Korski rightly cites hardening attitudes to the EU in Labour. But equally how could any Labour person in their right mind support the Common Agricultural Policy or the agreement to ‘solve’ the Eurozone crisis through the fiscal pact that basically lumps the Eurozone countries with a commitment to austerity for a decade? So while the EU (and the UK’s membership of it) may be of enduring value, who spends their days arguing in favour of something that’s also getting things wrong?

The danger of course is that if Britain edges towards leaving the EU and a referendum were to be held, could those wanting Britain to remain in muster enough support and organisational competence at that time? That must be a worry. But for the moment, while Britain remains in, it’s much more worthwhile to argue about the direction the EU should go (more socially responsible, more free market, more decentralised – take your pick) than it is to simply man the barricades for its defence.

The need to start to question it, for me at least, has been given new urgency by Douglas Alexander’s EU speech earlier this week (full text here) that mentions ‘national’ 9 times, and ‘democratic’ only once*. Alexander uses phrases like “those of us who see Britain’s national interest as best served within the European Union”.

But what does that actually mean? What is the national interest?

First, there is the notion that – when it comes to negotiating in Brussels – there is something that binds the inhabitants of the United Kingdom together, to want to push for the same thing. That encompasses everything from a Scottish fisherman to a person in retraining in a Welsh valley to a millionaire banker in the City of London. The way UK internal politics works correctly assumes there is little common political ground between these characters, but when we talk about Britain’s relationship with the EU we suddenly assume there is.

I do not reject the notion that there might be some trends between countries – that the British population might be more hostile towards integration, more free-market as opposed to protectionist, more opposed to subsidies, than populations elsewhere. But I would also contend that a banker in the City of London has more interests in common with a banker in Frankfurt than with a fisherman in Scotland. Likewise a Welsh person on a retraining scheme in a post-industrial region has more in common with a French counterpart in the same situation in Lens than with a millionaire banker in the City. Only we never debate EU politics in those terms.

There is then the second issue – that citing national interest in relation to the EU is done in equal measure by both Labour and the Tories (or at least their frontbench) – Cameron’s speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet this week is a case in point. When Cameron says Britain’s membership of the EU is in the national interest, do the words mean the same as when Douglas Alexander says them? Each will have their own interpretation of what that national interest is, but by using the term so frequently across the political spectrum it precludes meaningful debate about the sort of European Union we want. “The national interest is for a more social EU” doesn’t really work.

My third issue is the emotional connection that the phrase “national interest” evokes. It makes a person first think of the nation (and, for all the problems of defining Britishness, there is some emotional connection), and then make the leap to think of the nation in the context of something wider, the EU. With a debate in the UK about the EU that has been antagonistic for more than 30 years, the use of this phrase that encompasses and even emotionally highlights this antagonism makes no sense in framing terms.

I therefore suggest that the term “the national interest” should not be used in speeches by UK politicians about the EU, in the same way as I have argued the pro-European / eurosceptic frame should also be rejected. Politicians instead should articulate the interests of individual citizens, or groups of citizens wherever they are located. The needs of workers, bankers, fishermen, entrepreneurs, public sector workers should be set into an EU context, rather than first of all trying to construct a false notion that all in the UK agree before our politicians speak about the EU.

* – for more analysis of Alexander’s speech see this I wrote for LabourList and Emma Reynolds’s response.

There are a serious problems with these sorts of responses.

The first is the Euro. It may look like a battered currency just now, but the work to save it is central to almost every aspect of the future of the EU just now. Sarko could slap down Cameron because of the latter’s categoric rejection of the Euro much more easily than he could attack Donald Tusk or Helle Thorning-Schmidt, PMs from countries that still hold out the option of joining the Single Currency. So any argument about British leadership in the EU absolutely must not rule out Euro membership in the medium term, because without that commitment any attempt to reform anything at EU level proposed by the UK will be rejected at worst, and not taken adequately seriously at best.

Second, the pro-European vs. Eurosceptic fight is tiresome and gets us nowhere. As I argued in the Pragmatic Radicalism pamphlet, this frame only serves the interests of the EU-phobes, and prevents a narrative being developed that would allow a more socially responsible EU to be advocated. The term ‘pro-European’ is just too vague and stodgy to be useful.

In short, we need answers on how we want the European Union to look in the future – how the economic and political future of the EU should be. Just better defending what we’ve got, being cheerleaders for the status quo, is uninspiring and a waste of time.

We need to be able to attack the Common Agricultural Policy while defending and hoping to strengthen protection for workers EU-wide, and to advocate a future of the Euro that promotes growth rather than relying on austerity. That’s a long slog, but at least in the blogosphere we can make a start.

