In the comments to my National identity vs European identity post, where I’ve been arguing that it’s perfectly possibly to have a sense of belonging to multiple different groups, and thus to have multiple different identities, commenter WG notes:

I don’t see the point in this multi-ID thing.

One other point. The break up of Britain may well be a result of belonging to the EU. Wales, Scotland, and yes, even places such as Cornwall, may well decide that they will be better off under the EU and free of England. Whether this was intentional or no people such as myself have resigned ourselves to the ‘regionalization’ of England and expect other regions to break away. There is a growing sense that we are returning to the Essex/Mercia/Northumberland scenario.

As a Devonian, a Dumonii, I am afraid that I and many friends will never submit to EU rule. You see what a can of worms we have opened here. We are back to fighting Imperial Rome.

I’d agree that the EU makes such things possible (regional development funds and the like being able to fill the cash gap previously provided by nation state apparatus), I don’t necessarily see this as entirely down to the EU.

The drift to localism

There has long been a strong (and notably growing over the last century or so) nationalist sentiment in both Wales and Scotland (not to mention Northern Ireland), and the United Kingdom was always a way for England to govern its provinces while making them feel less like second class citizens – the fact that the capital of the UK is London being a bit of a hint there.

Little wonder that, now that the previously much-needed military protection provided by the UK nation state machinery is no longer necessary for Wales and Scotland to live securely, and now that there is an additional layer of economic security above that of the UK being provided by the EU, that they are shifting towards greater independence.

This is not a phenomenon unique to the UK – witness the break-up of Yugoslavia, the division of Czechoslovakia, the ongoing troubles in Belgium, the revival of regionalist movements (in many cases, as with the Basques, more accurately described as nationalist – as many of these regions have long retained their sense of unique identity, culture, and in some cases language) in Spain and France and Italy, among others. It’s not even unique to Europe – witness the various nationalist movements that sprang up in the various European colonies during the mid-20th century. Indeed, as long ago as the 1950s Arnold Toynbee (among others) was identifying a new movement away from the old Great Powers and large nation states towards smaller national identities. As Toynbee notes in his A Study of History,

The cumulative effect of the two world wars has brought to the surface a tendency which had been at work for nearly half a century before 1914. In 1918 Austria-Hungary, one of the eight Great Powers which had been on the map in 1914, broke up. At the same date the break-up of the Ottoman Empire was completed. The Second World War was followed by the break-up of the British, French, and Dutch colonial Empires, and the number of Great Powers was reduced to two, while the number of juridicially sovereign independent states was increased, in the course of the next quarter of a century, to about 140.

The greater the number of nominally sovereign states, the smaller their average area, population, wealth and economic and military capacity are bound to be… the characteristic states of the new age are not units that can be thought of as being universes in themselves [unlike the former Great Powers, which were characterised by almost total self-sufficiency and independence of action]… Some states… are… confessing… that they cannot stand alone. The ‘developing’ countries are still seeking financial and technological aid from the ‘developed’ countries, and the states of Western Europe [this passage being written in the 1960s] – which, for four and a half centuries, ending in 1945, fought round after round of wars with each other to prevent any one of them from dominating the rest – are now trying to unite voluntarily, on a footing of equality with each other, in a European economic community.

These multiple tendencies can be summed up in a single formula: in the new age, the dominant not in the corporate consciousness of communities is a sense of being parts of some larger universe, whereas, in the age which is now over, the dominant note in their consciousness was an aspiration to be universes in themselves.

So, a trend can be identified throughout the 20th century towards smaller units with a broader, international outlook.

What is the best form of government?

Myself, I always reckon that the best form of government is that which is closest to the people – because that way it is far more likely to tally with what the people actually want.

Most nation states are the size and shape that they are purely thanks to accidents of history – even the island of Great Britain, while superficially a clearly-defined geographical entity, is made up of numerous different cultures, nationalities and peoples – some which have come voluntarily into the larger whole, others only thanks to military conquest; some have been parts of the wider unit for over a thousand years, others for far shorter a period of time. And, as I noted in that other post, some national identities can be very tough to shake – witness Cornwall, more than a thousand years after becoming part of England, or Wales after 700 years of unity with her larger neighbour, or Scotland, after just 300.

I see no practical reasons why London should govern Kent or Sussex, let alone Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland – the reason why the UK is ruled from London is entirely because, well, that’s the way it’s always been done. (Or, at least, that’s the way it’s been done since the middle ages, when most of the institutions of governance began to permanently locate there.)

