Brexit is an old people’s home
… And it’s English, not British.
By Anthony Barnett
This article was originally published in openDemocracy.
As the UK government hands across its letter to the EU triggering Article 50, a poll was published showing that the judgment British voters made on 23 June last year has remained steady. There has been a very slight movement of opinion in support of leaving. Within the generations, the differences remain as striking as they were in the vote itself: there is no majority for leaving the EU amongst those under 55. Those between 55 and 64 favour Brexit by a mere 52%. It is the over 65’s who swing the outcome as they break 59% for Leave. In contrast, the under 25s are 55% for staying in the EU and only 32% for Leave. Brexit is government of the old, by the old, for the old – and it will perish with the old. Maturity could still mean that it is the right thing to do; only in Theresa May’s hands Brexit has become an attempt to restore a 17th century version of sovereignty that is bound to fail.
How long will this take, how long? The slow, drawn out process of modern aging can be interminable. Or fast. Incrementalism and sudden death exist side by side in the over 65s, so no clear prediction of when and how the nations of the United Kingdom will renew their engagement with the European Union is possible yet. Nor whether they will do so separately, jointly or in sequence. Nor how significant a change in the EU itself will be required, as it learns from its own crisis. Last week, the arch federalist Wolfgang Schäuble conceded in an interview with the Financial Times, “The federal idea has not gone away but at the moment it has no chance of being realised… there are no broad majorities to give additional shares of national sovereignty to Brussels… we have to improve… our intergovernmental methods”.
If that’s Schäuble’s view, what was the point of Britain leaving? The monster of neoliberalism and (as German finance minister) nemesis of Yanis Varoufakis is on his way out, while Varoufakis’s DiEM25 movement to reform Europe deepens its critique, proposing a European New Deal. There are therefore three ways of seeing the exchange of the British letter and the EU’s immediate response.
The one that will get the media limelight is the exchange itself, the terms they set, the actual argument over the next few months, the rows on both sides about the negotiation.
Much more important will be the two inner processes within the EU and the UK that will be unleashed: the internal reorganisation necessary to deliver the external objective of defining, achieving and selling the outcome over the next two years.
But by far the most important will be the EU’s. If all goes according to intentions, in about 18 months’ time an agreement will be concluded that each of the EU’s 27 member states must ratify. An intense period of reflection will then take place to define how the EU relates to its most important neighbour in each country’s legislature covered by its own domestic media. It is wrong to see Brexit as akin to a divorce between two single, separate beings. The EU is not a ‘super-state’. It shares but has not merged sovereignties. The nature and future of its “intergovernmental method” is now in play.
Europe and the gift of Brexit
A striking measure of the EU’s potential maturity (I emphasise potential) is that, just as it enters this defining period, the most ferocious advocate of centralisation relaxes his efforts. At the same time a feeble White Paper presenting “Reflections and Scenarios for 2015” was prepared for the leaders’ 60th anniversary summit by the EU Commission itself. It opens the way to doing less differently with a multispeed EU placed on the agenda. Ever closer centralisation is recognised as a has-been.
Until now, while each EU country has debated its own relationship with the Union in terms of its interests and desires, discussion about the nature and future of the EU itself and the actual ‘European project’, has been jealously guarded by the centre. The Commission and the growing Eurocracy that surrounds it has always sought to shield the project from the earthy localism of national legislatures and popular assent. There was one disastrous exception when the EU’s proposed constitution was put to referendums in 2005. The Spanish agreed, but French and Dutch emphatically did not. The leaders of the EU, with Tony Blair and the Brits actively amongst them, set about defying the popular verdicts. They created today’s Lisbon Treaty which delivered the constitution in all but name by anti-democratic means – turning the EU into an autonomous legal entity for the first time with its own diplomatic service and giving the European Court in Luxembourg hugely enhanced powers.
Since then, the EU has avoided entanglement with the domestic politics of the member states like the plague. Ireland was constitutionally bound to put Lisbon to a referendum and that took the embarrassment of two attempts. Now Brexit has vindicated its aversion. The terms of Brexit, however, will go to each member’s legislature to ratify. Nationally elected representatives will debate in their own parliaments what they think of the separation. In the process each country will have the opportunity to consider what it sees in the EU as a whole, and how it sees itself within a complex, probably multi-speed union. Done well, this could start to repair the democratic damage of Lisbon, by building a relationship between the EU and European citizens through their elected assemblies. A two year ‘legitimation process’ could be initiated, ironically enough, as the gift of Brexit.
Theresa May’s power grab
In the UK, however, a very different internal process is being demanded by the Westminster government. Not a democratisation, decentralisation and re-legitimisation of its political system now it has won back ‘independence’, but the opposite. The referendum was won with the cry of “take back control” and an aura of democracy hung about the slogan. The claim of a restoration of ‘sovereignty’ from Brussels carried with it a sense that the British people would enjoy self-government, once liberated from the oligarchy of the EU.
Instead of the much-needed democratisation of the British state following on from Brexit, the opposite is happening. The absolutism of the ‘absolute sovereignty of parliament’ that is coming to the fore. The most vivid, immediate demonstration has been north of the Scottish border. Here we can start to see what is going to happen to all British politics in the Brexit process.
