Constitutionally Leaving the EU

Over the last few days there has been a considerable flare-up over leaving the EU, after the High Court ruled that Parliament must have a say on the triggering of Article 50.

The right-wing tabloids were outraged: the Daily Mail front page branded the three judges behind the verdict as "ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE", making the Express's "Now your country really does need you: WE MUST GET OUT OF THE EU" and absurdly tacky Union Jack background seem moderate and restrained by comparison.

The reason they are annoyed is because everyone knows that MPs, even Tory MPs, were mostly opposed to leaving the EU; and Leavers are probably not being unreasonable in fearing that Parliament could block it from happening. People, including the right-wing press, seem generally convinced that Theresa May is genuinely committed to 'delivering brexit', and there has been a public sense in recent weeks and months that she may be gearing towards a (relatively) 'hard' brexit. Whether this is in fact the case, when everything is going on behind closed doors, is pretty unknowable; but I think that the populist Right is keen to avoid a 'soft' brexit, which they do not consider to be truly leaving the EU at all. This, they fear, would be Parliament's choice, so they prefer May to have a free hand.

This is not how May wanted things to go; personally, I was concerned that she was gearing towards a 'hard' brexit all on her own without that ever having been voted for by anyone. Whatever some may have thought, the referendum was not about weighing control of immigration against single market membership; the Leave side did not have present a united view on whether we would remain in or leave the single market, with some memorably claiming we could both have our cake and eat it on the topic. EU figures, meanwhile, have insisted all along that the 'four freedoms' go together as a package, and will not wish Britain to have a better or more attractive arrangement with it than we had prior to leaving.

If the government goes ahead with its appeal to the Supreme Court, I suspect that it will be defeated again. I suspect that a general "please can we activate Article 50" bill would scrape through the Commons, because MPs will not wish to be seen as going against the will of the people; but I think that it would almost certainly be blocked in the Lords - because the Lords is still full of Lib Dems appointed last parliament and has little fear of democratic accountability.

Last October, the House of Lords blocked a 2015 Tory manifesto commitment on tax credits, resulting in threats to curb the power of the Lords. If the Lords did something similar in this matter and blocked a brexit bill, I dare say that the outcry would be far, far greater. I suspect that May would be forced to follow through with or at least repeat Cameron's threats last year; Article 50 would probably then be delayed while our constitutional obfuscations are fudged, but I believe that May's authority in her party is likely to hold up long enough to see it through, albeit not by March.

I remain of the belief that Leave will happen - not necessarily in the sense that Nigel Farage would like. In any event, there certainly should be democratic oversight of May's negotiation agenda: she may be Prime Minister, but no one except her own constituents and Tory MPs ever voted for her.

Britain and the European Union

Today the 23rd of June 2016 is a historic vote for Britain on our membership of the European Union.

It is a day of democracy, for which we should all be thankful and in which we can take pride.


Whatever the outcome, what matters is that Britain strives to be the best it can be, for its own citizens and for the world, working with the other peoples of Europe, and elsewhere, to counter the great shared challenges of our time. At the end of the day, we will always be a European country.

I would like to offer a word of thanks to the BBC for a coverage which I perceive to have been an honest attempt to be objective and to inform.

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FR - Aujourd'hui est une fête de la démocratie pour laquelle nous devrions de la reconnaissance et dont nous pouvons être justement fiers.

Quel que soit le résultat, ce qui est important est que la Grande Bretagne s'efforce à être le meilleur possible, vis à vis ses propres citoyens et le reste du monde, en travaillant avec les autres peuples de l'Europe et d'autres parts, pour combattre les défis communs formidables de notre époque. Après tout, nous serons toujours Européens.

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IT - Oggi è una festa della democrazia, per cui dovremmo essere riconoscenti ed in quale possiamo essere fieri.

Comunque vada, l'importante è che la Gran Bretagna si sforzi ad essere il meglio che possa, per i suoi cittadini e il mondo, collaborando con gli altri popoli dell'Europa e oltre, ad opporsi alle grandi sfide comuni del nostro evo. Infine saremo sempre una nazione dell'Europa.

