Cameronian Europe is a Europe that is "done to people"

David Cameron's speech on Europe (full text here) didn't reveal much new on his thinking on Europe, but it is an important speech for the stark way in which the political lines are drawn. There may be little that Cameron actually wants or is able to repatriate apart from the Working Time Directive (his speech highlight more areas that powers had been or were being repatriated than areas for future negotiation), but the speech serves as a high-profile espousal of a certain ideology on Europe, along with some of the contradictions and bind-spots it has.

Central to this ideology is a very particular view of the single market. It is the fundamental reason for the EU's existence, and everything else that is defined as non-market is a distraction and a mark of waste. But this stance is also a denial of politics: it refuses the reality that the single market is an expansive concept that covers many areas, and that there can be many types of policy to deal with. Cameron asked:

"...when the competitiveness of the single market is so important, why is there an environment council, a transport council, an education council but not a single market council?"

He's right, there is no single market council. There is, however, an Economic and Financial Affairs Council, a Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council, an Agriculture and Fisheries Council, and a Competitiveness (internal market, industry, research and space) Council. You may also notice that there's no single British minister for the market, but there is at least one British minister for each of these Councils (and parliamentary committees as well). This is because there are different policies and politics behind each of these areas - and therefore if you're going to have a single market, you're going to have to accept that there should be a room for these politics to play out.

There's also a Council for Employment and Social Affairs, but to hear Cameron and others speak, this is a corruption of the EU's single market purpose. But to strip away the social aspects of the EU would undermine the political basis of the single market - and the single market is just as much a political project as the Euro. Without common minimum social standards, there would be a race to the bottom as it is recommended to people to deregulate to undercut other Member States, or dissatisfaction would build at how other Member States are undercutting their own social protections. This is not an EU through which people can vote for a more left or right-wing single market through national and European elections, but setting up a mechanism for a Europe that just happens to people, with a bigger disconnect than today.


When it comes to the institutions, Cameron is contradictory. He wants a more fluid Europe of 27 speeds, but decries the complexity of the EU institutions: something that would increase to manage this 27 times 27 Europe of different relationships. He says that people can never be properly democratically represented at he European level, but wants to have fewer Commissioners than Member States, undercutting national representation in one of the major institutions. The other Member States are hardly going to accept an EU that reduces their political representation, and nor would it pass parliamentary votes or referendums in other European countries (Commission representation was a sticking point in the Lisbon referendums in Ireland and will likely be a sore point with small Member States).

The vague nature and the reality of negotiations mean that nothing so radical will happen, but the underlying ideology behind the speech and the direction of negotiations mean that no realistic negotiation will ever satisfy it. Politics cannot be drained from the European Union: even if it was reduced to just the single market, these issues are political and need a political and democratic forum to discuss and decide on these issues. The EU cannot be changed into a simplistic enforcement mechanism for the Tories' own market policies across Europe.

UK Election 2010

It's polling day in the UK for the 2010 general election. The 3-way race between Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (itself a surprise outcome from the televised leaders' debates) has widened, and it looks likely that the Conservatives will "win" in terms of seats, even if it fails to secure an overall majority in the House of Commons. If the result is a hung parliament, then the Conservatives (or perhaps, wildly unexpectedly, Labour) could try to govern as a minority government (which is what the Scottish National Party has been doing in the devolved Scottish Parliament), or form a coalition.

So what coalitions are on the cards? The party in the strongest coalition-forming position is the Liberal Democrats, the centre-left pro-European party. Though the third largest party in a 2-party system, they're set to increase their share of the vote even if this doesn't translate well into an increase in seats due to the First-Past-the-Post system. Their natural coalition partners would be Labour, but it would be politically difficult for them to support a government that seems to have lost the support of the public, and Nick Clegg (the LibDem leader) has said that the LibDems couldn't support Gordon Brown as Prime Minister if Labour come third in the popular vote (though this could translate as second or even first in terms of seats).

