Libération published a comment piece on Brexit today. Here is the French. (There may be some small differences with printed copy)

Libération 24 April 2015
Bye Bye England L’Europe Doit Se Préparer au Brexit
Par Denis MacShane

Les britanniques sont à la veille de l’une des plus importantes décisions historiques de l’après-guerre. En 2017, alors que le reste de l’Europe célèbrera le 60ème anniversaire du Traité de Rome, le Royaume Uni sortira de l’Union européenne à moins que la politique au Royaume Uni ne prenne un tournant radical.
Si le premier ministre David Cameron est reconduit au No10 Downing street, le Royaume Uni aura son référendum sur son appartenance à l’UE. Si c’est le cas, les chances que l’électorat se prononce en faveur de la sortie de l’UE sont élevées.

Jusqu’à présent, peu de débats publics se sont tenus autour de la question de savoir quel serait l’impact du référendum Brexit sur la relation entre le Royaume Uni et l’Europe et la place du Royaume Uni dans le monde.

Le moment est venu d’admettre que différents affluents – politiques, économiques, culturelles, identitaires, historiques, et une grande partie des medias – confluent vers un bassin puissant qui pourrait faire sortir le Royaume Uni de l’Europe.
Au cours des vingt dernières années, l’orientation politique du parti conservateur a été fermement anti-européenne. Le parti travailliste, quant à lui, a gardé le silence et n’a pas plaidé en faveur de l’Europe avec force et vigueur.
Le parti UKIP anti-européen a eu 25 pour cent des voix aux élections municipales et européennes en 2014. Le parti de M. Farage ne remportera peut être pas beaucoup de sièges au parlement mais une fois que le plébiscite est annoncé, UKIP comme le FN en France augmentera la pression populiste anti-européenne.
L’attrait économique de l’Europe qui avait suscité le soutien du Royaume Uni en sa faveur au 20ème siècle, s’est dissipé.
Les medias se moquent de l’UE et la tournent en dérision à la moindre occasion. La BBC a transformé Nigel Farage en héros national. Il n’existe aucune couverture médiatique importante en faveur de l’Europe. Des journaux tels que le Guardian, qui sont pro-européens au plan culturel, publient article sur article qui font la critique de l’UE, de Bruxelles et présentent l’Euro comme un monstre qui n’aurait jamais dû naître.
L’arrivée massive d’1,5 millions immigrés venus de l’Europe de l’Est a provoqué des passions anti-immigrées qui ont fusionné avec l’euroscepticisme pour nourrir la recrudescence des sentiments anti-européens.
Un nouveau front anti-européen s’est ouvert avec des attaques constants contre la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme accusée d’empêcher les juges britanniques de déporter des terroristes dangereux et d’obliger les députés britanniques à amender les lois relatives aux droits de vote des prisonniers, questions qui unissent les Tories et le Labour contre l’Europe.
Tous ces différents courants se retrouvent ainsi unis. Si le référendum sur la sortie du Royaume Uni de l’UE est organisé les britanniques et nos amis dans les autres pays ne devraient pas présumer que les électeurs se prononceront en disant oui à l’Europe.
M. Cameron déclare qu’il souhaite amender les traités européens pour que le Royaume Uni puisse contrôler le flux des citoyens européens dans le pays. Les députés conservateurs et les grands patrons anglais disent qu’ils veulent de nouvelles règles excluant le Royaume Uni de l’Europe sociale. Mais si Bruxelles autorise une telle dérogation, elle risque d’aliéner toute la gauche britannique. Tout comme les socialistes français l’avaient fait en 2005 dans le référendum sur la constitution européenne, beaucoup voteront contre la vision de M. Cameron en faveur d’une Europe ultra-libérale où le pouvoir sera détenu uniquement par le capital et où les syndicats et les travailleurs seront réduits à l’état d’eunuques.
En 2017, si David Cameron est réélu, il aura été premier ministre pendant 7 ans. Il ne jouira pas d’une grande popularité. Ceux qui souhaiteront lui nuire seront tentés de voter contre lui dans le Brexit ou tout autre référendum.
Les britanniques pro-européens, dont la plupart ont atteint l’âge de la retraite estiment avec une certaine complaisance que les britanniques ne voteront jamais en faveur d’une sortie de l’UE. Mais à moins que Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage et David Cameron ne se dépouillent de leur peau d’eurosceptique pour se transformer soudainement en apôtres europhiles, il est loin d’être sûr que le Royaume Uni sera encore membre de l’UE à la fin de la décennie.

Le différend au sujet de la Grèce n’est qu’un prélude à une question beaucoup plus importante si le Royaume Uni passe à l’étape du référendum. Les gouvernements, les institutions européennes et les entreprises devraient se préparer dès à présent à assister au spectacle du Royaume Uni quittant l’Europe en somnambule aux prises avec les passions populistes suscitées par le plebiscite de M Cameron.
Denis MacShane a été ministre pour l’Europe dans le gouvernement de Tony Blair et il est l’auteur de Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe publié par IB Tauris

Denis MacShane : «Pourquoi la Grande-Bretagne va quitter l’UE»

