Blairite Europe

Yesterday former British PM Tony Blair made his big speech on Britain and the EU at the Business for New Europe event. You can read the speech in full here. So after writing at length about Labour and the EU on Monday, is there anything in the Blairite vision of the EU?


Eurocrisis

On the Eurocrisis, I partly agree with him.

"...the flagship policy of Europe is listing dangerously. As I have said before, to save it, I believe, requires a kind of ‘Grand Bargain’ approach rather than incremental steps, in which Germany agrees, effectively, to some form of mutualisation of debt; the debtor countries carry out profound structural reform; and the ECB stands fully behind the bargain. There are some signs this may happen. But even if it does, Europe will suffer for some time to come."

There have been calls for some form of debt mutualisation for a while now (and some Parliamentary amendments pushing for it), and it's hard to see how the current bailouts - which in Greece's case have led to the country's debt ballooning to 190% GDP rather than falling - actually help solve the fundamental problems of the Eurozone rather than  helping the balance sheets of creditors.


Narrative

Blair pushed for a change in the narrative away from peace towards power:

"...the truth is the rationale for Europe today is stronger not weaker than it was back 66 years ago when the project began. But it is different. Then the rationale was peace. Today it is power. Then it was about a continent ravaged by war in which Germany had been the aggressor and Britain the victor. Today it is about a world in which global geo-politics is undergoing its biggest change for centuries. Power is shifting West to East. China has emerged, with its economy opening up, one which will grow eventually to be the world’s largest. Its population is three times that of the whole of the EU. India has over a billion people. Brazil is two times the size of the largest European country, Indonesia three times and there are a host of countries including Russia, Turkey, Mexico, Vietnam, the Philippines and Egypt larger today than any single EU nation.

What is more, as technology and capital become globally mobile, in time there will be a re-alignment of GDP and population i.e. the larger your population, the bigger your economy. The USA remains extraordinarily strong, its military easily the largest and best equipped but the time when it has been the world’s only superpower, is passing."

The speech was clearly intended as an argument for Britain's membership of the EU, and as an attack on Euroscepticism in the UK, so the speech doesn't offer much in terms of the direction that Britain should go within the EU. He restated the case for membership based on economic advantage and global power. In a sense I agree - on Monday I was arguing that collective European decision-making should give the people and the Member States more opportunity to decide their economic and social future - but Blair's vision is almost completely dominated by the terms of international power relations.

It's a vision with some truth to it, but little appeal. Most Britons aren't as concerned with Britain's global position as Blair is - indeed, Blair's premiership isn't exactly an encouragement for British global involvement. The message, without much on sharing the economic and social power democratically among citizens, and the messenger, who comes across as being more concerned with the power of great office-holders than anything else, does not make a convincing narrative and is not really one that the left should or could adopt.


Euroscepticism

If it doesn't quite live up to being a bankable European narrative, it is good to have a public figure talk publicly about the advantages of EU membership, although many pro-Europeans on the left, myself included, will not enthusiastically welcome a Blairite vision of Europe. When it comes to the EU, there needs to be a place for political families of the right, left and centre. The pro-European voices from these families will inevitably conflict, but the Eurosceptic voices from the same families will have their own arguments and will need to be engaged with on their own terms. Yesterday Blair couched his argument in terms of the national interest, and the basic pro-European argument may need to be made there, but it's limited in providing a narrative that goes beyond the balance sheet approach.


Tony Blair for president?

There's been some speculation about whether Blair still wants to get a position in the EU, and he launched a Twitter account yesterday dedicated to his views and work on Europe. (There was also an unconnected website (mockingly) advocating him for the European Council presidency). I wasn't a fan of the idea the first time 'round...

Faith schools, Groups and Plurality

BY CC Jeremy Vandel.

Tony Blair's argument for faith schools in The Irish Times yesterday was odd: "Faith schools can help bridge gaps in divided communities". Blair was quick to counter the obvious arguments against faith schools from the situation in Northern Ireland:

"Whenever the topic of faith schools came up it would not be long before Northern Ireland was mentioned. Weren’t the roots of the Troubles down to the children of different faiths being separated in different schools? There was even a claim from those who were adamant that the conflict “wasn’t really to do with religion”. Strange how many people behaved as if it was.

