International Branch of the British Labour Party
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Jan Royall delivers the 2011 John Fitzmaurice memorial lecture
Mar 19th
On 13 October 2011, Jan Royall, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, delivered the John Fitzmaurice memorial lecture. A summary of the lecture is below, and the full speech can be read here.
Jan Royall was very happy to be back in Brussels to deliver the 2011 John Fitzmaurice memorial lecture.
For her, Brussels bring together three of the most important things in her life democratic socialism, Europe and friendship – and there were many old friends in the audience whom Jan had met during her time in Brussels.
Currently the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords and a Privy Councillor, Jan had previously been Leader of the House of Lords and a member of Gordon Brown’s cabinet from 2008-2010.
During her time with the European Commission, she was a long-serving member of the cabinet of Neil Kinnock and then Head of the Commission’s office in Wales before she re-entered British politics full time.
She began her address started by recalling that she first met John Fitzmaurice in the 1970s. John was an Oxford contemporary of Jan’s late husband Stuart Hercock, who died 2010 of prostate cancer. (Jan noted her belief that Stuart would still be alive today if he had had an early prostrate cancer test – and as part of the introduction to her lecture, she reminded all men present, especially middle-aged men, to have the test.)
Jan’s lecture began by looking back 16 years to the start of her time in Brussels – when Europe was a “beacon of hope” and there was optimism about jobs, growth and a prosperous future.
She regretted that more progress had not been made during the good times and that a lack of sufficiently bold political leadership contributed to the current problems.
Refreshingly she did not hesitate to be critical of some aspects of the European project – in particular the absence of the right mechanisms to manage the euro, and the fact that the EU institutions are too ‘distant’ from citizens.
One recurrent theme in her talk was the nature of the British press. A situation where politicians fear press reaction to their comments stifles them from saying what they really think – and so stifles meaningful broad debate on issues such as ‘Europe’.
Jan concluded her talk by recalling John Fitzmaurice fondly. “He was a decent and delightful human being”, she said. Jan reminded the audience that he was active not only in the European institutions and at high-level summits, but also on the ground: standing in elections where he had almost no chance of success, and taking progressive democratic socialism ideas and arguments to the doorsteps across the UK.
Mark Major, with Kathryn Seren
There is more information on prostate cancer tests here.
Guest blog from Julian Priestley: Opening a New Front in France
Feb 9th
The election campaign now well and truly underway in France probably matters more directly to us in Britain than the razzmatazz of the American elections in November (providing of course that the more gruesome Republican candidates are weeded out in the primaries).
François Hollande may not have been the first choice for many socialists – his very ‘ordinariness’ places charisma outside his range; his programme is cautiously social democratic, not transformative; other more exciting contenders have – how can we put it delicately? – fallen by the wayside. But he was the democratic choice of three million Socialist party members and sympathisers in an open primary which gave the Left a game-changing kick-off in the campaign.
His assured performance at the rally at Le Bourget in late January, addressing 25,000 supporters (that’s ten times the size of the Sheffield rally and without the gaffes), on TV and in a programme which rightly places all the emphasis on jobs and growth have given him a head-start. In the French presidential and legislative elections in April and May of this year Europe’s Left has its first chance of re-gaining power in a major EU member state since 2004.
This matters. First it means that at the top table in Europe there will be at least one significance voice opposed to the technocratic imposition of continent-wide austerity which is the mantra of the currently all-powerful centre-right. Hollande is committed to re-negotiate the ‘Fiscal Pact’ to be agreed in principle by 25 member states in March.
The French socialists do not reject budgetary discipline but want, quite reasonably to avoid arbitrary straight-jackets being imposed on member states without any accompanying measures for growth, and without adequate parliamentary safeguards. And their party has started working out a coordinated economic programme with German social democrats in the fairly confident expectation that ‘Merkozy’ will be seen by 2013 as a kind of historical aberration. More >
Book review: The Cost of Inequality
Dec 20th
How a dodgy ideology made the rich richer, the rest of us poorer and left the economy in ruins.
Around 1980, something changed: a seemingly unstoppable evolution in western societies went into reverse. For half a century the gap between rich and poor had been narrowing: an inevitable consequence, it seemed, of universal education, mass production, trade unionism and the rise of democracy.
Yet within a few years this trend had been sharply reversed. In the subsequent three decades, the western world has witnessed a dramatic growth in inequality. The top 1% have appropriated almost all the fruits of growth, while middle and low income groups have stagnated or worse.
Stewart Lansley’s new book, ‘The Cost of Inequality‘ (Gibson Square, 2011) looks at why this happened, and what have been the consequences. His central argument, impressively documented in a tour through the workings of modern capitalism, is that growing inequality caused the financial meltdown of 2008.
But along the way, he establishes two even more sweeping arguments, both of which tell us something important about the mess in which Europe now finds itself. He shows that the growth in inequality has its roots in an ideological shift that swept the western world from the late 1970s onwards. And he shows that, long before 2008, that ideology had spectacularly failed to deliver any of the promised benefits. More >
Guest blog from Julian Priestley: What am I bid for a toothless, dumb, blind bulldog?
