Written by Robert Tombs
This article first appeared in BriefingsforBritian.com and we republish here with kind permission.
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The prominent Left-wing intellectual Perry Anderson has just published a comprehensive and crushing indictment of the EU from its beginnings to the present. Robert Tombs provides a summary for those who might balk at reading the whole 50,000 words.
Perry Anderson’s evisceration of the European Union’s past and present in three long articles in the London Review of Books is remarkable in at least three ways. First, for its lucidity and intellectual richness: my summary can in no way substitute for reading the whole, which I strongly recommend. If many of its arguments are broadly familiar to critics of the EU, they have rarely been so cogently expressed, or with such controlled anger and command of detail. Second, because it comes from a leading Left-wing intellectual—though this will be no surprise to Left-inclined Leavers or to those who have followed some of Anderson’s earlier writings. Third, because it appears in a journal whose overwhelming majority of readers must be archetypal metropolitan Remainers: so all credit to the LRB’s editors. I look forward with anticipation to a flurry of Letters to the Editor attempting to reply to Anderson’s indictment. But so far, not one.
The first article, ‘The European coup’ (17 December) is an extended discussion of the political history of European ‘integration’ (apparently an American term), focusing on a book by a Dutch philosopher-historian, Luuk van Middelaar, The Passage to Europe: How a Continent Became a Union (Yale, 2013). The significance of this book is that it has been widely praised as the most intellectually penetrating and stimulating of the many (often deadly dull) histories of European integration. Donald Tusk hailed it as ‘the most insightful book on European politics today’. Sir Ivan Rogers described it as ‘brilliant’. Its triumphalist vindication of the European project won its author plaudits and prestigious appointments as advisor to a succession of prominent EU politicians.
Anderson thus chooses to analyse the history of the EU, and its pre-history in the early 19th century Restoration, through the eyes of one of its most intelligent apologists. But he turns Middelaar’s triumphant saga into a withering examination of the political means by which it was carried out. Middelaar unashamedly presents the EU as created through a series of ‘coups’, through which powers were taken and changes made by short-circuiting or simply overriding legal and democratically sanctioned procedures in the name of political necessity—an idea, as Anderson shows, that draws on a strand of European political thought going back to Machiavelli.
One of the most crucial of these ‘coups’ was in Milan in 1985, when Bettino Craxi, as chairman of the European Council, ruled that an inter-governmental conference was not needed to change the Treaty of Rome, as this was merely a question of procedure, not of substance. This for the first time overrode the opposition of a minority of member states, including Britain. Middelaar hails it as a brilliant bluff, a ‘coup disguised as a procedural decision’. What Middelaar typically ignores, but Anderson points out, is that Craxi was ‘the single most corrupt Italian politician of his time’, who had to flee into gilded exile in Tunisia to live off his ill-gotten gains. Thanks to Craxi, ‘the gate was unbarred’ to a series of treaty changes decided by heads of government alone and which created the EU. The article ends tellingly by quoting EU President Herman van Rumpuy (to whom Middelaar was a close advisor): ‘I believe the Union is over-democratised.’
The second article, ‘Ever Closer Union?’ (7 January) is a close examination of the history and functioning of the EU’s principal institutions: the Court, the Commission, the Council, the Parliament and the Central Bank. The founding fathers of the Court, notes Anderson, included former Nazis, an Italian fascist, and a French collaborator: nearly all appointees were not lawyers but politicians, as they remain. The Court has always been ‘the driving force of integration’ at the expense of the legal rights of nations and civil-society bodies such as trade unions. It has brazenly ignored or distorted European treaties and laws, acting beyond its powers in more of Middelaar’s ‘coups’. Most fundamental was its assertion that European law overrode national law—a theory first formulated by another former Nazi lawyer, Hans Peter Ipsen, but which had no basis in the European treaties. Most significant of all, the Court is unique in the world in being entirely unaccountable to anyone. Its decisions are secretive, final and effectively irreversible. In short, powers ‘that no analogue in a democracy has ever possessed.’