Schooling can divide communities. Think of the pivotal role of schools in desegregation in the US. That much of the argument is valid. But it is not the religious tradition, prioritised in affiliation of staff and students, that matters, but how each tradition is interpreted in the teaching and the life of the school.

Does it instil respect and understanding, an open mind, open to inquiry, at ease with diversity, ready to learn more about other faiths? Or does it create a closed mind, a mindset vulnerable to fear, distrust and coercion, a world where “error has no rights”? In short is it good religion or bad religion?"

Growing up in Northern Ireland, the vast majority of schools were connected with one (Christian) faith or the other - and there is often division on gender lines as well as religious ones. Together with academic selection, there's a lot of different schools in Northern Ireland, and simply not the population numbers or resources to fund it all. One thing we don't lack is division, so how can faith schools bridge these gaps?

"[On schools in Ballycastle]

On one side of the bridge lay the Cross and Passion, a Catholic school; on the other Ballycastle High, a mainly Protestant school.

Led by two outstanding religious education teachers the two schools tentatively began to get together in the late 1960s on a very informal basis. In the 1990s, through “Curriculum 2000” it became a much more formal and structured process.

Through the shared education programme funding, the collaboration has expanded beyond post-16-year-old students to include younger pupils studying for their GCSE exams. They now have a joint school choir and rugby team."

Hmm... So it was in coming together - working together, or singing together, or playing sports together - that they built bridges and overcame divisions? Well why not skip the expensive and time-consuming process of dividing people in the first place, and have them in secular integrated schools from the start?

"Many of our secular schools offer the same skills [from earlier: "instil[ing] respect and understanding, an open mind, open to inquiry, at ease with diversity, ready to learn more about other faiths?"], though I sometimes think they have a more difficult task. The gift is to help young people escape from what the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, writing about “the new religious intolerance” – intolerance of religion – recently dubbed a world of “whatever”." (I personally would have associated "whatever" with indifference and not intolerance, but whatever...).

This is a confused piece. Cooperation between faith schools is a good thing, particularly in places like Northern Ireland where politics has made interfaith tolerance a sensitive issue, and where there is a stronger political impulse to preserve the identities of separate communities using separate institutions as far as possible. It can be difficult to overcome these divisions, and shorter-term methods of building up confidence and respect such as through cross-community or interfaith cooperation are a good thing.

It's a different matter to suggest promoting faith schools where there isn't the same level of historical and inter-community conflict, and to propose faith schools, and cooperation between faith schools, as a way of building bridges between communities. Apart from the fact that the model would encourage sharper division into group identities that may not have existed if people hadn't have been sorted into different schools, it's a mistaken approach to plurality to simply see it simply as a collection of co-existing strong groups. Real pluralism is a patchwork of groups and individuals, with many individuals caught in the overlap. Membership of a group in a pluralist society should not be something that either defines you - and being sorted into schools based on a religious or cultural group identity is a pretty strong way of defining someone early on in life.

This is not to say that group identity shouldn't be accommodated in society: it should. It is more a mark of the respect, tolerance and understanding a society has between groups in society the more they can accommodate each other in a shared space, rather than shutting each other away. Ideally we should not need faith schools to build bridges between us, but would have a common public space where we all interact as a part of life.

I am also uncomfortable with the way this brings religion closer to the state. Blair was at pains to distinguish between "good" and "bad" religion, but conferring resources and privileges equally among religious groups is not only a misguided way of looking at religious freedom, but it also draws them closer in to the state. The state has to decide what religion is deserving of resources (presumably based on numbers, which leads to the question of how far religious groups are encouraged to shout the loudest for resources and privileges), and also is drawn into questions on the role of religion in education. There's a difference between teaching children about different religious beliefs and educating children in a religious ethos so they respect religious beliefs. The classic case is science versus religion - what if religious beliefs conflict with teaching the scientific content of the curriculum? Tony Blair says that faith schools should abide by the curriculum, but it is hard to say on the one hand that a school may have a religious ethos, and then refuse it the freedom to teach its religious teachings, either instead of or along with the curriculum. The state should stay out of religion.

