils, without the UK present, so getting national leaders around a table needs specific and special planning: it can’t easily be shoehorned into the agenda.

In practice, that means that whatever the government comes up with in July, it will take time for other member states to digest, then agree a common position with the Commission, then debate with the UK, then find common ground, then agree a means of moving things on, then entering several rounds of to-and-fro, and only then agreeing some text. Throw in the delays caused by holidays and October looks really very near.

“But they could ditch their holidays!”, you cry. Well, maybe the negotiating teams will do that, but that doesn’t help, not unless everyone else in their constituencies does the same. And given that Brexit remains low on the list of EU policy dilemmas right now, it’s unlikely to happen.

But so what? If we run towards Christmas then does it really matter?

Yes, it does matter, and for several reasons.

The biggest thing here is time, or its lack. Already the scant two years of Article 50 has seen the loss of a couple of months to the snap General Election, a couple more to the disagreements on ‘sufficient progress’ on Phase I, and yet another couple more to the lack of paperwork coming out of London since Easter. And that was on the parts of the agenda that weren’t the most difficult.

Leaving a deal until Christmas means there’s almost no scope for any further delay or bust-up, simply because there isn’t enough time: recall the deal needs not only to be signed, but also ratified by 29 March, and that can’t be done at the drop of the proverbial hat.

And yet we have to assume that delays and bust-ups will occur, if only because of the issues at stake. In particular, the UK has to make some crucial decisions on what it is seeking, which in turn are likely to mean running over some part of the red lines currently in position. Even an approach of creating new means of kicking topics into some longer grass will incur consequences that might be politically difficult to carry, especially with a Parliament that looks ever less conducive to letting things slide.

Which brings the next big issue: less time for a deal means less time to make a meaningful vote meaningful. The closer to 29 March that the government brings a package to Parliament, the less realistic scope there is to do anything other than rubber stamp it. If nothing else, the inclusion of a departure date in the Withdrawal Bill – which rescinds the 1972 European Community Act, on which all UK acceptance of the EU’s legal order rests – means that even asking for an Article 50 extension requires an additional Parliamentary procedure to amend that.

In short, it’s a game of chicken, with the risk of a no-deal exit as a price of failure to swerve.

Given that no group is seriously advancing a no-deal outcome as desirable, or even tolerable, that represents a real issue. Whether those involved appreciate that danger or how their (in)actions now are making that more likely next spring is open to discussion.

 

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The recently published Europe’s Brexit: EU Perspectives on Britain’s Vote to Leave concludes with several key themes about how the other 27 Member States and EU institutions approached and continue to handle Brexit.

As should be more than clear to many by now, the story of Brexit cannot be told from a British perspective alone. Nor can it be fold from one European perspective or from looking at a select few EU member states such as Germany or Ireland. Each of the other 27 EU member states, along with the EU’s various institutions, have been home to individual debates about Brexit, with each reflecting that country (or institutions) interests, links with the UK, and place in the EU.

Europe’s Brexit looks more closely at these multiple European views of Brexit. As Kevin Featherstone makes clear in his endorsement, taking into account these European views of Brexit is important ‘if you want to understand the negotiations and the possible outcome better. Ignore it if you prefer costly assumptions and think in one-dimensional terms.’

The book, with a foreword from former European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, is the product of a network of researchers in universities and think tanks across Europe dating back to 2013, the year David Cameron gave his Bloomberg Speech to which the origins of the 2016 referendum can most clearly be traced.

From 2013 onwards, the aim of the network was not only to broaden analysis beyond the UK but to ensure that the analysis covered as wide a range of countries as possible. Through publications with the DGAP, the LSE’s EUROPP blog and the LSE’s Brexit blog, the network followed the idea of a referendum become reality, the UK pursue a renegotiation, the shock of a referendum vote for Leave, and the EU’s response as it came to terms with the departure of the UK. The book, reports and blog series leave three sets of conclusions.

Europe’s Britain

Europe’s history of Brexit is a story of 27 different Member State governments and the EU’s institutions attempting to deal with a partner they all wanted to keep inside the EU tent. Britain might have been ‘an awkward partner’ but it was not ‘the awkward partner’, as some misquote the title of Stephen George’s 1990 book. Whether in balancing against French and German domination of the EU or pushing forward with European integration in a number of areas, the rest of the EU often (but not always) found the UK a constructive partner.

However, UK governments, especially since 2010, have increasingly appeared determined to isolate the UK. Why the UK did this is a story of growing British (and especially Conservative Party) political ignorance and disdain for the EU, growing UK isolation because of changing trade and Member State alliances within the EU, and a changing EU where the Eurozone was increasingly the centre of EU politics.

The UK failed to develop the institutional links and political outlook that would have connected it more closely with the rest of the EU. As a result, British politicians especially have increasingly taken the EU and its positions for granted, if they have thought about them at all. Witness how until the Brexit negotiations got underway, the UK’s debate about what new relationship to seek with the remaining EU rarely if ever considered what the other 27 Member States might think or agree to.

Too often British debate has been one of ‘Britain’s Europe’ without ever thinking much about ‘Europe’s Britain’. Even today, some in the UK – including in HM Government – struggle to understand why and how the EU is approaching Brexit and Britain as they do. As a result, they have struggled to understand how the rest of the EU has been as united as it has been. They have failed to appreciate, as touched on in Europe’s Brexit, that Brexit has not been seen as a test of EU-UK relations, but as a test of the EU’s unity.

Europe’s Brexit Themes

Five themes can be identified throughout Europe’s Brexit. First, if the rest of the EU has been united in its response to Brexit then the reason lies in a concern amongst the elites of many other EU Member States that it would fuel populism, Euroscepticism and illiberalism in the rest of the EU. In some Member States, Brexit may have helped drive up support for the EU, but populism, Euroscepticism and illiberalism remain strong.

Second, this political concern did not mean the governments of the other 27 Member States overlooked economic calculations. The UK ran a trade deficit with 23 of the 27 Member States, making the UK an important market for a majority of the EU. But that importance varies, and as is made clear throughout the book, maintaining the unity and coherence of the remaining EU Single Market is of greater concern.

Third, this is not to say Britain is unimportant. The UK is an important trade, security, social, and political partner to many other EU Member States. That importance, however, is relative to the importance of the remaining EU and close relations with its remaining leading players, especially Germany.

Fourth, the UK’s importance may be best understood by viewing it in terms of the importance of Brexit to the EU. Brexit is not necessarily at the top of the ‘to do’ list when it competes with problems in the Eurozone, Schengen, in relations with Russia and the USA, growing levels of illiberalism across Europe, to say nothing of domestic problems in various Member States.

Fifth, there is some debate elsewhere in the EU about how well the Union has so far performed over Brexit, especially compared to the other problems it faces. There are important lessons to be learnt, not least what role the rest of the EU may have played in helping create a situation in which the citizens of one of its largest Member States voted to Leave.

