Esteban Gonzales Pons: speech on Brexit, European Parliament – 2017
Europe is currently bound to the North by popularism, and to the South by refugees drowned in the sea. To the east by Putin’s tanks, and to the West by Trump’s wall. In the past by war, in the future by Brexit. Today, Europe is alone more than ever, but it’s citizens do not know it.
Europe is, however, for that reason the best solution and we do not know how to explain that to our citizens. Globalisation teaches us that today Europe is inevitable, there is no alternative.
But Brexit also tells us that Europe is reversible, that you can walk backwards in history, even though outside of Europe, it is very cold.
Brexit is the most selfish decision ever made since Winston Churchill saved Europe with the blood sweat and tears of the English.
Saying Brexit is the most insidious way of saying goodbye.
Europe is not a market, it is the will to live together. Leaving Europe is not leaving a market, it is leaving shared dreams. We can have a common market, but if we do not have common dreams, we have nothing. Europe is the peace that came after the disaster of war. Europe is the pardon between French and Germans. Europe is the return to freedom of Greece, Spain and Portugal. Europe is the fall of the Berlin Wall. Europe is the end of communism. Europe is the welfare state, it is democracy.
As Fintan O’Toole has pointed out Theresa May’s much heralded White paper is devoid of any understanding of what the EU is about, or any vision for what the UK should strive for outside the EU. It has satisfied neither Brexiteers nor Remainers and is most unlikely to be agreeable to the EU.
Having lost no less than 10 Ministers and many votes in the Lords, together with some close calls in the Commons, the name of the game for Theresa May now is survival until the summer recess during which time it becomes much more difficult to oust her as Tory Leader or as Prime Minister.
She will then have the opportunity to use the recess to negotiate the best deal possible with the EU and put that to a vote in the Commons once it returns. If she loses she can either resign or go to the country.
I suspect the deal will be so unpopular with both Brexiteers and Remainers that she would lose the Commons vote and any general election to Corbyn. The trick, from a Brexiteer perspective, is to force her to resign as PM before she can go to the country. That way Boris or some other Leaver can replace her and proceed to a no-deal “clean” Brexit.
Boris rivals Trump as a denier of reality and would probably get away with his bluster for quite some time. He could form a temporary alliance with Trump. Perhaps he thinks he can force the EU to concede him much better terms than they will offer May, but why would they? He has built his career on belittling the EU and all who work for it.
Corbyn, on the other hand, has few friends in the EU and many potential hard right enemies on the EU Council. The EU will also hardly offer him a better Brexit deal than they offered May. So he too, would be faced with a choice between May’s deal, a no deal Brexit, or a second referendum.
Given that he will have campaigned against May’s deal in the election and that his victory represents a popular rejection of that deal, the Referendum will effectively be a choice between a no-deal Brexit or a decision to stay in. He could offer the EU the option of giving the UK much better terms of membership – from his point of view – as the price of persuading the UK electorate to vote remain.
The EU might actually be amenable to many of the reforms Corbyn might seek – tighter control of external immigration, Increased funding for social and regional funds. Greater accountability and transparency in decision making. So the second referendum would be a straight choice between a no deal Brexit and continued membership of a “reformed” EU.
If the reforms are credible, they could offer the UK a way out of it’s current predicament without losing face. The A. 50 notification could then be re-framed as a clever ruse to force the EU to mend its ways and voters could feel they are now being offered a better deal.
But there are two problems with this scenario: Firstly, would the EU, increasingly influenced by hard right parties, agree to a substantial “reform” of the EU on largely social democratic lines, and secondly, would UK voters buy into it, with many previously having bought into Brexiteer dreams of a free and global Britain?
But there are two further imponderables for this scenario to even come about. Firstly, May must survive long enough to actually negotiate a deal and call an election before Brexiteers can oust her. And secondly, Corbyn would have to actually want to remain in the EU, even one remodelled somewhat more to his liking. Would he buy into a vision of Europe such as outlined by Esteban Gonzales Pons?
History is often misleadingly written as determined largely by the actions of great (or not so great) leaders. Much more often it is determined by hard military, economic and political realities. But there are also times when the choices made by leaders can be decisive. What futures will May and her successor choose?
For me there are still too many “ifs”,”buts” and “maybes” for the scenario of the UK remaining within the EU to be credible as the most likely outcome. What has changed for me is that the whole Brexit process has been so chaotic and incompetent, it is now possible to envisage a scenario whereby Brexit might be reversed. Still an unlikely outcome perhaps, but no longer incredible. The whole process really has been handled that badly to date.
My problem is that I really don’t have all that much faith in either May or Corbyn to rise above narrow and immediate personal and partisan concerns. They may also not have the authority or ability to deliver such an outcome, even if they wanted to. The most likely scenario still seems an absolute train-wreck no-deal Brexit. But maybe the summer sun is getting to me. We can but live in hope.
to wish the remainder of the EU well. Warts and all, the EU is far superior to many of the alternatives. In my fondest of wishes, the UK walks back what will ultimately walk back its disastrous Brexit decision. Those are merely wishes. I have no faith in May, and am still skeptical about Corbyn (admitting that he has had the occasional tendency to surprise me) should he some how become PM. That said, I do hope that no matter the road the UK ultimately takes, the remaining nations that make up the EU become closer and realize that the “will to live together” matters most of all. You all need each other now more than ever. The US is a shitty ally at the moment, and may be for quite some time. Those of us who have had the privilege to visit know just how wonderful the Schengen area really is, and what a loss it would be (thinking less in terms of the economic cost and more of the human cost). I keep hope that you all can get it together on our side of the Atlantic as we do what we can to get it together on our side. There is so much to be done. Losing hope is not an option.