Anderson subjects the other EU institutions to similar scrutiny. Their common features are secretiveness, democratic unaccountability, and ‘consensus’—‘a façade of unanimity’ principally imposed by Germany and France. The exception is the Parliament, but this ‘least consequential component of the Union’ merely provides ‘the appearance of a democratic assembly behind which oligarchic coteries are comfortably entrenched.’ The Central Bank, like the Court, is unique for being completely unaccountable to any outside authority, let alone any democratic institution, and so it is able to break the treaties which in theory empower it.
What has been created is a system of interlocking oligarchies on a pre-democratic pattern. The horizontal relations between governments of ‘member-states’ (no longer independent sovereign states) are more important than the vertical relations between those governments and their citizens, to whom political decisions are presented as faits accomplis unconnected with, and sometimes clearly opposed to, popular mandates.
Who benefits? Certain countries (principally Germany) and certain economic interests. And of course, the oligarchy itself:
It is enough to make a roll-call of its leading ornaments. Christine Lagarde, current president of the European Central Bank: suspected of complicity in fraud and malversation of public funds … Ursula von der Leyen …: charged in 2015 with plagiarism on 43 per cent of the pages of her 1990 doctorate at Hannover Medical School … Jean-Claude Juncker … survived repeated exposure of his involvement in the tax avoidance and policies facilitating money-laundering for which his country is famous … [The] high representative for foreign affairs and security, the Spaniard Josep Borrell: forced to resign as president of the European University Institute in Florence for concealing the annual salary of €300,000 he had been receiving from a Spanish energy company …
But as Anderson demonstrates (and as Briefings for Britain has often stated) there is no evidence of economic benefit for the peoples of Europe as a whole, other than ‘low key facilities’ such as greater ease of travel and variety on supermarket shelves.
The final article, ‘The Breakaway’ (21 January), continues its examination of the political history of the EU focusing on Britain’s relationship with ‘the project’ from Macmillan to Johnson. Few Brexiteers, I think, would disagree with his overall interpretation. He discusses several prominent British commentators, both Remainers (noting the ‘weakness’ of their stance, attacking Leave but offering no vision of Britain in the EU, and averting their gaze from its defects), and Leavers. Among the latter, he recognizes the ‘substance’ in the ideas of our friends Noel Malcolm, Richard Tuck and Chris Bickerton, who differ in their political starting points but agree on the legitimacy of Brexit. Given his own political views, Anderson is a stern critic of the British system of government. This makes the comparison he draws with the EU all the more compelling: ‘for all its woeful shortcomings … Westminster is vastly superior to this lacquered synarchy.’
He ends on a questioning note: will new global challenges somehow push the EU towards ‘adaptation’, or is its ‘current formula’ (which he defines as ‘dilute sovereignty without meaningful democracy, compulsory unanimity without participant equality, cult of free markets without care of free trade’) likely to last indefinitely? Perhaps he has already given the answer, writing in his second article that Europe is stuck in a ‘trap’, unable to move forwards or backwards, and held together principally by ‘fear of the unknown.’
Most interesting – Shows what an incredible achievement it is for one man, Nigel Farage, to have defeated such a monolithic hybrid of corruption and deceit – Hardly seems credible that it would have ever been possible – Generations to come will make movies of Britain’s Brexit escape, it has everything, an impossible task for the hero figure, myriad cliff hangers and ironies, huge characters on both sides and most importantly the eternal classic of a victory by the people over their masters.
Here is the silver lining in the Covid cloud . To the corrupt oligarchy The EU project is more important than the health of the Europeans.
If the Europeans put up with it they deserve what they get.
Lets call a spade a spade. The British establishment is every bit as devious as the EU.