Dec 14th
You know something is wrong when John Redwood, Boris Johnson, the Murdoch press and the Mail are calling it a triumph.
Even on its own terms the December EU summit plumbs new depths of government mendacity and incompetence. Even if one accepts that the aims of Cameron were legitimate – sheltering the financial sector which finances his party, or defending the single market, he came home less than empty-handed.
By forfeiting the right to negotiate an EU Treaty at the very outset, the government ensured that the summit was a quadruple failure for Britain.
First we will have no influence on the final form and content of the new intergovernmental treaty; if the UK had stayed in it could at every stage have fought its corner, paragraph by paragraph.
Second, we have achieved an isolation so melancholic that even our most traditional ‘friends’ like the eurosceptic Czechs and the hard-right Hungarians have abandoned us.
Third, even our established reputation for diplomatic competence is undermined by the crass failure to prepare the ground, by springing a text on the institutions and the other member states at the last moment, and by rejecting out of hand the procedural compromise offered by European Council President Van Rompuy.
Fourth it confirms the message to the Americans and others that doing business with Europe means working with Berlin, Paris and Brussels, not London. The business community may well draw the same lesson.
Cameron’s excuse that we reacted late because the Franco-German proposals were only tabled earlier in the week is doubly lame; a serious government might well have thought it best to take an initiative earlier rather than just reacting to proposals from others; and it has been clear for two months at least that some form of Treaty change was going to dominate this summit’s agenda.
As to our special pleading for the banks, financial services, hedge funds etc., nothing has changed. EU financial regulation is and will continue to be decided by qualified majority. There was no veto on that; there will be no veto- quite rightly because financial services regulation is part and parcel of internal market rules.
The only thing that changes is that the 26 will now develop the habit of working together on the broad range of economic policy, and that the voice of the most economically liberal, free market, high finance-friendly member state will no longer be heard. One would have to be exceptionally naive to imagine that the 26 will refrain from discussions about any aspect of EU economic and social legislation simply out of consideration for a government that has of its own free will boycotted their meetings. More >
Guest blog from Julian Priestley: ‘A treaty change is not a panacea’
Nov 21st
For certain media commentators, self-appointed spokespersons for the market, our friends outside the EU and some ministers in some EU governments who should know better, the debt crisis currently engulfing the eurozone has an easy solution. The European Central Bank should just step up to the plate and guarantee the solvency of the euroland member states.
In this black-and-white version of the world, Germany is the obstacle, haunted by its fears of returning to the hyperinflation of the early 1920s when its national bank just printed those much-photographed cartloads of million deutschmark notes. As the situation deteriorates from difficult to dangerous, the blame game has intensified.
And the culprits are now supposed to be found in the shadowy Frankfurt Group, a sinister secret society whose members happen to be the German Chancellor, the French President (i.e. the democratically elected heads of government of the two largest euroland countries) the President of the ECB, the Presidents of the European Council, the Commission and the Eurogroup, with the occasional participation of the head of the IMF and the Commissioner responsible for economic and monetary policy.
In the current hysteria this ‘Gang of Eight’ is assuming the reins of power in Europe, overthrowing democratic governments and parachuting technocrats in their place (worse still technocrats with European experience) , and imposing the fiat of Brussels in the 17 euro countries. Cooler heads might recognise the value in having regular consultations throughout this crisis with a manageable number of people who will in the end have to propose the solutions; and that this is a sensible if partial response to the much criticised leadership vacuum which has bedevilled the crisis.
And those solutions are not so straightforward. First, conferring on the ECB the role of ‘lender of last resort’ for the Eurozone would almost certainly require a Treaty change; anything less would be challenged in the courts, particularly in Germany. It is true that Germany has a federal structure, a multiparty coalition and an assertive judiciary which makes it impossible for any leader to push through proposals which would not only be politically controversial but also legally questionable.
And it would not just be Germany which would shudder at the thought of an open-ended commitment to other euro countries, now that the costs of servicing their debts have spiralled. So they would seek guarantees that would be tantamount to euro countries losing at least some theoretical national control over domestic spending.
And for this to have credibility it would need the same legal sanctity as that which would authorise the ECB’s new role, namely a Treaty change.
There are some who would relish the thought of a new constitutional process for the EU; certain federalists would see this as the defining moment, to complete business unfinished at Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam or Lisbon ; others, such as the Council’s former top lawyer, Jean-Claude Piris would want a new Treaty to consecrate the schism between the ins and the outs, a hardcore of the 17 virtuous with the other 10 banished formally to the margins; yet others, like at least some in the main party in the UK coalition would want to seize a chance gifted by heaven to repatriate labour legislation powers and other social dispositions back to member states, or at least to organise new opt-outs.
And these are what are already being talked about; who knows what inventiveness will be shown, and what shopping-lists will be drawn up, once the starting pistol is fired on Treaty change? More >
Germinal – new edition
Oct 14th
The latest edition of Germinal is available to download here and to read below via Issuu, featuring coverage of branch meetings with Ellie Reeves and Emma Reynolds, and the Labour Party Conference 2011.