National identities and the logic of the nation state

Will some people have a strong attachment to England or Britain? Well, of course – otherwise we wouldn’t have the English Democrat or British National parties. But based on a look at pretty much every national identity in existence, we can see that there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that these identities would necessarily be lost should England/Britain become part of a greater whole. In fact, if the 20th century has shown us anything, it is that being part of a larger whole can have precisely the opposite effect, and make these national identities even stronger. (And not just the 20th century. Wales has never existed as a united, sovereign state – prior to the English conquest it was characterised by its tribal nature; Welsh national identity only began to arise during the period of the English conquest and subsequent occupation.)

Does this mean that WG’s hint of the potential for armed resistance to the EU’s supposed attempts to impose itself on the peoples of Europe may come to pass? Well, possibly. But – as noted in that quote by Toynbee above – most states these days are too small to be fully sovereign, independent and self-sufficient. Not even Britain as a whole can exist without some dealings with its neighbours and the wider world – let alone such economically implausible units as Wales, Scotland or Cornwall.

Where the UK has been providing that extra layer of security for its various regions for the last 300 years, the appearance of the EU on the scene has given another option – Wales and Scotland can now dream of independence from rule by London by replacing the economic safety blanket of the United Kingdom with that of the European Union, and the military safety blanket of the British Armed Forces (arguably increasingly unnecessary for smaller European states since the end of the Cold War and the decline of wars between nations in Europe during the last 60 years) with that of NATO/the UN.

The flaws of nation-level governance

As I say, I see the best form of government as that which is closest to the people. The current British system’s primary concession to that idea is the retention of parliamentary constituencies, and the idea that Members of Parliament are supposed to represent their constituents in Westminster. But in practice, local voices and concerns are rarely heard in the House of Commons – the business of government is focussed at too broad a level to give due consideration to all the worries of all the various constituencies. The existence of County and Borough councils is one of the strongest indications of this inability of central government to give due consideration to local issues. The House of Commons is instead concerned with *national* issues, like infrastructure (Heathrow expansion, motorway building and the like), security and the economy.

Despite my attraction to localism, There are always going to be areas like these that are better ruled
from a higher level. But for me, the broader the area over which these areas are governed, the better – because no nation state (bar possibly Russia, perhaps America) is sizeable enough to be self-sufficient, and most of these issues are better dealt with on as broad a scale as possible. Take infrastructure – much more of a concern in mainland Europe, where ensuring that railways, roads and electricity networks link up effectively is essential, but also in the UK with concerns about flight paths, shipping routes and the like. Take the economy – the last year has been the ultimate proof that individual states are more or less powerless on their own. Take security – in an age of international terrorist attacks and rising levels of cross-border crime, co-operation between states is increasingly vital.

Where the EU fits in

This is a major part of the reason why I think the EU is a good idea – albeit an idea that has been poorly implemented and ill-thought-out. Especially since the introduction of the concept of subsidiarity, the guiding principle of the EU has – in theory, at least – been that issues should be dealt with at the most appropriate level, and that the most appropriate level should always be considered to be as close to the people as possible.

Hence the EU’s concept of regions – because the lower the level at which people are governed, the more appropriate the responses should (in theory) be. And bar some of the smaller EU member states like Luxembourg or Malta, few current European states are actually overly logical or efficient units, but instead are often sprawling entities with vast geographic and cultural differences within them, perceived as units only thanks to the accidents of history.

After all, we’re all trying to find the best possible system of government to make the greatest possible number of people happy and prosperous. If you were to look at the world entirely dispassionately and work out how best it could be run, there would be some elements that would be sensible to impose on a global level (much like the UN and World Trade Organisation – albeit in a different form to those deeply flawed institutions); but I doubt anyone working out a new global geopolitics would pick many of the existing nation states as sensible lower-level units of governance. (I also doubt anyone would pick Europe as a sensible unit of governance – but as we don’t have the option of an effective global structure at present, it’s about the largest we can currently hope for, and so will have to do.)

In short, I still have a strong sentimental attachment to the idea of Britain, and to the idea of England (I wouldn’t have spent so much of my life studying their histories if I didn’t) – but I don’t see any particularly convincing arguments to support their continued existence as practical units of governance, bar “they exist”.

And that argument, after all, applies equally well to the EU…

And so time for the annual reminder of why St George is the ideal symbol for Britain’s European legacy.