The EU’s Post-Brexit Europe

Debates in the UK, and to some extent elsewhere in the EU, about the future EU-UK relationship can overlook three things. First, debates similar to those in the UK have been held in the rest of the EU about the pros and cons of the Norway model, a Free Trade Agreement and so forth. If there is one aspect about a new relationship that is repeated throughout the book, it is that the UK’s dreams of getting a better deal than when it was in – the ‘having your cake and eating it’ option – is firmly rejected. As Donald Tusk made clear: ‘Buy a cake, eat it and see if it is still there on the plate.’

Whatever new relationship is agreed – and it’s worth recalling the EU and UK have not even formally begun negotiations over it – one of the problems Europe’s Brexit points to is the ratification minefield that lies ahead. If the new relationship is, as expected, a mixed agreement then it will need the approval of the other 27 Member States national parliaments, which in some cases will entail both upper and lower houses of parliament and, in the case of Belgium, the five regional parliaments. So far, the EU has succeeded in compartmentalizing Brexit into a technical and legal process, with the European Commission doing most of the work. It’s a reminder of how the EU can be a very effective way of depoliticising an issue through EU-level arrangements that can weaken the input from the domestic politics of the Member States. Ratification of treaties and agreements such as that which it is hoped the EU and UK will agree, is one of those moments when the domestic politics of Member States kicks back in.

It’s a reminder of the final concluding point of Europe’s Brexit: that making Brexit a success is about securing three sets of successful Brexits. First, successful deals over the UK leaving the EU and a new EU-UK relationship. Second, for the UK to come to terms domestically with the domestic causes of the Brexit vote. Third, for the remaining EU – 27 Member States and the EU’s institutions – to come to terms with a changed Union. For some of those remaining 27, a successful Brexit for the remaining EU is not just one that holds together, moves forward, and delivers for its citizens. It’s also one that avoids becoming a Union dominated by a ‘Carolingian model’ of France and Germany.

Europe’s Brexit: EU Perspectives on Britain’s Vote to Leave is out now from Agenda.

This blog post first appeared on the LSE Brexit Blog.

The post Europe’s Brexit: a successful outcome of negotiations for all? appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

With the pound so much lower following the Brexit vote, many more Britons are now holidaying at Britain’s seaside resorts. And it’s thanks to the EU that 95% of our beaches are now clean enough to wade out into the sea.

It wasn’t always like that. Back in the 1970s, we used to pump our untreated sewage straight into the sea. It’s only because of EU laws that the UK was forced to clean up its act.

As reported by Friends of the Earth, who campaigned during the referendum for the UK to stay in the EU for the sake of our environment:

“The EU’s 1976 Bathing Water Directive – and successful legal action by the European Commission – has made our beaches as clean, clear and swimmable as they are today.

“But it wasn’t easy going…The UK fought hard to maintain the right to continue polluting.

“Successive UK governments exploited whatever loophole they could find. They pumped untreated sewage into our ocean until 1998 – longer than any other European country.

“Now, water quality at beaches is better than at any time in living memory, according to the Environment Agency.

“Some of the UK’s most beautiful and loved beaches are protected in this way: Watergate Bay in Cornwall, Druridge Bay in Northumberland, Croyde Beach in Devon and hundreds more which have reached good and excellent water-rating standards.”

But, warns Friends of the Earth, not all of Britain’s beaches reach the crystal clear standards that we have now come to expect. Only around 60% of UK bathing waters meet the new “Excellent” standard of the revised 2006 EU Bathing Water Directive.

When Britain leaves the EU, we will no longer be subject to the Bathing Water Directive.

Commented Friends of the Earth:

“Without external EU pressure it seems likely that standards will slip. Staying in the EU delivers a win-win scenario of cleaner beaches and economic gain for sea-side economies.”

After Brexit, leaked documents suggest that Theresa May’s government plans to “scale down” climate and environmental protection laws to secure post-Brexit trade deals.

Does Britain really want the return of the dirty beach?

• Photo:  Jon Danzig at Tolcarne Beach at Newquay, Cornwall. The beautiful beach, one of the most popular in Newquay, has received a 5-star rating on Trip Advisor, with over 260 ‘excellent’ reviews.

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It has been just over two months since Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary and the leader of Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance), is back in power in Hungary. In these past two months Orban and his newly elected government’s policy proposals, such as the so-called ‘Stop-Soros’ bill has been under close scrutiny by the international press, Non-governmental organisations (NGO) and the European Parliament party groups. However what I found most striking about Orban and his political party Fidesz since April are Orban’s emphasis on ‘Christian democracy’ at his inauguration speech of May, the effect and implications of the European People’s Party’s (EPP) criticisms of the ‘Stop-Soros’ bill and Fidesz’s rigid position on the EU’s migration quota system. With these in mind the electoral success of right-wing Eurosceptic political parties across the EU such as the Italian Northern League (Lega Nord) and the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) also have made me wonder about the next year’s European Parliament elections and how the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic political parties across the EU might consolidate the basis of what Orban stands for and what this may mean for the future direction of the EU.

When the ’Stop-Soros’ bill was part of Orban’s April election campaign, from the international media to human rights organisation, such as the Amnesty International, and the European People’s Party group have all overlooked the details of Orban’s electoral promises. However now that Orban is moving forward with the bill for which he has the mandate, his government is under fire from left and right and it is widely covered in the press. It is not that I support the bill and what it means for those it covers, but it would have been more affective had the critical voices of today were lauder while Orban was promoting his anti-immigration and anti-Soros rhetoric and policy proposals across Hungary earlier this year during the election campaign.

Right after the elections in May 2018, Orban delivered his traditional inaugural speech at the Hungarian Parliament. His 2014 talk is still vividly remembered—what has now come to be known as ‘illiberal democracy’ speech. In which he claimed that the future it would be systems that were “not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies, and perhaps not even democracies” that would create successful and competitive societies. Fast forward in May 2018, Orban did not make any reference to ‘illiberal democracy’, instead he emphasised on Christian culture and values and how that has been put at risk by the non-Christian refugees. Perhaps he believes he already formed an Illiberal form of government in Hungary, so it is not an urgent matter for him in this term. Additionally his form of government is treated as a ‘good practice’ by Poland and Slovenia, not mentioning the popularity of his illiberal democracy rhetoric in Turkey. This means: Orban reached his goal of normalising ‘illiberal democracy’ in the EU and now he moves on to his next challenge for his new term, his speech points to immigration as the one.

It is suggested that when Orban visited Brussels in early May, he was actually summoned by the two main names of the EPP: Joseph Daul and Manfred Weber. During the De Volkskrant interview, Weber revealed that Orbán had been read the riot act. A growing number of MEPs in the EPP delegation are demanding Fidesz’s expulsion from this basically Christian Democratic group. Allegedly they asked Orban to alter the ‘Stop-Soros’ bill as demanded by European Commission’s Venice Commission and if he continues his illiberal and antidemocratic policies, Fidesz may face expulsion. Since then it is reported that Orban does not particularly refer to this bill as ‘Stop-Soros’, for instance in his visit to Poland, he referred to it as ‘immigration bill’. In terms of content of this bill, It is true that assisting illegal immigration will be a crime, necessitating an amendment to the Criminal Code, but some of most objectionable items will not be included in the new law, including a 25% tax on all financial assistance arriving from abroad.

