A version of this article was first published in the newsletter for the ‘Campaign for an Independent Britain’.
Brexit and its subsequent mismanagement by the European Commission and Council represent a major failure of their style of technocratic government. A failure to understand or respond positively to the political dimension associated with their actions; a failure to follow their own laws, treaty obligations and rules to mitigate the damage caused; failure to learn from their mistakes. Rather than adapt they appear set to double down on their agenda to create a homogenised European Superstate through inflexible centralised top-down control. Ultimately, their ever-hardening attitude will lead to a destructive political schism in Europe, something they will find increasingly difficult to understand or control without coercion.
The Brussels Bubble ignores the political dimension
At the heart of the European Union’s (EU’s) whole approach to people (in policies, laws, regulations, and behaviour) is to treat us as objects or resources not as ‘flesh and blood’ sentient and intelligent individuals. Thus what people (in the Member States) may feel, including anguish and stress, can be ignored in the interests of serving ideological or bureaucratic purposes. The EU then may appear compassionate in theory but is often not in actual practice. Thus the EU is immune to events that interfere with its chosen direction; the EU’s obsession with the ‘European Project’.
The European Commission has built up considerable expertise in centralised, top-down regulation, as a means of creating a homogenous European Superstate. Whilst often starting relatively unobtrusively, this approach inevitably leads to over-regulation as Eurocrats search for activities to bring under their ever more demanding control. Yet this does not occur in a vacuum; there is the wider or bigger picture where it all fits in. Each initiative has political, economic, public safety and security implications. The political dimension itself can be very wide-ranging including notions of cultural heritage, identity, democracy, freedom, law, and social stability.
Bureaucrats commonly fail to look beyond their narrow specialisations. Their reality is limited to ideological premises, sacrosanct assumptions and concepts to be universally applied. The outside world then remains just that – outside. The European Council of Ministers (political leaders of the Member States) whilst theoretically able to provide political insights has outsourced much of their oversight responsibilities to the European Commission and German hegemony. Neither Eurocrats nor politicians saw Brexit coming and have been unable or unwilling to accommodate its political dimension(s) since. (e.g., see Theresa May’s Impossible Choice 30th July 2018 in The New Yorker)
The EU’s technocrats had the expertise to run rings around Mrs May’s team, whilst they failed completely to address political aspects. The backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement is a case in point; few political leaders anywhere could accept the creation of a potentially indefinite internal border within their countries to serve the interests of a foreign power. But this is not the only issue – handing over (to the EU) defence, defence procurement, and fishing after Brexit are also issues where Brussels has made politically unreasonable demands. Such demands and more would obviously lead to political instability in the UK and a disorderly withdrawal.
The Brexit Elephant in the EU’s Room
Whilst a disorderly withdrawal has serious economic costs to both the EU and UK through loss of frictionless trade; this is not the only issue. The EU risks political instability and undermining of its authority within the remaining Member States arising from a perceived democratic deficient, the consequences of its own de-humanised insensitive actions and fall out from economic losses. With a loss of moral authority, the EU can only maintain itself through increasing coercion.
The EU’s inflexible complacency in the face of a disorderly departure of the UK is misplaced. A mutually beneficial settlement with the UK is essential for everyone, and the EU bears much of the responsibility for any failure to achieve this. Mrs May’s appalling handling of Brexit is only part of the problem, and in some instances, especially on the indivisibility of the four freedoms, there is evidence of her having been repeatedly misled by the EU’s leaders. The EU’s behaviour has been and remains more akin to the actions of a hostile power than of a friendly neighbour and ally wishing to maintain a long-standing close relationship. For example, former Greek Finance Minister Janis Varoukis has flamboyantly described the EU’s Article 50 behaviour as a Declaration of War.
