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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/26/brexit-campaign-wrong-uk-sovereign-nation-eu-masters-of-our-destiny-power
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| The Brexit campaign is wrong: the UK is already a sovereign nation | The Brexit campaign is wrong: the UK is already a sovereign nation |
| (6 months later) | |
| Michael Gove and Tony Benn are not related by blood, marriage or spiritual kinship. They belong in separate political universes. And yet such is the nature of the Brexit argument – carving its way through party lines, pitting friend against friend, uniting enemy with enemy – that the Conservative justice secretary has become the authentic voice of Bennism. | Michael Gove and Tony Benn are not related by blood, marriage or spiritual kinship. They belong in separate political universes. And yet such is the nature of the Brexit argument – carving its way through party lines, pitting friend against friend, uniting enemy with enemy – that the Conservative justice secretary has become the authentic voice of Bennism. |
| Not all Bennism, obviously. Not the whole socialist package. But rather that aspect of the Bennite legacy that helped make the indefatigable campaigner a national treasure. I’m thinking of the creed he expressed in his memorable five questions to be put to those in power: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” For Benn, the last of those was the most important: “If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.” | Not all Bennism, obviously. Not the whole socialist package. But rather that aspect of the Bennite legacy that helped make the indefatigable campaigner a national treasure. I’m thinking of the creed he expressed in his memorable five questions to be put to those in power: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” For Benn, the last of those was the most important: “If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.” |
| This was the voice Gove was channelling when he outed himself as an outer last week. In an essay far more persuasive than the muddled mess served up, with greater fanfare, by Boris Johnson, Gove put democracy at the centre of his case for a British break with the European Union. “I believe that the decisions which govern all our lives … should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change.” The problem with the EU, he wrote, is that “laws which govern citizens in this country are decided by politicians from other nations who we never elected and can’t throw out”. | This was the voice Gove was channelling when he outed himself as an outer last week. In an essay far more persuasive than the muddled mess served up, with greater fanfare, by Boris Johnson, Gove put democracy at the centre of his case for a British break with the European Union. “I believe that the decisions which govern all our lives … should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change.” The problem with the EU, he wrote, is that “laws which govern citizens in this country are decided by politicians from other nations who we never elected and can’t throw out”. |
| The appeal of that argument is as powerful now as when Benn first made it. It has simplicity and clarity, chiming with our most basic democratic instinct. For the liberal or progressive voter, one resolutely unmoved by Faragiste talk of curbing immigration, this, surely, is the outers’ best shot. | The appeal of that argument is as powerful now as when Benn first made it. It has simplicity and clarity, chiming with our most basic democratic instinct. For the liberal or progressive voter, one resolutely unmoved by Faragiste talk of curbing immigration, this, surely, is the outers’ best shot. |
| You saw what the EU did to Greece. You’ve heard how the European commission churns out binding regulations by the crateload. You read Gove describing the way a UK government minister, elected by the British people, can sit at his desk, keen to implement a plan that should help the country, only to be told by his civil servants: “Yes, minister, I understand, but I’m afraid that’s against EU rules.” If you believe in democracy and self-determination, then surely you must want Britain to break the shackles of Europe and govern itself? | You saw what the EU did to Greece. You’ve heard how the European commission churns out binding regulations by the crateload. You read Gove describing the way a UK government minister, elected by the British people, can sit at his desk, keen to implement a plan that should help the country, only to be told by his civil servants: “Yes, minister, I understand, but I’m afraid that’s against EU rules.” If you believe in democracy and self-determination, then surely you must want Britain to break the shackles of Europe and govern itself? |
| And yet, simple and clear though that case is, it’s not necessarily right. Start with the observation that Gove’s words could come back to haunt him should there be a second independence referendum in Scotland. Search for “the EU” in the Gove manifesto and replace it with “the UK”, swap “the UK” for “Scotland”, and the text could be republished as an SNP pamphlet. It’s the very same argument the yes side made in 2014: a nation can only truly shape its destiny when it governs alone. | And yet, simple and clear though that case is, it’s not necessarily right. Start with the observation that Gove’s words could come back to haunt him should there be a second independence referendum in Scotland. Search for “the EU” in the Gove manifesto and replace it with “the UK”, swap “the UK” for “Scotland”, and the text could be republished as an SNP pamphlet. It’s the very same argument the yes side made in 2014: a nation can only truly shape its destiny when it governs alone. |
| This is not a mere debating point, designed to embarrass the Scottish and staunchly unionist Gove. On the contrary, it goes to the heart of the argument. | This is not a mere debating point, designed to embarrass the Scottish and staunchly unionist Gove. On the contrary, it goes to the heart of the argument. |
