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June 15, 2004 For Brits it isn't "EU" but Eeeewww Mark Steyn explains some of the reasons European voters (and especially Brits) showed their displeasure with the EU at the polls this last weekend. Almost every Europhile argument is weaker now than it was a quarter-century ago, when the EU - or whatever it was called back then - had a stronger economy, healthier demographics, and the devastating implications of the Continent's social costs were not yet plain. Yet pro-Europeans remain wedded to their ancient arguments: for a good decade and a half Edward Heath in his tetchier moments has airily waved the interviewer's question aside and said all these things were decided in the 1970s and we need to get on with it. Otherwise, Britain will be "isolated in the world" and unable to survive unless it allows its relatively buoyant economy to be yoked in perpetuity to the FrancoGerman statist gerontocracy. He also notes that "but, as Peter Oborne pointed out in last week's Spectator, poll after poll shows that up to half the British electorate wants out of the EU ... That explains why the two governing parties, couldn't must 50% between them. This goes to a deeper problem than disaffection or anger about Iraq. After all, the opposition party should have been the beneficiary of the vote if it were 'all about Iraq' wouldn't you think? But they weren't. This is all about the EU. Its all about taking away national and ethnic identity and making the continent one large homogeneous population. Its about putting 20 cats in a bag, closing it and saying "get along together". Its not going to happen ... at least not anytime soon. Why? Well as we're all aware, there are some competing ideologies here. As Steyn points out, Britain is now "yoked" to the FrancoGerman ideal of the welfare state ... not that Britain doesn't have its tendency toward the same, but not to the extreme that do France and Germany. Its been evident to most unbiased observers in the US that the welfare states in France and Germany are failing ... and that's been evident for some time. Look at their unemployment rate. Look at their stagnant economies. Even in the superheated '90s they lagged terribly. So what are the choices France and Germany have? Well, they can reform their own political systems - fat chance, Frenchmen will go on strike at the drop of a hat if you mess with their 4 day work week or their subsidies - or they can get someone else, in the guise of the rest of Europe's economies, to subsidise them. Enter the EU and the "yoke". Brits don't like it. I don't blame them. The question is, how long will they put up with it? If the elections of the past weekend are any indication ... not much longer. ADDENDUM (Dale): I think an even more telling passage in Steyn's piece is this one: In the late 20th century sur le Continent, politics evolved to the point where almost any issue worth talking about was ruled beneath discussion, beyond the bounds of polite society. In Austria, year in, year out, whether you voted for the centre-Left party or the centre-Right party, you wound up with the same centre-Left/centre-Right coalition presiding over what was in effect a two-party one-party state. Then Jörg Haider came along. The Europeans have evolved a system in which important issues have been deemed out of bounds for political discussion. There is almost a two-tier political system there, now. One tier is democratic, where the people get to vote, but where controversial issues are not permitted to be discussed. Those issues, like the future of Europe, are handled solely by the political elites, who, in turn, tell the "electorate" what has been decided from them. As one wag put it yesterday, the problem is not that the EU is undemocratic. It's that, in many ways, it's anti-democratic, in that, to get a good position on the European Commission, you generally have to lose an election, viz. Chris Patten. The European electorate seems to be getting tired of this way of doing business, and tired of political elites presenting them with a fait accompli every time a controversial issue has to be addressed. The major parties are not addressing the desires of their electorates. As a result, we're seeing an upsurge in "fringe parties". But, as Steyn points out: In the East Midlands, UKIP was in a statistical dead heat for first place. The "lunatic fringe" - UKIP, BNP, Greens, Respect, etc - won 40 per cent of the vote. And the so-called looniest of the lunatics, UKIP and BNP, pulled 32.6 per cent. Between them, Labour and the Lib Dems got 33.9 per cent. What, other than the blinkers of the media-political Westminster village, makes 32.6 per cent the fringe and 33.9 per cent the mainstream? The problem, as Steyn puts it, isn't a growing lunatic fringe. It's a lunatic mainstream that is attempting to govern without a mandate from anybody. And the electorate appears to be getting a bit sick of it. Since there's increasingly less real support for their issues in the mainstream parties, the voters are turning to the fringe, because fringe parties are the only ones willing to discuss issues that matter to the voters. The European political elites might be in for a bitter awakening about the realities of democracy in the not too distant future, and find themselves becoming ex-elites. At least they'll have plenty of free time to write their memoirs. |