By Faisal Bari
Jul 1 2016 (Dawn, Pakistan)

I WAS a graduate student in Canada in 1995 when Quebec held a referendum to decide whether it wanted to remain a part of Canada or become independent. Parti Québécois, arguing for secession, was in power in Quebec at the time and the sentiment for separation was very strong in the province.

The province was deeply divided and emotions were running high. For the separatists, it was an opportunity of a lifetime — in fact, for many of them it was the culmination of a lifetime of work to bring Quebec to the point of a referendum. For those who wanted to stay with Canada and for those who lived in other provinces of the country (the latter were not voting in the referendum, of course) even the prospect of a break-up was traumatic.

Faisal Bari

The vote was held on Oct 30. Separatists lost by a mere 54,000 odd votes. Voter turnout was almost 94 per cent. A mere 0.4pc swing in vote could have given the separatists a victory in the referendum.

One can imagine the agony of those who had worked all their lives for a vote for separation. They were so very close; yet, in the end, they lost by the smallest of margins imaginable.

I walked the streets of Montreal as the results came in. It was quite a night. With every small victory or defeat, there were cheers or tears. Announcement of the final results brought a tremendous outpouring of emotions.

But, and here is the point of this article, at no point during the night of changing fortunes were there any signs of trouble in Quebec. There was no rioting or fighting between rival camps. Even when the final results were announced, and there was tremendous jubilation in one camp and anger and depression in the other, there were no incidents of violence across the province.

The law and order situation was normal the next morning too. Businesses opened as usual and daily activities continued. There was a spate of retirement/resignation announcements from Parti Québécois leaders and people knew that the case for separation had been buried for quite sometime, but the results were accepted and society moved on.

Whatever one’s views on the Brexit vote, there was a mature acceptance of the results.
Since the vote had been lost by a mere 54,000 odd votes, there were some voices that asked for recounts and talked about the unfair role that the federal government had played in the build-up to the vote and there were even some voices that talked of vote fraud, but, by and large, all government and important players accepted the results and moved on over the course of the next few months.

If the separatists had won on that day it is unlikely the aftermath would have been as smooth: the federal government might not have accepted the results, questioning the legality of the referendum as the sole means of deciding on secession or any announcement of freedom from the provincial government. But, we will not know about this as the country did not go down this path that day.

I was in the United Kingdom last week when the European Union membership referendum took place. The build-up to this referendum was a lot more divisive. The result was expected to be close and so the campaigning by both sides was hard. The general impression was that the UK would vote to remain in the EU; but the results were different. The turnout was more than 70pc and it would have needed a 2pc swing in vote to make the other side win. So, though the vote was close, the win, for people wanting to be out of the EU, was not a small one.

As the results started coming in on the night of June 23, there were celebrations in one camp and a lot of depression in the other. Given the result, it was expected that there would be consequences. Markets reacted early the next day. The pound lost a lot of value and the stock market also took a hit. But this was expected. Prime Minister David Cameron’s statement helped calm nerves. He accepted the vote and the decision of the people. He said this was not the direction in which he wanted to lead the UK and so would, after due process, step aside and let the voters pick new leaders for the future, but he would work in the interim to ensure that the transition was smooth.

There have been quite a few incidents of racism that have been recorded in the UK since the results were announced. There is a high level of uncertainty that immigrants and workers, especially from Europe, face at the moment. Politicians from all sides have condemned the incidents, and the authorities have taken action in cases where they have been called in. This trend will, hopefully, go back to the baseline very quickly.

A lot of things are still very unclear and will need to be worked out. Leaving a union such as the EU will take a lot of work and can only be achieved over a period of time. New laws have to be made, new treaties have to be negotiated and new processes have to be put in place.

Leaving the union does not mean the UK will not have trade and other relations with the EU. But the basis for these relations will have to be worked out. And a lot of this work will have to be done through negotiations as there are no existing blueprints for exits from unions. And this process will be disruptive and will have costs for the people of Britain and Europe.

But, again, the lesson from the referendum, was about how the vote was handled, the maturity with which the result was accepted and the handling of the aftermath. There are a lot of lessons here for our democracy.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums, Lahore.

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

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AGITATED markets, a tumbling pound-sterling, a downgraded credit rating: none of these should have been an unexpected outcome of the British electorate’s decision last weekend to opt out of the European Union.

As for leadership turmoil in the main parties, it was more or less a given that David Cameron’s days as prime minister were numbered if his arguments for remaining in the EU were defeated by the popular verdict. But the concerted move by members of his own shadow cabinet to expel Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the opposition Labour Party was greeted with surprise.

