Latest editorial
A good step but not far enough
JEREMY CORBYN’S willingness to challenge EU free-market dogma to save Britain’s steel sector shames a Tory government happy to see yet another great British industry go to the wall.
It also demonstrates the Labour leader’s courage and imagination, in stark contrast to all too many MPs in his party who seem blind to the neoliberal and anti-democratic character of the European Union.
On some parts of the British left support for EU membership has become an article of faith which does not require justification.
Brussels is seen as a magical source of jobs, trade, solidarity and internationalism, even where EU rules hobble strategic government intervention in the economy, EU courts rule against the right to strike and European Central Bank diktats force privatisation, pay cuts and pension theft on sovereign governments.
It is also bizarrely sometimes cited as a force for peace, despite its heavy involvement in the brutal wars that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s and its more recent complicity in the coup that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government last year, sparking a bloody conflict in the country’s east that continues to this day.
Membership of the bloc comes at a heavy cost, the surrender of our democratic right to manage our economy as we see fit.
That right is passed to “experts,” besuited technocrats and bankers pledged to deregulate industry and strip workers of their rights.
But it can be fought. As Corbyn points out in his exclusive comments to the Morning Star, Tory spluttering that EU competition rules prevent them from saving jobs at Redcar or anywhere else is a form of special pleading.
Technically the Tories are correct, but if they wanted to act in defiance of those rules they could try.
Unfortunately David Cameron’s party is intensely relaxed about unemployment, poverty and the collapse of British manufacturing.
As Corbyn says: “I’m quite prepared to challenge EU competition law and EU directives on public ownership and state funding.
“Other governments in Europe challenge it, it’s kind of weird that the British government doesn’t.”
The German and Italian governments, he notes, have taken parts of their steel industries into public ownership.
The Labour leader denounces the way the EU has treated Greece and hopes to work with left governments in Europe, such as the coalition recently elected in Portugal, to “build an anti-austerity coalition across Europe.”
He has always opposed the free market nature of the EU: “I voted against Maastricht ... because it was a Europe based on free market economics rather than a Europe based on social security and workers’ rights.”
Unfortunately this does not go far enough. Maastricht is now fact, and as Cameron is now finding — to his frustration or relief, depending on how pure you deem his motives — treaty reform in the EU is practically impossible, requiring the consent of every single member state.
The Morning Star too supports a Europe based on social security and workers’ rights, but such a continent will never emerge from the European Union and its opaque, convoluted and undemocratic power structures.
The EU is a capitalist construct — it is designed to stymie precisely the sorts of reforms those on the pro-EU left in Labour, the Greens and other parties have in mind.
Nonetheless, Corbyn’s position marks a huge step forward for Labour and illustrates yet again that the only fresh thinking in the party is coming from the left.
Britain’s workers will be better off under a government that fights their corner despite EU regulations than under one that accepts Brussels’s decrees without demur.
And a battle with the EU over public ownership and state funding will help to open up the debate on the left around the nature of the union itself.
Similar stories
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year
Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT
Deep disillusionment with the Westminster cross-party consensus means rupture with the status quo is on the cards – bringing not only opportunities but also dangers, says NICK WRIGHT