For those coming in late, the superstate series so far:
- The danger of Jean Monnet
- Why EU superstate conspiracy theories are nonsense
- Four points and a question for eurosceptics who believe in the advancing EU superstate
- EU competence creep, the spectre of the superstate, and how governments actually work

As I’ve set out several times, I don’t see an EU superstate as a realistic possibility at any point in the next hundred years – not even the next three hundred years. For me, this isn’t a problem. Our grandchilren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren are unlikely to have any of the same concerns that we do today – and as the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707 has proven nicely, national/cultural identities are more than capable of surviving political union (hell, in Scotland’s case the national identity has arguably got even stronger since the Acts of Union). As such, if – over the course of the next few centuries – it proves to be in the best economic interest of the peoples of Europe for a “superstate” of some description to emerge from the present EU, so what? We’ll all be long dead.

But if such a superstate were to emerge, what would it look like? On one of those previous superstate posts (all of which have got healthy discussions in the comments – despite various sidetracks into insane detail about trucking and jam), helpful contributor French Derek argues that

“a federal state of 27 nations, each with their own languages, cultures, economic models, etc would be impossible to govern”

However, there are two cases where something similar to this has come about – Russia and India. Could these provide us with a vision of a future European superstate and clues about a model to follow?

Where the EU is made up of 27 member states with 23 official languages (and a bunch of other, less widely-used ones ranging from Cornish in the UK and Frisian in Denmark/Germany through more widely-used unofficial languages like Russian, Ukrainian and Romani), the Russian Federation is made up of 21 semi-autonomous republics (plus various self-governing cities, oblasts, okrugs, etc. making up a total of 83 federal subjects) and has 27 official languages), while India is made up of 28 states (and a few additional semi-autonomous regions) with 29 languages spoken by more than a million people (and 122 spoken by more than 100,000). Neither country – much like the EU – could be considered to be ethnically or religiously homogenous.

But the fact remains that both federal states continue to function, despite insanely complex internal demographics (far more so than the United States of America – the federal model most often used as a point of comparison with any future EU superstate). Naturally, the size of their populations are not entirely comparable – Russia’s population is c.145 million (about a third of the EU’s 500 million) and India’s c.1.17 billion (about twice the EU’s population), while the US’ population of c.300 million is about two thirds that of the EU. But still – India’s size is similar at 1.3 million square miles as opposed to the EU’s 1.6 million (compared the the USA’s 3.6 million and Russia’s 6.7 million) – so who’s to say that either population or geographical area is a factor in the functioning of an effective federal state?

Of course, in the case of both Russia and India (as well as, arguably, that of the US), their current situation came about after centuries of war and conquest – unlike the EU’s entirely peaceful formation – and whether either Russia or India can be considered to be effectively governed is another matter entirely. But Russia, India and the US nonetheless are all examples of large federal states that manage to work – in India and the US with more or less effective democracies that have both seen minorities elected to the highest office in the land (Obama in the US, obviously, but also Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a Sikh). In both India and Russia (and arguably some parts of the US as well, with the various secessionist movements), the various federal states and regions have often retained a strong sense of identity and autonomy – just as have Scotland and Wales (among others) in the much smaller federal state that is the United Kingdom. Both India and Russia also retain some violent paramilitary nationalist/minority elements that occasionally cause trouble (much like in the federal state of Spain with ETA, or the UK with the various Irish republican groups of the last few decades).

So large federal states with complex demographics can exist and function with the constituent parts retaining their own national/cultural identites.

But can they hold together? India was far larger than it now is when under British rule – once the Raj left 60 years ago, Partition tore the country in three in a bloody horror the tensions of which remain to this day. With the end of the Cold War and fall of the Communist Party, various parts of the old USSR (Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. etc.) broke away from Russia – and other regions, most notably Chechnya, have continued as part of the federation only under threat of force. The United States was torn apart by civil war less than a century after its formation.

Indeed, it’s arguable that Russia and India continue to hold together largely due to fear of “the other” – the perceived threat of the West in Russia (hence the rampant popularity of the nationalistic Putin and co), and the genuine threat of Pakistan in India (the threat of India in turn acting as a unifying device for the fragile federation of Pakistan). The United States originally came together thanks to the threat of Britain, while England emerged from the Heptarchy under the threat of the Vikings, France from the threat of England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, modern federal Germany from a series of unifying wars with various neighbours under Bismark – and so on and so on.

