Anyone else baffled by this portrayal of the EU as progressive and liberal

[Roonerspism]

It struck me today watching the march that the EU is now being protrayed as this liberal force across European states promoting fair standards for all.

From the moment I knew I no longer believed in the EU, about five years ago, it was because I saw it as the exact opposite.

And it was this that underpinned my vote to Leave.

I'm essentially left leaning and feel increasingly lost in this sea of protests!

The EU has never meant "Europe" to me and is rather the desire for a distant superstate with power in the most powerful few countries. Indeed, the current austerity placed on the Southern European countries, to the benefit of the north seems to go unnoticed to the devastated UK youth who seem not to consider the hugely unemployed youth in south Europe.

This is a capitalist project and not a humanitarian one. The reason for free movement of people as a core concept is not because it's nice to travel but solely to ensure corporations have access to a mobile and cheap workforce this encouraging greater integration. Never mind if this decimates the country of origin.

The misery of the infliction of a single currency on countries as disparate as Germany and Greece and the subsequent power held by Germany will cause untold suffering for at least a generation.

The talks to promote TTIP have largely been held in secret and further underlines the utterly undemocratic nature of this regime.

Yet here we all are. Waving our EU flags.

I'm utterly bemused. Am I mad?!?!?!

Oh and while we are talking about the wonderful eu let's not forget the money they give to Turkey to put refugees in what can only be described as concentration camps, their role in the Bosnia war, in Ukraine. ....

John Hillary from war on want has written some very good articles on the whole eu issue.

I am interested in hearing the argument from a left wing worker-centric point of view

Have I understood you right- you are saying the problem is that Poland etc is sending its best youngest and fittest to do fairly low skilled jobs

this is great for employers. But You are saying that the Poles, etc, Are effectively the elite and so easily out compete the local population who are left feeling disenfranchise. - a sort of collective low self system thus sets inamong the locals leaving them prey to nigel garage etc

Is that basically it?

Would you agree it is good for the Eastern European migrants and their families themselves?

No - you are not mad. The EU is seriously flawed and it has been clear over the last few years that we as a nation are totally powerless to effect real change.

I find it unacceptable that the original 6 go into a huddle to make decisions and create policy; that the EU is growing ever larger; that MEPs are so powerless: that the decision-making process is so cumbersome.......

I am old enough to remember the Common Market and it horrifies me to see what it has morphed into - this was not what we signed up to; and the UK has never really been happy with it. We have been back and forth across the channel frantically trying to opt out of bits of the EU; some of our MEPs are there on an anti-EU ticket; and we have never been in the club with our hearts. If you join a club you have to share its basic values and I am not sure that we ever have - maybe it is a small island characteristic not to be "clubbable" or not to want to be part of a creeping federation - I do not know. But I do know that we cannot go on battling our corner.

What sums it all up for me is the fact that the ridiculous idea of traipsing from Brussels to Strasbourg (the Euro Shuffle) every month with the whole entourage of people and thousands of documents, at huge expense (travel, hotel bills, meals etc.) is recognised as being a farce by just about everyone, but there is no process by which this can be halted - now that is seriously barmy and quite frightening. If they cannot create a mechanism for something so simple then I do not rate them as rulers.

Oh, thank god I'm not alone!

caitlin you nailed it with the "parallel universe" bit. When I try to explain my Leave vote, you can see people going "WTF", a bit like elvira upthread.

This is why I find the denigration of the older voters' choice so irritating. Firstly, they can remember prior to the EU and further, for whatever reason are more questioning. (I'm not old BTW!) I firmly believe that older voters did vote for future generations, in completely good faith.

The Guardian is no longer my home (actually, it hasn't for some time). Thanks for the reading suggestions - I shall explore.

caitlinohara that's exactly how I feel!

