Latest post on Left Futures

Support for staying in the European Union is at an all time high

eu-stay-in-or-get-out-trend-oct-2014_lightbox

Calling it support might be a bit of a stretch but nevertheless this graph is interesting.
Here’s your source. The professional pundits are probably right. This is a backlash of sorts against UKIP. The greater their presence is felt, the more their backwardness is plastered all over the media the stiffer the resistance to their blandishments becomes.

But that is not all. Weirdly, I think a little bit of anti-politics sentiment is bound up with this. Consider it, every time you turn on the news or open a paper, politics stories always seem to be blah, blah, Europe, blah, blah, referendum, blah, blah more Europe. It’s really bloody dull. The problem is as the Tories have stupidly decided to try and out-UKIP UKIP by offering a referendum on a renegotiated relationship with the EU – a series of negotiations Dave will flunk in spectacular style – the knee jerk rejection and reaction to this interminably boring, alienating and remote politics finds itself expressed in maintaining Britain’s membership. Perhaps its just as well Labour and the LibDems aren’t making a big deal about EU support in the run up to next year. Unlike the Tories and UKIP, they are aware it’s a priority for approximately seven per cent of voters.

Is this existential crisis time for UKIP? You know how the story goes. In fact, the Tories are banking on it. The blue team are returned next year, Dave successfully renegotiates EU membership, the referendum happens, a yes vote wins out and UKIP withers away to nothing. All those voters dutifully return back to the Conservatives and they go on to win a thumping third term in 2020. Sadly for Dave and everyone pinning their hope to this scenario, no.

The salience of UKIP is expressive of and capitalises on long-term social trends that have, for a section of the population, made living in Britain feel as if it is a scary, insecure and unfamiliar place. To think an EU referendum followed by a yes vote is going to kill the kippers stone dead is to indulge Westminster determinism of the very worst sort. They are a sociological phenomenon and as such only long range policies that ease insecurity, such as building more affordable homes, tackling low pay and job insecurity, and doing something about the mountains of private household debt piling up will sort them out. After all, whatever happened to the SNP after the Scottish referendum?

4 Comments

  1. James Martin says:

    And is staying in a capitalist club that would not have allowed the NHS to be founded and would not have allowed key industries nationalised by the ’45 government a good or a bad thing Phil? Personally I don’t give a shite for UKIP’s reasons for opposing the EU, as I think the socialist case is far more relevant and important.

  2. David Ellis says:

    The neo-liberal principles on which the EU is founded are an anathema to socialist or should be but obviously not to the person who wrote this piece. However a Union of European States is in actual fact a strategic principle.

    That means that we do not call for exit or an in-out referendum like our chauvinist stalinist and neo-stalinist chums of NO2EU but rather we demand that any labour or socialist government should refuse to enact any of the EU’s anti-working class directives even if that means getting slung out whilst at the same time seeking to renegotiate the founding treaties of the EU in accordance with our own socialist principles such as EU-wide living wage and EU-wide full-employment in each member state to replace the neo-liberal ones that are tearing the EU apart in any case.

    On the other hand in the event of an `in-out’ referendum unlike our reformist and opportunist friends such as the writer of this piece we could not possibly vote positively for the EU as it currently exists and the neo-liberal principles on which it is built. We would be obliged to vote `out’ whilst explaining all the time that we are in favour of a socialist EU differentiating us from the Little Englanders of UKIP and the Tory and Labour right and of course NO2EU stalinism.

  3. Robert says:

    This is another of those articles which is to attack ULKIP and yet today we have Miliband backing UKIP by agreeing with them and saying look you can vote for us now because we were wrong.

    If Labour are so sure that support for the EU is so strong then give the people the referendum then if you win you can say well that ends that, it’s now been agreed, but if you lose then you will need to work a dam sight harder to make this country great again, something looking at the politician we have to day would be impossible.

  4. swatantra says:

    TINA

© 2024 Left Futures | Powered by WordPress | theme originated from PrimePress by Ravi Varma