The Scots voted 62% to 38% against Brexit in the referendum. A huge majority. They have a Scottish National Party government that was elected with a clear manifesto commitment that if the material circumstances of Scotland’s position in the world were altered it could hold an independence referendum – specifically designed as an option if the country were to be taken out of the EU against its will. But when the prime minister went to Glasgow on 3 March to address the Scottish Conservatives she made her priorities brutally clear.
Strengthening and sustaining the bonds that unite us is a personal priority for me… We must take this opportunity to bring our United Kingdom closer together… the fundamental unity of the British people which underwrites our whole existence as a United Kingdom… We need to build a new ‘collective responsibility’ across the United Kingdom, which unites all layers of government… I am determined to ensure that as we leave the EU, we do so as one United Kingdom… the UK Government serves the whole UK… That places on us a unique responsibility to preserve the integrity and future viability of the United Kingdom, which we will not shirk.
Instead of being intimidated by this bullying tone, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, declared that the UK government was being uncooperative. She demanded the authority to call a referendum between the Autumn of 2018 and the Spring of 2019, when the actual terms of Brexit become clear and are debated by parliaments across the EU.This has now become a formal request of the Scottish parliament.
The substantive issue behind Sturgeon’s stand is quite stark, although it has received almost no coverage in the London media who have no interest in understanding how things look from anywhere else. The EU is currently in charge of agricultural and fishing policies, two issues of great importance for Scotland. If these powers went to the Scottish parliament and government after Brexit, their responsibility would be increased considerably. This was the potential upside of Brexit for her, that Sturgeon expressed an interest in immediately after the referendum vote went against Remain. It would mean, however, that when London wants to negotiate new trade agreements with other countries round the world, it will need Scotland’s approval for any terms that cover trade in food and fish stocks. Instead of a ‘nimble’ UK government negotiating with the US, for example, on the import of their cheap, hormone-raddled steaks in return for exporting financial services, Edinburgh will object because of the need to protect its Angus herds. The prime minister has warned she is in no mood to permit this. In other words, what Theresa May calls “the fundamental unity of the British people which underwrites our whole existence as a United Kingdom”, could turn out to mean the authority to sell out Scotland in the name of her, “new ‘collective responsibility’”.
Gordon Brown was the UK’s last Labour prime minister and is a Scot. He attempted to intervene himself between Scotland’s First Minister and Westminster’s current prime minister by trying to upstage them both. In addition to agriculture and fisheries, Brown demanded that environmental regulation, the right to levy and adjust VAT and the £800 million that he calculates the EU spends in Scotland, should all be assigned to the Edinburgh parliament, to head off independence. Brown stated categorically,
The status quo has been overtaken by events because unless powers now with the European Union are repatriated from Brussels to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the regions, Whitehall will have perpetrated one of the biggest power grabs by further centralising power.
But power grab is what Theresa May seems to have in mind. She was coldly dismissive of Sturgeon’s demand that the Holyrood parliament be given the right to call an independence referendum. To make her point she flew to Glasgow for a second time in a month and delivered another adamantine and even more extraordinary speech so revealing it needs quoting at length,
When this great union of nations – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – sets its mind on something and works together with determination, we are an unstoppable force.
That is why the Plan for Britain I have set out… has as its heart one over-arching goal: to build a more united nation… fully respecting, and indeed strengthening, the devolution settlements. But never allowing our Union to become looser and weaker, or our people to drift apart.
So, as Britain leaves the European Union, and we forge a new role for ourselves in the world, the strength and stability of our Union will become even more important… for the good we can do together in the world, as a Global Britain… and as we face this great national moment together… the more united Britain that I am determined we should be once we emerge from this period of national change… And when we work together and set our sights on a task, we really are an unstoppable force.
There are three very striking aspects to this speech delivered in open combat with Sturgeon and the SNP. First, she will “never allow” that “our Union” becomes “looser and weaker”. Clearly, proposals for taking over the EU’s say over VAT is a loosening of the Union. She has set herself against Brown as well as Sturgeon. Should her intransigence provoke Brown into making an alliance with Sturgeon, Scotland will be free of England’s bullying.
Second, May’s language of “the nation”. She has given other speeches where she has referred to the nations of the UK and to then Britain itself as a nation. This time she has gone much further. Having acknowledged the separate national characters of the four countries of the UK she sets out as her “one over-arching goal” the building of a single, “more united nation”. She then emphasizes that Britain faces a “great national moment” and “a period of national change”. For her, Brexit is an exercise in nation building. May is seeking to fuse the countries of the UK into one nation. At the conclusion of her speech earlier in the month, she said: “We are four nations, but at heart we are one people”. Out of “one people”, one nation will emerge. So far as Scotland is concerned, this is an attempt to reverse the momentum of devolution altogether. It is not just a power grab, it turns the devolved administrations into a form of local government, denying them any distinct and separate national voice.
What kind of united nation will emerge from the fire of Theresa May’s Brexit? Her answer is “an unstoppable force”. She concludes her speech by repeating this to make sure we get the point. “together… we really are an unstoppable force”. Even Margaret Thatcher never claimed anything quite so balmy. Donald Trump does though. In his inauguration speech: “When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.” Such boasting is shameful enough when it comes from the most powerful politicians on the planet. From an unelected UK prime minister it is ridiculous. That May and her speech writers think it could inspire the Scots to join the English to lose themselves in a single British nation committed to global enterprise suggests the prime minister is already starting to lose her judgment under the pressures of Brexit.
