European Elections: A View from the Island
Claire O’Brien*
Only eight days later, but already the great, breached liner, massively imposing against the political horizon for a moment, has disappeared – sunk once again to the gravel bottom of the national psyche, and there to lie in long, watery silence. Only an occasional stale belch, bubbling at the surface, summons the memory of the grand project submerged below. Perhaps it was honourable, perhaps hubristic - who still alive can remember? All the living know is that a great, luxurious vessel, a triumph of engineering and optimism in its day, and host to an affluent cosmopolitan elite, slowly collapsed under the weight of its own proliferating, complex infrastructure, bringing premature end to its maiden voyage.
An elaborate metaphor this may be; but it does not exaggerate the lack of durability of political presence of Europe’s democratic institutions, nor the momentary nature of their visibility, to the general public in the UK.
Of course this time Europe hasn’t gone away. Far from it – a whole new cycle of treaty-mania, last witnessed with Maastricht, now awaits the nation. On this occasion, at least for the 20-40somethings, there will be the novelty that Parliamentary debate (which the government has already indicated will take years, rather than months) will be Labour rather than Conservative-led. As a result, wider public discussion of the issues will escape being immediately reduced to the daily numbers game, faced historically by the Conservatives, of whether internal dissenters will bring the government down.
On the other hand, with the Tories in opposition, their perpetual, atavistic obsession with Europe and sovereignty will rise to new, baffling levels of irrelevance, only heightened in prospect by the likelihood that UKIP (UK Independence Party) will split the Eurosceptic vote in 2005’s General Election and Labour in office.
As for the referendum, currently numbering two to one against the Constitution in opinion polls, this time, it appears, the Brits mean business. But ought we to read the low turnout and Eurosceptic boom in the Euro Parliament results as evidence of a newly solid popular hostility that will last the course, and which predicts an ultimate “No” vote that will soon end Britain’s life in Europe?
Here the answer should be “No”. Third place in European, local and mayoral elections for Labour looks bad. But a “pop psephology” of the underlying reasons, resolving their various, overlaid symbolic and instrumental functions show they are obvious, and transitory, in relation to Labour’s overall outlook, British intentions towards the EU, and the prognosis for the Constitution.
First, both core Labour supporters, and the all-important swing vote, stayed at home, either or both because they were sufficiently satisfied with the status quo in general not to want to change it, or deliberately, to protest about the war. By contrast, for regular Conservative supporters – always the highest turnout group by proportion – it was more important than ever to vote, with the government half-way through a second term, and down at least over Iraq, if nothing else. Additionally, right-wingers dissatisfied with Michael Howard’s “centrist” leadership had every reason, before manifestos have been published and battle launched for next year’s General Election, to register their appetite for a more Eurosceptic position by defecting to UKIP.
Voting patterns in Britain’s European elections should therefore on this occasion be understood predominantly as an “acting out” of attitudes and emotions arising from voters’ relations, not with “Europe”, but with the parties they see as their political “home”.
Nevertheless this simultaneously delivers, in principle and practice, a damning verdict – also an unsurprising one - on European democracy. Rather obviously, disaffected supporters of both the largest parties will vote in much larger numbers, and will vote loyally, in a general election, because of the instrumental value they know their vote carries in that forum. The space for expression of party-focussed sentiment – demonstrated this June by abstention or votes for minority parties – is squeezed out in that contest by the imperative to act instrumentally when it will make a material difference to issues of importance - schools, healthcare, and tax levels - in voters’ lives.
Likewise, when the referendum eventually takes place, the knowledge which voters now possess, but which they have the luxury of being able to suppress with impunity in responding to opinion polls – namely, that either not voting, or voting “no” will take Britain out of Europe - will be activated. It would be too risky, too lonely, too deviant, in the context of the mores of our geopolitical neighbourhood, and a step into the unknown for younger voters, to elect for isolation on the continent’s windy western fringes.
But meanwhile Europe continues to play its usual role as a target for the tide of general ressentiment. Previously this could be vented through voting to affirm a right-wing narrative that was built on contempt for the socially marginal. With this avenue now blocked for pragmatic reasons (the right lack still electoral credibility), ressentiment’s search for alternative release is instead satisfied by contempt for the “togetherness” of the European project, and expressed in the imaginary arena that the EU’s “democratic” institutions have helpfully created for it.
This effect is compounded by the fact that, even after decades, a European political domain has yet to be defined. Whereas there should be a commonly-experienced contest between opposing political narratives, embodied and explained by a clear choice between policy packages, and communicating to voters across Europe a shared account of the alternative identities and stories about themselves and Europe’s purpose and destiny, there is a void.
Added to what everyone already knows – that voting in European elections “makes no difference”, due to the Parliament’s emasculated role in the overall constitutional set-up that evacuates Euro-voting of instrumental significance – this leaves the European democratic forum as one in which voters have free-rein, either to indulge generalised antipathy, or substitute more pressing proxy domestic political concerns.
Addressing the political gap identified above must be the biggest challenge ahead for radical pro-Europeans. The Constitution, and its measures aimed at greater involvement of national parliaments and citizens, of course intended in some way to address this. It supposed that establishing greater interpenetration of the structures and processes of national and European democracies will open the way to greater popular engagement with “Europe” as a whole.
But without imbuing the choice exercised by voters in European elections with independent political meaning, Europe will remain hostage to the domestic party concerns that cut it in 25 different ways according to reactive impulses of the national political and economic season. What is really required, therefore, is the constitution of a trans-European discursive territory that recognises and can respond to individuals’ concerns, and which can reflect back at us a picture of ourselves and our society.
Of course this poses clear threats for national parties. Any dispersal of electorates’ political energy and interest to the trans-national plane lowers the star of national politicians. Building up a continental politics could ultimately, unthinkably, galvanise wider identities and create the appetite for a superstate that would at least force national parliaments to share the political limelight. Ugly arguments would be sure to ensue while national politicians and Euro-usurpers wrestled to determine the position of the new power equilibrium (for example, on the launch of any degree of dual representation, allowing national parliamentarians to participate in European decision-making).
In practical terms there are still the matters of language and cultural divides to contend with. But as globalization proceeds and the economic and social underpinnings of Europe’s political economy consolidate further, these will shrink as obstacles to the emergence of political euro-consciousness. Already political imagination and perception of community are extruding beyond national boundaries, in some part due to steady, if not seismic, effect of European institutional initiatives, and indeed to the political project synthesised by national leaderships to date. The question now critical to transforming Euro-elections in future decades, from shadow-boxing into lever of democracy, is therefore whether European political parties as such will grasp the future, and innovate, or stifle it by default.
London, June 25th 2004
* Claire O’Brien is Research Fellow in “Human Rights Futures” at the London School of Economics’ where she also holds a Research Studentship at Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR). For CARR she studies regulatory perspectives on human rights in the private sector, with particular focus on transnational corporations. She has acted as consultant on human rights issues to the UK Department of Constitutional Affairs, and to a range of non-governmental organisations. Claire holds degrees from Cambridge (MA Hons) and London City University (Dep. Law). She is Vision associate and co-author of “The Democratic Papers” collection (British Council, Vision et al. 2004).
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