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I would like to very briefly summarise the main areas in which I think each side has the upper hand in the argument. Most of those which I leave out are those where I think neither side really has much of an advantage, for example due to the uncertainty of the future (e.g. the direction of travel of the EU: there seems to be a consensus that the eurozone must integrate, but does that necessarily mean Britain must join or be marginalised? and what is the truth of talk about a European army, etc? I feel this area probably on balance lends itself to the leave case, but the level of uncertainty surrounding it make me feel it is not conclusive.)

Leave
1) Sovereignty.
One can talk about the value or indeed necessity of sharing sovereignty and the vanity of national identity as much as one likes; but at the end of the day, Britain as a state would be more independent if it were outside the EU, with full control over its own laws and all the other policy areas currently overseen by Brussels. Whether this would be better or worse is a separate matter.
2) Democracy and accountability.
This is closely connected to sovereignty. For better or worse the EU is not really a very democratic vehicle for decision-making; if you value democracy, then restoring full sovereignty to the British Parliament would straightforwardly be more democratic. It would prevent Parliament from being able to blame the EU for things, and the electorate would be able to vote out their lawmakers. In my view a vote to leave would be better for British democracy and make it healthier. (It would also resolve the European question once and for all, while staying will not make the leave movement go away.)
3) Immigration.
While leaving the EU would not necessarily automatically result in a drop in immigration, it would make it possible for a party to be elected that could actually bring this about. In all likelihood I think immigration would go down for a variety of reasons, not all of them good. If we remain however, freedom of movement is non-negotiable, and no immigration target can ever be guaranteed. However - see also emigration...

Remain
1) The economy.
There will probably be at least a short-term negative economic fall-out from a leave vote, of which nobody can be sure of the severity. We cannot be confident of a swift outcome from negotiations for a trade deal with the rEU, or of one that will be at least as good as that which we currently have. Being a member of the EU probably makes Britain a significantly more desirable place to invest. The leave argument for the economy focuses on regulation; I would be very unwilling to part with much of this, as "red tape" is in fact in many cases safeguards for things like the environment and workers' rights. The other argument is that we could pivot away from a declining Europe to growth markets elsewhere, but Europe is surely always going to be a very major market by dint of sheer proximity, and being in the EU by no means prevents trade with other countries.
2) International relations.
Clearly a leave vote will insult our geographically nearest allies, which might contribute to greater confrontationalism and illwill in our relations with the EU. It would probably weaken our soft power and influence in the world. Additionally, if it weakens Europe's economy or stability that presents an indirect but substantial threat to British interests.
3) Emigration.
The flip-side of immigration: free movement works in Britons' interests as well, with hundreds of thousands of Britons living and working abroad in Europe.
4) Regulation.
I think most EU regulation on businesses is probably good and progressive, and some parties with a very real chance of future government would not necessarily keep those safeguards.

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I think that there are very powerful arguments on both sides and that voting either way is perfectly rational and defensible. I hope that in the aftermath we will as a country come to an acceptance of the result either way and a greater understanding and appreciation of both sides' reasoning; although I greatly fear that this will not be the case.


Rule Britannia, and floreat Europa!

Progression, civilisation and cultural relativism

The following is a critique of two terms, one rather fashionable and one somewhat controversial, that are very much two sides of the same coin.

Civilisation is a highly problematic concept. It carries strong overtones of the superiority of a culture which has more "advanced" technology, and certain kinds of social organisation (what archaeology and anthropology call a "complex society"), involving, for example, urbanisation and a state system.

Of course, whether someone from your culture discovered electricity and whether your culture finds it expedient to conglomerate in towns is hardly a reasonable measure of whether a culture is morally better or worse.

Civilisation is a principle that has been used in the past to separate humans into a higher and lower strand of history with appalling consequences. People who were considered uncivilised - "savages" or "primitives" - were of lesser value, or indeed not even truly human at all: it was legitimate to oppress them, abuse them, or kill them by the thousands, and they were due no respect or equal treatment.