I have laid out Theresa May’s claims on Scotland because the consequences of the direction she is taking seem so dire and it is important to base the stark conclusions on some careful evidence. We British are to regard ourselves as “one people”. Ein Volk. Those who stand in the way are… enemies of the people. What is going on here? Last October, after May’s first speech to her own party conference, I showed how she was mainstreaming the Daily Mail. If that is the origins of her politics, what is its destination? This too is now clear. She is seeking to restore the absolutism of the absolute sovereignty of parliament, using the referendum to legitimate not the sovereignty of parliament but executive supremacy over it.
There was a moment when, after the referendum, it might have been possible to use the democratic impulse within the Leave campaign that was directed against the unaccountable nature of Brussels. Use it here in Britain to inspire the decentralisation of power and create a popular democratic Britain. I am not saying it would have been easy, but the direction would have been future oriented. Building on the openness and audacity of the vote, Brexit might have been used to launch the decentralised constitutional democracy England especially needs. Instead, Theresa May has set her sights on restoring a mythical period – when the Queen was young and the country united around her. This is why Brexit is an old people’s home. It need not have been , but in Theresa May’s hands it is. I don’t mean that it is associated with aging as such, but with nostalgia for a specific form of the past. To achieve this regressive vision, Brexit is forcing her to centralise, to subordinate parliament to her will, and use the surveillance state she has helped to build to ensure the necessary discipline. By centralising rather than sharing, closing not opening the process, insisting on strict terms, she has brought all the strains of leaving the EU onto herself and her government. It isn’t fascism. Nor is it the imperialism that gave the English the space to recruit Scotland especially into a joint enterprise around the world. It is an attempt to regenerate the authoritarian powers locked in the UK’s pre-democratic absolutist system and give them a national form.
The nation she claims this to be is Britain – which is not a nation. Nor can it become one in her uninspiring hands. The reason lies at the heart of Brexit. There is a national passion but it is English. An English nationalism that expresses itself in a longing for Great British institutions. I show in the book I have been writing about Brexit and Trump, English nationalism is without its own home and its politicians need Britain as their base. Any Scot or Welshman or Irishman reading May’s speeches in Scotland hears a cold, commanding English voice, not a British one. The frustrated, democratic impulse behind Brexit’s call for control was English. Rather than use the opportunity to release the English nation from its imprisonment in a centralised Britain, May along with the Daily Mail & co demand the opposite. Their centralised Britain, were they to realise it, would once more deny the English the chance to find their own voice.
It won’t work. The appeal to a fused, single people is as unattractive south of the border as it is to the north, or the west with Northern Ireland and Wales. Everyone outside England witnesses what Nicolas Boyle describes as,
the willed triumph of illusion over reality revealed by the referendum result… most damagingly still at work in the determination of the English to cling on to their old exceptional status as anonymous masters of the United Kingdom and of the other nations with which they have to share the Atlantic Archipelago.
It won’t work even for the English for whom the United Kingdom was always a means to achieve wider influence. This, indeed, is why the old establishment joined the UK to the EU in the first place. They fully understand that sharing sovereignty threatened their form of domination at home, but regarded this as a price worth paying for influence within the EU and with the United States as part of the larger North Atlantic alliance. No such political prize is on offer from being an off-shore trading depot. In so far as the City of London might cash in to global freeloading, this will exacerbate all the regional and social inequities that led to the Brexit explosion. To cap this by making the “precious” Union with Scotland and Northern Ireland her main priority makes sense only for those who are psychically obsessed with the Union.
They are becoming fewer. The 2011 census found that “70.1 per cent of people residing in England associated themselves with an English identity”, while “English as a sole identity (not combined with other identities), was chosen by 32.4 million people (57.7 per cent)”. This shift is finding its way into the Conservative party itself, as the ground gives way below the Prime Minister’s strong words. Paul Goodman writing in the Irish Times reports that a survey of conservative party members undertaken by Conservative Home and the John Denham’s centre at Winchester University shows that “Only 33 per cent said it would inflict serious damage on the power, influence and well-being of the remaining parts of the UK” while 29% looked forward to it ending Scotland’s “unreasonable demands on England”. Previously, UK prime ministers never had the Union Jack in the Cabinet room in Downing Street. Such displays were for lesser countries striving to assert themselves. That May should feel the need to breach this deep symbol of superiority shows what a backward step is being undertaken by her authoritarian turn.
A final contrast illustrates the miserable turn of events. The conclusion to the EU’s White Paper is a low key, back of the document affair. Someone was clearly instructed to write a few paragraphs to wind it up. The tone is sad. One of them states,
Change in all things may be inevitable, but what we want from our lives and the European values that we hold dear remain the same. We want a society in which peace, freedom, tolerance and solidarity are placed above all else. We want to live in a democracy with a diversity of views and a critical, independent and free press. We want to be free to speak our mind and be sure that no individual or institution is above the law. We want a Union in which all citizens and all Member States are treated equally. We want to create a better life for our children than we had for ourselves.