·
· Actualité
· International

Par Florentin Collomp 
Mis à jour le 19/04/2015 à 21h26 | Publié le 19/04/2015 à 18h11
INTERVIEW – Pour l’ex-ministre travailliste, l’hostilité du monde politique, des médias, des affaires et de la culture à l’égard de Bruxelles rend inéluctable un «Brexit» en cas de référendum.
Propos recueillis par notre correspondant à Londres
Ancien ministre de l’Europe de Tony Blair, Denis MacShane est l’un des rares politiciens britanniques foncièrement europhiles. Dans son livre Brexit. How Britain Will Leave Europe ,l’ex-député travailliste redoute que son pays ne se dirige tout droit vers la sortie de l’Union européenne si David Cameron, qui promet un référendum d’ici à 2017, remporte les élections législatives du 7 mai.
LE FIGARO. – Quelles sont les probabilités de voir la Grande-Bretagne quitter l’Union européenne?
Denis MACSHANE. – L’ancien premier ministre conservateur John Major les estime à 50 %. Moi, je crois que, si un référendum a lieu, les courants antieuropéens très puissants dans la société britannique vont s’unir de façon irrémédiable pour nous entraîner vers une sortie de l’Europe. Ces forces hostiles à l’Europe dans le monde politique, les médias, les affaires, la culture sont tellement vives qu’il me paraît irréaliste d’imaginer un renversement de tendance.
Quels sont ces courants antieuropéens?
Ce ne sont pas des composantes marginales de la société, comme en France, mais ils en constituent le cœur. Sur le plan politique, le Parti conservateur est devenu presque entièrement eurosceptique. Il est impossible d’être désigné son candidat aux élections législatives si l’on montre le moindre sentiment favorable à l’Europe, c’est un critère de sélection. Ajoutez à cela les 25 % de réserves de voix aux européennes de l’Ukip (United Kingdom Independence Party), qui n’attendent que l’opportunité d’un référendum pour se manifester. Au Parti travailliste, la seule politique européenne, c’est de ne pas en parler. Son leader, Ed Miliband, est européen par sa culture et ses origines, mais on ne l’a jamais entendu prononcer un discours proeuropéen. Il a fait le choix courageux de ne pas promettre de référendum, contre l’opinion de nombre de ses proches. Dans les médias, si vous additionnez les voix des tabloïds, du Daily Telegraph, de la presse Murdoch avec le Sun et le Times, c’est un peu comme si vous imaginiez Le Figaro, Libération, Le Parisien, Le Point, L’Express répéter tous les jours les mensonges de Marine Le Pen sur l’Europe. De plus, le débat sur l’immigration, le plus toxique des sujets politiques, a maintenant fusionné avec la question de l’appartenance européenne, à travers la notion de liberté de circulation. Enfin, les entreprises ne cessent de se plaindre depuis vingt ans de bâtons dans les roues mis par Bruxelles.
«Londres a ­offert in extremis un énorme chèque et d’immenses pouvoirs aux Écossais pour qu’ils restent. Il est difficile d’imaginer Bruxelles faire d’énormes cadeaux aux Britanniques pour les retenir»
Les milieux d’affaires britanniques ne sont-ils pas inquiets du risque de Brexit?
C’est la position des grands patrons de la Confederation of British Industries, mais ils y mettent tellement de conditions que cela favorise en fait la défiance à l’égard de l’Europe. Ils réclament une réforme en profondeur de l’Union européenne, accusée d’être trop bureaucratique, de leur imposer trop de normes et de réglementations, d’être insuffisamment dynamique, et ils rejettent l’Europe sociale. Le patron des British Chambers of Commerce, qui représente plutôt les petites et moyennes entreprises, réclame qu’on avance le référendum à 2016. Cela accroîtrait le risque d’un vote négatif, en réduisant les chances d’obtenir des réformes. Même un champion du business britannique comme James Dyson répète à l’envi qu’il se porterait mieux hors de l’UE.
Un sondage récent montrait un rebond du soutien au maintien dans l’UE. N’êtes-vous pas trop pessimiste?
Les sondages vont et viennent. Au mieux, c’est 45 % de personnes qui accepteraient de rester dans une Europe réformée. Cela en laisse 55 % qui refusent de se prononcer pour cette option, soit parce qu’ils ne savent pas, soit parce qu’ils préfèrent sortir. Un référendum est dangereux. Les Européens, comme les Français en 2005, ont tendance à voter non quand on les interroge sur l’Europe. De plus, si Cameron est réélu le 7 mai, il aura été au pouvoir depuis sept ans en 2017, avec de forts risques d’impopularité. La tentation sera grande de voter non pour le sanctionner.
Ne peut-on pas miser sur un réflexe de raison du peuple britannique, à l’instar des Écossais, qui ont choisi de rester au sein du Royaume-Uni?
L’Écosse dans le Royaume-Uni, c’est un mariage de 307 ans, certes avec quelques frictions. La Grande-Bretagne et l’Europe, c’est une cohabitation de quarante ans à vingt-huit, où chacun fait chambre à part. Les Anglais pensent que ça leur coûte très cher, qu’ils n’ont rien à y gagner et qu’ils doivent de surcroît accueillir chez eux tous les parents pauvres de l’Union. En Écosse, tous les sondages, sauf un, trois semaines avant le référendum, donnaient une large majorité au statu quo. Pris de panique, Londres a offert in extremis un énorme chèque et d’immenses pouvoirs aux Écossais pour qu’ils restent. Il est difficile d’imaginer Bruxelles faire d’énormes cadeaux aux Britanniques pour les retenir.
«Le pays perdrait son accès privilégié au marché unique, qui représente la moitié de son commerce extérieur. Hors de l’UE, le Royaume-Uni n’aurait plus aucun poids face aux États-Unis ou à la Chine»
Pourquoi tant de haine pour l’Europe en Angleterre?
Ce n’est pas de la haine. Des centaines de milliers d’Anglais vivent en France ou en Espagne. Mais imaginez qu’en France l’un des grands partis de gouvernement, le PS ou l’UMP, soit fondamentalement antieuropéen. C’est le cas en Grande-Bretagne: dans les années 1980, c’étaient les travaillistes qui étaient hostiles à l’Europe. En 1983, ils faisaient campagne pour un retrait total. Depuis vingt ans, ce sont les conservateurs. Soutenus par la presse, ils mènent une propagande antieuropéenne permanente. Les David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson ont commencé leur vie politique quand Margaret Thatcher était idolâtrée pour sa résistance à Jacques Delors. Les Anglais n’aiment pas Bruxelles parce qu’on leur répète à longueur de journée que l’Europe est mauvaise pour eux. Boris Johnson, le maire de Londres, quand il était journaliste à Bruxelles, passait son temps à inventer des histoires pour ridiculiser et nuire à l’Europe. Dans son dernier livre sur Churchill, il parle d’une «Union européenne nazie contrôlée par la Gestapo». Il faut le faire!
Est-il possible de renverser cette vision manipulée?
Quand je pose la question aux historiens, ils me répondent: il faudrait que la Grande-Bretagne ait été envahie et occupée pendant quatre ou cinq ans. Plus sérieusement, l’Europe était attirante pour les Britanniques dans les années 1970 et 1980, quand l’économie y était bien plus performante que la leur. Cela s’est inversé depuis l’introduction de l’euro. Donnez-nous cinq ans de croissance à 3 % dans la zone euro et vous verrez qu’on redécouvrira les mérites de l’Europe.
Si les travaillistes gagnent les élections de mai, le danger de Brexit est-il évacué?
Ed Miliband ne reviendra pas sur sa position de ne pas organiser de référendum. C’est son seul faible crédit au sein de la communauté des affaires. Si les conservateurs perdent, on peut imaginer deux scénarios. Soit ils opèrent une quasi-fusion avec l’Ukip, avec un eurosceptique invétéré comme Boris Johnson à leur tête – et la question restera au centre de la vie politique. Soit ils comprennent que leurs campagnes antieuropéennes depuis vingt ans ne les ont pas servis sur le plan électoral et entreprennent un aggiornamento.
Au fond, serait-ce une telle catastrophe si le Royaume-Uni quittait l’Europe?
Oui. Nous sommes le pont entre le capitalisme mondial et l’Union européenne à travers la City, qui perdrait toute son influence hors de l’UE. Le pays perdrait son accès privilégié au marché unique, qui représente la moitié de son commerce extérieur. Hors de l’UE, le Royaume-Uni n’aurait plus aucun poids face aux États-Unis ou à la Chine. Pour l’Europe, cela créerait un précédent risqué. Marine Le Pen aurait tous les arguments pour réclamer un référendum en France. Après le Brexit, suivrait le Frexit.

