Why does the Labour Party not support Brexit?

[FlatulentStarfish]

Forgive me, I am not brilliantly knowledgeable about politics. But what I can't understand is why are the Labour Party not supporting Brexit? I always understood that Labour supported the British poor and working classes. Surely these are the very people who are being most hurt by remaining in the EU. One newspaper described the referendum as a battle between the Haves and the Have Nots. Why are Labour abandoning their people? The old Labour politicians such as Tony Benn were always anti EU.

[chilipepper20]

Once you end the nation state, you end democracy since you are governed supranationally by an elite you can't remove.

this is the argument I have sympathy for and one reason why I am on the fence. Immigration and dubious protection for one group (the unskilled poor) is not convincing.

[Winterbiscuit]

There are quite a few things the UK hasn't shared with the cultural history of other EU countries. Just for example:

Spain was a dictatorship under Franco until 1975
The Berlin wall didn't fall until 1989
In 1990 free elections were held in Romania and Croatia for the first time in 50 years
Greece had an unelected government in 2011-12
Italy's dictator Mussolini, the founder of fascism
Italy had an unelected government in 2011-13
Communism in Eastern Europe until recently, such as Hungary, Poland and Lithuania until the late 1980s

[Palehorse]

You seem to have missed from your list British colonial occupation exploitation and oppression throughout much of the 20th century....(e.g. Kenya, Cyprus, Palestine, India, s.africa...the list goes on)

Maybe we did spare our own citizens most of the time (well, putting N.ireland to one side), but we can hardly crow about how virtous we are in comparison to others in Europe.

[Palehorse]

chili why do you think democracy and the nation state are intrinsically linked?

Is it not possible to have popular/elected assemblies etc. Without the nation state?

[Winterbiscuit]

Yes I thought someone would mention colonisation and of course, that's very true.

But the comparison is between EU countries, and the level of democracy and how recent it is, compared to the UK with its long democratic history. There doesn't seem to be that much "shared cultural history" there.

Yes, Greece is an interesting point with its contribution to human rights. But if the EU values this so much, how come it has treated Greece so shoddily in recent times?

Perhaps to a number of EU states, democracy seems like a novelty and they have little experience of what it's like to live in a democratic nation outside the pseudo-democracy of the EU.

[Palehorse]

I think that's a very Anglo centric perspective. In terms of modern democracy, the UK's is not yet 100 years old. Finland's is much older as I understand.
In addition, there have been various forms of democracy across Europe over the centuries, Poland and some Italian states to name a few.
I don't think the UK is anything special this regard

[Palehorse]

Not to mention our laughably undemocratic second chamber

[Winterbiscuit]

The Tories got 36.9 per cent of the vote, so not a huge percentage but they got more seats than any other party. Would you still be contesting the system if your favoured party had got in? Would you be happy with PR if several smaller, rather extreme parties got a significant number of seats?

In the UK, both the House of Lords and Proportional Representation have been on the political agenda recently and there are groups currently pushing for reform.

The EU system is less democratic IMO. Our elected MEPs can't even propose legislation; not that many people could even name their own MEP as with all aspects of the EU they seem distant. The system is far removed from ordinary citizens, with constant lobbying from big business, secret trialogues and an unaccountable Commission. The UK's voice is just one out of 27 other countries. MEPs aren't even grouped into the countries they come from, but into political groupings, so there isn't one voice for the UK. We are outvoted more than any other country and when we've disagreed with a law we've been outvoted every time. Yet the EU law is gradually, permanently replacing UK law, and it's going slowly enough so that people don't realise the danger of this, as they can't remember anything different.

[OTheHugeManatee]

So elected MEPs have to go cap in hand to a bunch of unelected commissioners who then use their discretion to decide whether or not to act on that to propose legislation?

I don't know who else is asking the Commission to propose legislation along with MEPs, but neither do you, or anyone else. That's precisely part of the problem.

Do you really not see how this attenuates democratic representation of electorates? It's like having an elected House of Lords but a permanent House of Parliament, composed of appointees who you can't get rid of if they propose legislation you don't like.

The power to get rid of politicians if they piss off the electorate is a huge one, and we shouldn't take it for granted. Think of all those Tory U-turns lately. Tax credits. PIP cuts. Forced academisation in schools. All of which have come about because the politicians in question know they are voted in, and can be voted out again, so they just can't push changes through that piss too many people off.

Weaken that power, remove the fear of being voted out, and you start to see decisions forced through with total indifference to public outrage. After all, if the public can't vote the decision-makers out, who cares what they think? Think of what's been done to Greece, the forced privatisations and butchering of the welfare state there and you start to see what happens when unelected technocrats are in ultimate charge of political decision-making, with no fear of reprisals from an angry electorate.

This, fundamentally, is why we need to cling to UK parliamentary sovereignty and resist the attempts of bureaucrats to whittle it away under the guise of 'labour protections' or economic scaremongering. UK parliamentary sovereignty could be used to push through the right-wing will of the people, but also the left-wing will of the people. The key point is that it's the will of the people. Remove the accountability of politicians to the people, and they just do what they think is best - and if the people don't agree, tough.