This feels all the more authentic for not being pompously self-important. Most of it is standard rhetoric. One sentence stands out: “We want a Union in which all citizens and all Member States are treated equally”. The argument for Brexit was that the EU was stifling its member states in an old-fashioned, centralising fashion. Now we discover that it aspires to treat all of them equally, whereas in the United Kingdom such equality would be regarded, to quote the Prime Minister, as “drift” undermining the “precious union”. No equality of treatment here? I know all about the centralising and exploitative realities of the EU. But aspirations matter also. What Theresa May’s definition of Brexit aspires to is unsustainable.
The EU cannot survive if it sticks to business as usual
Article originally published in CNN
As British Prime Minister Theresa May triggers Article 50, rendering Brexit inescapable, Europe is gripped by two paradoxes, both of which pose clear and present threats to the European Union and to Britain.
David Cameron — May’s predecessor who lost the Brexit referendum — has reason to be puzzled by the upshot of his defeat.
Britain is now leaving the EU because of his request for a “variable geometry” — allowing Britain to opt out of basic EU tenets — which was unceremoniously turned down by Berlin and, less consequentially, by Paris.
Yet, as a direct result of Brexit, Berlin and Paris are now adopting the idea of variable geometry as the way forward for the EU.
This first paradox is easier to understand when seen through the lens of the conventional European practice of making a virtue out of failure.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had for years opposed the idea of a Europe that proceeds at different speeds — allowing some countries to be less integrated than others, due to their domestic political situation.
But now — after the colossal economic mismanagement of the euro crisis has weakened the EU’s legitimacy, given Euroskeptics a major impetus, and caused the EU to shift to an advanced stage of disintegration — Mrs Merkel and her fellow EU leaders seem to think that a multi-speed Europe is essential to keeping the bloc together.
At the weekend, as EU leaders gathered to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, leaders of the remaining 27 member states signed the Rome Declaration, which says that they will “act together, at different paces and intensity where necessary, while moving in the same direction, as we have done in the past.”
The failure to keep the EU together along a single path toward common values, a common market and a common currency will come to be embraced and rebranded as a new start, leading to a Europe in which a coalition of the willing will proceed with the original ambition while the rest form outer circles, connected to the inner core by unspecified bonds.
In principle, such a manifold EU will allow for the East’s self-proclaimed illiberal democracies to remain in the single market, refusing to relocate a single refugee or to adhere to standards of press freedom and judicial independence that other European countries consider essential. Countries like Austria will be able to put up electrified fences around their borders. It could even leave the door open for the UK to return as part of one of Europe’s outer circles.
Whether one approves of this vision or not, the fact is that its chances depend on a major prerequisite: a consolidated, stable eurozone.
One only needs to state this to recognize the second paradox of our post-Brexit reality: In its current state, the eurozone cannot provide the stability that the EU — and Europe more broadly — needs to survive.
The refusal to deal rationally with the bankruptcy of the Greek state is a useful litmus test for the European establishment’s capacity to stabilize the eurozone.
As it stands, the prospects for a stabilized eurozone do not look good. Business as usual — the establishment’s favored option — could soon produce a major Italian crisis that the eurozone cannot survive.
The only alternative under discussion is a eurozone federation-light, with a tiny common budget that Berlin will agree to in exchange for direct control of French, Italian and Spanish national budgets. Even if this were to happen, which is doubtful given the political climate, it will be too little, too late to stabilize the eurozone.
So here is the reality that Europe faces today: a proper federation of 27 member states is impossible, given the centrifugal forces tearing Europe apart. Meanwhile, a variable geometry confederacy — of the type David Cameron had requested and which the UK might want to join after 2019 — requires a consolidated eurozone. But this also seems impossible, given the current climate.
Allowing EU member states to move in different directions and at different speeds is precisely the wrong way to address to address the differing concerns of Europeans living in different countries — and it seems an odd way to unite them behind a single way forward for the continent.
In fact, Europeans are already united by two existential threats: Involuntary under-employment — the bitter fruit of austerity-driven under-investment — and involuntary migration — the result of the overconcentration of investment in specific regions.
To make the European Union work again, each and every European country must be stabilized and helped to prosper.
Europe cannot survive as a free-for-all, everyone for themselves, or as an Austerity Union built on de-politicised economic decision-making with a fig leaf of federalism in which some countries are condemned to permanent depression and debtors are denied democratic rights.
Europe, in short, needs a New Deal — perhaps similar to the New Deal that my organization DiEM25 unveiled in Rome at the weekend while the European elites were toasting their variable geometry — that runs across the continent, embracing all countries independently of whether they are in the eurozone, in the European Union or in neither.
"DiEM25's European New Deal demands electoral expression", Yanis Varoufakis tells journalists
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is excellent to be back in Rome, where all roads have led us, from all over Europe, on the 60th Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome.
Under normal circumstances, tomorrow should be a major celebration of the idea of Europe and the achievements of the EU. Alas, the idea of Europe is in retreat and the EU is at an advanced state of disintegration. Europeans watching on their TV screens their leaders celebrating here in Rome will be asking themselves: What exactly are they celebrating? Europe’s disintegration, which they now call ‘multi-speed’ or ‘variable geometry’ Europe? Their business-as-usual approach, which is fanning the flames of xenophobic nationalism? It is not at all clear what they are in Rome for.