Where is another Europe now?
DENIS MACSHANE 18 April 2015
Europe either hangs together or – as the American revolutionaries liked to point out – the nations of Europe will be hanged separately.
Brookings Institution, Washington DC. Wikicommons/Gryffindor. Some rights reserved.The game of Greek chicken is unending. At the Brookings Institution in Washington DC where the world’s finance ministers assembled for the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank this week, Germany’s austere finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble was asked, ‘Is Europe ready to lose Greece?’
‘No,’ he replied in his one-word answer to the questions that came from the floor. Fifteen minutes previously, also in Brookings, Yanis Varoufakis, who likes to portray himself and his country as the victim of hardline German economic philosophy dating from the pre-1914 Austrian school of Ordoliberalismus had spoken with his usual passion about how the previous corruption and clientelism of past Greek politicians had brought down his country.
Both men are trapped in the iron grip of politics, rather than economics. Varoufakis represents Plato’s philosopher-king, the man of ideas who becomes a ruler, catapulted from the backwaters of academic life into being the most famous finance minister the world has seen this century. But Varoufakis is right when he says that he has a mandate. And so does Schäuble. Varoufakis cannot return to Greece and say to voters – ‘You were wrong and previous governments who imposed austerity were right’. Schäuble cannot return to Germany and say to his voters, ‘You are wrong and Germans should agree to wipe off debts and give Greece lots of money to start growing again.’
The Greek drama has been presented as an economic crisis. It is, but it is also profoundly political. The disaster of the last ten years of EU economic management under leaders like Barroso, Sarkozy, Cameron, Berlusconi and Merkel was never seriously challenged until the arrival of Syriza.
There was opposition but it was diverted into support for populist rejectionist politics expressed by new parties of the right (UKIP, Front National, Swedish Democrats, Dutch Freedom Party) or new parties of the left (Syriza, Podemos) as well as the rise of nationalist partitionist parties like the SNP or Sinn Fein in Ireland.
The failure of the classic post-1945 ruling parties to work out a coordinated, EU-wide response to the crisis of the global banking failure in 2008 opened the way to the rise of all of these. The post-1945 party elites responded with bluster and denunciation or the smugness in Germany of saying, “we took all the pain years ago, and Vorsprung durch Leiden (in French one could paraphrase this as il faut suffrir pour être bon) is the only way forward.”
So today for Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble to ask the over-taxed and under-consuming Germans to accept more sacrifice to fund Greeks, even if for the Paul Krugmans and Paul Masons of the world it may make perfect economic sense, is no more politically possible than it is politically possible for the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to tell the people who elected him, “You were all fools to believe a change of government could undo economic reality and the only way forward is years and decades of misery, pay and pension cuts and the continuing impoverishment of an entire nation.”
The economics may be with Athens, but the politics are with Berlin. Because behind Berlin are all the democratic left governing parties of Europe who watch with loathing and fascinated fear the spectre of their toeing of the austerity line since 2009 being repudiated. As Pierre Moscovici, the French socialist EU Finance Commissioner noted, it is impossible for European social democracy to accept Varoufakis’s demands as this would give a green light to the anti-austerity critique of Podemos in Spain, the left in France of Jean-Luc Mélanchon, Sinn Fein in Ireland, the SNP in Scotland, the Greens in England and other parties challenging the deficit and debt reduction priorities of the centre-left parties either in power as in France or Italy, or hoping to win power as in Spain or Britain.
These have watched with horror as Syriza has installed anti-Semitic or pro-Soviet ministers and broken ranks with blatant crawling to Putin. The economic analysis of Varoufakis actually meshes with the undeclared view of many of the mainstream left that the EU under the dominance of the centre-right since 2005 has made endless wrong decisions on major economic policy issues.
But the politics of Syriza, with its invocation of the old leftist themes and the vanity of the philosopher-kings who treat political relations with every other democratically elected Party of European Socialists government in Europe like a radio phone-in – the louder you shout and hurl abuse the better the programme ratings – has lost Greece so many friends and people of influence to the point that in Washington, Berlin and other EU capitals there is now a sullen passivity with regard to the idea that Grexit may be unavoidable.
This will be a disaster for Greece, for Europe, for EuroAtlantic values that after 1950 delivered the best years Europeans have ever enjoyed in their history.
It will accelerate the EU centrifuge driving European peoples and nations apart. The idea that Grexit will be a painless amputation is absurd. Europe either hangs together or – as the American revolutionaries liked to point out – the nations of Europe will be hanged separately.
But unless Syriza can rethink its political language and accept some compromise with the rest of Europe, this is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Denis MacShane spoke at Brookings on April 17 about his book Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe but to a much smaller audience than Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Schäuble

Comment for Carnegie Europe

Denis MacShaneFormer UK minister for Europe

World War II began in response to the German and Soviet invasions of Poland and the Soviet annexation of the three independent Baltic states. The prelude to the war, of course, was Germany’s annexation of the sovereign state of Austria and part of Czechoslovakia.