In all cases, the sense of identity – “I am Russian”, “I am Indian”, “I am American”, “I am English”, “I am French”, “I am German” and all the rest – emerged due to a growing sense that another group of people were both somehow different and a threat. (Welsh national identity is a prime case in point – such a thing didn’t even exist until England started to invade what is now Wales, with the entire region made up of little more than warring tribes and principalities until they were given a unifying force, and existed as one kingdom only once – and then for just seven years – until the English conquest was completed and Wales in its current form was created. The same unifying, nationalising effect can also be seen in Scotland, where medieval English invasions likewise fostered a sense of Scottish national identity that helped bring the warring clans together.)

But what is the European Union’s threat? Who is “the other” for the EU that can foster a sense of European identity? With the current ongoing arguments over Turkish EU entry – not to mention the rise in tensions between Islam and the West of the last decade, the Islamist terror attacks in Madrid and London, and the perennial Europe-wide tensions over immigration – is “the other” for the EU going to be Islam? With the increasingly frequent stand-offs between the EU and Moscow over energy supplies and the autonomy of states on the European fringe, could it be Russia? For a while under the Bush administration and in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, it even looked like it might be America.

But whatever the “threat” – real or simply perceived – might turn out to be, it is hard to see a truly European identity begin to emerge without a greater sense of what being European is *not*. “We are American because we are not British”, “We are English because we are not Viking”, “We are Welsh/Scottish because we are not English” – this is how national identity has always begun.

So, while I disagree that the EU is too big and complex to form a superstate, I do maintain that such a thing remains unlikely. You can legislate to create political and economic integration, you can forge agreements between different territories and different cultures – but you cannot legislate or negotiate to build a sense of identity. Without that sense of identity – “I am American”, “I am Indian”, “I am Russian” – none of those three existing sprawling federations would be able to hold together. Of the EU’s 500 million citizens, how many really feel “European” to the extent that an American feels American, a Russian Russian or an Indian Indian? Hell – we can’t even agree on what Europe is – how can we know what it is to be European?

My jokey post on the “danger” of EU founding father Jean Monnet prompted a response from the usually well-intentioned and often thought-provoking eurosceptic Ken of EU Realist (on whom I don’t mean to pick, but he’s provided me with most of the standard anti-EU lines in one handy package).

We’ve started having at it in the comments there, where he has again restated the classic anti-EU conspiracy theory:

“the basic plan [is] to unite Europe under one government… there is nothing else on the table and… each succeeding treaty follows that exact plan”

As such, a response to this, the classic EU superstate conspiracy theory, originally posted as a couple of comments there:

It all starts with Ken’s claim that “Monnet`s misquote ['Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose but which will irreversibly lead to federation'] …Epitomises the aims and the methods to be employed in order to bring about a united Europe”

Erm… Only it wasn’t a misquote. It was something made up by someone who believes the same things that Ken does about how the EEC/EU is progressing – things based on a misunderstanding of what “the United States of Europe” (Churchill’s phrase) was intended to mean (i.e. united in common purpose, not united as one country), an apparent inability to think of any federal system of government other than a heavily centralised one like that of the modern USA (take a look at Switzerland for an alternative model, for example), and an inclination to see the EEC/EU as a monolithic organisation characterised primarily by groupthink in which everyone thinks the same thing and wants the same thing. If the latter (in particular) were truly the case, do you really think it would have been stuck in a rut for the last two decades, unable to move forwards with this grand plan of continental political union?

As such, Ken’s initial claim about what the EU’s founding fathers were really after is, erm, nonsense. I can give you a brief run-down of what the various chaps usually considered the founding fathers (or at least, those listed by the EU itself) were after, if you like:

Schuman – merge those parts of the economy necessary for war to prevent future conflict
Monnet - take this further by encouraging cultural co-operation and cross-border friendship among the people (again to prevent war)
Spaak - use binding international treaties to prevent war
Hallstein - create common economic institutions
Adenauer - prevent war through ever-closer co-operation and friendship
Spinelli - introduce a loose federal model to aid economic co-operation
Gasperi - merge western European economies as closely as possible to prevent fascism and communism taking hold in weaker areas
Churchill (yes, THAT Churchill) – “We must build a kind of United States of Europe” (though please note the “kind of”…)

So when Ken (or another eurosceptic who believes the same stuff) claims that the founding fathers hoped “that Europe should become one nation state along the same lines as the United States of America with one overarching federal government”, what he really means is that one of the founding fathers (Winston Churchill) suggested something along the lines of one European state along the American model, and that another of them (Altiero Spinelli) pushed for some kind of federal structure.

