If pursued with vigour and resolve, liberal democracy will eventually resemble a snake devouring its own tail. It’ll steadily become illiberal and undemocratic.
Such is my recurrent theme and, if you disagree, look no further than Labour’s attempts to sneak Britain back in the EU.
Sir Keir Starmer refuses to word his aspiration quite so forthrightly. Instead, he talks about a “reset of relations” and closer ties with the EU. A distinction without a difference, I dare say.
Actually, there is a difference. At least, full membership conferred some power within the bloc. Not much, but some.
What Starmer means by closer ties is recognising the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and following its laws on free movement of people, food safety, access to British fishing waters, workers’ rights and so on.
A customs union will follow as night follows day, even if the government is denying that possibility at the moment. However, its reputation for what lawyers call truth and veracity doesn’t inspire much trust in their vows on any subject, especially this one.
In 2016, 17.4 million Britons voted to leave the EU, which is more than have ever voted for anything else, and certainly more than those who voted Labour this year (9.7 million). Yet the government clearly believes that its 9.7 votes give it a mandate to overturn the will of 17.4 million.
Then one notices that not a single member of Starmer’s cabinet was among those 17.4 million. They all voted Remain and some, including Starmer himself, actively campaigned for a second referendum.
That proves their intimate understanding of democracy as practised by the EU. People’s choice is all fine and well, provided it’s the choice European federalists favour at the moment. Otherwise, people will have to choose again – and keep choosing until they get it right.
That has happened with the democratically held referenda in Denmark, Austria, Ireland and France. In the first instance, the Danes rejected the Maastricht Treaty. In the second, Austria voted in a party the EU found unsavoury. In the third, the people of Ireland voted not to ratify the Nice Treaty on the enlargement of the EU. And the French voted against establishing a European Constitution. In all four instances, the EU put its foot down and the boot in.
Starmer and his fellow Remainers have so far been unable to act in that spirit, but they clearly feel that time is on their side. Meanwhile, the government has set up a 100-strong unit to renegotiate relations with the EU. That is, to knock on the EU’s door, trying to flog bits and pieces of British sovereignty for a pittance.
The EU is a manifestation of liberal democratic eschatology at its most strident. It advertises itself as Europe’s ultimate political achievement, the happy ending of its political history. Finally, the European nation has founded a body that represents it properly.
There is a slight problem with this self-image: the body exists, but the nation doesn’t. There exist Swedes, Italians, Bulgarians, Poles, Belgians, even Germans, a hodgepodge of nations that collectively don’t add up to a single one. You don’t think they all coalesce on the basis of Christianity, do you? No, I didn’t think so.
The EU is therefore a sort of IOU issued to European nations: it takes their sovereignty in exchange for a promise to knock them all together into a single entity. In that sense, it’s similar to Soviet communism that took away everything possible from the people, including often their lives, but promised a mythical bright future in exchange.
Put another way, the EU is as much of a utopia as the USSR was, and it’s as pernicious and as socialist, if not yet so violent. That part may still come though, something to look forward to.
The essence of socialism, which is what liberal democracy inexorably tends to become, is maximum centralisation of power. Even as we speak, our Labour government is planning to merge many local councils to create more manageable super-units further removed from the very demos that gave its name to democracy.
The government’s White Paper explains that its aim is to “reduce the number of politicians” involved in making decisions. That’s classic socialism (or liberal democracy, if you’d rather), with its belief that politics is safer in the hands of bureaucrats and apparatchiks than those of elected representatives. The aim of politics seems to be the elimination of politics, a paradox that goes largely unnoticed.
Transfer of power to supranational bodies, which is to say as far away from the national electorate as geography will allow, is a natural extension of the same process. The EU is its perfect example.
Its functionaries proudly boast that they produce some 70 per cent of the laws inside the bloc. That makes them as industrious as they are unaccountable. For the elected part of the EU, its so-called Parliament, is strictly a talk shop. It decides, in round numbers, nothing.
All decisions that count are made by the EU government, the European Commission. Like God, it’s accountable to no one other than itself. The people haven’t put the Commissioners in power, which means the people have no legal way of getting them out.
Nor do Europeans have any recourse when their ruling socialist-bureaucratic elite fails to act in their interests, acting instead solely in the interests of expanding and perpetuating its own power. At least, in the absolute monarchies of yesteryear, princes were accountable to the aristocracy, councils of elders, sometimes even independent courts.
Such is the body for which Starmer’s socialist loins are aching. He doesn’t seem to have much of a mind to consider the ramifications at any depth, but he is richly endowed with an instinctive understanding of the EU’s inner logic – indeed the inner logic of all states and superstates calling themselves liberal democratic.
He hears the clarion call of his ideology in every tonal detail, and it muffles the barely audible whispers of reason and morality. Speaking of reason, there is not a single rational argument for Britain rejoining the EU or even establishing a closer relationship with it.
The bloc’s economy is in the doldrums, exacerbated by its own suicidal, ideologically inspired policies, such as net zero and workers’ rights. Joining that club, say, in the 1960s at least could have delivered some economic benefits, if at a cost that anyone who respected Britain’s constitution would have found intolerable. This time around, the cost would be even steeper, while the benefits non-existent.
Various EU shills in all major parties (except Reform) are lying that “Brexit has failed”. In reality, it hasn’t even been tried.
Having divested themselves of the outer paraphernalia of EU membership, several consecutive governments have been desperately clinging to every whiff of the EU spirit. They, Tory and Labour alike, made Britain bear the brunt of reduced trade with Europe, but were prevented by their innate socialist longings from taking advantage of the possible benefits.
Lower taxation, deregulation, tight control of national borders, freedom to pursue economic opportunities all over the globe – all these were made possible by Brexit. And all these have been tossed aside by our leaders, guided as they all are by their ideological fallacies and overpowering self-interest.
Sometimes I wonder if Starmer has been bribed by Nigel Farage to pursue pro-EU policies. A little more of the same, and the Reform Party will saunter into government at the next election, with the establishment politicians, both Labour Full Strength and Labour Lite (aka Tories), repeating by rote their mantra of being committed to democracy.
No, wrong thought. Starmer doesn’t need any inducement to act stupidly. That ability comes naturally.