It is therefore hard to see how democratic leaders can boost a new European strongman who has annexed part of one UN-recognized sovereign state, Ukraine, and de facto incorporated regions of another, Georgia. As former British prime minister William Gladstone put it when Britain was quarrelling with United States in the nineteenth century, “the arbitrament of the court is preferable to the arbitrament of the sword.”

#Putin has undermined the post-1945 European contract.

TWEET THIS

Russian President Vladimir Putin has undermined the post-1945 European contract that law replaces the illegal use of armed power. There was no attempt to win back sovereignty and democracy for Soviet Eastern Europe by armed force. Putin has revived every European worst fear that might is right. He has undermined the international rule of law that governs interstate relations.

Therefore, while everyone should recall the sacrifices made by Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and other Soviet peoples between 1941 and 1945, it is not appropriate to salute the man who has reintroduced the annexation of another state’s sovereign territory as an acceptable practice for a European power.

EU Reporter  14 April 2015

Review: ‘Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe’

By James Drew

Truth be told, I am not normally the biggest fan of political studies – they are frequently as fleeting as the ‘crisis’ or phenomenon of the day that they claim to be covering and, even more frequently are so loaded in favour of the author’s bias, one way or the other, that they often emerge as little more than rants, no matter how well written.

But not so, definitively not so, with Denis MacShane’s treatise on the state of play with the UK’s ‘in or out?’ concerning its membership of the European Union. I didn’t get around to asking MacShane, when I last saw him at the Press Club Brussels launch of his book whether, like myself, he is getting so jacked off with the UK’s attitude to the EU that, in fact, he didn’t consider that we could all do with the country p***ing off. One senses, in fact, since Thatcher’s famous Bruges speech, that the continent’s other leaders may well have felt and feel the same way – but would that make a UK departure the right thing to do?

Well, this writer definitely thinks not and that would also appear to be MacShane’s perspective but, unfortunately, based on the former Europe minister’s witty, engrossing and enlightening text, the UK may well soon be bidding the EU adieu.

It was obviously impossible for MacShane to completely keep his own political leanings out of his arguments, but the book, despite his Labour membership, does not emerge as a damning indictment of the Conservatives, past or present.

Rather, MacShane takes great care to point out the Torys’ former allegiances to the European project, and the fact that Labour, from Wilson onwards during the 70s and early 80s were far more ‘No, no, no!’ than their Tory counterparts of the time but, following Margaret Thatcher’s deteriorating attitude towards the EU, a rift was established in the Conservative between pro- and anti-EU that remains to this day, and may well bring further downfalls for the party, from the 2015 general election and beyond.

I read the book in two straight nights, so riveting and entertaining a read it was. If anything, one wishes almost that MacShane had been able to devote more time and research to a longer text. The EU problem for the UK is going to go on, and on, and on – arm yourself with Denis MacShane’s book, and you’ll be ahead of the game.

Brexit: How Britain Will Leave The EU by Denis MacShane

Tory Party Manifesto Very Thin On Europe

Denis MacShane

We still don’t know what exactly David Cameron wants from the rest of Europe in order to campaign vigorously in favour of Britain staying in the EU in the promised 2107 referendum if he is returned to Downing Street as Prime Minister.

There were hopes that the Conservative election manifesto drafted by Joe Johnson MP, the erudite former FT correspondent in India and less Eurosceptic younger brother of the ebullient London Mayor Boris Johnson might provide some clues.

But it looks as if voters in Britain, and negotiators in 27 EU member states as well as experts at the European Commission and Council, will have wait to find out that David Cameron wants and hopes to get to satisfy his ambition of a major reform of Britain’s status in Europe.

There is no ambiguity about the pledge of the In-Out or Brexit plebiscite by the end of 2017. Sensibly given that is the year of elections in Germany (September) and France (May) no month is specified. Indeed the wording allows a possible referendum before 2017.

By that year Mr Cameron will have been PM for seven years and close to his announced departure. Voters who are bored or angry with him may be tempted to give him the “order of the boot” as Churchill called it by way of voting against him in a referendum.

Otherwise the short page on Europe is banal to the point of being of no interest. It repeat the long-standing demand for removal of the words “ever-closer union” but that will not happen unless there is a major new Treaty and the manifesto does not mention any new Treaty at all.

There is not even the Europe Minister David Lidington’s language of “Treaty change” or Foreign Secretary’s Philip Hammond’s calls for “concreteand irreversible” changes in Britain’s relationship with Europe.

No new Treaty will please the EU but if there us no new Treaty why do we need a referendum?

There is a reprise of the very old demand, going back to Labour years, that national parliaments being “able to work together to block unwanted EU legislation.”

The sounds fine save that Mr Cameron has stopped working together with fellow centre-right parties in the EU by quitting the European federation of conservative parties in order to set up an alliance with smaller, more nationalist parties.

In fact, nothing stops the House of Commons today or in recent years from seeking to forge alliances with other national parliaments to influence or indeed block unwanted EU laws. EU Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans has long urged this but Dutch diplomats report they cannot get anyone in London to work to achieve this desirable aim.

The Tory manifesto pledges to “expand the single market breaking down barriers to trade and ensuring new sectors are opened up to British firms.” Again this is old, old policy but the problem is that to break down trade barriers requires more EU legislation, a more powerful Commission and the erosion of sovereign rights of states to control their own trade and markets.

If Mr Cameron wants more single market, he needs more Europe.

Although there is a promise to repeal the existing UK Human Rights Act there is no manifesto pledge to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights so the Strasbourg European Court of Human Rights can breathe easy and British citizens will still be able to appeal to it.

And, eh, that’s it in the manifesto section on Europe.  There is far more meat about Europe in the section on immigration with the claim the UK “will negotiate new rules with the EU” which will deny to any Irish, French other EU citizen the right to top-up tax credits for low pay jobs for four years.

