In an article that would be funny if it wasn't so wicked in the Guardian's Comment is Free section, an academic called Stephanie Blankenburg argues that now is the time for the EU elite to advance their project. The only possible solution to the Greek debt crisis, she declares, is for full political union.
Ms Blankenburg wears her heart on her sleeve. She tops and tails the article with a wholly irrelevant attack on Cameron over the News International phone hacking scandal. Quite what it's got to with remainder of her piece is unclear. Probably she only thought she had to put it in to prove her credentials, and to persuade any remaining broad left sceptics of political union that as she is anti-Tory she must be on the side of the angels.
On its own - fanatically authoritarian - terms,
the article makes a deal of sense. The 'unelected' ratings agencies are behind the Euro crisis. (Quickly glancing to one side to speculate what possible use there could be in an 'elected' rating agency, and also noting that the place of rating agencies in mankind's doings is - in the Voltairean sense - rather like God's.) So the rating agencies should be bypassed through the EU issuing Euro bonds, through which any Eurozone country can finance its national debt. Such bonds, Blankenburg acknowledges, will achieve fiscal union and thus a European state through the back door.
There is, she concedes, no democratic mandate for a European state. So it is essential to dress up the solution in purely technical language. Euro bonds, debt union, fiscal consolidation, such terms will mean nothing to the great mass of the European electorate, so there will be no need to help the poor little dears towards comprehension by explaining what the consequences will be. That's for another day. Presumably when it's too late to go back to the nation state - rather like, as is now argued - it's too late to go back to national currencies.
In any case it seems that in Blankenburg's view the only reason that the electorates of Europe resist political union is that: 'thirty years of neoliberalism have made sure of an electorate that regards "the state" as their enemy No1'. Odd how those self-same electorates continue to cling to their 'enemies No1'.
But hey! When you're talking contempt for the common people, the EU integrationists have never been bound by the constrictions of ordinary intellectual consistency. The project is everything.
Typical. You wait for a blog to come along, then three arrive at once. Keep up the good work Neil!
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