As the coalition government’s austerity package begins to bite at home, the issue of Britain’s contribution to the European Union (and Prime Minister David Cameron’s campaign to prevent above-inflation budget increases in Brussels) has hit the headlines once again. Inevitably, the issue of Britain’s continued membership of the political and economic union has formed the topic of reinvigorated debate with newspapers like the Express calling for Britain to leave. With some of David Cameron’s closest advisers (most notably Steve Hilton) rumoured to have quietly joined those chanting “better off out”, ThePoliticalReader decided to revisit a book brought out in 2009 about Britain after the European Union – 'Ten Years On' by Lee Rotherham – and consider not just the case for staying or leaving but the sort of debate we need to have.
This book, of little over one hundred pages, is chunked into three parts which centre around what Britain would look like had it withdrawn from the European Union in 2010 (Rotherham, in 2009, writes as if this is to happen after David Cameron wins a majority Conservative government in the 2010 election and in doing so highlights a fundamental issue with this work – it’s attempt at prophecy and analysis on this basis). The first section focuses on imagined anecdotes on different sections of society – the business owner, the fisherman, the MP – and how their lives would be different, and much improved, after ten years without the European Union. For some, this prophecy will appear to vindicate in day-to-day practice the burden of the European Union of people like me and you. For others, it will read like the allegory of the propagandist’s pen. TPR’s perhaps more reasoned view is that whilst it would seem nonsensical to say the European Union has not added any new regulations and burdens to the British people, and money would be saved without it, many of its directives would no doubt have been enacted by British governments by now had Brussels not beaten them to it (for example, Health and Safety regulations).
In Part II, we have a more narrative approach of how Britain would come to secede from the Union in 2010. Focusing on the events that first brought the European Constitution turn Lisbon Treaty into focus, this section is written in a way that, for the most part, feels more legitimate than Part I as it mainly focuses on truth events. Many will, no doubt, feel as I did throughout this short book that the much more legitimate thing to do would have been to ask how Britain would have been in the actual events we know happened in the past decade rather than inaccurately guessing the decade to come.
There is much to criticise about the European Union, and Dr Rotherham highlights some of its biggest failings with a worthy passion – perhaps most strikingly and deservingly over the issue of Ireland’s second referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon (however, Rotherham’s reference to European officials who threatened Ireland would collapse in the financial crisis and be unable to survive without European support no longer seems an inflated threat). However, whilst there is much to criticise and elements of Britain would likely be better off outside of the European Union, this book fails to remember the broader issues at debate here. The European Union, a federalist project, was created to achieve and ever more united yet ever more peaceful union. Its success in achieving this goal has been unparalleled in modern European history, even if its own credit in this goal can be doubted. If Britain is to withdraw from the European Union, it would be disastrous for the European project. On that basis, our discussions of membership needs to focus more on the bigger picture of world politics without the EU and the continent once returned to fractured nation-states. Without these bigger issues, the debate is simply nationalistic and at times petty and, perhaps most importantly, the debate simply forms along preconceived prejudices of the virtues or the failings of the EU. This book is testament to that.
You can purchase and read ‘Ten Years On’ here.
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