The European Court of Justice in an important ruling last month said EU citizens had the right to free movement and to work in an EU state but not the right to welfare benefits if they have not contributed to national social security systems.

The working tax credit in Britain (based on the US Earned Income Tax Credit, a form of negative income tax) is actually a subsidy to low-pay employers to hire people at sub-living wage rates with the tax-payer paying a subsidy through the pay-roll.

It is not clear that it can be legal under EU anti-discrimination rules for a government to treat identical workers doing the same job differently on grounds of nationality.  It will be interesting to see how the Irish government as well as other EU governments react to this clear discrimination against their citizens who will be expected to work alongside British citizens in identical jobs but receive lower pay.

The four year wait seems arbitrary. If it is legal under EU law why not five or ten years? There is a similar wait of four years before being allowed to apply for a council home. But since most waiting lists for the very small number of council homes that become available stretch to several years it is hard to see what impact this measure can have.

There is a demand aimed at Turkey or Ukraine or Western Balkan states who harbour future ambitions of EU membership. The UK will not allow Turks ro whoever to work in Britain until the economies of “new member states have converged” with the rest of Europe.

For years the Tories have said they support Turkey’s (now dwindling) EU aspirations but the manifesto has binned these which is sad given the Turkish ancestry of the Johnson dynasty

The manifesto says that any EU citizen who has not found a job within six months may face deportation. If the same policy were applied to British citizens on the Spanish costas the tabloid headlines in the UK would be a joy to read.

The same might be applied to the manifesto call that “every public sector worker – (transport, social care and so forth) operating in a customer-friendly role must speak fluent English.”

Presumably this does not apply to Parliamentarians as some might argue “fluent” English is a challenge now and then for John Prescott and Eric Pickles.

And that’s it.  Joe Johnson has reduced to the barest of bare minima the demands on Europe placed by his more Eurosceptic colleagues. The manifesto has nothing to assuage UKIP or Daniel Hannam-cum-Bill Cash ambitions let alone meet the demands of the Dailies Mail and Telegraph.

The rest of Europe will have to wait to see if Mr Cameron returns to No 10 as this manifesto gives hardly any clues to what his demands will be when or if he gets his Brexit plebiscite up and running in a few weeks time.

The Tablet (blog)  10 April 2015

Catch 22

The nation-changing issue no party is talking about

10 April 2015 by Denis MacShane

There is a Catch-22 in the election which no one so far has noticed. As David Cameron and Ed Miliband square off, an electorate disenchanted with traditional politics seems to be yawning. Voters know that apart from excitements over how many Labour seats fall in Scotland and how many Lib Dem seats go in England and whether Ukip and the Greens make any kind of parliamentary breakthrough, the direction of the next government is not going to change radically.

Ed promises to regulate electricity prices, Dave says he will control the cost of rail traffic. Both parties will reduce the deficit, impose public sector cuts, keep nuclear weapons, invest in the police, back teachers, and support the NHS, motherhood and apple pie. It is an election of small differences, save in one key area.

The biggest single reason to vote either Conservative or Labour is Europe. Two years ago David Cameron seized one of the two core Ukip demands – namely that an In-Out or “Brexit” plebiscite on Britain staying in the EU should be held.

So if you want a referendum that can lead to Britain exiting Europe, vote Tory. Labour and Ed Miliband, in contrast, have said a categorical “no” to organising an immediate Brexit referendum.

It is an open secret in Labour’s ruling circles that the decision to oppose a Brexit referendum was Ed Miliband’s. Senior shadow cabinet colleagues such as Ed Balls and Jon Cruddas and many Labour MPs wanted to match the Cameron offer of a referendum, thus neutralising it as an issue.

So on 7 May voters have a classic binary choice, where the two main parties are 100 per cent opposed to each other.

All EU ambassadors in London and most ruling politicians in Europe, irrespective of political affiliation, are horrified not just at the prospect of a referendum decision to quit the EU but at the idea that instead of focusing on jobs and growth and solving the Greek crisis, Europe would be gripped by Brexit negotiation for the next two years.

But foreigners have no vote in a British election and any intervention would be counter-productive.

There is complacency in the pro-European camp that it is inconceivable that Britain would vote to leave Europe. But as I argue in my recent book, this may be a colossal error. Most Tory MPs, all of Ukip, and quite a few Labour MPs, dislike Europe. The off-shore owned press is not going to convert to the pro-European cause. The toxic issue of immigration has now fused with membership of the EU. Many business leaders and financial commentators argue that Europe is an economic failure and the Euro a disaster.

If we isolate ourselves from Europe, we fundamentally alter our place in the world, as foreign firms will pause before investing in a UK outside Europe and the United States will no longer see Britain as a geo-political partner. Given the enormity of the decision to open the door to a Brexit, one might have thought this would be quite an issue in the election.

But the opposite is the case. Other than a powerful speech by Tony Blair there has been hardly any discussion on the implications of voting “yes” or “no” in a referendum.

The Eurosceptic press, which covers most mass circulation papers, is looking forward to a Brexit referendum which hands power from parliament to press proprietors and others with the financial resources to unleash populist propaganda against Europe.

So the centrality of the choice for or against holding a plebiscite is being downplayed by the media. Tory MPs in favour of Brexit told me they would not raise the issue because their sole aim, as with Ukip, is to obtain a referendum with David Cameron’s return to Downing Street.

Editors and television producers say they will wait until they know if there is to be a referendum before discussing the pros and cons of Brexit. This is the ultimate Catch-22. The most important divide between the two main parties cannot be discussed until the election is over – by which time it will be too late.

Denis MacShane is the UK’s former Minister for Europe under Tony Blair. His book Brexit : How Britain Will Leave Europe is published by IB Tauris

Open Democracy 10 April 2015

The strange silence over Brexit

DENIS MACSHANE

Despite the historic nature of a Brexit referendum, it has been worryingly absent during this election. Serious discussion in the press is almost non-existent.