Our reason for being here in Rome – the reason DiEM25 is here – is both clear and pertinent. We are here to answer two questions:
The first question is: “What needs to be done?” Our answer comes in the form of DiEM25’s European New Deal that we shall be launching at the Teatro Italia tomorrow evening: a comprehensive, innovative policy agenda capable of saving Europe and, more importantly, capable of making Europe worth saving. It is DiEM25’s antidote to the TINA (There Is No Alternative) dogma which is paralysing and destroying Europe.
The second question is: “How can it be done?” How is DiEM25 proposing to take its European New Deal agenda to the peoples of Europe and enable them to impose it on an Establishment in permanent denial?
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?
DiEM25’s European New Deal, in brief
DiEM25’s European New Deal offers a comprehensive economic and social agenda for the whole of Europe, including the Eurozone, EU members not in the Eurozone, and even European countries outside the EU. It demonstrates how the European economic and social crisis, including the euro crisis, could be stabilised immediately, under the institutions already in place, before developing new institutions aimed at: (a) turning idle wealth into green investments, (b) delivering basic goods to every European region (freedom from involuntary unemployment, freedom from involuntary migration, the right to a sustainable environment and community), (c) sharing the returns to capital and wealth, (d) democratising, and thus rationalising, economic policy. Moreover, a plan for managing the ill-effects of a possible EU and Eurozone disintegration are embedded in DiEM25’s European New Deal.
HOW CAN IT BE DONE?
DiEM25’s Open Call to political and civil society across Europe
DiEM25 was founded on the belief that a progressive agenda needs a fresh, transnational, pan-European political movement to realise it… the ‘M’ in DiEM25! Can the European New Deal be made relevant, however splendid it may be as a Policy Paper, without being put to democracy’s greatest trial; i.e. the ballot box? We do not think so. Does this mean that DiEM25 is turning into a political party ready to contest elections in national or European Parliament elections? This is what I’d like to elaborate on this morning.
When DiEM25 was founded, at Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre in February 2016, we explained that our first task was to put together a Progressive Policy Agenda for Europe as a whole. When asked whether we intended to contest elections our standard answer was: “If our Progressive Policy Agenda is sound, we trust that it will find a way to express itself electorally across Europe.” Well, a little more than a year later, our Progressive Policy Agenda – the European New Deal we are launching tomorrow, here in Rome – is ready. And it demands electoral expression!
Ideally, DiEM25 would not contest elections but, rather, offer existing political parties, movements and organisations the infrastructure necessary to enable them to run with DiEM25’s European New Deal. To this effect, today, here in Rome, we are issuing an Open Call to political parties, municipalities, trades unions, social movements, civil society organisations and citizens from across Europe to join us over the next two months in a joint effort to give a pan-European electoral expression to the European New Deal that DiEM25 is launching tomorrow evening at the Teatro Italia.
Over the next two months we shall deliberate with all parties, organisations and trans-European networks that respond positively to DiEM25’s Open Call, as well as with DiEM25’s membership. Then, on 25th May, exactly eight weeks after tomorrow’s launch here in Rome, we shall meet again, this time in Berlin, at the Volksbühne Theatre again, to announce the electoral expression that our European New Deal policy agenda will take. In countries where our political partners share our commitment to promote and realise the European New Deal, we shall support them. Elsewhere, if DiEM25 members decide in a democratic and transparent process involving the entire movement’s community that they wish to organise themselves to put forward the European New Deal in an electoral contest, we shall support them too.
DiEM25 is not about winning power. DiEM25 is about empowering Europe’s peoples to re-claim control over our cities, countries, dignity, hope, lives and future. But to reclaim these we first need to reclaim common purpose among sovereign European peoples. For this, we need an internationalist, common, transnational European economic and social agenda. We need an antidote to the EU’s TINA paralysing doctrine. We need a European New Deal offering realistic policies that can be implemented as soon as tomorrow morning. And we need to take this European New Deal to the ballot box in every corner of Europe.
Thank you
Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 Co-founder
Introducing DiEM Voice, our new art platform
As part of this weekend’s launch in Rome of our European New Deal with a three-day festival of DiEM25 activities, we will also launch DiEM Voice, an on-going art platform that will serve as an integral part of our movement’s future.
For us, art plays an integral role in determining not only the means (propagation) but also the ends of our movement; not only the medium for conveying the policy/message but also for shaping the policy/message itself. DiEM Voice aims to facilitates a democratic dialogue between people-participants across Europe, using art.
DiEM Voice will make its first appearance at our event “The Time Of Courage” on March 25, in the form of a project that will be powered by the audience. Throughout the evening we will capture questions directly from people at the event and those watching it online – questions that might not have been expressed otherwise. We will print these questions and gradually fill up the foyer area of Teatro Italia. As the event concludes and the participants leave the auditorium, they will all be confronted with these questions.
The next day, Sunday, March 26, marks the official launch of DiEM Voice. We will participate in a pioneering cultural event in Rome’s MAXXI contemporary art museum, alongside some of the most interesting voices today in politics and art. Our coordinator Danae Stratou will give a presentation of DiEM Voice.