Even up until the mid twentieth century, this abuse of the idea of civilisation was still rampant. Britain was still the seat of an empire run on racial superiority, which was closely linked in people's minds with the kinds of cultural and technological differences that made Britain a civilised country and anything much outside Europe sub-civilised, inferior - conveniently ignoring or explaining away things that Europeans would have considered as markers of civilisation in places like Africa and South America as well.

Regardless of this, to the contemporary Westerner it is perfectly plain (I would hope) that a culture which is referred to as a civilisation on the basis of certain kinds of technology (e.g. agriculture, writing) and social organisation (e.g. urbanisation, laws) cannot be considered "superior" to one which is not; we may consider it more "advanced" if it has cities and writing and social hierarchy, but in fact none of these things make one culture better than any other - which the term "civilisation" implies. This is closely related to the idea of progress; indeed we may define civilisation as whatever is considered to be the most "advanced" or "developed" stage of human societal organisation along the timeline of human progress. Of course, in reality, taking a long-term perspective on the history of humanity, there is no single fixed progression from a horrible primordial condition to a superior present and future one in line with the evolutions of the organisation of human societies.

Given these problems, it is essential that this term is used with great precision and circumspection, if at all. If we define civilisation as "the most advanced level of human social organisation", then it should be used within societies that like to think of themselves as civilised to hold people to a higher standard of behaviour: to remind them of the values such as respect and tolerance that they associate with the "ultimate" (from a Latin word meaning final), "perfect" (from a Latin word meaning finished!) stage of human progress. I think that such values, rather than anything to do with technology or social complexity, may still be usefully described as civilisation, in association with the good or desirable things about Western culture.

Given the appeal to the same potentially dangerous idea of the "progress" of humanity, the term "progressive" is arguably in some ways almost as problematic as "civilised" and the like; "civilisation" at least is unable to hide from the history of the abuse of the concept. In both terms, there is an appeal to the idea of "progress" with application to humanity as a whole, which used to imply (and in many circles still does) that all cultures must proceed according to the pattern of the industrial revolution in Europe in order to achieve a superior moral state. The problem with this is that it is of course incorrect to assume that the past was a horrific and immoral or amoral Hobbesian state of nature: we really have very little idea how morally righteous (according to our own culture's morality) most societies were for the vast majority of the history of humanity, which is well beyond recorded history. This line of thought steers us towards some general reflections about archaeology: how little archaeological evidence there is for so many human societies, how interpreting it is rarely straightforward, and how representativeness is never guaranteed.

That said, the idea of progress is of course not in itself problematic, as long as the difference between moral development, on the one hand, and the presence of particular technologies or particular kinds of social organisation, on the other, is properly maintained. The idea that things should move from a present worse condition to a future aimed-for better one is surely nothing other than hope; and fighting for a future that is better than the present should surely be what politics is about.

"Do you look at nationalism the same way you look at religion?"

This was a question asked by a page I follow on facebook. I originally wrote an answer and posted it here last year, but I have largely rewritten and considerably expanded it.

Nationalism is definitely in some fundamental ways comparable to religious affiliation, in that it is driven by the desire to belong to a group, or simply passed down within kinship-groups as part of what affiliates your family with its wider social group/community. If we exclude the real or supposed social functions of religion and nationalism, then on that basis they may both seem to be equally irrational.

Nationalism and nation both need to be defined to answer the question in any depth as they will mean different things to different people. The OED definitions may be somewhat instructive:

nationalism, n.: 

1. a. Advocacy of or support for the interests of one's own nation, esp. to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations. Also: advocacy of or support for national independence or self-determination. (Whereas patriotism usually refers to a general sentiment, nationalism now usually refers to a specific ideology, esp. one expressed through political activism. In earlier use, however, the two appear to have been more or less interchangeable.)

nation, n.:

I. A people or group of peoples; a political state.

1. a. A large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent, language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people. Now also: such a people forming a political state; a political state. (In early use also in pl.: a country.)In early examples notions of race and common descent predominate. In later use notions of territory, political unity, and independence are more prominent, although some writers still make a pointed distinction between nation and state.

...

c. A group of people having a single ethnic, tribal, or religious affiliation, but without a separate or politically independent territory.

d. With the: the whole population of a country, freq. in contrast to a smaller or narrower body within it.