Rooner Are you me?! This is exactly what I have been saying about the older generation vote. The fact that they can remember a life before the EU, the fact that they were lied to in 1975 when they were promised that joining the single market would not mean giving up sovereignty in terms of laws etc, that annoying assumption that because they'll be dead soon they don't care about their children's and grandchildren's future. It's ridiculous. All I'm hearing on the radio is people complaining that it'll be so complicated to start making all these trade agreements for ourselves instead of relying on the EU to do it for us. It's infantilising. It's quite a show of faith by the older generation that they think we are capable of making a success of it, but that angle hasn't been explored at all.

And yy to mishaps, it's obvious that we have always been the awkward ones in the whole 'European project' thing (I really hate it when they call it that, it makes it sounds unnecessarily sinister!). My FIL told me about the Shuffle thing - I didn't even know that before. What a racket.

why your summary takes it a bit further than my conclusion, but yes. By flooding the market here with young, mobile workers, you are suppressing wages although studies apparently suggest this is not by a huge amount but I'm not sure if such studies are area specific. What then happens at the host country? many of the ambitious young leave. Is this good? I'm not sure it is from a humanitarian point of view. Does that mean, for example, that there is less training provided here for certain skill sets e.g. Plumbing. Does it mean a loss of talent from the original country?

In our office, I walk past the Lithuanian and Polish workers who basically run the place through menial jobs such as cleaning, cooks, porters etc. They are all highly qualified in their home countries. There isn't any progression - they stay in these low paid jobs. The company loves it. But why is it good for a degree educated Pole to clean bloody toilets? It makes me feel very uncomfortable. I chat to these people every day and they all say the same thing. They are here to make money, they want to go home but are saving. Some bring their kids up here and so hope to give them a better life.

Does no one else find this makes them feel shit?

Finally, I wonder whether the smaller towns in England are more troubled because the towns themselves are smaller. Thus the arrival of many low skilled workers transforms the town very quickly. There are different languages spoken, different shops, enclaves of certain nationalities in certain parts of the town.

I can understand why this would make people who had lived in these towns resentful.

In a global world, perhaps we all need our own sense of community and that is being lost?

I'm not sure if any of this is right. It's my take on what has happened the last few years. I live in a large cosmopolitan city and overall, I would say immigration has been positive. But even the systems here are creaking.

I have found here (mostly) my fellow leavers who have so eloquently argued why the EU is not paradise.
I remember the original EEC and the last referendum on this and I can assure you we thought we were voting for an economic grouping of the original member countries.
We 'oldies' mostly did not vote in this latest referendum for selfish reasons nor are we racist, xenophobic or ignorant - many of us have lived through history and the effect the war had on our childhood so if we really believed the EU was as wonderful as the young seem to view it - we would be whole-heartedly voting 'in' for the better future for our children and grandchildren
thank you OP - I feel I am not alone.

caitlin - we have a spiritual home thread

I have thought more than once about how I would have run the Leave campaign. It would have been brutally honest and mediocre! "Yes, there will be a shit storm when we leave. Yes it will be uncertain. Yes, the economy might be battered for a bit" I would then passionately explain why sovereignty is essential, why the EU is quite simply an entirely different beast to what we consented to. And no doubt I would be boo'd off stage!

I think it is going a bit far to think we can judge the effect on other countries so I don't share your feeling there

But it is good to read an argument about immigration that is not racist so for that merit alone it deserves serious consideration

Any solutions?

My solutions?

Well, with the Eastern European countries joining we could have capped immigration but chose not to as our research suggested hardly any people would come (well done Tony Blair).

So that was our error.

If I had been in Labour then I would have listened to voters from deprived parts of England. This is when Labour lost its vote. Remember Gordon Brown's "bigot" comment?

I think we are so up our liberal arses that we are unable to recognise that you can be concerned about immigration numbers and effects on towns without being xenophobic. Is is frankly ridiculous that we haven't been able to do so and is one of the reasons we are where we are.

I believe Cameron "got" all this. I think he should have thought more strategically. He could have got countries on board and pressed for further reform. I think a two tier system of membership, for example, might have worked so that free movement only existed among countries with similar economic standing.