Ahead of a crucial EU summit due on 28-29 June, EU migratory reform have been a hot topic and the countries that have rejected obligatory quotas for accepting refugees have been at the centre of this debate. Since 2015 how to share the burden of asylum seekers has been a dividing matter in the EU, particular Italy and Greece has been complaining that they are overstressed. This meant disunity and conflict at the EU level. At this summit there is a plan for migratory reform so to overcome some of these problem, since Hungary and Poland do not change their positions on the obligatory quotas. Which meant that the other EU member states had to come up with new ways to get countries like Hungary to make a contribution in some form. Some suggested a flexible system in which countries that refuse quotas could compensate by making contributions in other areas. There is also a serious consideration for reforming the Dublin regulation. However it is also likely that at this EU summit an agreement may not be reached. In fact newly emerging Eurosceptic political parties and Fidesz are now promoting the idea of reform the EU migration policy after the European Parliament elections, probably expecting alike political parties doing significantly well at these elections. Whether there will be an agreement on the EU Migratory Reform I do not know. However it is for sure that the rise of Eurosceptic and anti-immigration political parties will change the future direction of the EU in many areas.

 

 

 

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Construction site of the European Spallation Source in Lund, Sweden. Image credit: ESS

Isabel K. Bolliger, Katharina Cramer, David Eggleton, Olof Hallonsten, Maria Moskovko, Nicolas Rüffin[i]

We are witnessing the emergence of ‘grand challenges’ impacting societies on a global scale. These include climate change, artificial intelligence, and access to resources. Large-scale research and internationally coordinated collaboration in science, technology and innovation (STI) policy are viewed as the means by which we may find solutions to these challenges while at the same time contributing to scientific progress and basic research. The importance of international research organisations that combine large-scale research and multilateral collaboration are therefore expected to increase.

 

Considering these developments, it is time to thoroughly examine the main concepts and the role and influence of actors and different processes in policymaking on research infrastructure and ‘Big science’. An understanding of these phenomena will help professionals optimise these collaborations and may have further applications elsewhere in STI policy.

 

Rising attention for research infrastructures in Europe and beyond

In the past two decades, the European Union (EU) has established itself as a key actor in European innovation policy by virtue of the European Research Area (ERA) framework, as well as the intensified programmes under Horizon 2020 and the creation of the European Research Council (ERC). Another important component of current EU innovation policy is the focus on research infrastructures (RIs) and the identification that pan-European RIs function as a “pillar” of ERA and a “motor” of the European knowledge-based economy. This prominent role of RIs in EU policy-making is an under-researched area in science and innovation policy studies, as well as European studies. Although there is much to suggest that the institutions and processes of policy-making act out in partly new ways in this area, with new dynamics of decision-making and new constellations of actors involved.

 

In the United States, we observe pronounced research systems that developed in the post-war period. Many of the technologies we depend on today developed as a result of mission-oriented research policies where the government took active steps to shape markets. Through its many funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the American research system provides a model that many try to emulate with varying results. Now we witness a retreat in some fields of publicly funded research as government allows the private sector to fund significant basic research. We also observe some sub-domains of applied research, particularly in space, being yielded to private enterprise with the government incentivising such work in the form of resupply contracts to the International Space Station. While the gravity of some research has shifted to Europe such as high energy physics, the United States still plays an important role in providing funding and industrial capacity.

 

Elsewhere, new players are entering the stage of big science research. China is investing heavily in new laboratories such as the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS). Both China and India are pursuing ambitious programmes for space exploration. The increasing interest in mega science projects may present new opportunities for international collaboration.

 

Each of these developments deserves to be studied in detail from multiple disciplinary and international perspectives.

 

A new network for research on big science and large-scale research infrastructures

In January 2018, a group of junior researchers focusing on research infrastructures were brought together for seminar at Lund University, where a research project on “The Rise of the New Big Science: Opportunities and challenges for nations, universities and science” studying present efforts in Lund to construct a new Big-Science facility the European Spallation Source (ESS).

 

The seminar resulted in a successful panel proposal for the ECPR General Conference 2018. The next step planned is the establishment of an interdisciplinary network to bring together researchers focusing on big science and research infrastructures. The aims of the network is to provide a forum for researchers around the world to exchange knowledge and experience on various aspects of big science and research infrastructures and therefore bring forward a very young field of research. Network members have a variety of backgrounds and analytical perspectives; these include historical studies, political science, psychology, sociology and physics. If you are interested in our activities or would like to get involved please contact Nicolas Rüffin for further information.

 

The next major event will be the panel on “Research infrastructures in Europe: Big science, Big Politics, Big Decisions” at the ECPR General Conference in August 2018, which is composed of four papers reporting on a variety of studies. The contributors of the panel deal with different aspects of European scientific collaboration in view of Big Science and Research Infrastructures, which is characterized by incoherent policymaking and ad hoc solutions. Nevertheless, European countries are able to come together and establish world-leading RIs despite the lack of pre-existing frameworks. The panellists examine different facets of this puzzling contradiction. These include looking at the role of the EU in coordinating and improving strategic planning, the history and politics of bilateral and intergovernmental collaboration, and different tools of policy-making such as foresight and roadmapping.

 

The panel will constitute a much-needed effort to raise visibility to these topics and begin a debate on the main concepts by analysing what actors and processes are involved in policy-making around RIs in Europe. Furthermore, we hope to be able to reach other researchers interested in the topic, in order to continually growing the network.

 

Authors: Isabel K. Bolliger, PhD Researcher at University of Lausanne (Switzerland). Katharina Cramer, Research Fellow at University of Konstanz (Germany). Dr David Eggleton, Associate Tutor at University of Sussex (UK). Dr. habil. Olof Hallonsten, Researcher at Lund University (Sweden). Maria Moskovko, PhD Researcher at Lund University (Sweden). Nicolas Rüffin, Research Fellow at Berlin Social Science Center (Germany).

[i] Authors are listed in alphabetical order.

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When Prime Minister, Theresa May​, said in Florence last autumn that, “the United Kingdom has never totally felt at home being in the European Union”, she not only misrepresented the history of her country, she betrayed the legacy of her party.

It was only because of the passionate resolve of past Conservative Prime Ministers that Britain joined the European Community in the first place.

Now, Mrs May is Britain’s only Prime Minister ever to go against membership of the European Union and the cherished Single Market of Europe. She will be taking Britain out, whereas all previous Prime Ministers (both Tory and Labour) wanted Britain to be in.

