Britain and the EU: The Political Case for Leaving

After my previous attempt to analyse the economic case for leaving the EU, this time I tried to look at the political arguments for leaving, those which revolve around sovereignty and democracy.

Just a reminder, the reason for focusing on the Leave campaign is because I believe that they have the greater case to prove. We know what life in the EU is like. The impetus is on the Leave campaign to show us how it would be better outside.

Until we leave, we are not a properly sovereign country

Sovereignty is a funny old thing. It is a bit like sex. Everyone agrees that more of it is better, but you have to take claims about how much of it people do or don't have with a pinch of salt.

The Leave camp are making a simple, powerful claim. Their claim is that by being a member of the EU, the UK has surrendered some of its sovereignty. By leaving, we would get that back. No numbers to crunch, no statistics to contend with. By voting Leave, you will help to restore Britain's power. What more can be said to that?

But in every way imaginable, the UK is a sovereign nation. Laws are made by the 'Queen in Parliament'- that is, they are introduced by the government, passed by the House of Commons and House of Lords, and signed off by the Queen. Within this model, there are few constraints on the power of the British state. That is pretty much the textbook definition of sovereignty. The British state has a monopoly of political power within its borders.

As an example, if we wanted to, we could easily use this sovereignty to leave the EU. Tomorrow, if we wanted. All it would take would be for Parliament to repeal the European Communities Act of 1972. This would end our membership of the EU immediately, by rendering Community law unenforceable in the UK. Granted, it would be a chaotic way of leaving the EU, but it is theoretically possible. That is sovereignty right there. Would a non sovereign state be able to do that?

Being part of any international organisation requires the surrendering of some say or power on the part of the state. Our membership of NATO means that we have to accept that, if any NATO member is ever attacked, we have to go their aid, even if it is not within our national interests to do so. Our membership of the UN means that we accept that our soldiers will be placed under international command, and deployed around the world where Britain has no interests, but the world does. The UKUSA agreement means that any intelligence collected by the UK is automatically shared with the USA, Canada, New Zealand or Australia.

Any agreements between countries requires them to accept a limit on their ability to act as they please, in the pursuit of mutual interests. The EU is just another example of this, albeit the most prominent example. The logical extension of the sovereignty argument is that Britain should leave all international organisations, and cut off virtually all ties with the outside world. Then we would have our sovereignty back. But this Britain would be a poorer, less safe, place to live in.

If you want an example of a non-sovereign country, look at Germany's recent past. Until 1990, the highest authority in West Germany and East Germany was the Allied Control Council. In theory, Germany was still under military occupation by the UK, France, the USA and the USSR. Or modern day Bosnia ;the Dayton Accords imposed a political structure on the warring factions in 1995, against the will of many Bosnian Serbs. The head of state is still appointed by the UN, and has not yet been a native Bosnian. Those are countries which are not sovereign, as they lack the ability to act independently. We're nothing like that.

The Westphalian model of sovereignty, of nation-states with untrammeled power, acting in their own interests, is at odds with the 21st century world of inter-connectivity. The idea of sovereignty which many in the Leave campaign argue for was not possible in the 17th century, and certainly will not be possible now. To be concerned about a loss of sovereignty is fine, but you can't pick and choose how you argue that fight. If it is the issue, then we must leave all international organisations and strike out alone. If you think that is the way forward, then do vote to leave. But you can't use the sovereignty argument for the EU alone.

The USA wouldn't accept this loss of sovereignty

This one was trotted out when Barack Obama decided to get stuck in to the referendum campaign. One of the objections raised was that the USA would never stand for the restrictions placed upon it that we do.

Firstly, see back to the idea of unlimited sovereignty. Any state which engages with the rest of the world has to accept limits on its power. Even America.

But the United States of America is engaged in a much bigger loss of sovereignty, one which it undergoes every day.

When the Thirteen Colonies of British America declared themselves to be in rebellion against the Crown, they became independent countries. They chose to co-operate for the purpose of winning the war with Great Britain, but they still became 13 separate countries. When the war ended, they became a confederation, a loose agreement. The United States had no national leader, a toothless parliament, no army, no tax raising powers, no central co-ordination. For the first few years of its existence. During that time, ultimate power rested with the states. Each could set their own laws, elect their own governments, raise their own taxes. They chose to send some money to the centre, to co-ordinate trade and interstate relations. Sound familiar?

It soon became clear that this wasn't working. So a constitutional convention was held. The states decided on a radical course of action. They would pool their sovereignty; each state would surrender it's right to unrestrained autonomous action, to support the creation of a federal government of the United States. George Washington was chosen to lead this federation, and the rest was history.

So, yes the USA would accept this limit on its sovereignty. It is what the modern United States is; the greatest experiment in pooled sovereignty to this day. Rather than spurning their advice, we'd do well to listen to them instead.

The EU is undemocratic

Yes.

Surprised? It'd be hard to claim otherwise. The EU is run by unelected Eurocrats from Brussels, far removed from the people they make decisions for, and impossible to hold to account. This has been one of the oldest arguments against the EU. It was made in the 1975 referendum, and has continued to be made since.

But, unlike the vast majority of international organisations, the EU does have a degree of democracy. When was the last time you voted in a Commonwealth election? Or to the NATO parliament? How about for the UN Secretary-General? You won't have done. Those organisations are run by people appointed by national governments. They may even be appointed internally. They are far less democratic than the EU, which alongside appointments by national governments has elections to the European Parliament. But yet these less democratic organisations are often the ones that the Leave campaign are keenest for Britain to become more involved with.