Sometimes it's more practical to foster understanding between groups by building bridges between their respective institutions - particularly in divided or post-conflict societies - but we should be working towards a pluralism that is a common public space for everyone, not a gangway of rickety bridges.

Blairs' Backers are making a Fundamental Error

Media attention is back on the possibility of Tony Blair becoming the President of the European Council. Many arguments surround his - possible - candidacy: his supports think he will be a strong, recognisable figure who would give the EU a greater voice on the world stage, and shape the office into an agenda-setting focal point in the EU's institutional structure. His opponents oppose him simply because they consider that Blair just isn't the right man for the job given his attachment to the US over the EU and the failure to make the pro-European case in the UK.

Blair's personal background and qualities can be (and have been) picked over: a good speaker and deal maker, experienced on the global stage, has a reputation burdened by a war legacy, is generally pro-European in outlook, failed to bring the UK into the Schengen and Euro zones, comes from a major yet largely Euroskeptic member state... However, while this is an important debate, behind it lurks the idea that the post can really become a strong executive post - and it can't.

It's not really a surprise that this impression has surfaced - the EU is incredibly fond of creating presidential titles. The heads of the Commission, Council, Parliament, ECB, etc, are all Presidents. The European Parliament even has a Council of Presidents (the party group leaders) who collectively agree on the Parliament's agenda. The European Council is also the highest level of the most powerful institution in the EU, the Council, so in many ways it's natural to assume that any presidential role emerging from this institution could become quite powerful. But while it's true that a strong first President could make the post stronger and more influential, he or she won't be able to force his or her decisions through or play a strong executive role.

First of all, the role will be that of a chairperson. There's no doubt that this could be an influential position; the Parliament has its president, so it can present an institutional voice, even if the political sands are constantly shifting in the chamber itself. In some ways the Council, by virtue of its sheer power, doesn't really need a strong spokesperson. However, a rotating presidency and the intermittent attention of member states to some issues mean that a chairperson could significantly boost its coherence. Being able to organise agenda and shape the debate will make the role important and influential - but not strongly executive.

Institutional arrangements will prevent the emergence of an overpowering President. The Commission retains the power of legislative initiative, and the Parliament has been strengthened under Lisbon so laws require a high degree of support across the EU institutions to pass. Within the Council, it's important to note that the rotating presidency doesn't disappear - when the Council is in it's "committee" forms (agriculture, etc.), it will still be chaired by the rotating presidency, except for the foreign relations circle, which will be chaired by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs (who will also be the Vice President of the Commission). So the President of the European Council is more likely to emerge in a similar (but slightly stronger) form to the US Vice President: influential and visible, but with limited institutional reach.

The desire for a strong European Council Presidency is quite strange when it comes from the member states. Barroso's main strength in getting nominated by the Council in July was his relative subservience to state interests - is it really politically likely that member states will weaken counterbalancing leadership roles in the EU only to set up a rival in their own institutional backyard? The President of the European Council won't be able to act without the backing of the Council, so it's likely that any President to tries to be too activist would be cut down to size.

A strong Presidential role would be undesirable for several reasons: it would favour big states at the expense of smaller states who depend on the Commission to ensure the equality of states, the post wouldn't be under the scrutiny of the European Parliament unlike the Commission President, it would diminish transparency and accountability. But the fundamental error of Blair's backers is that they seek to change the office to be more than it can be; an exercise that could end up obstructing law-making when the Lisbon was supposed to streamline EU decision-making.

Blair has a well-known ability to shape the office he occupies - he was famous for his "sofa government" in the UK. An over-activist President like Blair would continuously clash with the Commission and the semi-Commission-semi-Council High Representative. A drawn out political battle for influence, while it my draw more attention to EU politics, will hinder progress on issues that actually matter. And in the end, the style of Council Presidency may end up effecting the power relationships outside the Council more than the position of the Presidency itself, since the war for influence isn't one the Presidency can win outright. How would the High Representative, Commission President and the European Parliament react to such an activist President? Would the European Parliament and Commission draw closer to offset the Council? Would the High Representative be a Trojan horse for the Council or for the Commission - or would he or she play at both? Would Barroso try to concentrate power in the Commission in his hands further?