Is also led to very unfair restrictions and deportations of non EU migrants.

I don't think many Leave voters are either racist or against immigration per se. I think many felt there was zero control for the UK government over the issue.

At its most basic, if you can't even control who enters your country, the you have lost your sovereignity.

You don't need a university degree to feel at odds with this and the very fact that those who do tell you you are stupid for scratching your head in wonder at it only makes you more likely to tick the "out" box

I think another strength of the argument is that it is consistent with accepting that immigrants put in more than they take out on a national level.
I understand you as accepting that but saying that doesn't help the average member of the local community

OP Very good thread and I agree with everything you say. I have tried making those same points over the past week but you have put it in a much shorter and neater way.

I think SOME remainers need to be honest and say they voted for what was best for them, their friends and family. In terms of finances and jobs only. Their jobs would be affected by Brexit, their stocks, shares, investments and private pensions would be affected. People they knew in big business, finance and EU funded work would be affected.

What they didn't consider was the millions of people already unemployed in Spain and Greece and Portugal. The massive austerity in Greece and the ever increasing national debt in Italy. The fact millions of people including many in the UK lost their jobs and homes after the 2008 crash, which was caused by bankers who the EU and UK decision makers support and bend over backwards to please.

Since 2008 those people have only seen recession and austerity. Recovery and Growth mean nothing to them, they haven't felt it one little bit. They have been forgotten and ignored by UK Government and the EU. Remainers may be worried about their investments going down, but where was the worry for those who only have a state pension or even less when they lost their jobs? Where was the worry about people who ended up using food banks?

Op, your original question is asked from a position of privilege - you live in the global North, and I assume that you have not lived through communism, authoritarianism, a failing state, warfare, genocide, hyperinflation, arbitrary detention, removal of minority rights etc.

Well, the entire post-soviet bloc including Poland and East Germany, the Baltics, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania etc - have all those things in their very recent political memory (last round of warfare and systematic human rights abuse by a government, on European territory, took place in 1999, for example.

So for a large chunk of Europe, the EU is a democratic project - countries emerging from communism and warfare, for example, were able to democratise because EU membership was the end goal of their transition.

When 'old regimes' ended, countries didn't become democratic and problem free overnight so the idea was that working towards membership would promote reform and good governance at all levels. I am simplifying massively here for brevity, there were and are problems with this system.

However, meeting membership criteria was basically a major goal of pretty much every post communist government at some point, and many, like Poland, implemented laws and democratic.reforms.that they wouldn't have otherwise.

As a result of 'aiming to meet European standards' for membership, many countries also reformed their policing practices, domestic violence support, anti pollution and building regulations, workplace rights, minority rights, basic humane conditions for prisoners, I could go on.

Bottom line, if you are a citizen in a corrupt, post-authoritarian system (and if I remember correctly, citizens in Bulgaria had to get a visa to leave their own country) where your basic rights are severely compromised, the the EU has been a.major force for democratic change.

Hasn't always been perfect, but seriously, if you'd experienced the political turmoil that much of Europe has until recently, then its a no brainer.

Rooner I remember Gordon Brown saying that. It spoke volumes about the party's dismissive attitude to their core voters. I blame them entirely for the rise of UKIP actually.

singapore these are all good points and probably explain why these countries are the ones that have the lowest levels of support for their own referendum and the highest levels of satisfaction with the EU. They also receive the most funding.

Not looking so good for the likes of Greece though.

Is suits the EU for these countries to join their project. But when the shit hits the fan, the EU has a heart of steel.

it's like being in a parallel universe where you suddenly find yourself at odds with everyone around you

I feel this way too.. I voted Remain, and it's not that friends/family voted Leave that's left me shocked and baffled, it's how they've been since.

OP I agree with lots of your points about the EU actually, and most I did take into consideration when weighing up my vote. Ultimately I kept coming back to the idea that limiting other people's freedom was not going to increase my own lot in life.

