This is a good thread (via @simonjhix) and worth reading. I don’t agree, but it reflects a common problem with how people think of the EU’s actions – a sort of essentialism that sees the EU as a unit with fixed views. (Thread) twitter.com/danieljohnsalt…
Why is this wrong? The EU is an assembly of member state and EU-level elected politicians. It has a bureaucratic culture, though that changes over time, but its political positions reflect the people who are elected to be there.
When centre-right governments hold the reins, centre-right things happen. What happened to Greece happened to Greece because the political moment was one where governments who supported austerity held the reins in the EU.
Had centre-left governments held the reins, things would have been different. Perhaps not very different given the pressure from national level, but different.
(As an aside, saving the euro was not an ego trip. A collapse would have been a disaster that hit millions of people, affecting the poorest the most – the idea of the euro as just a policy choice is also a common UK error)
So I understand why Greece made people angry. It made me angry, and in retrospect people have started to admit mistakes. But being angry at the EU *as an institution* rather than the people who made the decisions is the wrong way to look at it.
It’s like being angry at parliamentary democracy for the chaos around Brexit, or at Congress for Trump. There might be structural weaknesses, but the driving force is the people in the system not the system.
So my response to Daniel would be – the EU is never good or bad, except as we make it, through the politicians we send there and the actions we take as citizens. To control a world where decisions are global we need to be part of a democracy with global influence.
The U.K. on its own will not just be poorer, though it will, it will be weaker and its citizens less able to shape the decisions that affect their lives. Stay in, campaign, elect the politicians who will make the Europe you want, locally, nationally and in Brussels.
Originally posted as a thread of 9 tweets on Twitter on 22 July 2018. View the original thread.