Conflating the views of two people with a made-up quote from a third to arrive at a grand conspiracy. Nice.

Ken then asked another standard anti-EU question that usually crops up in superstate arguments: “Perhaps you could point to the [treaties] which returned power to the member states?”

Maastricht enshrined the principle of subsidiarity, as has every treaty since. The Commission has even started to act on this principle during the last five years by scrapping various silly laws and seeking greater deregulation at EU level to give powers back to the member states and regions – one of the few good things the Barroso Commission has achieved.

Ken’s belief in some kind of divine teleological providence guiding the EU to a predetermined destiny is charming, it really is. But the EU is a complex series of institutions with no single guiding hand, trying to reconcile the conflicting demands of 27 different countries. Its course is even less clear now than it has ever been.

Were it still just made up of the original six members then it’s possible that he (and his eurosceptic chums) might have a case. But as soon as Britain and Denmark joined back in ‘73 (not to mention Ireland with its specific constitutional requirements that have so hampered the progress of the Lisbon Treaty), the likelihood of the EEC/EU ending up as a single unified state became greatly diminished – not least because of the UK’s ongoing ties to the Commonwealth, something inadequately dealt with during the entry talks.

There are TWENTY-ONE more countries involved now than when Monnet, Schuman and co went about setting up the thing – which was OVER HALF A CENTURY AGO. Most – if not all – of the EU’s founders are dead and buried, along with the post-WWII, early Cold War ideals of the era in which they were working. And yet Ken and co think that somehow the founding fathers’ alleged grand plan for a superstate has been maintained all this time? Who by, for God’s sake? Seriously: I don’t get who it is they think has enough influence – let alone over the EU itself, but also over the governments of every single EU member state (and their opposition) to boot.

What Ken (and the rest) is suggesting IS a conspiracy – and a conspiracy mostly based on out of context quotes from 50+ years ago. Yes, it is possible to look at the current EU and see some of the things included in its various (failed) draft treaties of recent years as pointing towards a superstate. But to do that you have to ignore so much other evidence to the contrary as to make it laughable.

I’m not saying it’s not a possibility that a superstate is where the EU will end up – hell, anything’s possible. But I am saying that it is not part of the current plan. Because there IS no current plan. To think that there is would be to ignore the failure of Nice, of the Constitution, of Lisbon; it would be to ignore every stalemate, every failure, every continuing veto; it would be to conflate meaningless legal niceties (like calling us “citizens” – even though it grants us no more rights or obligations than we had before, and even though we remain subjects of Her Majesty) with serious progress.

What Ken (and the rest of the eurosceptics who believe this) is doing is assuming an end-point – a European superstate – and picking their evidence based on that assumption. It’s a classic technique used by whig historians for years, and can make for a nice and easy to understand narrative. But when historians do it, they tend to wait for the end-point to have actually happened. Ken and co’s end-point isn’t even likely – not in the current circumstances.

Have I missed something? Seriously – I’d love to know where the EU’s guiding hand is. Because all I can see at the moment is chaos.

For as long as there have been eurosceptics, there have been arguments that the EEC/EU is part of a grand plan to create a United States of Europe. Why? Well, largely thanks to the dreams of some of the organisation’s founding fathers (from a generation, it should be noted, which had mostly lived through two world wars – but still…)

The founding father most often brought up in this context is Jean Monnet, the first Deputy Secretary General of the interwar League of Nations, and one of the key figures in organising Allied supply-lines in both world wars (not to mention the Chinese railway system, bizarrely). Now, however, he is most often remembered as a key eurosceptic bogeyman for his postwar efforts to bring Europe together – and most notably mentioned in tandem with his 1943 statement of belief:

“There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty… The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation.”

Ah, the F-word… Federalism to a eurosceptic is like the proverbial red rag to a bull (despite the key attribute of a federation being, erm… the self-governing nature of the component states, with the central federal government’s powers often being highly limited – but sssh!)

The other favourite Monnet quote, of course, is that about “the superstate”:

“Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose but which will irreversibly lead to federation.”