| For what was the most persuasive unionist reply to the independence case in Scotland? It said that the Scottish people were indeed a sovereign nation. But that sovereign nations often pool or share that sovereignty with others for the sake of their own national interest. They do it every time they sign a treaty or reach an international accord, voluntarily constraining their own ability to act in order to achieve some other goal. Sometimes that goal is grand and noble, such as when a nation agrees to be bound by the UN Declaration of Human Rights or assorted Geneva Conventions. Sometimes the objective is more self-serving, as when sovereign nations, eyeing the financial bottom line, submit to the rules of the World Trade Organisation. | For what was the most persuasive unionist reply to the independence case in Scotland? It said that the Scottish people were indeed a sovereign nation. But that sovereign nations often pool or share that sovereignty with others for the sake of their own national interest. They do it every time they sign a treaty or reach an international accord, voluntarily constraining their own ability to act in order to achieve some other goal. Sometimes that goal is grand and noble, such as when a nation agrees to be bound by the UN Declaration of Human Rights or assorted Geneva Conventions. Sometimes the objective is more self-serving, as when sovereign nations, eyeing the financial bottom line, submit to the rules of the World Trade Organisation. |
| But sovereignty is not like virginity, that once given away is lost forever. On the contrary, sovereign nations can reel back in what they have lent out the instant they decide the previous sharing arrangement no longer suits them. The Scots could have made that move in September 2014 but, exercising their sovereignty, they decided that pooling what they had with England, Wales and Northern Ireland served the Scottish national interest better. | But sovereignty is not like virginity, that once given away is lost forever. On the contrary, sovereign nations can reel back in what they have lent out the instant they decide the previous sharing arrangement no longer suits them. The Scots could have made that move in September 2014 but, exercising their sovereignty, they decided that pooling what they had with England, Wales and Northern Ireland served the Scottish national interest better. |
| The UK has not somehow lost its sovereignty by being in the EU. Parliament can simply repeal the European Communities Act of 1972 and we’d be out. MPs could do it now without a referendum if they wanted. Such is the power of a sovereign nation. | The UK has not somehow lost its sovereignty by being in the EU. Parliament can simply repeal the European Communities Act of 1972 and we’d be out. MPs could do it now without a referendum if they wanted. Such is the power of a sovereign nation. |
| Still, the last few decades of pooling and sharing with the other nations of Europe grates on the Brexiteers. You can hear the plaintive cry running through the Gove text. Why do we have to do it? Why can’t we just rule ourselves alone, unfettered, like the Americans do? | Still, the last few decades of pooling and sharing with the other nations of Europe grates on the Brexiteers. You can hear the plaintive cry running through the Gove text. Why do we have to do it? Why can’t we just rule ourselves alone, unfettered, like the Americans do? |
| The answer is a matter of both space and time, geography and history. We are a proud island nation, to be sure, but we are also right next to a continent that represents the largest single market in the world. Half our trade is with mainland Europe. And because those nations have formed a single market, to trade with them on the same beneficial terms they all enjoy means complying with that market’s rules. We could do it from the outside, as the Norwegians do. Or we could do it from the inside, as we do now. Both options involve some constraint of our sovereignty. | The answer is a matter of both space and time, geography and history. We are a proud island nation, to be sure, but we are also right next to a continent that represents the largest single market in the world. Half our trade is with mainland Europe. And because those nations have formed a single market, to trade with them on the same beneficial terms they all enjoy means complying with that market’s rules. We could do it from the outside, as the Norwegians do. Or we could do it from the inside, as we do now. Both options involve some constraint of our sovereignty. |
| If anything, after a Brexit, we could discover that we are rather less sovereign than we are now. In order to do business, we could find ourselves compelled to bow before rules that, like Norway, we have no say in writing. As the Norwegian conservative, quoted by David Cameron in the Commons this week, put it: “If you want to run Europe, you must be in Europe. If you want to be run by Europe, feel free to join Norway in the European Economic Area.” | If anything, after a Brexit, we could discover that we are rather less sovereign than we are now. In order to do business, we could find ourselves compelled to bow before rules that, like Norway, we have no say in writing. As the Norwegian conservative, quoted by David Cameron in the Commons this week, put it: “If you want to run Europe, you must be in Europe. If you want to be run by Europe, feel free to join Norway in the European Economic Area.” |
| Besides the map, there is the clock. Today’s world is very different from the 17th and 18th centuries, when the notion of state sovereignty first took root. National independence is more abstract, less absolute in the age of international interdependence. Britain can no more be sovereign alone in the face of global terror, mass migration or climate change than Canute could be master of the waves. Now the world awards strength to those who combine their muscle. Even the mighty US, spanning a continent, cannot get all it wants alone. | Besides the map, there is the clock. Today’s world is very different from the 17th and 18th centuries, when the notion of state sovereignty first took root. National independence is more abstract, less absolute in the age of international interdependence. Britain can no more be sovereign alone in the face of global terror, mass migration or climate change than Canute could be master of the waves. Now the world awards strength to those who combine their muscle. Even the mighty US, spanning a continent, cannot get all it wants alone. |
| The Financial Times’s Philip Stephens wrote this week that “the castaway alone on a desert island may be sovereign over all she or he surveys”, but is also “impotent”. A vote to leave the EU would certainly give an instant sugar rush that would feel a lot like an assertion of sovereignty. But a sovereign nation understands that to share what it has in order to get more can be not an act of weakness – but of great strength. | The Financial Times’s Philip Stephens wrote this week that “the castaway alone on a desert island may be sovereign over all she or he surveys”, but is also “impotent”. A vote to leave the EU would certainly give an instant sugar rush that would feel a lot like an assertion of sovereignty. But a sovereign nation understands that to share what it has in order to get more can be not an act of weakness – but of great strength. |
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