WINSTON CHURCHILL: It was one of the Tory party’s greatest leaders, Winston Churchill, who passionately promoted the ‘Union of Europe as a whole’ and is recognised as a founder of the European Union.

When the European Economic Community (now called the European Union) was created in 1957, Churchill welcomed the formation of a “common market” by the six founding countries, provided that “the whole of free Europe will have access”.

Churchill added, “We genuinely wish to join..”

But Churchill also warned:

“If, on the other hand, the European trade community were to be permanently restricted to the six nations, the results might be worse than if nothing were done at all – worse for them as well as for us. It would tend not to unite Europe but to divide it – and not only in the economic field.”

In 1961 Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, applied for Britain to join the European Community.

Churchill wrote, “I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community..”

He added, “We might well play a great part in these developments to the profit of not only ourselves, but of our European friends also.”

HAROLD MACMILLAN: In a pamphlet explaining to the nation why Britain had applied to join the European Community in 1961, Prime Minister Macmillan wrote:

“By negotiating for British membership of the European Economic Community and its Common Market, the present Conservative Government has taken what is perhaps the most fateful and forward looking policy decision in our peacetime history.

“We did not do so lightly. It was only after a searching study of all the facts that we came to accept this as the right and proper course.”

Mr Macmillan continued:

“By joining this vigorous and expanding community and becoming one of its leading members, as I am convinced we would, this country would not only gain a new stature in Europe, but also increase its standing and influence in the councils of the world.”

SIR ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME: Mr Macmillan’s successor, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, was briefly prime minister for one year from 1964. He supported Britain’s application to join the European Community. Sir Alec said:

“I have never made it a secret that I cannot see an alternative which would offer as good a prospect for this country as joining the E.E.C. [European Community].”

And he also stated:

“I am acutely conscious that there are two questions which have to be asked: not only whether we should go in, but what is the prospect for Britain if we stay out. Those two questions have to be asked because, whether we are in or out, the Community goes on.”

EDWARD HEATH: It was Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, who joined Britain to the European Community following the backing of Parliament after 300 hours of debate (contrast that with the scant time given to Parliament by the current Conservative government to debate the triggering of Article 50 and the European Withdrawal Bill.)

On the evening of 28 October 1971, Mr Heath addressed the House of Commons during the momentous debate on Britain joining the European Community. He said:

“Surely we must consider the consequences of staying out. We cannot delude ourselves that an early chance would be given us to take the decision again.

“We should be denying ourselves and succeeding generations the opportunities which are available to us in so many spheres; opportunities which we ourselves in this country have to seize.

“We should be leaving so many aspects of matters affecting our daily lives to be settled outside our own influence. That surely cannot be acceptable to us.

“We should be denying to Europe, also – let us look outside these shores for a moment – its full potential, its opportunities of developing economically and politically, maintaining its security, and securing for all its people a higher standard of prosperity.”

Mr Heath added:

“..tonight when this House endorses this Motion many millions of people right across the world will rejoice that we have taken our rightful place in a truly United Europe.”

Parliament did endorse the Motion, and Britain subsequently joined the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973.

MARGARET THATCHER: Two years later the Labour government offered the British people a referendum on whether the country should stay in the European Community. Tory leader and future Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, strongly campaigned for the country to remain in the Community.

In a keynote speech at the time she said:

“It is not surprising that I, as Leader of the Conservative Party, should wish to give my wholehearted support to this campaign, for the Conservative Party has been pursuing the European vision almost as long as we have existed as a Party.”

Mrs Thatcher also pushed for, and made possible, the Single Market of Europe.

In September 1988 in Bruges, Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher gave a major speech about the future of Europe. She said:

“Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.”

Mrs Thatcher added:

“Let Europe be a family of nations, understanding each other better, appreciating each other more, doing more together but relishing our national identity no less than our common European endeavour.”

Crucially she said in support of the Single Market:

“By getting rid of barriers, by making it possible for companies to operate on a European scale, we can best compete with the United States, Japan and other new economic powers emerging in Asia and elsewhere.”

JOHN MAJOR: And it was former Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, who negotiated and won Parliament’s backing to sign the Maastricht Treaty, that among other benefits gave us EU Citizenship rights allowing us to reside, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent.

At the Tory Party Conference of 1992, just six months after John Major won a surprise victory in the General Election, he said to the party faithful:

“I speak as one who believes Britain’s future lies with Europe.”

And Mr Major warned about Britain walking away from Europe:

“We would be breaking Britain’s future influence in Europe. We would be ending for ever our hopes of building the kind of Europe that we want. And we would be doing that, just when across Europe the argument is coming our way. We would be leaving European policy to the French and the Germans.

“That is not a policy for Great Britain. It would be an historic mistake. And not one your Government is going to make.”

And Mr Major crucially added:

“Let us not forget why we joined the Community. It has given us jobs. New markets. New horizons. Nearly 60 per cent of our trade is now with our partners. It is the single most important factor in attracting a tide of Japanese and American investment to our shores, providing jobs for our people..

“But the most far-reaching, the most profound reason for working together in Europe I leave till last. It is peace. The peace and stability of a continent, ravaged by total war twice in this century.”

DAVID CAMERON: Previous Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, also strongly supported Britain’s continued membership of the EU, and his government’s official advice to the electorate during the Referendum was to vote for Remain.

Of course, Theresa May also shared these sentiments during the Referendum, when she campaigned for Remain and declared:

“I believe it is clearly in our national interest to remain a member of the European Union.”

And she added then:

“If we do vote to leave the European Union, we risk bringing the development of the Single Market to a halt, we risk a loss of investors and businesses to remaining EU member states driven by discriminatory EU policies, and we risk going backwards when it comes to international trade.”

But now, Mrs May has volunteered to go against her own wise words prior to 23 June 2016, and as our Conservative Prime Minister, seems determined to wreck the legacy of all the past Tory Prime Ministers – indeed of all UK Prime Ministers – of the last 60 years. Why?

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The post Destroying the legacy of past Tory Prime Ministers appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Srsly???

Following the Common’s debates on and around the Withdrawal Bill alongside my Twitter feed has been instructive at a number of levels, not least the volume of comment that can be generated around a man standing up.

But one of the more striking moments was the comments surrounding the continuing lack of knowledge that many in the chamber appear to display. The on-going conflation of the customs union and freedom of movement, or the assumption that the Irish border is only a matter of customs checks, are taken as emblematic of ‘The Mess We’re All In’.

To that I want to advance a somewhat different proposition, namely that since not everyone is as engaged in the ins-and-outs of Brexit as the kind of people who read blogs about it, they use short-cuts and heuristics to guide their way, and those are sometimes insufficient.

In the two examples I gave just now, the customs arrangements are a common element, because right now that what a lot of the British debate is about, even if – as Ken Clarke noted – no-one ever talked about it during the referendum.

Customs arrangements matter, but not to this degree, so why the focus?