Mahir Ali

It shouldn’t have been. The Daily Telegraph reported 10 days before the vote that “Labour rebels believe they can topple Jeremy Corbyn after the EU referendum in a 24-hour blitz”. The result of the referendum was unclear at the time, and it is reasonably clear that the “24-hour blitz” would have occurred even if the popular verdict had gone the other way.

The bulk of the Parliamentary Labour Party was extremely disconcerted by Corbyn’s landslide victory some nine months ago in a leadership contest that, under new rules, for the first time gave each party member an equal say. Corbyn was a backbench maverick in the PLP who frequently voted against New Labour when it was in power under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and his triumph was anathema to the bulk of MPs who saw power primarily as a means of consolidating the Thatcherite agenda that Blair, with minor variations, had so blatantly pursued.

A clear majority of Labour members thought otherwise, though, and Corbyn’s ascendancy drew back into the party a substantial number of those who had abandoned it because they considered it too right-wing.

The PLP’s assault against Corbyn — led, somewhat ironically, by former shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, whose dad, Tony Benn, a close comrade-in-arms of Corbyn was for decades the most coherent and consistent Labour opponent of the EU on the utterly plausible grounds of its depletion of national sovereignty — has ostensibly been based on the Labour leader’s lackadaisical approach to the ‘remain’ argument ahead of the referendum.

In fact, Corbyn, perhaps against his better judgment, campaigned extensively, if not always enthusiastically, in favour of Britain remaining in the EU. Sure, he was disinclined to rave like Boris (Johnson) and Dave. But that’s not his style. And, more importantly, he had qualms about the EU that his intrinsic honesty prevented him from disregarding.

Yesterday, as Cameron headed for a meeting where he would be obliged to face his EU counterparts, Corbyn faced a PLP vote of no-confidence that was expected to overwhelmingly go against him. Whether his position would remain tenable beyond that is open to question, but there is a fair chance that he could rely on a second leadership vote to retain his post. Where would that leave the conspirators, who until the time of writing had failed to come up with either an alternative candidate or a distinct set of policies?

The move to expel Corbyn was greeted with surprise.
Amid the inevitable turmoil among the Conservatives, commonplace logic pointed to Labour unity behind a democratically elected leader on the basis of a platform that challenged from the left the consequences of a Tory catfight between a pair of more or less equally contemptible former Eton classmates.

Labour’s MPs — and many of Corbyn’s most vociferous opponents belong to constituencies that voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU, but are unwilling to accept responsibility for that outcome — were, until the weekend, in a position to make their party electable in the probable event of a snap election. They have now squandered that chance. Were Labour to win power under a re-elected Corbyn, which is not an impossible dream, it would be despite Hilary Benn & co, caterers to the despondent elites.

Meanwhile, Cameron, who has decided to leave activation of Article 50 — which formally begins the process of UK withdrawal from the EU — to his successor, does not intend to step down until October. Not all of Europe empathises with that approach. France, in particular, wants the exit strategy to be put into action right away, whereas Germany has shown signs of greater patience.

Some constitutional lawyers — of whom there is no dearth in Britain, despite its lack of a formal constitution — have indicated that the nation’s parliament is under no obligation to abide by the referendum verdict, so the UK could remain part of the EU. Direct democracy has also come in for some flak — as, more appropriately, have younger voters who largely opposed a Brexit but did not turn out in sufficient numbers to produce a different verdict.

Amid a sharp rise in instances of racism and profound uncertainty in every sphere, including the UK’s integrity, the only thing Britons are clearly blessed with is the ancient Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

Joaquín Roy

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, Jun 27 2016 (IPS)

The hopes of many of those who confidently expected the British electorate to vote, by a slender margin, for the country to remain in the EU have been dashed. All that is left to do now is to ponder the causes and background of this regrettable event, and consider its likely consequences, especially for relations with the United States.

In the first place one must point out and – and this is a general criticism of the present British political system – that Prime Minister David Cameron was hugely irresponsible to steer his country into this risky adventure. It has resulted in the worst calamity to befall Britain in the last half century and has inflicted severe damage not only on the EU but also on all the countries of the North Atlantic rim.

Cameron went out on a limb, thinking to secure total control over the country for his Conservative Party for the next several years. Next he pursued a surrealist referendum campaign agenda, seeking to persuade the public to vote to remain in the EU, against the Brexit proposal that he himself had engineered. He relied on the advantages and special privileges promised to the UK by the EU if the British people voted to remain.

Brussels had already warned that the EU would not grant Britain any further concessions or benefits over and above the conditions that apply in common to all EU members. It pointed out that Britain was in fact already a privileged partner, having opted out of the common currency (the euro) under a special agreement that did not even fix a timescale for its putative future membership of the euro area.

London also retains full control of Britain’s borders, having declined to sign the innovative Schengen Agreement which abolished many internal borders and introduced passport-free movement across the 26 Schengen countries.