One of the strange silences in the current British general election is the sotto or non voce question of Europe. In less than a month the British people will make a binary choice. Either they vote to embark on the road of an In-Out plebiscite on Europe by sending back David Cameron to Downing Street or they elect Ed Miliband and there is no Brexit plebisictie and hence no immediate risk of Britain quitting the European Union.

The choice could not be more dramatic. At the end of a Brexit referendum as I will demonstrate below there is the strong possibility, if not probability that under the pressure of populist, press-formented attacks, the UK will quit the EU.

This will be the first time in British history that the nation will have left an international treaty organisation following a politically motivated plebiscite which hands power to off-shore media proprietors, to secretive financiers, and to single-issue pressure groups that call themselves parties but have no serious representation in elected bodies.

The consequences of a Brexit are enormous. Scotland, as the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has indicated would demand a second referendum on independence as Scotland looks sure to vote to stay in Europe whatever the English decide.

The EU minus Britain would become dangerously unbalanced as Germany, already dominant, would become overwhelmingly hegemonic. The hopes of an EU security or foreign policy would evaporate as the UK is, other than France, the only major military and global geo-policy power-player with a seat on the UN Security Council and its Commonwealth network of English-speaking nations, including G7 and G20 member states.

The United States would lose its post-1945 major European partner and dependable ally. Britain would seek to hug Washington closer in exchange for losing its European influence but an isolated Britain would only further encourage the new policy-makers in America, often without European roots or links, who see the US looking to Asia and leaving Europe, incuding the Russians to fester in their endless bickering navel-gazing.

Business would be thrown off balance as the automatic access to the EU’s Single Market of 500 million consumers would need to be renegotiated.  In the end the UK would have to accept the same status as Norway or Switzerland which entails accepting all EU rules, including free movement of citizens, and agreeing to allow the European Court of Justice to be the final arbiter. Alternatively a post-EU Britain could seek total independence and an end to interdependence and insist on its own trade and people movement policies which would require British citizens to seek visas to visit Schengen nations.

Yet despite the historic nature of this decision it is a non-issue in the election. Serious discussion in the press is almost non-existent. Tony Blair tried to megaphone his worries about Brexit into the debate but Labour came up with the stronger front-page story about ending the status of so-called non-doms – 116,000 very wealthy people who live in Britain but do not pay tax on their wealth and income in the UK. This is part of what Richard Tawney called “the lues Anglicanum” – the reverence of wealth that is the hereditary disease of the English and for which no cure has been found.

In addition, Blair’s appeal, powerfully crafted as it was, was seen through the prism of his contested status in connection with the Iraq war legacy and the manner in which he had made money since leaving office. Other former prime ministers obtained income from exotic sources but they were all Conservatives and thus to be praised for making money. But a Labour ex-PM is expected to become virtuous and give up worldly pursuits upon leaving office.

Kirstie Allsop, a broadcaster, attacked Blair in the Guardian for daring to question the virtue of a plebiscite arguing “Why would it not be a good thing to offer British people the chance to make the decision that is right for them?” Ms Allsop would be first to the barricades to protest a decision to hold a referendum on withdrawing from the European Convention of Human Rights and denounce a United States that held a referendum on staying in the UN but apparently a plebiscite which hands politics over to the money power of off-shore media proprietors and unleashes a barrage of populist, often openly xenophobic discourse against Europeans, especially if they are “iimigrants”, is OK by her.

To be fair, Blair himself let the EU plebiscite genie loose when he offered referenda on joining the Euro or endorsing the vapid 2004 EU Constitutional Treaty. Blair was playing guard-your-back politics with both decision so he is not on strong ground when he denounces Mr Cameron’s referendum.

That said all of Blair’s arguments are valid one and anyone with a milligram of internationalism in their make-up should see just how dangerous this referendum proposal of Cameron is. Most of the press whose election agenda the BBC follows are owned by off-shore proprietors who oppose the European Union. They want Cameron to win because he follows their broader socio-economic agenda for the rich, of the rich, by the rich. The extremely limited rules of Social Europe or the impertinence of the European Council and Commission suggesting some limit on bankers’ bonuses are intolerable for much of the ruling elites in London.

Some who know history understand that Britain’s repeated cycle of trying to isolate first England, then Great Britain, finally the UK from the continent, preferring a deep-water strategy of disengaging from Europe always end badly. Time and again, Britain pays with blood what it could not achieve with policy from intelligent political presence and engagement in Europe. The anniversaries of Waterloo, the Dardenelles, and the liberation of Auschwitz might remind us of this fact (see Brendan Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy from 1492 to the present day. Penguin Book 2013) but since we have stopped teaching history, our MPs and ministers know little of the past follies of their predecessors..

Politics is the art of the possible but winning David Cameron’s proposed In-Out referendum on the EU looks increasingly like mission if not utterly impossible highly improbable.

Right now all the currents in public opinion and political-economic-social life are flowing against Europe. Polls vary on an unqualified exit from the EU but the new politics of identity and culture rather than ‘It’s the economy, Stupid’ all tend to soft as well as hard Euroscepticism.

The Conservative Party is now deeply impregnated with Euroscepticism. It has only been possible to be selected as a Tory candidate in the last fifteen years except by expressing negatives about the Europe.

There is a rumoured group of pro-EU Tory MPs but other than the splendid Ken Clarke MP now in his eighth decade they keep themselves remarkably well-hidden.

UKIP scored 25 per cent of the votes in the European and local elections last year. Labour opposes a referendum but there has been no enthusiastic pro-European language from Labour since Tony Blair stood down.

The mass media is unlikely to reverse two decades of rubbishing the EU just because a referendum is held. Rupert Murdoch and the proprietors of other mass selling papers won’t change their tune. Some papers will oppose Brexit but even the nominally pro-EU Guardian knocks or mocks the Commission and – with good cause – presents the Eurozone as a no-growth, high-unemployment nightmare.

The EU question has become fused with the most toxic of political issues – immigration. The In-Out referendum is nirvana for all the descendants of Enoch Powell who can now say Britain has lost control of its frontiers and allowed in too many immigrants thanks to EU membership.

The European Court of Human Rights is not part of the EU but the Eurosceptics have cleverly opened a new front by attacking “Europe” for rulings that rob British judges and ministers of the unilateral right to decide prison or deportation policy.