It's a strange way for the LibDems to think about coalitions if they want to break the old system, as they've claimed. In a proportional representation voting system, coalitions are likely to become the norm, and the test of legitimacy would be whether the coalition had the majority of voter support, rather than that of the leading party, which is the old logic that the LibDem's language seems to indicate they follow. Still, they have left the possibility of a coalition with Labour open, even if Brown's head is the price. Such a coalition would make more sense than that of one with the Conservatives since they're both progressive, centre-left parties that are more supportive of working within the EU than the Tories, and have similar philosophies on the approach (if not detail) on how to deal with the economy and tackle the deficit.

Yet they still might form a coalition with the Tories (which I think would alienate a lot of their voters - after all, if they are taking support mostly from Labour supporters, how long will their supporters stick with them if they are keeping a, perhaps Thatcherite, Tory-LibDem government in power?).

Apart from the LibDems, the Welsh and Scottish nationalist parties would be likely to support any government on a case-by-case basis, based on whatever concessions they can get out of Westminster. In terms of the Northern Irish parties, the unionist parties would be natural allies of the Conservatives, while the nationalist SDLP, a left-wing party, would be more likely to support Labour/Labour-LibDems. Sinn Féin would be a big opponent of the Tories - but they don't take their seats in the Westminster Parliament in protest against the Union and the Oath to the Queen.

The ideal outcome for me is a Labour-LibDem government, so I hope people will be voting tactically to ensure that the centre-left get as many seats as possible (though I want the LibDems to do really well in order to boost the chances of electoral reform).

I'm against the Conservatives for several reasons:

1. I find them grossly and dangerously constitutionally illiterate. Their opposition to the Human Rights Act (with no clear explanation for what they'd do differently) is populist and their attacks on judicial power are something I cannot support given the lack of constitutional checks on the Parliament. The judiciary have proven to be better defenders of rights than the Parliament under the Tories or Labour, and I doubt the wisdom of diluting their power further.

2. Their Euroscepticism. It's unclear what powers they want to repatriate, how, and what difference this will make. Nick Clegg highlighted the advantages the EU brings to policing cross-border crime, etc. It is likely that Cameron would be more pragmatic in government, but then again I cannot trust a party which cannot clearly argue for the good points and against the bad points of a project. I don't see any clear vision, and suspect that the populist posturing will make it harder to be pragmatic, and policy will be confused and even hostage to backbench MPs (who are very Eurosceptic in the Tory Party).

3. I believe a more gradual reduction of the deficit is better for the economy. Basically I'm agreeing with the Labour/LibDem assessment here. Additionally, though it has a few (lonely) good points in it, Cameron's "Big Society" appears to merely be a salve for Tory consciences as they cut deep into the public sector. A culture of mass volunteerism won't spring up overnight, and I don't believe that a Tory government has the time, policy consistency, money and vision to nurture such an expansion in civil society. He's effectively asking people to volunteer to do some of the government's job for them. (Though obviously the point is that they think that the government shouldn't be doing it anyway). Again, I can't support this.

However, I live in a difficult constituency. The 2 leading candidates are a joint unionist one (likely to be pro-Tory), and a Sinn Féin one (anti-Tory, but won't take the seat if she wins it). Therefore, the pro-Tory forces will be added to, or we'll get a vacant seat which will reduce the majority number the Tories need to get to form a government.

I guess I'll just have to vote with my conscience to boost the vote of a party I support, but who probably won't win, and keep my fingers crossed that a Labour-LibDem government will be the result of today's voting...

Update on the European Elections (and media coverage)

France 24 has set up its own page on the European elections, where you can see the current president of the EP, Hans-Gert Poettering, facing questions from young people on issues and how Europe can/should deal with them.

Personally, I found Poettering's answers very disappointing: he waffled on and didn't answer some of the first questions put to him. On one question he didn't make it clear where the responsibility for decision-making lies - blathering on about the need to work together rather than properly addressing the issue. Since his role was to explain what the EP could do for citizens and to encourage young people to vote, I have to give him a fail on this occasion - he gave no real sense of what the EP was for and what it could do for citizens.

