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by Rory » Tue Jun 28, 2016 12:46 pm
by Nordic » Tue Jun 28, 2016 12:51 pm
I am here in Britain trying not to get embroiled in EU and Brexit discussions -- which are bitter and heartfelt.
This may be the worst outcome with the worst intentions -- but my fears about the current EU governance structure remain real and this may be the right time for people to understand and debate what is so appalling about the way the EU is actually set up in terms of governnance.
Most people have no idea that EU ministers (who are elected) have NO power to pass laws -- just to propose them; and that the laws are DECIDED by a group of unelected, non-transparently assessed diplomats, with close ties to lobbyists for special interests. I myself didn't know this until I was on a panel with a Portuguese EU minister who explained that he has and his colleagues have no powers to get laws passed, just to propose them. The real deciders are these nameless, nontransparent diplomats.
When the governance structure of the EU comes up, the message in pretty much all consistent throughout European media, I have seen it, that 'it is complex, no one can understand it' or that the problem is 'bureaucracy.' No, it is not complex -- no one can understand it because this basic and quite simple fact about its actual governance structure has been kept incredibly well hidden from even highly informed people.
This is the only essay I have read that addresses what was wrong with the EU. If this basic nondemocratic nature of its governance can be reformed -- which I doubt -- then it is a good thing. But if it remains completely nondemocratic, then I know as a political consultant, it can do a lot of positive things but the basic deals will be worth far more than the small political capital expended on things such as minimum wage, grants for the environment, etc. And voters will NEVER KNOW what the real deals are.
I hope inclusiveness, justice and human rights do win, whatever the outcome of arrangements post Brexit. But people did and do deserve to know the mostly secret and completely nondemocratic nature of EU governance, and reform the EU so it is actually a democracy -- instead of yet another fake democracy with fake representatives who have no real powers .
From today's Guardian:
"Which brings us to remain’s conception of the EU as merely “a market”. This is a disastrous view. Markets are never neutral arrangements but always political constructs. Consider whether you allow pharmaceutical companies to market antidepressants directly to consumers, as in the US, or not – as in Europe. Both are “markets”, but the difference in impact on society is profound. Think of environmental standards, genetically modified organisms, anti-trust law (when is a market an oligopoly?), privacy or priorities in enforcement of intellectual property violations. Then there is the question of what should be a market in the first place: education, health, the prison system?
Brexit: Labour MPs to hold no-confidence vote in Jeremy Corbyn - as it happened
All the day’s political news as chancellor seeks to stabilise economy, with more resignations expected from Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet
Leaving these decisions to European technocrats means that we effectively hand over control of our society to the corporate lobbies that have direct access to those technocrats. These days global banks and other multinationals operate on a European level while politics still take place on a national level. The consequence is that big corporations can play off one European country against the other in a regulatory race to the bottom, demanding ever lower if not downright homeopathic tax rates.
Is this the EU we want? Or do we build a strong and democratically legitimate countervailing power that can operate on the same European level as they corporate lobby? If the latter, we need to construct a vibrant pan-European political space with real debate and real powers. It is crazy that Europeans have their own court, parliament and currency, but no pan-European public forum to debate what to do with these instruments."
by Rory » Tue Jun 28, 2016 12:54 pm
The 172-40 vote, which is not binding, follows resignations from the shadow cabinet and calls on Mr Corbyn to quit.
Mr Corbyn said the ballot had "no constitutional legitimacy" and said he would not "betray" the members who voted for him by resigning.
You wouldn’t believe it from reading the mainstream press but Jeremy Corbyn is still a hugely popular figure in the Labour Party.
Not, of course, in the Parliamentary Labour Party, where Corbyn barely found enough MPs to nominate him for a leadership election he won by a 40-point margin in September.
But among the party’s members, who ultimately elect the leader, his support is strong.
A poll last month placed him top of the pile in a putative leadership election by a huge margin with 43 percent support. Andy Burnham, who is backing Corbyn and says he won’t run, is closest to him on 10 percent and the only other in double digits.
The plotters make for a pathetic lot: Hilary Benn can’t even muster 5 percent, Margaret Hodge receives close to 0 percent.
This is not isolated data, either. During the referendum campaign the Fabian Society, who could not be described as fans of Corbyn, released a poll showing him to be by far the most popular politician in the party.
Corbyn enjoys an approval rating of +17 percent. The leader of the Labour’s Remain campaign, MP Alan Johnson, another plotter against the party leader, is at -10 percent.
When you add the vociferous support Corbyn has received from the trade union movement the result of any fair leadership election is clear: he would win.
The only way that his opponents can beat him in this election is to rig it. Accordingly, they are already pursuing a strategy of excluding Corbyn from the ballot paper.
The result of such an antidemocratic maneuver would be simple: the Labour Party will split. This, more than any other likely event, would make winning an election impossible.
by Rory » Tue Jun 28, 2016 12:56 pm
by coffin_dodger » Tue Jun 28, 2016 1:00 pm
by JackRiddler » Tue Jun 28, 2016 1:38 pm
Rory » Tue Jun 28, 2016 11:56 am wrote:They are clearly going to have to do a Robin Cook/David Kelly, to remove him.
by FourthBase » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:10 pm
Not sure if it was pre-orchestrated or opportunist. Sure suits the establishment, though.
by coffin_dodger » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:14 pm
FourthBase wrote:Not sure if it was pre-orchestrated or opportunist. Sure suits the establishment, though.