We will also screen the Palme d’Or and BAFTA-award winning movie “I, Daniel Blake”, made by DiEM25 Advisor Ken Loach.
>> EUROPEAN NEW DEAL: A summary
By DiEM25 Belgium/Italy DSC members
The idea of Europe is in retreat and the European Union seems to have entered into an apparently irreversible crisis. With Brexit, one great pillar of the European Union has already fallen. Others may follow – if not in this year’s election cycle then perhaps in the next.
“Take our country back!” is the proud message of Brexit supporters and an aspiration that we begin to encounter everywhere in Europe, even amongst left-wingers advocating a return to the nation-state.
So, is the European Union a lost cause? Or can it be saved? Should it be saved? DiEM25 believes yes. That we, the peoples of Europe, must take back our countries and our future, our regions, our cities and towns. And to do this we need to reclaim a common purpose amongst sovereign peoples.
Some issues cannot be solved by a single country or region (e.g. concerning ecology, economy, migration). The disintegration of the EU is a divide et impera strategy we should avoid. We need an internationalist, common, transnational European project, closer to its people, open to their ideas, sensitive and responsive to their anxieties.
We need a bold, innovative project for Europe. We need a European New Deal[1].
This document outlines just that.
Bottom up, participatory democracy:
DiEM25 is a space for participatory, open-source and democratic actions. This paper, as our movement organizational principles and everything we do, was designed and put together collaboratively.
This is how DiEM25 reclaims a common purpose amongst sovereign peoples: by bringing them together and back to democracy. The process takes 6-8 months (faster than most existing ones) and results in a highly participative, democratic and engaging civic experiment, giving every participant a true sense of ownership and connection with the end result. Exactly what Europe needs.
It is a practical, effective, rich and enriching way of democracy. It brings people together in constructive discussions, harvests the full power of the collective intelligence of a mass of engaged citizens, and legitimizes policies, strategies and processes to their core.
Capitalizing on DiEM25 volunteers from hundreds of cities across Europe, we convened locally and in self-organization, invited people from across the political spectrum to share ideas and propose solutions and policies. An elected expert committee then compiled the proposals and wrote a first Policy Paper Proposal. This first proposal was sent back to the members, for debate, revision, added comments and suggestions. The cycle repeats itself sometimes, fueling short and effective feedback loops between all participants. Finally, a date is proposed for a vote on a digital platform, and the paper is judged on its merits by all the members of the movement.
Join us, and let’s build a new Europe together.
[1] DiEM25’s Working Paper entitled ‘European New Deal: An economic agenda for European Recovery’ will be launched on the 25th March 2017 in Rome, in the context of the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The full version of the White Paper will be made public before that event to prepare the deliberations that will take place in Rome
This weekend, DiEM25 lands in Rome to present its "European New Deal": our alternative to "There Is No Alternative"
We, the Democracy in Europe Movement, see things differently. We want to give the people of Europe a real alternative to the Establishment and the rising ‘nationalist international’; a progressive path to save Europe from itself.
That’s why this weekend we’ll be landing in Rome to set that alternative in motion, over three days of events and important announcements. And we invite you to be part of it!
Here’s what will be happening* (see below for specifics on timing and locations):
- On Friday, March 24 our co-founders Yanis Varoufakis and Lorenzo Marsili will hold a press conference, where they will make an important announcement on the international progressive alliance we are now building.
- On Saturday, March 25 we will take to the streets of Rome alongside other progressive groups, as part of the March For A Different Europe that we have co-organised.
- When the march concludes, we will hold an Open Assembly with our members and activists, to regroup before our main event.
- On the evening of Saturday, March 25, we will host “The Time Of Courage”, a gathering of Europe’s brightest progressive minds – like Podemos co-founder Juan Carlos Monedero and award-winning film director (and DiEM25 Advisor) Ken Loach – in a 1,000-seat theatre. Here we will launch our European New Deal – a set of ambitious economic proposals to save Europe from itself by transforming it – putting it to vote for our entire membership.
- On Sunday, March 26, we will participate in a pioneering cultural event in Rome’s MAXXI contemporary art museum, alongside some of the most interesting voices today in politics and art. Here we will launch DiEM Voice, an on-going art platform that will serve as an integral part of our movement’s future. We will also screen Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or and BAFTA-award winning movie “I, Daniel Blake”, which attacks the brutal austerity pushing millions of Europeans into hopelessness.
*If you’re interested in attending any or all the above events, mail [email protected]. If you’re a journalist and would like to explore the possibility of an interview with one of our spokespeople, mail [email protected].
ROME, ITALY | March 24 – 26
General Information
Press Conference
- When: Friday, March 24 at 12:00.
- Where: Foreign Press Association, Via dell’Umiltà 83/C 00187 Roma, Italia.
- Contact: Annamaria de Paola ([email protected]).
March for a Different Europe
- When: Saturday, March 25 at 10:45.
- Where: We meet in front of Bar Kristal, in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II 114. From there we will demonstrate all the way to the Colosseum!
- More information here.
Open Assembly of DiEM25 Members and DSCs
- When: Saturday, March 25 at 17:00.
- Where: Teatro Italia (first floor), Via Bari, 18, 00161 Roma, Italia.
- All welcome!