Simply put, it’s because it’s a more manageable hook on which to hang a number of other big questions without getting too lost. Solutions to customs carry with them implications for those other questions, including free movement and regulatory alignment: win the narrow battle and you carry a big advantage through to the rest.

Hence the max-fac/customs partnership tussle: the former accepts hard borders, while the latter doesn’t.

Partly this is about the nature of political debate: fix on something that people feel they can understand and build out, rather than trying to convey a broad and detailed platform. That’s why ‘Brexit means Brexit’ lasted so long: it made enough sense to show that May was serious about, well, Brexit, without getting bogged down in the fine print.

Obviously, that doesn’t meant you don’t need the fine print. Or even some of the larger print, for that matter.

But partly, it’s also about Brexit. It’s a genuinely massive undertaking, well beyond the scope of any other matter of public policy. And that means there is no one master key, no one slogan that can capture that.

I’m hesitant about this, since I’m generally of the opinion that the worst way to engage people in a subject is to tell them it’s complicated. So my ju-jitsu move is to say that the shape of the problem is simple, even if the substance isn’t.

The problem is that in the face of such complexity, simple heuristics don’t work. They obscure more than they reveal and they suggest extrapolations that aren’t appropriate.

To return to the case in point, sorting out customs does offer a way into issues such as freedom of movement or regulatory alignment, but they don’t deal with the full range of those issues. Indeed, customs barely touches the sides of freedom of movement of goods, tell alone anything else.

Moreover, there are plenty of areas that can’t be addressed at all by the customs issue: the security relationship is an obvious example.

This prompts the observation that there’s a lot of stuff we’re not really giving enough attention. And a prime exhibit here is the Withdrawal Bill itself.

Recall that the purpose of the Bill is to cover the uncertainty around the status of the EU’s acquis once the UK leaves: it’s an essential counterpart to the Withdrawal Agreement. And the solution it offers, of rolling over all that acquis for the government to decide what to keep and what to chuck, matters hugely for the balance of executive and legislature in the UK, given the scale and scope of what it deals with.

And yet, we had scant discussion of that – despite numerous outstanding critiques of its model – and a focus on an (admittedly meaningful) amendment relating to the role of Parliament in the event of a failure to reach a deal with the EU by November.

The issue is essentially one of bandwidth: there’s only so much that can be a priority issue at any one time, so something’s got to give. That’s true in normal times, and these are not normal by any stretch of the imagination.

The risk is that important decisions are made by accident, or without due consideration, or even by default.

That’s a problem for everyone, both those who don’t get what they want – i.e. the large majority – and those that do – because the other lot will feel rightly aggrieved. Even the cry that “you should said something at the time” is weakened by the scale of the problem, even before we get to contemporary values about the instantaneous satisfying of one’s needs. In short, it’s a recipe for future instability.

The process of Brexit will matter as much as the outcome for the future development of the British polity. Consider how already the dissatisfactions carried by remainers shape political debate, much as the disconnect between elites and publics contributed to the referendum in the first place.

Participation is the life-blood of democracy, not only because of the need for some transmission from people to government, but also because inclusion through political channels is a means of building and maintaining a community. If we fail to heed that point, then we risk dealing with even greater problems than those posed by Brexit.

The post The heuristic gap appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Based on her prize-winning article in JCER on the Sino-European Solar Panel Dispute, Astrid Pepermans examines how the European Union (EU) risks losing a trade war which China and the US initiated. She argues that the EU must respond by remaining united and sticking to its values of quality and rule-based trade. 

Container ship in the port of Rotterdam, Holland © rob3rt82 / Adobe Stock

Lately, free traders all over the world must be having a hard time when opening their newspapers. Donald Trump is unleashing a trade war with Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, the EU is also increasingly agitated about its imbalanced trade relationship with China. And, while having similar worries about China’s mercantilist economic strategy, the US and the EU find themselves dragged into a tit-for-tat trade conflict which is not so different from the Trans-Pacific trade quarrels.

Nothing new under the sun, you may think. Trade conflicts have existed since the birth of human economic interaction. However, this is the first time that the ‘strategic triangle’ of China, the EU and the US has been so close to reaching deadlock. The EU may well get squeezed between the two superpowers, which know exactly how to play on the EU’s internal divisions. The EU risks losing a trade war which China and the US initiated.

One could argue – and some experts do – for a Sino-European alliance against President Trump’s foolhardy catalogue of requirements for every country with whom the US has a trade deficit. However, as my recent article on the Sino-European solar panel dispute illustrates, existing worries about Chinese overcapacities, dumping practices, mercantilist policies and technological transfers are far from ill-founded.

In fact, these unfair trade practices have been, and are, harmful to the EU. While the European Commission has some trade defence instruments to tackle them, the same case demonstrates how China can bypass the Union with ease by playing member states against each other. In short, while fighting the eagle by joining the panda sounds like a good idea, history has shown that the latter has claws too and that it will use them whenever it feels its interests are endangered.

Others argue for the opposite: a western front forcing China to deliver on all the promises it made when it entered the WTO in 2001. These promises include opening up the Chinese market to foreign goods and investment; transforming the economy from state-directed to market-orientated; making consumption rather than investment the main driver of Chinese growth; and liberalising its monetary system etc. Nevertheless, it is clear that Trump is planning on playing cavalier seul on this one. Even if the US and the EU worked together to press for Chinese concessions, it is highly unlikely (and equally unconducive) that all the EU member states would join the US’s extremely hard stance in the debate.

Whether by means of hard protectionism or offensive mercantilism, both the US and China are laying claim to the top spot of the global economy. The only way for the EU to cope with its position between the hammer and the anvil is to remain united and to set its own course. Such a course does not include closing off its market, nor does it mean that it should make an enemy of China or the US.

It means sticking to what is at the core of the Union: rule-based trade. Trump is wrong on many points, but not on his argument that China should follow trade rules. The prospect of tapping into the huge Chinese consumer market has blinded the 28 EU member states to China’s economic nationalism, which has stood in the way of a level economic playing field since China’s entry into the WTO.

Having arrived at a point where Chinese strategic investments have made clear the enormous competitive pressure unleashed by the ‘opening up’ of the Chinese economy, it is only now dawning on countries like France and Germany that their position in global trade is being challenged. However, their efforts to establish a decent screening mechanism at European level to scrutinise Chinese investments in sensitive industries have been hampered by the desire among many other member states to attract Chinese capital.

Creating a European policy and tackling the challenge mean that the member states must refrain from short-term thinking, which implies not giving in on every financial carrot China dangles before them. As a unified whole, the EU28 still carries serious economic weight and the member states should be less afraid of using it to press for fair competition. In the same vein, quality should remain Europe’s central yardstick. Competition is important for innovation and economic progress, but not when it causes international price wars and a global race to the bottom. Whether for European, Chinese or American goods, quality standards should be agreed upon and upheld.

