Reasons this blog rocks:

A: There isnt another that is this informative on the issue of the EU.

B: There arent many blogs of any sort where one can read and enjoy while disagreeing with the blogger. Usually thats just a way of getting oneself incensed just for fun, cant actually get anything from it.

C: There is no other place I know of with so many well-informed people arguing so respectfully of each other on any political issue. There is no better discourse on any issue out there. Wish I could find blogs like this on other topics.

D: Reading this thing is making me the foremost expert on the EU in Texas I reckon.

Seeing as you’re of the labour party, I hope you’ve read Hugh Gaitskell’s famous speech on the Common Market:

“There are certain ways in which we should not decide this issue. It is not a matter to be settled by attractive pictures of nice old German gentlemen drinking beer on the one hand or, on the other, by race or national hatred stimulated by past experiences. It should not be decided because on the one hand we like Italian girls, or on the other, we think we have been fleeced in Italian hotels. It should not be decided on the basis of whether we think French food is the best in the world, or because, as one of my correspondents put it, she was afraid Europe was out to poison us!”

http://www.ena.lu/speech_hugh_gaitskell_october_1962-020003043.html

http://www.ena.lu/speech_hugh_gaitskell_october_1962-020003043.html

You can see from today’s post about football that even when watching Turkey-Germany I’m still wondering what to write about.

In reply to comments by Central Scrutiniser and European Union Law Blog about party politics: it’s hard to assess how much the party line tempers what I write. Relatively little I think. I have a sympathy for centre left parties, and have been a member of the Labour Party for more than a decade, but I am very critical of the Labour Party too – especially its internal procedures, how it deals with the EU, and its policies on things like nuclear power. More important to me are the people in the Labour Party, good folks who have been politically influential for me.

In short I see it like this: at present what I write here is my choice. If it causes problems or offence then so be it, although I do not set out to offend. If I’m undecided on something that’s because I’m genuinely, as an individual, undecided – I’m not taking commands from anyone and that’s good.

But Jon, I do worry about your addiction to party politics. What a waste of potential blogging time! I wonder how often your views are tempered by the party line or how pained you might feel when departing from it in your posts.

I think blogging is a thing that still needs to grow to be honest. It’s especially younger people who know blogs, although that’s improving. In addition I remark an over representation of the British in blogs witch has probably got to do with the language and the culture.

Being independent and on the margin means you are not part of the decision making process, but you do influence people. I’m gonna work next year in an independent think tank next year, so you are definitely influencing me already

Keep up the good work

It may not be immediately obvious, (I often get totally infuriated) but I have tried to push a pro-Europe, anti-EU, internationalist and progressive line on my blog (which I do for love not cash). Some of my traditional Eurosceptic readers have spotted it and they don’t like it.

I think blogs are important part of an emerging debate. The demographics of the No vote in Ireland show that young working class people and women, who do not vote in general elections, used the Irish referendum to score a hit on the political establishment.

Traditional Euroscepticism was parasitically based on the decay of the right and left, the Labour movement and Tories in the UK. The referendum Nos are not Euroscepticism, they are something new.

Political establishments in many, or most, European countries are increasingly unable to mobilise or to take voters with them. And, many Europeans are not convinced by how the elites explain the world.

This seems to be a genuine European trend. That’s why I likened the Irish referendum to a James Larkin moment on my blog, after the rousing words on his monument by the French revolutionary Camille Desmoulins, a past era of European internationalism.

It is interesting that while turnout in elections is dropping (a marker of disenchantment with established politics) the referendum turnout grew (the same in France and the Netherlands, I think).

Could it be that as Europeans we have in common a mistrust of our national governing classes, and their combined expression in the EU? Could it be a pre-political-party stage of the beginning of the beginning of a new oppositional politics?

This could be a fertile soil for ideas.

Jean Quatremers said once during a conference that he is paid for his print reporting and not his blog (which reflects far more his opinion). But he spends far more time on his blog than on the newspaper articles.

So maybe you could invest half of your blogging time in useful background reports for newspapers and support your blog activity with that? Knowing the earnings of Brussels EU journalists I probably know your answer…