What of business? To be sure the boss of Goldman Sachs spoke to the nation from Davos to tell the BBC Brexit would be terrible. The CBI says Yes to Britain staying in the EU but only on the basis of unspecified reforms which may indeed be worthwhile but cannot be negotiated with 27 other member states in the months between May and Mr Cameron’s 2017 plebiscite.

Business for Britain has listed 10 minimum conditions the Prime Minister must obtain including the end of free movement of EU citizens and the abolition of Social Europe. Like the British Chambers of Commerce with its eccentric call for a referendum in 2016 the outfits representing native rather than global businesses are setting conditions for staying in the EU that they know cannot be achieved.

No one in Europe wants Britain to go but no one thinks that demands for Treaty change and abolition of core EU values like free movement can be negotiated with 27 other governments and parliaments. And as Mr Cameron himself has said he will only recommend a Yes vote if he can bring back enough concessions to satisfy his Eurosceptic party. Top Tories like Boris Johnson or rising star Sajid Javid now say they are relaxed about Brexit.

There is a complacency in pro-EU circles that it will be alright on the night. That as in 1975 or in the Scottish referendum good sense will prevail. In 1975 everyone in politics, the press and business was in favour. In Scotland, a huge bribe and a promise of more power was needed to win the vote. Britain’s testy unenthusiastic membership of the EU and the combination of forces hostile to Europe all point to Brexit as voters will want to give a kicking to any London elites that tell them the EU is good for them.

Referenda rarely answer just the question asked. By 2017, Mr Cameron is unlikely to be popular and rejecting what he urges much as French voters defeated President Chirac in the 2005 referendum will tempt some.

So if Mr Cameron returns to No 10, prepare for Brexit. As over free trade or Irish Home rule, Britain is poised for one of its big historic changes of direction.

But you are unlikely to read about the historic importance of the decsion in the press or see or hear it seriously discussed on the BBC, ITV or Sky this side of 7th May

BREXIT: How Britain Will Leave Europe. By Denis MacShane.

“We have to be worried about the future of the UK,’ says Denis MacShane.

by GERALD ISAAMAN

GREAT Britain, which once painted much of the world in possession pink and profited from it, now faces a nightmare future as a nation that has lost the confidence of Europe and America as a global power.

And if a successful European referendum goes ahead as a result of the general election on May 7, then we are doomed to become a backwater, stripped of influence in a devastating new world order.

The message is both definitive and demanding and comes with a passionate punch from Denis MacShane, Labour’s former Minister for Europe, who has used the shorthand BREXIT – British Exit from the EU – in the title of his new book.

“We have to be worried about the future of the UK because we are becoming totally obsessive and more introverted,” he tells me. “We are becoming a state obsessed with welfare rather than a state obsessed with economic growth and productivity.

“We have reduced our status as a player outside our borders. David Cameron has lost the confidence of the rest of Europe and of the United States. Our military strength has been slowly whittled away. So on present projections [ the UK would have] an army of 50,000, which means that we shall have twice as many people in prison than we have soldiers.

“The rest of Europe is reported to be giving up on Britain. We are seen more and more like Spain was seen 20 to 30 years ago, a country with a great past, great culture, wonderful literature and art – nice people, but just not an important player any more.

“That’s very dangerous because once a country loses its global aura of being a power player then people look elsewhere to open up banks, financial centres, businesses and so forth. We will be lost.”

He reminds me of Daniel Defoe’s description of the British as a mongrel nation and recalls: “When I was a boy we didn’t ask: How many Irish have we got living in Britain? How many Jews? How many Poles stayed here after the war? We just got on with our life.

“Then Enoch Powell came along and started ranting about Pickaninnies and in a sense it’s been sad ever since with our obsession with foreigners.

“Now different manifestations of it have been given full clinical expression by UKIP, who, in a sense, have taken the question of immigration and fused it with being in the European Union. And they have legitimised anti-immigrant passions by saying we have lost control of our frontiers, which isn’t true any more than we lost control of our frontiers when every second Irish male emigrated to work in England.”

BREXIT is both an eye-opener and a dire warning which sets out the arguments for 27 nations being bound together, just as Winston Churchill demanded, to prevent annihilation through war within or without their borders. At the same time, he accepts the current contradiction of regions and cities seeking control over their own destiny, as was the case in Italy before Garibaldi created a nation state.

“The argument for bringing political decisions closer to people has grown in strength,” he says. “But if a nation doesn’t have a centre, one place where laws are decided and then enforced – ie parliaments and a system of courts – then the nation doesn’t exist. Europe is in a dis-integrative mood right now with regional, sub-national assertions of populist identity, which are growing everywhere, in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and in the UK we’re becoming a dis-united kingdom.”

One fault is that our electoral system is not longer fit for purpose, exposed now to a volatile situation where austerity has promoted new parties, the more so when distrust in politicians has reached an unprecedented peak and the civil service no longer copes with the complexities of coalition government.

“It was always the boast of Britain that the Mother of Parlia­ments and first past the post delivered clear and decisive governments with a working majority – and when the civil service could respond to it,” he says. “But not any more.”

Yet, as he tells us the fraught history of Britain’s relationship with Europe – and the way our media forever mocks and scorns the EU – he fears the worst outcome. The political direction of the Tory Party has been against Europe for the past 20 years, he insists. The reforms David Cameron seeks are not attainable. And, apart from a few brave souls, the Labour Party’s lack of positive commitment adds to his foreboding.

On the penultimate page he writes: “The assumption that BREXIT will not or cannot happen is wrong. The rest of Europe and the rest of the world had better get used to the idea that while a team from Manchester and Chelsea will still play in the European Champions League and British singers will still come last in the Euro­vision Song Contest, the moment is fast approach­ing for the British to say bye-bye Europe.

And then the decisions that both Britain and its fellow European nations will have to take in order to survive in a new world order will become acute.”