Fair international competition and a consistent focus on quality will in turn create room for manoeuvre for Europe to increase its productivity and prosper economically. The threefold approach of regaining Europe’s economic competitiveness, sticking to European values such as quality and rule-based trade, and conveying them in a forceful and unanimous way is the only option for Europe to tackle both the China and Trump challenges.

This article is based on the author’s article in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies (JCER) Vol 13 No 4, which won the 2018 Luke Foster Prize for Best JCER Article. 

Please note that this article represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the UACES Graduate Forum, JCER or UACES.

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Shortlink for this article: http://bit.ly/2sT5FNE

Astrid Pepermans 
Free University of Brussels / Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Astrid Pepermans obtained a Masters degree in Political Sciences and started working as a teaching assistant at the Free University of Brussels in 2015. She is currently preparing a PhD thesis on the Sino-European political/economic relationship.

 

The post Unless the EU Gets Its Act Together, It Will Lose a Trade War Against Both China and the US appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Last week Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, proposed that President Donald J. Trump should be in charge of Brexit.

“Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Johnson said, according to a leaked audio recording obtained and published by BuzzFeed.

“I have become more and more convinced that there is method in his madness.”

“He’d go in bloody hard … There would be all sorts of breakdowns, there would be all sorts of chaos.

“Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually, you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought,” he said.

In reality, it’s a very, very bad thought.

Trump causes discord in his wake every time he talks or Tweets.

His method of management is to abandon diplomacy and use bellicose, bully-boy tactics, causing as Johnson so gleefully admires, “all sorts of breakdowns… all sorts of chaos.”

Which is also exactly what Brexit offers us too. Breakdowns and chaos.

During the USA election campaign Donald Trump called himself ‘Mr Brexit’. The name fits. Trump’s style of populist nationalism and insular policies are isolating America just as Brexit is isolating Britain.

Brexit, Trump, populism, nationalism, bigotry…they all come from the same DNA. We should have learnt from history that this strand of politics leads to disharmony, conflict and yes, even war.

This weekend Trump huffily left the G7 summit causing rifts and ruptures. He yanked the USA out of a previously agreed summit communique, and accused the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, of being “dishonest and weak”.

All, of course, straight out of the book, ‘How to win friends and influence people.’

The G7, which is supposed to be a network of global co-operation between the world’s leading countries, has been turned into a fiasco.

All because a dangerous bully has been put in charge at the White House. A guy who uses shockingly harsh, belittling language towards fellow democratically-elected leaders of allied countries to enforce his way.

The guy Boris Johnson thinks should be in charge of Brexit.

Trump is setting America on a perilous course, alienated from its allies, isolated, abandoning co-operation and attempting to win dirty trade wars with those previously considered to be friends.

Brexit is doing exactly the same to Britain. We are cutting ourselves off from our nearest and most important allies; our friends and neighbours in Europe.

We think we can ‘go it alone’, just as Trump thinks that America will be great again, alone.

It’s not too late to extricate ourselves from this mad path to pandemonium. We don’t have to follow Trump’s method of madness, so admired by Boris Johnson.

We should be working with our allies in Europe, not leaving them at just the time when we need our friends close at hand.

It’s complete folly to believe that Brexit will bring anything good to Britain. The country needs an urgent opportunity to do a democratic U-turn on Brexit, and return to sanity.

The alternative is to follow Trump, and Boris, on a road to ruin.

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The post The man Boris Johnson would put in charge of Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

Although there’s hardly anything about it in the news, one year ago Theresa May held a snap General Election in a bid to win a bigger mandate for her Tory version of Brexit.

Instead, she lost her mandate entirely.

The Tory’s majority in the House of Commons was crushed in the General Election of 8 June 2017. Any sane Prime Minister would take that as a message from the electorate that the country didn’t want the Brexit she was planning.

Instead, Mrs May is carrying on as if last year’s election hadn’t happened; unfortunately, aided and abetted by Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour Party, who have squandered opportunity after opportunity to effectively challenge Brexit following the Tory’s election defeat.

Leading Brexiters claim that since around 80% of the electorate voted for Brexit-supporting parties, that means the country has endorsed Brexit. That’s nonsense.

Voters didn’t vote for Labour because they wanted Brexit. They voted tactically for Labour because they didn’t want the Tories.

Most Labour voters voted for Remain, and according to current polling, most Labour members and supporters want Britain to remain in the EU or at least the Single Market.

• The Tory Brexit lost last year’s General Election. But they are ignoring that result.
  
• They will not let us, ‘the people’, have another say on Brexit.
  
• They are trying their damnedest to prevent our Parliament from having a ‘meaningful say’ on Brexit.
  
• They insist that Brexit is permanently irreversible, even though in a democracy, no decision is supposed to be beyond recall, or perpetual.

This is no longer just about Britain leaving Europe. This is about democracy leaving Britain.

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Below is my story of 8 June 2017, the day of the General Election, written for my Reasons2Remain campaign, as the country was going to the polls to give Mrs May a message that she has still not read.

→ A vote against Mrs May can stop her plans – please share WE SAY: VOTE TO STOP HER Today’s snap general election is as close as we may get to a second EU referendum. This is our chance to soften Brexit, if not to stop it completely.

When, on 18 April, Mrs May stood outside 10 Downing Street to announce a surprise general election, she said (yet again) that, “Britain is leaving the European Union and there can be no turning back.”

Don’t believe her on that.

Just one year ago, Mrs May campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union, which she urged then was in Britain’s best interests. But she turned her back on that and instead volunteered to be the gung-ho Brexit Prime Minister.

And Mrs May also turned back on her pledge that there would not be another General Election until May 2020. Out of the blue, she called for a General Election three years early.

Now it’s our turn to turn our backs on Mrs May.

She cynically called an early General Election because she thought she could make a political land grab. She seeks a new mandate to bulldoze Britain out of the European Union, with a hard, harsh version of Brexit that will only benefit speculators, spivs and off-shore spongers.

Mrs May said in April:

“Every vote for the Conservatives will make it harder for opposition politicians who want to stop me from getting the job done.”

So, let’s vote to stop her.

The General Election today is our legitimate, democratic opportunity for a softer Brexit or even to stop Brexit. That would be almost impossible if Mrs May is returned to power.

Mrs May said Brexit means Brexit, but has made clear that she wants her version of Brexit, without us, the people, having any further say on the matter.

In announcing the snap General Election, May said she had a “simple challenge to the opposition parties.”

She continued, “you have criticised the government’s vision for Brexit, you have challenged our objectives, you have threatened to block the legislation we put before Parliament.

“This is your moment to show you mean it, to show you are not opposing the government for the sake of it, to show that you do not treat politics as a game.”

Agreed. Now is the opportunity for opposition parties to show they mean it. And now is our moment to vote to stop Mrs May’s true-blue right-wing Brexit plans for Britain.

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Today Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, and the man who more than any other helped to cause Brexit, handed in his resignation.

In the years leading up to the EU referendum, and since, the Daily Mail has published a daily deluge of stories that spread hatred of migrants and the EU.