There is a woeful level of participation in EU elections, right across Europe. But that is partly our fault. Turnout in all elections has been falling across the developed world since the 1990s. When given the chance to elect our MEPs, millions of us just stay at home. We cannot then be complaining that we have not been given a say.

Also, national governments are not much better. Britain has never been a direct democracy, certainly not since the first mass extension of the franchise in 1832. We elect representatives in the form of Members of Parliament, and expect them to sort it all out. Lord Hailsham once described Britain as an elected dictatorship. There is virtually no limit or accountability on the power of the government once it has been elected. And when you go to the polls every half a decade, you are voting for your MP. You are not going to be swayed by every single thing the government or opposition has or hasn't done over the last five years. Anyway, you can hardly vote to punish an MP whose seat is hundreds of miles away for their poor decision some years before, unless you happen to be one of their constituents. Successive British politicians have taken decisions for which they have been held only marginally accountable.

And this presumes that only politicians work for the state. In reality, civil servants enact much of the legislation which is created. And they are protected from elections, to ensure their independence. That is only right, as it separates power between those who make political decisions and those who implement policy. But you can't vote for British civil servants any more than EU ones.

What at first seems like an excellent critique of the EU ends up as a mess of contradictions. Are we prepared to accept undemocratic impositions on our lives, providing they are closer to home? Or speak the same language as us? The answer to Britain's democratic deficit is more democracy, not to leave the UK. Logically, the EU should be treated the same.

That we cannot name our MEPs is our fault, not that of the EU. That we feel we have no control over the EU should not be limited just to that institution. You have very little say over the actions of the British government, NATO, the UN. If the EU is not a democracy, than neither are many things. The answer should be more democratic accountability and engagement, not giving up and walking away.

Most of our laws are made in Brussels

This is often cited as one of the biggest examples of why we should leave the EU. Various suggestions as to how many new laws are made in Brussels are currently swirling, varying from 6% to a whopping 85%.

I can't answer this. In fact, no one can. According to a House of Commons report in October 2010:

there is no totally accurate, rational or useful way of calculating the percentage of national laws based on or influenced by the EU.

In the absence of any actual numbers, this seems like a dead end argument. Instead, I want to look at how EU laws and regulations do affect us, and whether leaving the EU would save us from the diktats of Brussels Eurocrats.

In the area of business, competition, commerce, working, and trade, we have had to accept many EU laws over the years. During the 1980s and 1990s a huge number of laws and regulations were introduced due to the EEC, to enable the creation of the Single Market. The Single Market only functions if we are all on a roughly even footing, and this proved to be a legislative nightmare to achieve. But since then, the number of new EU laws and regulations appears to have gone into steep decline. That makes sense; after the messy business of breaking down trade barriers was done, there would be less need for endless fresh legislation.

But leaving wouldn't necessarily rescue us from all these laws around businesses and working practices. Many Leave campaigners are very keen for Britain to be able to access the Single Market, as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland do from outside the EU. But to retain this access, we would have to agree to abide by the rules and regulations of that market. And what's worse, we would not be able to influence any decisions made by the EU about the rule governing the Single Market. Instead, new rules and regulations would be presented to us to accept, with no chance of amending or blocking them. It seems far better to stay inside and try to change the laws, rather than get out and realise you can't change them.

Then there are certain areas that the EU aims to help national governments co-ordinate policy and legislation, but does not have the power to compel them. These are:

• tax
• defence
• health
• industrial policy
• culture
• tourism
• education
• youth policy
• sport and vocational training
• civil defence
• administrative cooperation

That is a fair chunk of government business in which the EU has no say whatsoever. To those we can add areas such as foreign policy, in which the EU has agreed in principle to work together and has then spectacularly failed to achieve any consensus. So there are already a large number of areas in which the EU won't be making any laws at all.

For the rest, many of the examples often cited as 'EU laws', normally in the same breath as 'political correctness' and 'gone mad', are actually decisions made by the UK government. Health and safety is an excellent example: The Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 was first introduced to Parliament in 1970, three years before Britain joined the EEC. EU regulations have added extra layers to this, but it is fundamentally a British law. That is the direction we have decided to go in as a society. Blaming Brussels might be easy, but in a lot of cases just isn't true.

The bottom line is, in an ever-interconnected world, it is impossible to prove or disprove the claim that most of our laws are a result of being in the European Union. But what is clear is that, if we do leave, and want to retain access to the Single Market, as many Leave campaigners maintain, we will have to retain much of the legislation and regulation that goes with it. What we will have done is to surrender our ability to influence future changes to the rules and regulations laid down by the EU. Having gone through all that pain, we would see precious little gain.

Summary

Firstly, I'd like to apologise for the fact that this post was very long and rambling. There is no short way to tackle the big questions, and I'd rather ramble and get there than try and cut corners!

I'd also like to apologise for the lack of hard data. Whereas lots of numbers have been hurled around with regards to economics, surprisingly there aren't as many when it comes to calculating the exact loss of sovereignty. Sources and inspiration are still available, they just won't be as comprehensive.

Overall, the Leave campaigners have sound political grounds to attack the EU from. It is undemocratic, and it does involve a loss of sovereignty on the part of the UK. But every single international organisation is the same. In trying to have an element of democracy within it, the EU has shown a way forward. We should be pushing for more democracy in the EU, not turning our back on it and leaving.