DiEM25’s European New Deal Launch (“The Times of Courage”)
When: Saturday, March 25 from 20:00 until 23:00.
Venue: Teatro Italia, Via Bari, 18, 00161 Roma, Italia.
Tickets: https://goo.gl/UztNcf
Website: http://www.iltempodelcoraggio.it/en/
Livestream: https://mera25.it/the-time-of-courage-diem25-live-in-rome/
DiEM25 contact at venue: Luca Pisapia ([email protected]) and Annamaria de Paola ([email protected]).
Launch of DiEM VOICE
- When: Sunday, March 26 from 12:00 to 19:30.
- Venue: MAXXI (National Museum of the 21st Century), Via Guido Reni, 4/A, 00196 Roma, Italia.
- Tickets: Available at the museum premises. Cost: 5 EUR.
- Website: https://goo.gl/oU8lMw
DiEM25 members take to the streets of Rome in “March for a Different Europe” demonstration
This weekend in Rome, ahead of our European New Deal launch, DiEM25 is co-organising a mass demonstration of progressive forces: the “March for a Different Europe”. While EU leaders socialise nearby for the Union’s 60th birthday, we will be marching alongside a broad coalition of movements, trade unions and political actors to send an important message to anyone who will listen: we are determined to save the EU from itself.
If you’re in Rome on Saturday – join us!
When? At 10:45 AM.
Where? We will meet in front of Bar Kristal, in Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II 114, at 10:45 AM. From there we will demonstrate all the way to the Colosseum.
If you can’t make it, you can still support us by helping us get the message out about the march! Share this information through your social media accounts, tell your friends who might be interested in attending and stay tune to this page for updates on social media activities around the march. Let’s make sure everyone knows we are united, energised and that we also have something to celebrate: our determination to save our Union.
Check out the entire programme of activities around DiEM25’s events in Rome here.
A tragic milestone in the EU’s treatment of refugees
Today is a shameful day: it’s the one-year anniversary of the EU-Turkey deal on refugees that’s tearing families apart, inflicting unnecessary suffering on people who have already suffered the unimaginable and sending the worst message to the world about the values of Europe, our common home.
That’s why at DiEM25 we launched #StopTheDeal, a campaign to take the EU-Turkey refugee deal to court in a bid to save the life of Shabbir Iqbal – a Pakistani refugee trapped in Lesvos, Greece – and improve the lives of millions.
Shabbir Iqbal
But we remain behind Shabbir, and won’t let him down… nor the millions like him. So we’re asking you to please sign and share this petition to help us raise awareness about Shabbir and our struggle to #StopTheDeal.
You can also write to your representatives (we have a template letter to make this easier). And, of course, you can join DiEM25 and discover how our movement is fighting to transform the EU to create a better future for all.
Thank you for being part of this vital struggle!
Dutch Elections and Europe: the Dutch political ‘center’ asserting itself no reason for complacency
If this election shows anything, it is that the tacit Dutch political center reasserted itself. However – and here is the major caveat – it would be misleading to read this as back to business-as-usual. Underneath the ‘grey-right or green-right’ coalition government, which will most likely now emerge, several strong socio-economic and cultural changes are manifest, which constitute the deeper transformations in the Dutch political arena. And they may not be unique for The Netherlands.
By Godelieve van Heteren, chair European Movement in the Netherlands and DiEM25 member
The Dutch elections have passed, Dutch people have spoken. After months of heated debate and fierce campaigning, 80% of Dutch electorate came out to the ballot box yesterday to cast their vote. All of Europe was watching, and many commentators expressed a sigh of relief when the party of mr. Wilders (PVV) did not become the largest. Quickly people claimed this to be ‘a victory for Europe’, or in the words of the current PM: “A clear ‘no’ to ‘the wrong kind of populism’.”
This may be a bit too quick a conclusion.
It is early in the day. The final results will only be confirmed by next Tuesday. It may be wise to take a deeper look at the complex party political landscape of the Netherlands and try to assess what actually emerged yesterday.
For weeks, the polls indicated a close call between the Conservative VVD of the current Dutch PM, mr. Rutte, and the PVV of mr. Wilders, each fighting for the lead which in the Netherlands as coalition country gives one the first right to form a coalition government. After the diplomatic clash between the current government of the Netherlands and the Turkish government over an unwanted proposed referendum rally by Turkish ministers in Rotterdam last week, it appeared that many people last minute turned to the VVD instead of the PVV, landing mr. Rutte’s party in a comfortable lead yesterday.
Overall, a majority of Dutch citizens yesterday turned to the established center parties. If this election shows anything, it is that the tacit Dutch political center reasserted itself. However – and here is the major caveat – it would be misleading to read this as back to business-as-usual. Underneath the ‘grey-right or green-right’ coalition government, which will most likely now emerge, several strong socio-economic and cultural changes are manifest, which constitute the deeper transformations in the Dutch political arena. And they may not be unique for The Netherlands.
These changes can no longer be characterised in terms of traditional opposites. Especially among the younger electorate, left-versus-right labeling no longer applies, if you see which shifts-of-parties voters have actually made. Generally speaking: people vote much less collectively, and much more on the basis of individual current concerns. They vote less for ‘programs and manifestos’, more for individuals/individual issues and different senses of self and future. However, people are still carried by deeper cultural preferences, which are not always so explicitly discussed.