Ah! See the devious nature of the European elites, trying to guide us without our knowledge down a path we haven’t been consulted on! How dare they! (The fact that this quote is an entirely made-up load of old bollocks that Monnet never actually said or wrote is neither here nor there… If you repeat something often enough then it becomes true – or at least true enough to enable a justification of the ongoing belief in the veracity of the idea behind the belief…)

Perhaps because many British eurosceptics take a decidedly whiggish view of history – a teleological approach to the world that often also tends towards great man theory, in which providence and inevitability are seen in just about everything (and the Norman Conquest somehow marked the start of 1,000 years of English independence – despite it only being 944 years, despite the royal family being French Vikings from 1066, becoming Welsh in 1485, Scottish in 1603, despite the successful Dutch invasion of 1688, and despite our royal family having been German since 1714) – the fact that Monnet helped set up what was to become the EU more than half a century ago means, of course, that the EU is still headed down the path that he envisaged for it. Despite the fact that he died 30 years ago this week, and the EU is an entirely different beast to anything he had planned for the thing. (Hell – Monnet was a highly effective and efficient organiser, for starters. There’s no way he’d have come up with something as chaotic and inefficient as the current EU system…)

Anyway, even though the “Jean Monnet said it so it must be true” line of argument of the eurosceptic types convinced that the superstate is the EU’s final destination is utterly thwarted by the fact that a) Monnet didn’t actually say most of the things they attribute to him, and b) the fact that if a week is a long time in politics then half a century is an eon… Even though all these assumptions and beliefs about the much-misunderstood and mis-remembered Monnet can be shown to be based on nothing more than personal political prejudice, I can now exclusively reveal that we now have proof that Monnet is indeed a danger.

Sounds promising, from Russian human rights organisation (yes, there are such things) Memorial – recently raided by armed police. These guys are still on the frontline of history, while those of use sitting comfortably in Western Europe can, bar the odd credit crisis, often feel as if Fukuyama may have had a point.

In any case, at its most basic the fun of history was always – for me – the competing accounts of what happened, and the sheer inability of pretty much any source to be free of bias. It’s invaluable journalistic training, history – if more journalists did history at university, the quality of the press would be vastly improved. You come, Rashomon-like, to distrust every account, and so hunt for as many different primary sources as possible to get the full picture. Accept one version of history, and you risk ending up like the blind men and the elephant. (Which is why, of course, Holocaust deniers shouldn’t be outlawed. Theirs is an alternate take on history, and can – despite being just about as categorically, demonstrably wrong as it is possible for an historical theory to be – merely by existing prompt new research and new approaches that may be able to cast light on one of the murkiest episodes of human history. Flawed hypotheses need to be disproved, not banned.)

So the new Memorial European history initiative reported by Eurozine strikes me as well worth supporting:

The twentieth century left deep and unhealed wounds in the memory of almost all nations in eastern and central Europe. Often, the memory of one nation contradicts that of another. If these disparities are recognised and understood, the historical awareness of each society is enriched. If not, they can be exploited for political ends.

Some of the specifics given in the article raise some vital issues about the ongoing post-WWII, post-Soviet recovery of Central and Eastern Europe that it’s all too easy to forget in the West – with many more older Eurozine articles well worth another look in the boxout on the right, such as Isolde Charim’s Historical Myths Old and New (very good on the EU’s “foundation myth” and failure to reconcile East and West).

Europe needs to confront its bloody past openly and honestly if it is ever going to move forward as one. Yet so much of our history we fail to understand – or even learn about. Too many historical myths continue largely unchallenged in the national consciousness of every country, from the old one of Magna Carta in the UK to the newer one of the Resistance in France. Yet without an honest, open understanding of our pasts – both individual and collective – how can we possibly hope to build a better future?

Still catching up, but it would be churlish not to mention the 20th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s celebrated (in some circles) Bruges speech, which passed the other day with the usual guff from withdrawalists. The BBC’s Nick Robinson has a fun piece on the anniversary celebrations and the Tories’ Europe problem which is well worth reading, considering the fact that they’re likely to be in power at some point within the next couple of years.

Because the Tories under David Cameron still have no EU policy. I’ve been hunting for one for a while now (March 2008, July 2006), and they still seem no closer to working out what they even think of the thing. (It’s not just the Tories, of course – Labour are just as bad…)

The thing is, Thatcher’s near-infamous Bruges speech remains a great starting point for the Tories to set out their position on Britain’s involvement with the rest of Europe. An odd thing for someone who labels himself loosely pro-EU to say? Not really…

The speech is well worth reading in full – because it’s now become this near-mythical anti-EU manifesto for British withdrawalists (notably anti-EU “think tank” the Bruges Group, named after the speech – a think tank not afraid to associate itself with some of the more hysterical anti-EU crowd).