“It is as well to state this at the outset – no government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences……. No satisfactory economic plan for Europe can be devised without sacrifice of sovereignty by the nations concerned.” – Peter Thorneycroft, former Tory MP June 1947 (Posts held; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chief Whip, Secretary of State for Defence, Party Chairman)
I would point out that a fine example of a small but debasing change is happening right now, in the governments Political arm to debase and starve and reduce the political position of the armed forces, and others, ( Hence the political value of Covid ) that can equally oppose the political changes before the Monarch. This is why the PM always toadys to the Queen. And why politics tries to marginalise the Queen. and debase the HoL. So, the Service Heads Are equals, as should be the Chancellor.
It is this slow and obscene corruptuon by politics that got us here.
This dance of power before the Monarch requires the Manarch above it all but ESSENTIALLY make sure the Monarch authority is NEVER nibbled away without wisdom and understanding.
All this discussion about politics is about the Queen. Charles, and William and how strong these competing factions feel.
So when we moan about the HoL which once upon a time protected ‘haves’ upon which everyone depends ( the wealth and economy ) we are being seriously thick and politically wrong. Nobody nowadays talks the Queen being the protector of thepeople, But that is what she is against any of the yapping mobs. Such as the HoL vs HoC, Services, Church, Exchequer, Civil Service. [ All infiltrated by Politic Party beliefs and supporters, and that is why partys are so dangerous they aim to subvert everything. ]
.This is one reason why manifestos are dangerous. and stupid and everything at once and can be apple pie.
Very interesting. It cements my belief that the state of our constitution has been shaped in the last hundred and twenty years, by copying laws from either American or EU sources, in a gradual degradation of minor corruptions, or mere idleness noting that ” That is how they do it, and it works for them “. Those two examples of lazyness of our MPs, Lawyers ( So called Judges), governers, have bought our country on every step of the journey from Eminence to grovelling.
Examples abound of tiny changes causing corruption. Similarly., Lack of action as a powerful political tool, of what is actually cowardice. With the result that we have a constitution that can be claimed as flexible, or almost any adjective you can think of. Meaning almost anything.
They cannot be bothered to think.
PS As a useful guide to sensible action that can substitute for evidence or deduction, I reccommend Wise Women, or Grannies sayings. Some of which are contradictory but useful in argument.
I endorse this recommendation!
🙂
Wise Women were certainly wiser than the Church that burned them alive at the stake!
But actually TGS the wise women used deduction, to extrapolate from empirical evidence.
Probably your grannies rules arose the same way.
TG Spokes…’ Grannies sayings’………what, that again. Just what is Granny saying then? Suppose one has to be grateful for small mercies, in that the subject of conversation is not UKIP and NEC’s, last years pet subjects. Now it is just all about Granny and her sayings
Thank you for an interesting summary; I look forward to reading the full articles. We have known for some time of the Nazi influence on the EU. I can understand, with considerable distaste, the use of some in weapons development by the US, but why were the rest of them not executed for their crimes?
All in all a clear indication that we must cooperate with the good Europeans who oppose the EU to bring about its early demise. Perhaps we could also seek justice for the crimes of those mentioned who still control the EU. Whilst it exists we are in danger from the Remainers who would seek our rejoining.
Jack Thomas. You may be right to worry about the influence of Rejoiners but at the moment I have other worries on my mind.
Mainly that our own Westminster based Democratic system has been undermined.
I’m reading ‘The Death of Britain?’, written by John Redwood, published 1999. One of his criticisms of Blair’s administration is it’s by passing of HoC debate and use of the cabinet office to give news direct to the MSM!
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! How has Boris run his Government?
Covid measures have exacerbated this situation but strikes me that it is how this Tory P.M. expects to rule.
Anyway, back to the EU. Isn’t it inevitable that that empire will crumble for one simple reason. They do not have a common language. The ancient Roman Empire survived well by imposing Latin on all it’s components.
U.S.A. has English as it’s common language.
Unless and until all E.U. citizens have a microchip implanted giving instant translations, I fail to see how they can have any feeling of common identity.
Just musing.
Indeed Pauline, the cancer is deeply rooted.
Think we need to deal with the enemy within first.