• BREXIT: How Britain Will Leave Europe. By Denis MacShane. IB Tauris, £12.99.
MacShane: Still fighting the cause

DENIS MacShane doesn’t hide his downfall as one of 389 MPs initially found to have fiddled their expenses – David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and Keith Vaz were all ordered to make repayments – and was one of a handful who ended up in prison.
“I’ve got a slight grudge because I was cleared by the police but then done over by politicians with their own agenda,” he says. “I had to leave the Commons after 18 years. I was humiliated, disgraced, I’ve got no income and I’m in despair.”
Yet, at 66, he has a remarkable resilience, as you might expect from being born in Glasgow as Josef Denis Matyjaszek, the son of an immigrant Pole, taking his mother’s surname to make life easier as a journalist and politician.
And he spent more than 20 years based in Kentish Town as his career developed, becoming chairman of St John’s Wood Labour Party and even standing – unsuccessfully – as a Camden Council candidate in Swiss Cottage ward.
He moved to Pimlico to be able to walk to work – and come home for tea with the family – when he became MP for Rotherham and was appointed Europe Minister by Tony Blair in 2002 on the resignation of Estelle Morris.
He still plays a role as an informed adviser networking in Europe and gives his support to Labour leader Ed Miliband.

“The personalisation against Ed is a disgrace,” he declares. “He is a thoughtful, decent, intelligent, reflective, incredibly polite person. And there’s no arrogance in him at all.”

The knight and the peer in need of a history lesson
Written By: Denis MacShane
Published: April 4, 2015 Last modified: March 31, 2015
The idea that Margaret Thatcher was a heroine of the struggle to replace apartheid is a rewriting of history that would have shamed Stalin. Yet in a remarkable, unchallenged article in The Guardian by Simon Jenkins this extraordinary assertion is made.
Sir Simon was reviewing a book – The End of Apartheid – by Robin Renwick who was named Britain’s ambassador to South Africa in 1987. Lord Renwick is long retired from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and seems to need to justify himself by producing a book that hails Margaret Thatcher as responsible for ending apartheid.
According to Sir Simon: “Thatcher opposed apartheid and she lobbied Pretoria incessantly for Mandela’s release”. He argues that all during the 1980s, the white Afrikaner government was solidly in power while the “most effective opposition came from the solitary anti-apartheid MP Helen Suzman.”
Simon Jenkins, now a pillar of the English establishment, says he covered the country for the Economist in the 1980s. In his recall of the era, everything was going swimmingly well for the apartheid regime, “Then suddenly”, writes Sir Simon, “in 1989-1991 came a revolution.” The ghastly PW Botha had a stroke and overnight a shining new white leader, FW De Klerk, came to realise apartheid had to end.
In that period the British ambassador backed by the anti-apartheid Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, drove forward with vigour to secure Nelson Mandela’s release and the end of white supremacy.
It is difficult to know where to start dismantling this silly and patronising re-writing of history.
The main driving force in toppling apartheid was the black working class who formed independent trade unions during the 1970s and then went on strike to claim both economic and political rights from 1980s onwards. They were inspired by other blocks of workers in the 1980s in Poland and Brazil who also resisted authoritarian rule – communists in Poland, generals in Brazil.
The white rulers were confronted with a dilemma. White-controlled capitalism needed a mass consumer base to survive let along thrive but that was incompatible with racist white supremacist rule. In the end, apartheid politics surrendered to the needs of economic growth and capitalist accumulation.
In that process, the black trade unions, together with white intellectuals and lawyers, liberal activists and smarter young mining executives, received considerable and crucial help from overseas trade unions especially in Britain, Nordic countries, Germany and the United States, notably the progressive United Autoworkers Union whose international director, Don Stillman, cajoled UAW union leaders to visit townships and car factories to meet black workers long before Robin Renwick or Simon Jenkins took an interest. Activists such as Peter Hain in Britain or journalists such Bryan Rostron in Tribune played an important part.
I spent a considerable time in South Africa with black trade unions as an international trade union official in the 1980s and co-authored a book on black independent trade unions published in 1984. I organised liberal-left QCs and lawyers to go to South Africa to defend trade unionists charged with various crimes under apartheid.
I do not recall any help of any sort from the British Government or the British embassy. In contrast, the United States sent a African-American diplomat, Edward Pickering, as Ambassador to South Africa in 1986, and his embassy became open house for the black resistance movement, as did the Nordic and Dutch embassies who reached out to black union leaders providing some shelter and support in the 1980s.
The US Congress banned the sale of Krugerrands and took other sanction measure. But it was the adoption of mass and non-violent means of organisation that made the difference. The idea that Thatcher was involved is laughable.
The FCO at the time took its cue from Thatcher’s visceral and obsessive hate of working people and their trade unions which marked her entire premiership. Embassies stopped helping British unions in overseas work, including solidarity support in South Africa. Young Conservatives sported badges saying “Hang Mandela” and the support by Tory racists in the House of Commons for the apartheid regime was notorious and well-noted in South Africa.
When Thatcher rolled out the red carpet at Chequers for PW Botha and the apartheid leadership in 1984, it was seen as further proof in South Africa of how Britain was not interested in supporting black workers and other movements of resistance.
The Australian right-wing Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, (1975-1983), who has just died, fought publicly against apartheid, as did his successor, Bob Hawke after 1983. They were blocked at every turn by the Conservative government.
The FCO diplomatist, Sir Derek Day, who recently died, was at the 1987 Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver in which Thatcher rowed with the Canadian government over taking action against South Africa. He recalls with sadness the British leader’s opposition to tackling apartheid. “Mrs Thatcher was adamant… so it was a meeting of some acrimony.”
America, Australia and Canada all wanted to take action against apartheid. The British Tories did not. That is history which no amount of re-writing can alter.
No doubt, Lord Renwick, an extremely able diplomat, was able to sniff the winds of change by the end of the 1980s, and reported back to London that apartheid was edging towards the dustbin of history so the United Kingdom should be on the right side of what was going to happen. But the idea that the Thatcher regime in any way helped that movement especially when it needed help, not when apartheid was collapsing from within, is a re-write of history too far.
For the record, some of these points were made in a short letter to The Guardian which the paper refused to publish. With luck, the new editor will have a greater care about publishing glorifications of apartheid’s best friend in democratic world in the 1980s – the then British Prime Minister and the rabid Nelson Mandela hating Conservative students who now run today’s Tory Party.