With such a massive reputation to fight through, it’s very easy to make assumptions about what Thatcher actually said. Listen to the anti-EU lot and you’d think that the speech was a blistering attack on the very idea of a common European future, delivered in the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth style that anyone who’s been knocking around EU-related internet forums has come to associate with British euroscepticism. (Seriously, British anti-EU types – you’re embarrassing me here… I want to feel proud of being British, and you’re making us all look like arseholes – same as those drunken tits on the Costa del Sol. Whatever happened to the old British virtues of decency, restraint and politeness?)

Yet it actually contains much that is positive towards a European Union, and fully supports continued British engagement at the heart of the process. It’s just that it doesn’t support the direction the current EU has been heading for the last 30-odd years towards greater centralisation and uniformity. Pretty much all of Thatcher’s suggestions back then are still being made to this day – and not just by eurosceptics.

Sadly, though, Thatcher’s Bruges speech is more referred to than read – and thanks to its current associations with flag-waving anti-EU nutters it is mostly ignored. Yet its overall vision for Europe remains a sound alternative to the current model, while in the details are identified many of the key problems with the current set-up, none of which have really changed in two decades. It’s got its problems, certainly – I don’t advocate everything that Maggie said by any means – but as a starting point for creating an alternative vision for the European Union, it remains both simple (if occasionally overly simplistic) and compelling. Check out the Wordle-generated word cloud of the speech (with only Europe, Community, European, Britain, British and removed – the five most commonly-used words, and in that order) – there may be a slight tilt towards an economic vision of European co-operation, but she covers a lot of ground:

Most satisfying, though, is that it provides a healthy supply of quotes defending and advocating Britain’s close involvement with the rest of Europe (even to the point of advocating greater use of a European single currency) which can be thrown at any British eurosceptics that happen by…

“We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history…

Too often, the history of Europe is described as a series of interminable wars and quarrels. Yet from our perspective today surely what strikes us most is our common experience… It is the record of nearly two thousand years of British involvement in Europe, cooperation with Europe and contribution to Europe, contribution which today is as valid and as strong as ever…

Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.”

What are the chances of David Cameron ever making a speech containing that kind of rhetoric? The old Tory squabbles over the EU that dominated the 1990s may well have subsided, but the party leadership are still worried that they’re bubbling away under the surface. The recent campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty showed how powerful anti-EU populism can be. Though the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, it did demonstrate one thing – euroscepticism remains a danger to the Conservative party. Perhaps its biggest danger.

These people will be in charge of the EU’s second largest economy – and yet even they don’t know what they are going to do once they come to power.

(On a related note, Richard Corbett may be a decidedly pro-EU Labour MEP writing in the left-wing Guardian, so just about as biased as they come on this topic, but his recent look at current Tory attitudes towards the EU is essential reading.)

It’s looming – and from today it’s apparently officially acceptable to wear a poppy.

No longer are the Remembrance Sunday parades packed out with survivors of the Somme, even veterans from the Second World War are getting rarer by the day, and the curmudgeon in all of us feels like asking if anyone remembers why they bothered seeing the state of the world today.

But none of that matters. And no, it doesn’t matter if you opposed the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan either. Donate. Though none of us can ever understand, we must remember.

Today sees Britain’s new European Commissioner, Baroness Ashton, appear before the European Parliament. You never know – something interesting might crop up. Her answers to the usual written questions can be found here. Not much to get excited about, though the anti-EU crowd will no doubt leap on her first justification for her appointment:

“As Leader of the House of Lords, I steered the Lisbon Treaty through that House.”

Perhaps more interesting is a different constitutional issue – that of whether life peer Ashton can be fully independent in her new role – as raised by Jon Worth. Be warned, this one may go on a bit, and I doubt there’ll be many definite answers…

It is, in short, the age-old problem of whether it’s possible to serve two masters – a dispute that’s been ongoing ever since medieval times when increasingly powerful monarchs began to object to the authority of the Papacy, first properly expressed by Pope Gelasius back in 494 in what has come to be known as two swords theory. How can one swear an oath of allegiance to both Pope and monarch? What happens when they come into dispute? This was the very problem – well, part of a larger, more complex problem – that caused England’s break from Rome back in the reign of Henry VIII, the bitter Investiture Controversy during the time of Pope Gregory VII, and countless other spats down the years.