PLEASE NOTE: The meeting with Harriet Harman MP, advertised in this issue, has been cancelled.
David Lammy – Labour’s road back to power
Apr 20th
Brussels Labour welcomed David Lammy MP to its meeting on 24 March on the theme of ‘Labour in Opposition and the days ahead’. David was the youngest member of the House of Commons when elected as MP for Tottenham in 2000. During his time in Parliament he has served as a minister in the Departments of Health, Justice and Culture, before taking the higher education portfolio, a post he now shadows in opposition. Brussels Labour was grateful to David for fitting in a visit while in Brussels to address a European Parliament Conference on Minority Leadership.
In a wide-ranging speech he gave his critique on the Conservative-led Government and his thoughts on the way forward for Labour in opposition and the challenges faced by the Party in securing a route back to power.
He began with the story of his own life and what inspired him to enter politics. Born in Tottenham itself – the constituency he now represents in Parliament – and raised by a single mother, David won a choral scholarship to the King’s School in Peterborough and went on to study at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the University of London and Harvard. He contrasted his experiences in Tottenham – the constituency with the highest unemployment in London – with Peterborough – in the heart of middle England – to highlight the challenges that Labour faces in recapturing the broad constituency of the British people necessary, in his view, to be a credible alternative for government. More >
Guest blog from Julian Priestley: ‘In our name?’
Apr 6th
The European Commission is neither fish nor fowl. Not quite a government, as such, it is more than just a secretariat or an administration. It proposes, it guards the Treaties, it rules on competition policy and on state aids, and it implements EU policy across the full range of activities.
To pretend as the UK government sometimes does that the Commission is just a technical regulatory body, not a political one, flies in the face of both constitutional theory and confirmed practice. And if this was just an administration then why did successive UK governments appoint Neil Kinnock, Peter Mandelson and Chris Patten as Commissioners? Whatever criticisms may be made of them, not even their worst enemies could describe them as desiccated technocrats.
For a future reforming Labour government, committed to growth through public investment, promoting the green economy, keen to reduce VAT if possible, looking for structural support for regions which are being blighted for the remainder of this Parliament, a strong and constructive relationship with the next Commission, which comes into office in 2014 will be crucial.
The next Commission looks like being less dominated by conservatives as member states incumbent governments pay the price for unbalanced austerity measures, and most incumbents are on the right. If the successors to the Barroso regime recognise that the answer to Europe’s sluggish economic performance cannot be yet more long-term wage deflation and more public spending austerity, then we may see a Europe-wide push for growth. More >
Guest blog from Julian Priestley: ‘A word of caution’
Feb 17th
What a good idea it must have seemed to have a European Council which was not just about the sovereign debt crisis and the euro. That was the intention for the most recent meeting at the beginning of February. And it was good that at least part of the discussion was about security of energy supply; and innovation. Although the conclusions were very general, at least certain lines of action emerge. And it was inevitable but quite appropriate that the heads of government should take stock of the situation in Cairo, even if events took their more dramatic turn after the meeting had closed. Regrettably however there was no clear line about engaging with new democratic forces in North Africa; and no decision to move forward on the idea of a special summit on economic and political cooperation with the region as it enters this new era.
In the media of course there was barely a word about the substantive points on the Council agenda. It was all about the ‘row’ over the Franco-German, or more precisely, the Germano-French initiative for a ‘competitiveness pact’ for the Euroland countries. And how could it be otherwise when the French president and the German chancellor held a joint press conference to announce their proposals, almost as the meeting was about to begin? This was a hi-jack, pure and simple.
Of course one can be positive about some aspects of the initiative. It is good to see Germany coming forward with policy ideas to bolster economic governance in the EU. It is sensible to have a debate about guarantees to strengthen the credibility of commitments about spending. It was inevitable there would have to be some extra conditions to make the existing temporary bailout mechanism both stronger, and from 2013 permanent. And some of the squeals about particular proposals seem somewhat exaggerated- is it really unthinkable in the globalised economy for Belgium and Luxembourg to move away from wage indexation? And, perhaps above all, it is reassuring to see Berlin and Paris working together. Over forty years some of us can remember the gripes when the French and the Germans have been portrayed as imposing their will on smaller, weaker or more marginal member states. But when they do not cooperate, nothing happens.
But the ‘Competitiveness Pact’ is a misnomer. Greater European competitiveness will not be achieved by depressing public spending, wage deflation and reducing purchasing power. Yes, public spending must be brought under better control, but competitiveness also requires more and better training, higher levels of educational attainment, far greater R&D expenditure (public and private) and modernising much of Europe’s increasingly decrepit infrastructure. On these issues the French and German leaders were rather more reticent. And as yet they frontally oppose any effort to strengthen the EU’s resources to meet the competitiveness objective.
In terms of consensus building to get a quick agreement on the Germano-French proposals so that the euro might be bolstered, the shock and awe tactics were almost entirely counterproductive. So Herman van Rompuy once again is dragooned into service to try to get some package together by the end of March- first at a Euroland summit in early March, and then at the next European Council before the end of the month. More >