Funnily enough, if you scroll back 10 days ago on people's facebook feeds or go back that far here on MN or recall real life conversations from before the vote, there were A LOT of people who were on the fence, or who were very soft leave or remain.. i.e. only just. But still uncertain. But now, all of a sudden it's very polarised, and I find that people on both sides (even ones who seem to have forgotten that they were openly on the fense right up until the end) are 100% either leave or remain TO THE CORE. And that's odd, and a bit scary.

Is it just me? Am I going mad, or does anyone else remember all the "ooo I don't know, I can see both sides" people who have totally vanished and are now replaced by polarised Leave/Remainers?

Agree with previous poster., We sail tonight for Singapore
I did live in Czechoslovakia when it split up and I did witness how positive the desire to join the EU was as a force. It helped avoid destabilization and war.

I think the idea that British Voters were making informed decisions based on benefits that would accrue to the unemployed in other EU countries is weak. Who can be an expert on all these different countries with their different problems? and what is the highest proportion of leave voters who would truly have such motives?

But I have also been involved in a project in the north east using lots of EU money. and I can tell you that people were commuting up from Cambridge and london to lead the projects and take the money back down south. So I am very swayed by the idea that the average local needs more help when talented migrants flood in

But, speaking as someone who lives in the UK, I see the EU as a democratic project because I happen to think that check and balances, and regulation, are a good thing.

Most democratic constitutions - , German etc - have a system.of checks and balances built in, to make sure a single person doesn't gain absolute power - lessons learned from history.

Recent history also shows us that neoliberal democracies are increasingly rolling back welfare and eroding rights (USA) in the interest of capitalism. I see a lot of happening in the UK and I'm worried that we'll be like the USA quite soon.

The EU is like another layer of regulation which you may find democratic or not, depending on your political viewpoint.

I happen to like it because it has prevented us from deregulating markets and tossing workers and unions rights out of the window (like the USA again).

I don't agree with a lot of the stuff EU does (sending refugees back to Turkey, Frontex etc) but most such policies come from member states not 'Brussels'.

Adulting, I read somewhere (paraphrased) that people who were only slightly on the side they voted, feel like they are back-to-the-wall and are under pressure to justify their decision - at this point they are likely to become more polarised.

Certainly the aftermath of this referendum was very emotional & some of the vitriol felt quite personal (even though it was generalised anger & defensiveness); people felt they had to wholly justify their stance - to give a 'weak' or 'woolly' "well, I was not really sure so went for leave" was to unleash hell from Remainers (for eg).

Singapore
I agree that EU regulation is a great thing
It is not necessarily the same as being democratic though

I don't get this thing about Greece.

Yes, austerity measures were harsh. But doesn't anyone know how badly Greece was run for decades, by its own governments, who basically ran it into the ground? SnowBells explained this very well on page 1 of this thread.

Its not like the EU applied austerity measures to Greece on a whim. Greece was unable to live within its means, then expected a bail out, and the EU was rightly pissed off.

That said, I saw first hand the effect of the austerity measures in Greece, but blaming this on the EU rather than national governments, misses the point. Massively.

I see a lot of happening in the UK and I'm worried that we'll be like the USA quite soon

Me too. To be honest, if our domestic government was different, I might have been a strong leave voter.. but leaving now is IMO out of the frying pan into the fire.

Take TTIP for example, awful, AWFUL! but a lot of opposition to it across the EU and pressure from other EU countries. So by leaving, potentially, EU could back out of TTIP, and we're sat here with our "leaders" selling us off to something similar or worse than TTIP.

If I trusted us to take it in the right direction, out would be okay. Out is not okay now because of how things are domesically now and the EU is a buffer to that IMO

For example funding. Our government is pulling rugs from under people's feet left right and centre, but when funding goes through the EU and comes back here it is a more stable funding stream than it would be if it came form the governement of the moment trying to win the election of the moment IYKWIM