Currently, European Commissioners have to take an oath (PDF) that includes the following:

“I do solemnly undertake: to be completely independent in the performance of my duties, in the general interest of the Communities; in the performance of these duties, neither to seek nor to take instructions from any government or from any other body”

Is this compatible with Ashton’s oath of allegiance to the Queen, sworn on taking up her seat in the House of Lords? Ashton seems to think it’s not a problem:

“For the term of my mandate as Commissioner I have taken leave of absence from the Lords. This means in practice that, although I retain my title, I would not attend the House of Lords, nor take part in votes, give speeches there, or draw any allowances during the period of my mandate.”

All well and good – as according to the Code of Conduct for European Commissioners (PDF), “Commissioners may hold honorary, unpaid posts in political, cultural, artistic or charitable foundations”. But it doesn’t quite answer the question. Can you hold allegiance to the Queen while being “completely independent”?

As life peers who become MEPs have to give up their peerages (something Ashton claims she is unable to do), surely the same should apply to Commissioners – not least because they are explicitly supposed to be acting for the good of the whole of the EU, not just their respective countries. It’s an ongoing problem for British politicians, almost all of whom – if they end up sent to the Commission – will have taken not just the oath of allegiance, but the far more explicit oath sworn by members of the Privy Council (PDF):

“You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance to the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all civil and temporal Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates.”

It’s hard not to see this as incompatible with the Commissioners’ oath to be independent and act “in the interest of the communities” – so little wonder UKIP’s Nigel Farrage raised the point on Peter Mandelson’s appointment to the Commission four years ago.

The question of where a European Commissioner’s loyalties lie is a vital one – especially with the ongoing moves to reduce their number, so that not all member states will have a Commissioner of their own nationality. Is Ashton’s first allegiance to the Queen, or to the European Union? It’s not hard to see how anti-EU types could start to ask how can she defend Her Majesty’s “temporal Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities” while working for an organisation that pushes for a pooling of national powers. But turn that around – how can pro-EU types not ask how someone who’s taken an oath to defend national powers can work for the good of the Union? It’s not like it would be hard to pass a quick statutory instrument to absolve British Commissioners from their previous oaths for the duration of their terms. So why haven’t we?

Is the Privy Council oath meaningless? And if so, why does that organisation remain part of the governance of Britain? Or is the oath the Commissioners take meaningless? And if so what does this say about the role of the Commission? Where do Commissioners’ loyalties lie – with the EU, or with their home nations? Because if it’s the latter, the Commission is incapable of fulfilling its allotted task.

After the worrying moves against Italy’s Roma population back in the summer, it seems that racial tensions are on the rise Italy-wide. After all, if the state’s going to sanction the persecution of one ethnic minority, why not start having a crack at the rest? In times of growing economic hardship (and it’s not like Italy’s economy’s been doing too well in the last few years anyway), finding scapegoats is always popular. And so:

In recent weeks, a Ghanaian man, Emmanuel Bonsu Foster, 22, was injured in Parma in a scuffle with the police; a Chinese man, Tong Hongsheng, 36, was beaten by a group of boys in a rough neighborhood in Rome; and a Somali woman, Amina Sheikh Said, 51, said she was strip-searched and interrogated for hours at Ciampino Airport in Rome. Last month, six African immigrants were gunned down in Castel Volturno, a stronghold of the Neapolitan Mafia…

Last week, Parliament debated whether Italy was facing what newspaper headlines referred to as a “racism emergency.”

Now that the governments of Europe seem to have decided to act in tandem to stem the credit crisis (joined around the world by countries from Japan to Brazil), the economic nationalism of the 1930s that did so much to exacerbate the Great Depression seems not even to be an option this time around. Could this in turn prevent a rise in the less savoury, more personal forms of localist resentment that caused so much trouble 70 years ago? Or is Italy, just as it became the first fascist country back in the 1920s, leading the way once again? If the current economic crisis doesn’t sort itself out soon, will such attacks against “foreigners” become more common throughout Europe? It’s not like there’s not already a sizable fear and resentment of foreigners knocking around…*

* See, for example, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights‘ Annual Report for 2007 (PDF), noting a general upward trend in racist attacks EU-wide. Some of this is certainly due to increased awareness and greater levels of reporting and recording over the last decade or so, but still.