“Without Dacre there would be no Brexit,” said David Yelland this evening, the former editor of The Sun.

“In a 52-48 vote, I have no doubt, and nobody in politics would disagree with this, he pushed us over the edge on Brexit.

“By the way, he’s very proud of that, although he’d never say that publicly. He would say his readers did, of course.”

It’s been announced today that Geordie Greig, editor of the Mail on Sunday and a strong Remain supporter, is tipped to be the next editor of the Daily Mail.

Commented Guido Fawkes today, “Greig is a huge Remainer so it would be quite a change of direction.”

However, Mr Dacre is not stepping down until November, when he will then become editor-in-chief and chair of Associated Newspapers, the ower of the Daily Mail.

As Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee commented, “His hot, fiery breath and sweary bollockings may bear down on his successor.” She added,

“As he reputedly frightens his proprietor, Lord Rothermere, Dacre may be the one to appoint an editor in his own image.”

In the year before the referendum, I gave a speech at an international media conference in Germany, on how newspaper lies in Britain promoted xenophobia. I quoted the Daily Mail more than any other newspaper as being guilty of this.

The following year, Britain voted for Brexit, citing ‘too many migrants’ as one of the main reasons.

There is a connection. Please share my video.

• News update: Remainer and currently editor of the Mail On Sunday, Geordie Greig, is to replace Paul Dacre as Editor of the Daily Mail next November.

________________________________________________________

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How newspaper lies led to Brexit

→ Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, resigns – Please shareVIDEO: HOW NEWSPAPER LIES LED TO BREXIT Today Paul Dacre, Editor of the Daily Mail, and the man who more than any other helped to cause Brexit, handed in his resignation.In the years leading up to the EU referendum, and since, the Daily Mail has published a daily deluge of stories that spread hatred of migrants and the EU.“Without Dacre there would be no Brexit,” said David Yelland this evening, the former editor of The Sun. “In a 52-48 vote, I have no doubt, and nobody in politics would disagree with this, he pushed us over the edge on Brexit.“By the way, he’s very proud of that, although he’d never say that publicly. He would say his readers did, of course.”It’s been announced today that Geordie Greig, editor of the Mail on Sunday and a strong Remain supporter, is tipped to be the next editor of the Daily Mail. Commented Guido Fawkes today, “Greig is a huge Remainer so it would be quite a change of direction.”However, Mr Dacre is not stepping down until November, when he will then become editor-in-chief and chair of Associated Newspapers, the ower of the Daily Mail. As Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee commented, "His hot, fiery breath and sweary bollockings may bear down on his successor." She added, "As he reputedly frightens his proprietor, Lord Rothermere, Dacre may be the one to appoint an editor in his own image."In the year before the referendum, journalist and Reasons2Remain founder, Jon Danzig, gave a speech at an international media conference in Germany, on how newspaper lies in Britain promoted xenophobia. Jon quoted the Daily Mail more than any other newspaper as being guilty of this. The following year, Britain voted for Brexit, citing ‘too many migrants’ as one of the main reasons. “There is a connection,” said Jon this evening.Please share his video.• News update: Remainer and currently editor of the Mail On Sunday, Geordie Greig, is to replace Paul Dacre as Editor of the Daily Mail next November. theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/07/new-daily-mail-editor-to-be-geordie-greig

Posted by Reasons2Remain on Thursday, 7 June 2018

 

 

The post How newspaper lies led to Brexit appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

This week I found myself in one of the leafier parts of the stock-broker belt, giving an after-lunch talk on the Brexit process. As we pushed the meat-and-two-veg around the plates of the clubhouse, I listened to tales of how the Germans were trying to do what they didn’t manage in the world wars, and of how Whitehall was trying to spike the whole thing.

Tragically, for the bathos of this tale, cake wasn’t on the menu, but a rather good summer-fruit pudding instead.

This experience, plus the continued agonies of the government this week, invite me to consider the role of trust.

Trust is a central part of politics: indeed, one might argue it’s fundamental, given the need to work with others to achieve any political process or outcome.

At the same time, it’s also necessary to recognise that trust is sometimes in short supply, as in the case of Brexit: a lot of participants – both principals and the wider public – don’t trust any one, including those on ‘their own’ side.

Once again, I’ll take you back to some negotiation theory, because this isn’t an uncommon issue. The principled negotiation model that I’ve discussed before offers a number of strategies for dealing with those you don’t really trust: indeed, one of the motivations for using this approach is that it is grounded in always taking your relations with others with a pinch of salt.

The first key concept is that you’re trying to solve a problem, not a person. That means focusing your efforts on the matter in hand, but it also implies that you can be sympathetic to the other needs they might have, albeit without making it part of the negotiation. Indeed, being able to empathise with their situation might help you understand better how to address the problem you both face. Acknowledgement of how they feel doesn’t have to mean acceptance or concession, but rather opens up new ways to tackle and resolve the issue.

Secondly, and related to this, is the need to recognise and manage one’s emotions. Often there are problems of vicious circles of emotion, as each side becomes frustrated or annoyed by the other side’s frustration or annoyance. Being able to step out of one’s own self and see how you come across is a vital step in this: a useful rule of thumb is that if you don’t think you need to do this, then you need to do it. If you don’t want to dress it up in quite such grand terms, then it’s largely about being self-aware. As I’ve noted elsewhere, it’s not what you say that matters, but what people hear.

Linked to this is the notion of getting away from tit-for-tat. Old Testament-style an-eye-for-an-eye approaches might feel satisfying, but they tend to produce the kind of downward spirals just mentioned: retribution usually only begets more retribution. Instead, there has to be a willingness to step back from the brink of kicking back. This links to the first idea, inasmuch as if you can appreciate that they have emotions too, then you’re more likely to let them vent, so you can then get on with the core work of solving the problem. Sure, this can make you somewhat annoying, as you wait for them to finish, but if it produces results then that might be a price worth paying.

Incidentally, the Commission is doing a lot of this right now: letting the various factions in the UK put out their desires and vent their furies, before working through the issues of whatever document comes out of it all.

There’s a final idea here too, that takes me back to my Surrey lunch: the question of alternatives.

Usually in a negotiation, failure to agree leaves things as they were: you don’t buy the car, or sign the trade deal. But it’s also essential that you understand what the best alternative to an agreement might be, because if that’s not as good as what’s on offer in the negotiation, then you should take the negotiated outcome.

In the case of Brexit, the alternative to an agreed deal is departure from the EU in March 2019 with no deal. There is nothing either the Germans, or Whitehall, or anyone else can do to stop that happening, now that Article 50 has been invoked.

Moreover, the decision to invoke was the UK’s, with Parliament following the decision in the referendum, so it’s not an unforced error, but an outcome of democratic politics. Ultimately, that means that the outcome of all of this rests with the government laying a deal that it has agreed with the EU before Parliament to be approved: that too will be a democratic process.