[chilipepper20]

why do you think democracy and the nation state are intrinsically linked?

I don't. I just think practically most people in the UK couldn't tell you who their MEP is or what the EU structure is. But they could tell you about the equivalents in UK.

So, right now, it's undemocratic because people just don't know.

[Palehorse]

chili it's a fair point; so is it really a question of better education?

So elected MEPs have to go cap in hand to a bunch of unelected commissioners who then use their discretion to decide whether or not to act on that to propose legislation?

Only in the same way an mp/group of MPs/the government go cap in hand to parliament to get the rest of elected mp's to give their consent. I think it's called democracy?
You keep asserting that the commission is some kind of opus dei shadowy organisation. It's not. It's made up of member states! If you don't like your representative then vote out your government, it's them making the appointment.

Member states, meps, and possibly other organisations (though the rules are quite strict) can put forward legislation to the commission, but it can only become eu law when voted on by the parliament, which is directly elected.


Yes it should be more democratic, perhaps balanced by directly elected commissioners? But it's hardly the polit bureau you're painting it to be

[OTheHugeManatee]

'Politburo' and 'opus dei' are your words, not mine. Are you confusing me with someone else?

[OTheHugeManatee]

Only in the same way an mp/group of MPs/the government go cap in hand to parliament to get the rest of elected mp's to give their consent. I think it's called democracy?

The key difference here is that 'parliament' isn't an unelected group of permanent appointees - it is composed of elected representatives. By contrast, the power to propose legislation in the EU rests solely with people who are not accountable to any electorate.

I am not making the EU out to be a 'politburo'. I am simply pointing out that elected representatives - Parliament, in our case - have an incentive to listen to the wishes of ordinary people, in a way that unelected ones - such as the European Commission - do not. And that if sole power to propose legislation rests with an unelected group this is likely to have knock-on effects in terms of the kind of legislation proposed and its sensitivity to adjustment based on the views of the electorate. This is of fundamental importance if we want to live in a democracy. It's not enough just to say airily 'It should be more democratic, yes': democratic power is hard-won and history shows that it's not something readily handed back to the people, once given up.

[Palehorse]

Eu commissioners are not permanent appointees. They serve 5 year terms. Those in Permanent positions are akin to our civil servants.
Commissioners propose legislation to the directly elected eu parliament, which cannot become law until voted and passed by the parliament. That legislation might originate with member states, meps, or from the commissioners themselves who are acting on behalf of (and with instruction from) member state governments.
So in effect the commissioners are answerable to their own national government, with the exception I suppose of the president, whose position is ratified by meps in the eu parliament.
No one is unaccountable.

In fact, I'd probably say that this system is more democratic than the UK system, where we have an unelected second chamber full of peers who are literally accountable to no one.

[user1463231665]

Labour supports remaining as do Tories like I am because it makes sense for Britain. For the left it's in part because the poor will be better off and because many many of our protections for the less well off have come from EU legislation we might never have pushed through but for having them forced on us by the Eu in all kinds of areas. On this topic I the Tory and my Corbynista adult child actually agree for once....

[AnnaForbes]

For the left it's in part because the poor will be better off - why do you think this?

[user1463231665]

The economy will be a lot stronger with us in the EU - just about everyone agrees on that. If there is more money around we can provide for the less fortunate better. I know some brexiters think we will be richer outside the EU but that is simply not so.

[Winterbiscuit]

The economy could well be stronger in the longer term. This isn't a short-term decision.

If there's more money around then yes, we can better provide for the less fortunate. But while Brussels takes away British taxpayers money, then gives only some of it back and tells us how to spend it, we are less in control.

[claig]

"Eurozone is DOOMED: Euro will stumble from crisis to crisis and FALL, warns Mervyn King

THE EUROZONE is doomed to COLLAPSE in failure, a former governor of the Bank of England predicted yesterday.
...
In the book, Lord King expected an "economic political crisis" to be triggered by further euro-zone bail-outs and austerity measures.

Voters across Europe will increasingly turn against the single currency project in a backlash against the loss of sovereignty in the drive towards financial union.

He wrote: "It will lead to not only an economic but also a political crisis. "

www.express.co.uk/news/politics/648539/Eurozone-doomed-single-currency-crisis-Mervyn-King

[Palehorse]

Claig, I'll see your former governor, and raise you one still serving

[claig]

Palehorse, always remenber the Establishment. Serving members etc.

Remember Boris's words in general "it is the biggest stitchup since the Bayeux Tapestry" and they don't come any bigger than that apart from from on a Labour Party convention.

[Winterbiscuit]

I see that Lexit the Movie: The Left Wing Case for Brexit has nearly reached its funding target

It's organised by "Labour Leave" and I'm looking forward to watching the finished film!

"Lexit the Movie: there is a big lie we want to challenge, and we need your help to do it, and we need to do it fast.

Politicians and journalists up and down the country have a simple message for you: voting Leave is for eccentric Tories and nationalist UKIPers. Voting Remain is for decent, progressive, internationalist Labour folk.

This is a falsehood, a very big one. And we're going to make a film to explain why.

We are the Labour Leave campaign group, run by Labour MPs, campaigning to leave the EU on June 23rd."