The EU can then ill afford to have the UK as a major mistreated neighbour, a source of acrimony, mistrust and a potent example of the missed opportunity for mutually beneficial co-operation – a festering wound that will not heal. The EU needs to find a way forward to enable existing beneficial relationships (including frictionless trade and wide-ranging co-operation) to continue after a real Brexit that satisfies political aspirations in the UK. In a nutshell, the EU’s leaders need to be much less inflexibly dogmatic and much more humanely pragmatic. They need to stop using the Single Market as the thin regulatory edge of the political integration wedge. The European Commission’s technocrats know how it can be done; it is within their specialisations to know how. It is for them and the European Council to provide the political will to do it. Brexit is a unique wake-up call that sadly is likely to be ignored.
This reminds me of the terrifying words in HGWell’s book New World Order “… when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.”
H. G. Wells, in his book entitled The New World Order (1939)
And of Bernays “Propaganda”
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power… …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
“Propaganda” by Edward L. Bernays (the father of modern advertising), 1928. HGWells continued:
“..the New Republicans “will constitute an informal and open freemasonry. In all sorts of ways they will be influencing and controlling the apparatus of the ostensible governments…” “..“we can weave a world system of monetary and economic activities, while the politicians, the diplomatists, and the soldiers are still too busy with their ancient and habitual antics to realise what we are doing”
This “open conspiracy,” according to Wells, was “not a project to overthrow existing governments by insurrectionary attacks, but to supersede them by disregard. It does not want to destroy them or alter their forms but to make them negligible by replacing their functions”
This is what the EU does and hand in glove with big business. There is really no secret about it!
This concept of a “high intellectual class” was typical of the Fabians, the Fascists, Communists, Socialists and the technocratic “Global Republicans” such as Monet and Schumann and MacMillan and the current spate of Tories, Greens, LibDems, Labour and SNP “nationalists” (who are in fact just willing regionalists in this plan) and was the case of two world wars and has been behind geo-politics ever since, and benefits a small very privileged group of fanatics who regard the ordinary people as dispensable. And we are stuck with their lying 1920s utopian insanity.
“Whilst a disorderly withdrawal has serious economic costs to both the EU and UK through loss of frictionless trade; this is not the only issue.”
We cannot blame the EU for where we are. They laid their cards on the table right from the word go. It is their project and they let it be known they would do all they could to deter others from leaving the EU. The treachery and chicanery is right here in Westminster. May rejected a Canda style free trade deal that was offered to Britain by the EU. A very reasonable and mutually beneficial deal. The heart of the problem is that the Conservative Party are committed to fudging or overturning Brexit.
“Fudging ” as a la Cameron asking for virtually nothing and ending up with some sort of “legally backed ” offer which was actually nothing at all and would have resulted in our .leaving with less top table influence in EU affairs, with as much say in affairs as say the tea convened in the school PTA.
I’m pretty sure she has been taking Camoron guidance all through
Thanks for printing this very perceptive article, I nearly missed it in the General Brexit hoo-ha.
Now I know a little more about “where we have been” pity we still don’t know where we are going.
Just as a matter of interest, strange how we have ,majored on the word “uncertainty”, first it was the very thought of referendum, then we have had three years awaiting the outcome and now it seems that we are going for endless extensions without knowing the outcomes. Surely the word uncertainty has become debased and completely lost its impact. In the context of this article I think that is very apposite ” rules are rules and must be implemented to the exclusion of all supervening considerations”
.”…beneficial relationships (including frictionless trade and wide-ranging co-operation)”
Frictionless trade is fine but if they continue to be obstructive we can do without it; after all the numbers are on our side.
Wide ranging co-operation inevitably will include the unacceptable such as the military co-operation (integration?) which the UK government* is so intent on pursuing. That is absolutely unacceptable as is any other “co-operation” which efffectively hands control to a foreign power.
*I no longer regard it as our government.
“At the heart of the European Union’s (EU’s) whole approach to people (in policies, laws, regulations, and behaviour) is to treat us as objects or resources not as ‘flesh and blood’ sentient and intelligent individuals.”
Cattle I think you mean.