Jeremy Corbyn was voting against the Single European Act when David Cameron was still at university. He sounded scarcely keener when responding to Cameron’s statement today. He needs to propose several interrelated measures to be enacted regardless of the outcome of the referendum, and if at all possible prior to it.
The economic, social, cultural and political power of the British working class, whether broadly or narrowly defined, cannot exactly be said to have increased since 1973. Any more than Britain has fought no further wars since joining a body as successful as NATO or nuclear weapons when it comes to keeping the peace.
We had full employment before we joined the EU. We have never had it since. No job in the real economy is dependent on our membership. Or were trade with, and travel to, the Continent unheard of, because impossible, before our accession to the EU?
Not for nothing did Margaret Thatcher support that accession, oppose withdrawal in the 1975 referendum, and go on, as Prime Minister, to sign an act of integration so large that it could never be equalled, a position from which she never wavered until the tragically public playing out of the early stages of her dementia. “No! No! No!” was not part of any planned speech.
In anticipation of Cameron’s Single European Act on speed, Labour needs to get its retaliation in first. Corbyn needs to demand immediate legislation.
First, restoring the supremacy of United Kingdom over European Union law, using that provision to repatriate industrial and regional policy as Labour has advocated for some time, using it to repatriate agricultural policy (farm subsidies go back to the War, 30 years before we joined the EU, and they are a good idea in themselves, whereas the Common Agricultural Policy most certainly is not), and using it to restore the United Kingdom’s historic fishing rights of 200 miles or to the median line.
Secondly, requiring that all EU legislation, in order to have any effect in this country, be enacted by both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or the other of them. Thirdly, requiring that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard.
Fourthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament. That would also deal with whatever the problem was supposed to be with the Human Rights Act.
Fifthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs who had been certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons. Thus, we should no longer be subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, of neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, of members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, of people who believed the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and of Dutch ultra-Calvinists who would not have women candidates.
Sixthly, reducing in real terms the British contribution to the EU Budget; that is another longstanding Labour policy. And seventhly, pre-emptively disapplying in the United Kingdom any Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, thus making any such Agreement impossible in practice. Outside the EU, would Cameron just negotiate something even worse with the United States? Not before 2020, when he would need to be replaced with Corbyn.
All regardless of the outcome of the referendum.
After all, which privatisation did the EU prevent? Which dock, factory, shipyard, steelworks or mine did it save? If we needed the EU for the employment law that, since we do not have it, the EU is obviously powerless to deliver, then there would be no point or purpose to the British Labour Movement. Or have the trade unions disbanded, their job done?
Far from preventing wars, the EU has done nothing to prevent numerous on the part of, at some point, most of its member-states, and not least this member-state. It was a key player in, and it has been a major beneficiary of, the destruction of Yugoslavia. It is now a key player in, and it seeks to be a major beneficiary of, the war in Ukraine, which is the worst on the European Continent since 1945, and which is a direct consequence of the EU’s expansionist desire to prise a vital buffer state out of neutrality and into the NATO from which the EU has become practically indistinguishable.
The Leader of the Labour Party has been saying all of this all along, since even before he voted against the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty.
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