I’m glad you said “many” instead of “all”. IMHO, the EU has simultaneously too much power and too little. The EU has power over things like refugee admittance that pretty much caused Brexit and too little power over pan-European concerns such as the value of the Euro, the money supply generally, and common defense.
Divisive social issues decided by an indirectly headed parliament without a strong executive is a recipe for dissolution. The right of free travel within the EU for EU citizens is necessary, but not Brussels dictating terms of external immigration. Things like invalidating the German beer purity act of {somewhere in the deep past, 1500’s?} is not a trade issue but micro-management.
Europe needs a common integrated military without the USA. I’m not sure what language should be spoken. That’s a matter for Europe to decide, most educated people are multi-lingual anyway. Europe needs a Central Bank ultimately under control of the European Parliament. Europe needs direct election of that Parliament.
France and Germany are the core of Europe and has been since Charlemagne. For most of her history that core has been split, often actively fighting. The Scandinavian countries need to be brought in, if only as associated states with their own currency.
In short, in my outsiders’ perspective the EU is simultaneously too loose and too tight. That’s why all the -exits. The most important being no elected control over the currency which is still haunted by memories of the post-WW I German inflation.
Hope this helps…
I always preferred German beer to American horse piss but also because I didn’t have to worry about added carcinogens. (Preferred German until I first tasted Guiness! Sadly only about ten years ago)
Thank you for educating me. The US news is hardly worth wrapping garbage in. Unless you want to hear about somebody’s baby daddy. No wonder our politics are so screwed up.
As a general rule we don’t do political assassinations despite the fact that political leaders (even the most senior) have minimal or zero personal security. The nearest to an EU related assassination I can find is that of Anna Lindh by a mentally ill man on the eve on a debate about Eurozone entry. The assassination was not considered a political act.
She sounds like a good person. Better than anyone I can recall here.
Television news played up the political angle. Then stopped reporting. Much like the so-called Chlorine gas attack by Assad.
And the Iraqi WMD, I might add.
Some listen to RT for news. I would trust them even less the US corporate news.
Best is to have a local friend to tell you the truth.
I think the assassination Voice is referring to is British MP Jo Cox
The Lega Nord campaigned against the Euro in recent elections but has dropped these demands in government. Arguably the Euro has been a mixed benefit for Italy with low interest rates fuelling a borrowing binge and a near unsustainable debt mountain.
Even more so in Greece. Many would argue that Greece should never have been allowed into the EU (it falsified it’s debt figures with the help of Goldman Sachs to qualify for entry) and that membership has been a mixed blessing for it.
The severe austerity imposed on Greece by the EU (in return for debt restructuring) has made membership controversial, but my view would be that if that severe deflation didn’t convince the left wing government to leave, then nothing will.
Allowing Greece to join the EU was more of a political act – to reinforce democracy after years of dictatorship – but some economic lessons have had to be learned the hard way.
Opposition to EU membership is negligible in Spain
I reply in particular about the immigration issue.
It is repeated often in the American press that a fundamental cause of Brexit was unrestrained immigration of Muslim refugees from the MidEast wars. That they make a beeline for the countries with the best welfare benefits. I should have known it was on a par with Welfare Queens and the current Russia hysteria.
Moral: Totally ignore the US media.
Social welfare benefits in Ireland are over 3 times more generous than in the UK. Strangely, as more jobs are created, less and less people stay on the unemployment register. Unemployment has reduced from 16% in 2011 to 5% now.
We have a larger non-Irealand born population (as % of total) than UK. This is generally uncontroversial as most immigrants are perceived as hard working and positive contributors to society.
Many on the left in the UK argue that it was not immigration per se, but austerity policies and public service cutbacks which created public service waiting lists and shortfalls which caused Brexit.
Interesting. I find many ethnic Irishmen in Chicago to be very anti-immigrant. I have heard, it’s true, that they tend to be more “Irish” than the Irish. Perhaps as a legacy of discrimination. Our High School Econ/Poli Sci teacher in High School, Mr. Roche, showed us clippings from 1930’s newspaper want ads saying “No Irish need apply.” He was good teacher, but not popular. He made the students think and that’s never popular with most.
very eloquent speech by Pons, thanks for sharing it.
It employs emotion and vision, which are the tools used (negatively and spitefully) by Brexiters and (over here) by our National Trumpalists.
The details and machinations you describe are over my head, but it seems the strategy is to get to another referendum, in hopes that the incompetent white electorate (of England) can be overcome the next time. But how many English will change their minds?
What evidence we have doesn’t indicate that a huge number have changed their minds, but turnout might be quite different, and the process is ongoing…