In recent days a new controversy has been brewing in Oxford as Richard Dawkins has declined to debate visiting American theologian William Lane Craig and Craig’s supporters have taken out 30 ads on Stagecoach buses in the city (more from The Oxford Times) with the slogan “There’s Probably No Dawkins”.

My mother e-mailed me, asking whether she could donate to a counter campaign (along the lines of “Dawkins exists. Question is whether god does.” perhaps?) but, on reflection, I don’t actually think any counter campaign is needed.

The ”There’s Probably No Dawkins” bus ads use the same colours and font as the Atheist Bus did and when you see those buses you think Atheist Bus and/or atheism. The atheists framed the whole fun but thought provoking bus ads thing, and any religious rival campaign uses our frames. So this latest campaign is one more win for our efforts.

Atheist Buses are also now embedded enough in the British psyche to have also featured in a couple of books recently as well – Alexander McCall Smith’s Corduroy Mansions, and Marcus Brigstocke’s God Collar.

Not bad for an idea from a journalist and a campaign started by a blogger.

But what is this ‘bailout’ actually?

What – importantly – does the image of ‘bailout’ conjure up in your mind? It’s the picture of water being thrown overboard from a leaking ship and – once the water is out – it’s subsumed into the rest of the ocean, lost.

Hence – in political terms – the very image of ‘bailout’ is wrong. It implies that the money (from the Finns in the case of Soini’s argument) will never be returned. But that is not so, as eloquently argued in this blog post by Henning Meyer at Social Europe Journal. Money is being lent, not given, and is being lent at rates at which lending countries will make a profit.

So this is not a bailout for Portugal. It is an emergency loan. That’s an important difference.

'Now is not the time to put the environment in the back seat'. My speech to Greek parliamentary committees today http://tinyurl.com/3gjm5cl

07.04.2011 13:51 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@JanezPotocnikEU

Janez Potočnik

The link leads through to a speech he gave in Athens today – full text here.

The key message – that the worst of the financial crisis is over for Greece and now is the time to focus once more on environmental matters – is fair enough, but my problem is with the framing of the title of the speech. I had to read it a couple of times before I understood the point. Not for the first time in an EU comms matter, the framing is all wrong – it’s the words ‘put the environment in the back seat’ that stick in mind, while Potočnik actually wants us to do the opposite.

Anyway, to give Potočnik his due he (or one of his staff) replied to my tweet to him, and as a result I’m going to send him a copy of George Lakoff’s excellent Don’t Think of an Elephant.

But an In/Out referendum might at least deliver one thing – an honest debate about the EU, its role in global politics and Britain’s role

Now here’s a radical idea. If a referendum is about the voice of the individual voter, how about giving some emphasis to the individual’s representation in the European Union? Fox should have added the words ‘and citizens’ role within it’ to the end of his sentence.

In other words, the phrasing should not be that I am a citizen of Britain, and that Britain is in the EU, but rather a simpler notion that as a Brit I am citizen of the European Union. That I have certain rights and responsibilities, and wield some power and influence, directly as a citizen of the EU.

If we cannot work out what Britishness means, even internally, why do we always bang on about membership of the EU being in our national interest? Strikes me it’s another broken frame in the UK-EU debate.

Frankly, the very title of the event makes me annoyed.

Why can we simply never move on beyond discussions about in or out of the European Union in the UK? OK, if you’re UKIP or Bill Cash then maybe you have the incentive to talk about this, but where is the incentive for an organisation linked to the Labour Party to pose a question this way?

For Labour, Britain’s membership of the EU has been a reasonably undisputed fact for a long time, and it’s about time the discourse caught up.

The old pro-European vs. eurosceptic frame is broken (as I’ve previously argued) and while debate is stuck on that issue there’s no way to discuss what those on the left – in the UK and elsewhere – should really be talking about, namely what a more social EU would actually look like, and how the UK can play a role in that.

A related discussion would be about how parties on the left – in the PES at EU level, and nationally – find a compelling message to get themselves back into power.

The two people I know in the UK in Labour circles who could give some compelling answers to these questions – Henning Meyer (of Social Europe Journal) and David Schoibl (chair of Labour Movement for Europe) are not even on the programme…

It is also vital that the debate does not start at the event about whether Labour should advocate a referendum on in-or-out of the EU, a matter I raised earlier this week. Yet with Wayne David on one of the panels, and Sunder Katwala chairing a panel, I fear this issue will raise its ugly head.

On balance I’m happy that the event tomorrow is taking place, and that the Fabians are starting to talk about EU matters. But it’s going to be a long and slow process before that debate in any way becomes meaningful.