Blair is not just the wrong man for the job, but the vision of a Presidency that he represents is simply wrong for the office. Trying to create a strong President won't create a strong EU.

A strong President of the European Council?

There's been a sudden burst of activity across the EU-Bloggosphere over the re-emerging story that Tony Blair might run for the Presidency of the European Council (which is not the presidency of Europe) after Lady Kinnock slipped up by saying that the UK government is giving Blair full backing in his bid - as Charlemagne explains, Blair's not actually running (yet). There are many reasons why Blair should not get the job; they've been covered by Child of Europe, and very comprehensively by Crystals and Gaish.

But there's another issue here: should the post of President of the European Council be a weak or strong one? A weak one would be a "chairman" role, where the president merely organises the agenda and the meetings/summits and represents the positions that the Council makes to the world and the other institutions. A strong president would have more input in agenda-setting and he or she would have a more decisive role in setting the EU's agenda as a whole.

Do we want a strong presidency? We shouldn't. A strong presidency would strengthen the most intergovernmental institution of the EU while simultaneously weakening the intergovernmental flavour of the politics in the Council. Such a president may be able to give some good and strong leadership, but he or she would be less legitimate than the Commission: the president of the European Council will not be subject to the scrutiny of the European Parliament, so if this office becomes the leading office of the EU, accountability and transparency will suffer. For small states, a strong president would weaken their position in the same way that strengthening the Council tends towards weakening the smaller states: if you make a forum where state interests are the focus, and where the power of those state interests have the weight of their states behind them, then the bigger states will strengthen their position versus the smaller ones and can seek more privileged positions. Where positions and policies are debated and set along ideological right-left lines and states cannot get privileges due to their size, the set up is more equal.

At the same time, it's hard to see how a strong presidency would be possible. The president can't promise what the Council won't give him/her, and the president would have few political weapons to force the Council his/her way - political skill and reputation would be the most obvious weapon, but it weakens as things stop going exactly their way in the Council. The power of the president will be based on the Council, so there is little the president can do to counter the Council if it refuses to play along. So even with a strong candidate as president, they can only do what their office permits them to do. They will not be able to bestride the world stage like the US president or even the Russian president and the Chinese and Indian premiers. There may be moments when the president can provide Europe with a loud voice - but it will only be when, and if, the Council is united. The president won't be able to unite the Council because the presidency won't have the institutional power or democratic or political legitimacy to bludgeon the Council into following.

The European Council needs a permanent president who can provide a focus and organisational coherence that the Council has lacked for years. Having a president will strengthen the tendency to argue along the left-right dividing line and will make debate within the Council more "normal" in political terms (the need for more openness and transparency will be as great as ever). These are good changes. But we should not expect nor want a strong president in the Council. I don't think that it's remotely politically possible though - this is the same organisation that picked Barroso, after all.

What the European Council needs is a good and respected "Speaker of the House", not a strong executive figure.

He hasn't gone away, you know

Tony Blair, who still hasn't solved the Middle East Peace Process, is maneuvering for that other job again: the Presidency of the European Council.

Under Lisbon, the European Council Presidency would be electable by the European Council for up to two 2 1/2 year terms, an institutional change intended to promote coherence and a higher degree of continuity in the Council's direction, and to reduce the likelihood of stuff like this happening.

Now Gordon Brown is reported to be backing Blair for the post, the rationale being that there needs to be more British representation in key world roles. So does this revive the debate of whether or not Blair would be a good appointment, with the good of high profile & experience versus the bad of - well, no need to detail this side...?

I have to admit that my emotional response to seeing Blair speaking as President of the European Council would be queeziness (it's a valid emotional response), but he does have some leadership qualities. It would depend on the other candidates (of whom I assume Junker would be one...?).