For our purposes we may consolidate this down to two key referents: the people of a nation-state, and the nation-state of that people. Therefore the definition of nationalism depends on what meaning of nation we are referring to: the people, or the state - the ethnic referent, or the political one.

If your idea of your nation is one which is inclusive of people of recent foreign background, then a strong sense of affinity to that nation is unlikely to be divisive or destructive to your society - foreign policy aside. However I suspect that that is not the case with many (most?) people who consider themselves nationalists: nationalism, as opposed to patriotism, often carries more exclusive, racial, connotations, in my experience, even if those connotations are not quite part of the definition. That is, nationalism with respect to a people defined in part by a perception of common descent. This perception of common descent we may call "race". I say "perception of" because the reality or not of whatever degree of homogeneity is implied is a different question, somewhat irrelevant to the present point as it is not a discussion of the objective validity of the ethnic sense of nation.

If the ethnic sense of the word nation is "people (most of) whose ancestors have been of the nation for longer than folk-memory", this is not necessarily unfair. (I have the impression that it is a fairly common element in the definition of ethnic groups.) What would be unfair would be exclusion from something on the basis of not being of a particular nation; which is the same thing as, exclusion from something on the basis of not being of a particular ancestry/race. This is clearly unfair.

It is very close to exclusion from something on the basis of not being of the correct ethnic group. This too will almost always be unfair: I say almost always because "ethnic group" implies a cultural element (often as well as an ancestral one); conceivably there could be a justifiable reason for an exclusion from something on the basis of cultural incompatibility. However, a further qualifying factor here for exclusion of an ethnic group to be justified is that the (cultural) element that is the basis for the exclusion must a key and inalienable aspect of that ethnic group - in other words, no individuals are being unfairly discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity, even if that was not the intention. In short, it is people who have the incompatible element who are being excluded; not, people of a group with a relatively higher incidence of the incompatible element. It must be that particular element that is the reason for the exclusion: this must never be confused with exclusion on the basis of ethnicity. Exclusion on the basis of cultural ethnic difference is very little different to exclusion on the basis of racial (ethnic) difference: indeed the two are equally unjust. I find it hard to think of a real-world example of a trait that is ubiquitous to a certain ethnic group that is also significant enough to justify exclusion from something; though doubtless examples do exist.

So what if the criteria by which you define nation can be shown to synchronise with valid criteria for preferring one group to another? Perhaps that might justify a kind of nationalism in that particular superior nation. We must consider whether any such criteria exist: as far as I can see, perhaps the only even arguably valid reason for preferring one group of people to another would be a "superior" shared morality. However, if that is the only justifiable reason for preferring one group to another, then nationalism (if defined as preference for one national group over others) is still wrong: because we clearly cannot define the national basis of nationalism out of nationalism. In other words, if your nation is morally superior (and if moral superiority is a reasonable basis for preferring some individuals over others), then it must be for the moral superiority that the individuals are preferred, not for their nationhood. Again the problematic trait must remain the basis for discrimination, however easily it might be confused with ethnicity.

Of course, what constitutes moral superiority is extremely culturally and individually subjective. To give just one obvious example, some groups, especially conservative Abrahamic religious groups, consider homosexuality to be morally wrong; whereas I will go to my grave maintaining that they are morally wrong to think so, and that my morality is superior. Possibly it could even be shown philosophically that I am objectively right, although I think that probably depends on how you define morality and perhaps what you consider to be its purpose.

Regardless of whether you define your nation by the borders it lives within, and/or a shared culture or world-view ("ontology"), or by perceived shared ethnic origins (however that is defined) or shared ancestry (however that is defined, and whatever its historical reality), giving preference or favouritism to a group of people based on any of those criteria is obviously unjust (at best baseless, if we leave out the moral question). There may be problematic traits which are linked to particular nations or ethnic groups for cultural reasons; but in such cases, the problematic trait must be the basis for discrimination, not the ethnicity. The trait must be identified, defined, described, and its presence assessed in each individual, rather than trusting to prejudice about other ethnic groups.