What appeared yesterday is that:
- Young people have voted in large numbers for social liberal parties as D66 (liberal democrats), the Greens and an ecological party (Animal Welfare party PvdD). For their European orientation, this choice can be welcomed, since all these parties propose international openness, a strong, reformed Europe, and inspirational politics, which is what especially the young Green Party leader was offering his supporters. However, many of the youths which came out in strides to support these parties are middle-class, higher educated. It remains to be seen how many of the other youths actually voted. Recent reports worried about their connection to the political scene, specific groups of youths may have stayed home.
- ‘Identity politics’ and specific issue parties dealing with basic human rights (such as Art. 1) have entered the scene. One ‘identity party’ DENK, a spin-off of the Labour party, strongly focusing on the rights of migrant communities, has swept up the votes of some people in migrant communities (2-3 seats), who traditionally voted Labour. Their concerns are serious, their gains may also relate partially to the conflict with Turkish president Erdogan last week, which left many Dutch citizens of Turkish background uneasy.
- The Dutch social democrat party (PvdA) has lost dramatically and is now reduced to being the 7th party in the Parliament. The Socialist party (SP) is the sixth party and also lost one seat (against the expectations in the polls). The Labour losses were especially dramatic in the cities. The major urban centers have turned to the Conservatives on the one hand (i.e. entrepreneurs, SMEs, corporate interests, e.g. Rotterdam) and to the D66 and Greens (new urban liberalism, e.g. Amsterdam, Utrecht, Groningen) on the other. Thus, the traditionally Labour/social democrat urban centers such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Groningen, Utrecht etc Labour have moved to three other parties, leaving the social democrates diminished to their very hard core electorate.
- This continues a downward trend for the social democrats, which has been there for a while but was blurred by the unexpected, tactical victory the party had in the 2012 elections. Whereas Labour had already lost much of its old Labour base (unions etc.) to the Socialist Party before the 2012 elections, they now also seem to have lost many of their higher educated, liberal progressive urban voters and many of the young. A very dramatic result indeed, which deprives them of a lot of innovative power and social base. Much of this needs to be further analyzed. Commentators seek the initial answer for Labour’s demise in the ‘governmental style and self-centeredness’ the party has adopted in government, and the fact that the compromises they had to strike with the Conservatives were often harder to explain to Labour supporters (many of the policies being closer to Conservative dictums). It is significant, however, that the Socialist Party did not benefit from Labour’s loss either. In fact, some of the SP voters may actually have transferred to the Wilders party, as people who feel nobody is looking after their interests.
- The shifting electoral sympathies also demonstrate that the party-political system is not a very strong vehicle of ideological positions anymore. People switch more easily between parties. This is reflects deeper socio-cultural and economical divides, even within the current parties, which are visible in the following:
- The ultra-conservative, national conservative and nationalist forces are now spread over a part of VVD, part of the Christian-Democrats, Wilders party PVV and Forum for Democracy, the small Christian parties and part of the Socialist Party (SP). They are split into center conservatives (i.e. VVD Conservatives, part of the Christian-Democrats and the small Christian parties, which add up to 60/150 seats; nationalist populist forces (Wilders PVV and Forum voor Democratie), which up to 22/150 seats; and old Socialist party forces which are culturally often conservative (14/150).
- The progressive, urban liberal democratic, Green and ecological forces are spread over D66, Greens and PvvD and add up to 38 of the 150 seats) (19 plus 14 plus 5 seats respectively). The Dutch Labour party is reduced to 9 seats and has to reinvent itself. It is very unclear where it will position itself in opposition and from what premises it will seek its regeneration, a situation which again is not unique for The Netherlans, but in different forms and shapes also applies to social democrats in other European countries.
- This Dutch election was characterized by the emergence of a wide range of new small parties, many representing specific issues of identity or cultural roots not served sufficiently by the major parties. The fact that none, except for DENK and the Forum for Democracy (FvD), made the threshold to enter Parliament does not diminish the importance of this trend of fragmentation.
Given all these subplots, we should be very wary of settling too quickly into a victorious rhetoric, or fall into the trap of new complacency. Surely, progressive Europe constructive parties will enter government. And surely, the Wilders forces did not take the lead. For a variety of reasons, they dispersed. And yes, identity and one-issue parties did not win major gains. But the sentiments are there and represent real concersn of people and a tough set of social challenges, which in a mature democracy should not be ignored.
Adding everything up, the social polarization is not gone. The mixed majority of Dutch moderates has asserted itself. But at least 20-30% of the Dutch electorate feels attracted to nationalist policies, feels underserved by established politics and expresses fear or opposition to internationalism, multiculturalism and ‘Europe’ as an anonymous projection screen. The fact that many of the Wilders supporters voted last-minute for the Conservatives does not mean their discontents have now subsided. The people attracted to Wilders are now spread over Wilders own party (PVV), the VVD (the winning Prime Minister’s party), the newcomer Forum for Democracy (with 2 seats), the CDA and others.
The fragmentation and continued social disconnects put a huge burden on whoever will govern next, to build the bridges, of the kind that during election campaigns are never built.
Article originally published in Europese Beweging Nederland (EBN)