Another story is Sarkozy and Merkel's common campaigning for the EPP - and Merkel's thinly veiled criticism of the UK Conservative's championing of enlargement while not facing up to the need for reform by embracing the Lisbon Treaty. Though it seems not to have made much of an impact over in the UK (the BBC haven't reported it anyway), it will probably be used by the Liberal Democrats and Labour to bash the Tories' weakeness/highlight their isolation in Europe.

The LibDems have just launched their election campaign. I wasn't impressed with their Public Election Broadcast (PEB) on the BBC: no mention of Europe, just a promotional video for the still new-ish leader Nick Clegg. Quite disappointing, since Clegg used to be an MEP. However, at the launch Clegg stressed the need for the EU and gave specific examples of how it was a positive force for Britain.

The Irish Independent and the Irish Times have increased their coverage of the European elections, with sections of their papers devoted to the campaign leading up to the June 5th polls.

UK: What's in a Constitution?

In the UK there is a certain pride in their legal traditions, but there seems to be a confusion about what it all means - the concepts of referenda and parliamentary sovereignty are increasingly uttered in the same breath, seemingly without the speakers' awareness of how much these concepts are incompatible. The UK is famous for its unwritten constitution. Of course it has a constitution, but it's not codified - and a lot of people don't seem to know what it is, exactly. And the bigger question is: is the old constitution, favoured for its flexibility, up to the task of serving today's Britain?

There are many factors to be considered in UK constitutional law, but the most famous one is the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty (PS). PS basically means that parliament is all-powerful, just like god.* According to constitutional theory, if the Westminster Parliament repealed the India Independence Act 1949 tomorrow, then India would revert back to British control (who says constitutional law has to make sense? Or even be practical?).

The UK constitution is just made up of acts of parliament (so it can be changed by a simple majority vote in parliament). Parliament can do whatever it wants (except anything that restricts its ability to do whatever it wants in the future). PS also means that parliamentary Acts are superior to judge-made Common Law, which is quite sensible in a democracy. The problem is that PS rests on its recognition by... judges. Because the doctrine of PS is in itself a judge-made concept.

Confused? Well, it dates back to the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution,** the end result of which is that the King/Queen had the powers of an absolute monarch, provided that the Parliament was the only body that could exercise them. What parliament is, is the King, just divided up among several hundred people. It just happens to be the case that the lower House, the elected one, is now the most powerful part of the Parliament.

So the UK has a constitution which is at odds with the more modern idea of popular sovereignty (the idea that the people are sovereign, and delegate their power upwards), because it is based on the sovereignty of the monarch, which was essentially (though not completely) stolen by parliament. Referenda go, therefore, against constitutional theory in the UK.

The UK has only ever had one referendum: over EEC entry (referendum introduced by Labour).


Now the constitution of the UK is largely a political one: it depends on the political culture for its continued existence since it is built on custom and tradition, and because any parliament could overturn the entire constitution at a stroke with a simple majority (which, under First Past the Post, might only have the support of a third of the electorate). The political culture of the UK has changed a lot over the last century, and it is doubtful that the current constitution is suitable for the modern UK. The issue of Europe in British politics shows the gap in the current political culture from constitutional theory: that the Conservatives, (the traditionalist, constitutional-upholding party) are demanding a referendum suggests that they have lost all respect for the constitution - and yet are not putting forward recommendations for constitutional reform.

There are a number of issues that make constitutional reform more pressing; chief among these is devolution and human rights. Devolution has raised the well known question over English self-rule,*** and human rights has raised questions over how much the parliament should be able to overturn such rights at a whim - or even without meaning to under the doctrine of implied repeal.****

While there have been a few suggestions on these issues (mainly just the Conservatives demanding that only English MPs should be allowed to vote on legislation affecting only England - in my opinion this will just make the system more messy), but no serious attempt at a systemic overhaul. Until this is done, and until popular sovereignty is made part of the UK constitution, Eurosceptic demands for a referendum will ironically attack the British idea of sovereignty more than the EU does (Factortame resolves the tension between PS and the ECJ's doctrine of supremacy of Community law).