Parliament thus already holds the power to frustrate the supposed will of others: what it has to decide is whether rejecting any final deal is better than accepting what is offered. That power can, and does translate into the ability to encourage the government to pursue certain objectives that it, Parliament, deem important, but that can only happen in a short window between new and the autumn.

Whether everyone can hold their emotions in check in the coming weeks remains to be seen.

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Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has been criticised for rejecting a House of Lords amendment for Britain to remain a member of the EEA (European Economic Area) after Brexit.

Instead, Mr Corbyn said Labour would push for a ‘new Single Market’ deal with the EU, giving Britain full access but without accepting all the rules, such as free movement of people.

But newspapers reported that his proposal had ‘split the party’ amid accusations that he was making a ‘fudge’ of Brexit and offering ‘weak leadership’.

The EU has already said the UK cannot have a bespoke arrangement that retains all the benefits of the Single Market without the obligations that membership entails.

But that’s exactly what both the Tory government and the Labour opposition are proposing. They are both spending energy pretending we can keep EU benefits without being a member of the EU or its Single Market.

The EU has flatly said no to such an idea.

Even before the referendum Theresa May said:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

And before the referendum, Jeremy Corbyn said:

“Labour is convinced that a vote to Remain is in the best interests of the people of this country.”

He added,

“The Labour Party is overwhelmingly for staying in.”

But whatever their positions were before 23 June 2016, they both now support Brexit, in one form or another.

Neither are willing to give Britain another chance to consider the issue.

Jeremy Corbyn has said that, “we have to respect” the referendum decision. Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell agreed, adding that, “We must not try to re-fight the referendum or push for a second vote.”

Theresa May has also agreed, saying it wouldn’t be right to give people another vote, adding that, “people voted and politicians should respect that.”

Even though a YouGov survey published this week found that a significant majority of voters now think that the decision to leave the EU was wrong.

According to the poll, Remain now commands a lead over Leave of 47% to 40%. It’s the biggest margin for Remain since the regular survey began two years ago.

Commented our polling expert, Professor Adrian Low of Staffordshire University, “This translates into a 10.7% lead for Remain.”

And a recent poll of over 200,000 local newspaper readers showed that most Britons would now vote to remain in the European Union if there was another referendum.

But like a broken record, both May and Corbyn are stuck in a time warp, repeating their mantra of having to ‘accept the will of the people’ as expressed two years ago.

On this, both of Britain’s two main parties seem to be locked hand-in-hand with each other. Brexit has been decided, so we must stick with it, regardless, they say.

It seems so odd, since before the referendum, both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition were in complete agreement with each other: Britain should remain in the EU, because Brexit would be damaging to our country’s best interests.

How on earth did we get stuck with Brexit?

After all, Brexit used to sit on the far side-lines of politics. Indeed, the word ‘Brexit’ was only invented in 2012, and until the lead up to the 2016 referendum, most people didn’t even know what it meant. (Now it’s in the Oxford English dictionary.)

For over 40 years Britain didn’t want to leave the EU.

Britain’s membership of the EU was never previously a majority interest subject. Some on the fringes of the Conservative and Labour Parties thought Britain should leave the EU, but they were small in number.

The vast majority of MPs and members of the House of Lords strongly supported Britain’s membership of the EU, and most of them voted for Britain to remain in the European Union.

With the notable exception of the current Tory government, every single UK government and Prime Minister since we applied to join the European Community back in 1961 has supported our membership of the EEC/EU.

And for most of our membership, the vast majority of people in Britain also didn’t want Britain to leave the EU. We’d been members for around 40 years and it was not a big deal. There was not a groundswell of opinion for Britain to leave.

Even one year before the EU referendum, polling showed that support for our continued membership was running at three-to-one in favour.

Nevertheless, Britain – to the shock of everyone – voted for Brexit two years ago, and we are now on the road to leaving the EU in March next year.

Now Brexit is on the news every single day, most often the lead news item.

Parliament, politics, the news, discussions at work, in the pub and in living rooms across the country, are often dominated with talk of Brexit.

How did it happen?

It started when politicians, who should have known better, got scared of a little Eurosceptic party called UKIP. A party so fractured, small and splintered that they have now sunk into oblivion.

But senior politicians in both the Conservative and Labour Parties were fearful of UKIP.

Instead of bucking the UKIP trend, they fell for it; they unwisely helped to promote and prolong it, along with the majority of British newspapers, also guilty of inciting UKIP’s message of xenophobia.

Just before the 2015 general election, the BBC reported on the rise of UKIP:

‘David Cameron’s historic pledge to hold an in/out referendum on UK membership of the EU if the Conservatives won the next election was interpreted by some as an attempt to halt the rise of UKIP, which senior Tories feared could prevent them from winning an overall majority in 2015.’

(Repeat: Previously hardly anyone in Britain was concerned about Britain’s EU membership – it was a minority issue on the side-lines of politics.)

In 2014 Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP told The Telegraph:

“Parts of the country have been taken over by foreigners and mass immigration has left Britain as unrecognisable.”

It was complete nonsense of course. Most Britons didn’t have a serious problem with migration before the likes of Nigel Farage, UKIP’s on-off-on-off leader, told them they did.

If you look at a map of where UKIP had the highest support, it was mostly in the areas of Britain where there was the least migration. And conversely, in the areas with lots of migrants, UKIP mostly had the least support.

The foreign-born of Britain only represent about 12% of the population – that’s a normal proportion for most modern, thriving western democracies. Even among those 12% of foreign-born are many considered to be British, such as Boris Johnson, born in New York, and Joanna Lumley, born in India.

And citizens from the rest of the EU living in the UK represent only 5% of the population – that’s small and hardly ‘mass immigration.’

Tory MP, Sir Oliver Letwin, agreed. He said that British politicians “made a terrible mistake” in failing to take on the argument about immigration, the argument spread by UKIP.

He told The Sunday Times just after the referendum result:

“We all, the Labour party and the Conservative Party alike … made a terrible mistake, which was not to take on the argument about migration.”

He added that UKIP exploited the failure of mainstream politicians to “put the counter-argument” that “migration enriches the country in every way.”

But even Mr Farage, who married a German and has a foreign name, probably doesn’t believe most of what he says. What he really means behind his Ukipish words are:

“Scaring people and the other political parties about immigration has spectacularly worked for us.”

Gandhi got it right when he said:

“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear.”

It’s time to stop being fearful. Brexit came about because of unfounded fear.

Now our leading politicians are too fearful to challenge Brexit; scared that they would be going against the ‘will of the people’ as expressed on one summer’s day two years ago, without any interest in finding out what that will is today.

We need to let the politicians know, clearly, loudly and boldly, that Brexit is not our will.

Our political leaders should have the courage to state what they already know in their hearts and heads to be true: it’s in our country’s best interests to #STOPBREXIT.

Especially now that polling confirms that the country agrees: Brexit is a big mistake.

• Related interview with Jon Danzig: The tide is turning on Brexit:

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