Question: Would you not have also said that the outcome suits the establishment if Remain had won, instead?
by tapitsbo » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:16 pm
by American Dream » Tue Jun 28, 2016 2:42 pm
Despite vociferous claims to the contrary, Brexit really is about race—but not in ways we might expect. In this seemingly ‘post-race’ era, Brexit shows us how whiteness, as a power relation, operates in ways to cast itself as both a ‘victim’ and an ‘innocent’ simultaneously.
Whiteness As Victimhood
An unstated campaign strategy of the Leave campaign was to re-imagine Britain and Britishness (but really Englishness) as white in order to make particular kinds of claims to victimhood which would highlight economic inequality without challenging neoliberalism. For instance, a key argument of the campaign was that the ‘working class’ (who were unquestionably assumed to be white) were suffering under the burden of mass immigration, which transformed the culture of their neighbourhoods and put undue strain on public services. Thus we see whiteness operating as victim—the white working class is being held hostage in their own country by migrants. Any critique of this victimhood further re-enforces a victim status through fulminations that the critic is ‘the real racist’.
This construction of whiteness as victimhood purposefully makes it difficult to understand how and why public services are in crisis. Rather than migration causing the crisis, the crisis is, in fact, the official policy of the current Conservative government: austerity measures have been the dominant policy response since the 2008 economic crisis. Austerity, however, has not been imposed on Britain by the European Union. Rather, the then Coalition government and the current Conservative government voluntarily adopted this policy of shrinking and privatising the state—with disastrous and uneven effects for particular social groups. In other words, those ‘shy’ 2015 Tory voters have much to answer for in terms of the destruction that austerity has wrought—but this complicity has been erased by the Brexit campaign. Instead, migrants have been weaponised to stoke fear and get out the vote for the leave campaign.
Although we appear to be in a ‘post-fact’ Britain, I feel compelled to remind readers that austerity measures are unequally distributed across the population. Certainly, the poorest local authorities, especially those in the north and east, are being hit hardest by these unprecedented cuts to public spending. However, looking more closely at the data shows us that women—and women of colour in particular—are disproportionately impacted. Because women of colour, on the whole, are more likely to be public sector employees but also living in the poorest households, cuts to vital services, such as libraries, public transport and afterschool care, translate into further immiseration as jobs are threatened and household incomes decline. Even though people of colour are more likely to be living in poverty and are being hit hardest by austerity measures, 75% of voters of colour opted to remain in the EU. What does a claim of white victimhood mean in this context?
Whiteness as victimhood is also deployed in a much more insidious fashion. Both before and after the Brexit vote, previously ‘invisible’ and privileged white EU migrants—excluding ‘white’ migrants from Eastern Europe who have been and continue to be subject to institutionalised xenophobia as their labour value is exploited—began to report feeling unwelcomed and unsafe. These reports have combined with social media accounts of increased racial harassment, leading to figures suggesting that such incidents have risen 57% since the referendum. The sincerity of these claims of feeling unsafe, nor the legitimacy of these reports of racist and xenophobic abuse, must not be doubted.But whiteness, even in discussions about racism and anti-racism, can intrude, appropriate and colonise these spaces in order to re-enforce an identity of victimhood, whilst at the same time seemingly de-prioritising the interests and experiences of people of colour.
I do not seek nor desire a victim identity. I do, however, want public acknowledgement, solidarity and collective action against Britain’s de facto policy of indefinite detention of migrants; of everyday and institutionalised Islamophobia and the state violence deployed against Sarah Reed, Sheku Bayoh and Jimmy Mubenga and other people of colour. What does it mean that those who now are expressing ‘concern’ about a surge in xenophobia have previously had little to say about everyday and institutionalised racism and violence that people of colour experience? And that people of colour were not taken at our word, as others have been, about what we experience? It seems some people are only concerned with racism and xenophobia when their own privileged migration status is challenged.
by Project Willow » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:15 pm
Searcher08 » 27 Jun 2016 15:06 wrote:
I do but no one is interested.
The reason the EU is utterly FUBAR is because of the way it is designed as an organisation.
JackRiddler » 27 Jun 2016 15:30 wrote:It's an ideological ecology at work, it has its laws, and it tends to these kinds of results.
by Sounder » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:42 pm
by slimmouse » Tue Jun 28, 2016 5:55 pm
Most people have no idea that EU ministers (who are elected) have NO power to pass laws -- just to propose them; and that the laws are DECIDED by a group of unelected, non-transparently assessed diplomats, with close ties to lobbyists for special interests. I myself didn't know this until I was on a panel with a Portuguese EU minister who explained that he has and his colleagues have no powers to get laws passed, just to propose them. The real deciders are these nameless, nontransparent diplomats.
by American Dream » Tue Jun 28, 2016 6:05 pm
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