Given these issues though, and the lack of political attempts at reform, it has been left to the judiciary to deal with things the best they can. And over the last 40 years there has been a weakening of the judicial deference to parliament, and even (weak) limits being imposed on PS. The famous Factortame case (no.1), which confirmed the supremacy of EU law in the UK (by cleverly saying that EU law was supreme because the UK Parliament's European Communities Act 1972 really said it was, subject to the parliament's sovereign ability to withdraw such rights. ...Yes, I know, but it has to be done in such a way in law) and the Thoburn case (which started a trend of deeming some statutes to be "more constitutional", and therefore not subject to implied repeal) are good examples of this.

In fact, in Jackson v AG, Lord Steyn in obiter***** practically served notice on PS - stating that if parliament threatens access to the courts (etc.), then the courts could just dismiss the power of parliament to do so. The supremacy of the judiciary is a general feature of democracies (supreme courts being able to rule on laws being unconstitutional, etc), and the UK could be moving in that direction, albeit very slowly, and being moved there by the judges themselves.

If nobody discusses the pressing need for constitutional reform in the UK - in fact, the basic need for a codified constitution - then the judges will just have to do the job themselves, just as they did in the past.

This post doesn't have much direction to it, I'd admit. Sorry for that. In a way, I just felt like showing what a mess I think the UK constitution really is, and vent annoyance at some UK eurosceptics' lack of basic knowledge of how their country works, and what its sense of sovereignty is (basically the sovereignty of the rulers based on their control of a territory rather than popular sovereignty). However, I think that the UK needs a constitution in the traditional, write-it-down-somewhere, sense. The current constitution is out of touch with its people (though if you really like it, perhaps you'd say it's the other way around?) - and there needs to be a big effort to confront these challenges.

And if you think all this is messed up, just take a look at land law in Ireland and the UK!





*Depending on the religion. In some cases perhaps even more powerful than god.

**Where the King was fired and Parliament bought a new one.

*** Britain (more correctly the UK) isn't a nation-state. It's a collection of nations in one (historically very centralised) state. A bit like the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

**** Parliament can't bind successive parliaments, so if two Acts conflict, the newest one is the right one - it "impliedly repeals" the old one. For human rights this could be a bit of a problem.

*****Obiter means that the judge is just saying it - it has no legal effect. But if other judges start agreeing with it, it could find its way into the legal orthodoxy.... [I think this part of Lord Steyn's judgment is at paragraphs 90+ - of the top of my head I'd say it's at 100-110].

[Note: the links for the cases are just to their wikipedia articles, which is definitely not academic. If you actually want to read the cases they should be in the House of Lord's website, though I'd say that they're so famous (ok, famous for court judgments) that you should be able to just google them.]

An official British perspective on Europe?

David Miliband, British Foreign Secretary, has given a speech on European Reform at the LSE. (Click here). There seems to be a few ideas there, along with a desire for reform (and note the use of climate and energy security policy to slip in an attack on the CAP), but is Britain actively promoting these policies or engaging with the other member states to forge a way forward? It doesn't seem as if any country is really pushing imaginative schemes, to judge from the bland outcome of the recent summits.

And the Commission is hardly taking a lead either.

I like the defence of the single market and the Community institutions/legal system:

"...the best defence from encroaching protectionism is an effective European Commission. You cannot be in favour of the single market, but against the very institutions that preserve the rules of the game. This is the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the eurosceptic position."

I've ranted on about it myself. Why can't there be a spirited defence of Community values for a wider audience? Reform isn't enough - the public should be told why the system must be defended and reformed.