The EU has indeed done everything in its power to keep the UK government and people happy and flaunting their prized British exceptionalism.

And now the fateful moment is at hand. The effect on Europe has been devastating. The one possible advantage for the EU – which has discreetly remained unvoiced – is that of ridding itself of an awkward partner, a dinner guest with an unfortunate habit of drawing attention to itself in negative ways. Britain slammed the brakes on progress towards fuller European integration and was a temptation to other recalcitrant EU countries to follow its bad example.

Recently concerns were raised in Washington over the Brexit referendum.

President Barack Obama himself did his best to urge Britons to stick with the EU when he visited London in April.

Cameron, and the people who voted for the UK to leave the EU, have done Obama a disservice. Britain’s image in the United States will deteriorate to unprecedented depths. The vaunted special relationship between the U.S. and Britain will no longer be an effective force underpinning one of the strongest alliances in recent history.

The first victim of the debacle may be the approval process for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, which is already looking shaky, at least for the immediate future.

The TTIP was meant to replicate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an ambitious deal to cut trade barriers, set labour and environmental standards and protect corporate intellectual property. The TPP was signed in principle by twelve Pacific Rim countries including the United States, and now awaits approval by legislators in each of the countries.

The rise of populism and anti-free trade sentiment is reflected in speeches by both U.S. presidential candidates, and is likely to slow down what is now viewed as “excessive globalisation”. There is a return to a style of nationalism that exerts control over economic as well as political initiatives.

The next U.S. president will find it difficult to advance their country’s alliance with London on defence issues. The UK will have freed itself from what was already problematic military cooperation with Europe, and only its link with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will endure. Some European NATO partners will be cautious about developing joint operations with a fellow member they view as uncommitted to agreements within the EU.

In the matter of trade per se, Washington will not take kindly to the new position of the City of London once it has lost its enviable status as a financial hub embedded in the EU. Siren songs from other European capitals solidly anchored in the soon-to-be expanded European community will be hard to resist, especially if European leaders adopt policies to strengthen the euro zone.

In Latin America, Brexit will be read as a confirmation that supranational practices and thoroughgoing integration are no longer a priority for the UK. The referendum result sends the message that national sovereignty is now paramount. All the time and effort the EU has spent over the years to promote the advantages of the European model of integration, based on the strength of its treaties and the effectiveness of its institutions, will be regretted as a sheer waste of time and energy.

An alternative “model of integration” based on the U.S. agenda, favouring one-off arrangements or treaties limited in scope exclusively to trade issues, will prevail over the already weakened European model.

The Caribbean region has strong historical and cultural ties to Britain. It will suffer from a less secure bond with the UK and will incline more closely to Washington.

The continent of the Americas, which is closest to Britain from the point of view of history and culture as well as in political and economic terms, will thus find itself further apart from Europe than before.

Joaquin Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Centre at  the University of Miami.  jroy@Miami.edu

Translated by Valerie Dee

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By Roberto Savio
ROME, May 19 2015 (IPS)

The victory of the Conservative Party and the debacle of the Labour Party in the recent British general elections is yet another sign of the crisis facing left-wing forces today, leaving aside the question of how, under the British electoral system, the Labour Party actually increased the number of votes it won but saw a reduction in the number of seats it now holds in Parliament (24 seats less than the previous 256).

Roberto Savio

If the proportional rather than uninominal system had been used, the Conservative Party with its 11 million votes would have won 256 and not 331 seats in Parliament (far short of the absolute majority of 326 needed to govern), while at the other extreme the United Kingdom Independence Party with nearly four million votes would have landed 83 and not just the one seat it ended up with – results that would be hard to imagine anywhere else and a good example of insularity.

To an extent, the recent British general elections mirrored the U.S. presidential elections in 2000 when Democratic candidate Al Gore won around half a million more popular votes than Republican candidate George W. Bush but failed to win the majority of electoral college votes on which the U.S. system is based. The outcome was eight years of George W.  Bush administration, the war in Iraq, the crisis of multilateralism, and all the paraphernalia of “America’s exceptional destiny”.

Let us venture now into an analysis that will have the politologues among us cringing.“The left has tried to mimic the winners, instead of trying to be an alternative to the process of neoliberal globalisation and, since the beginning of the world financial crisis in 2008 … it has had no real answer to the crisis”

It is now generally recognised that the end of the Soviet Union has given free way to a kind of capitalism without control, marked by an unprecedented supremacy of finance which, in terms of volume of investments, overwhelmingly exceeds the real or productive economy.

In its wake, neoliberal thinking has found the left totally unprepared, because part of its function had been to provide a democratic alternative to Communism, which was suddenly no longer a threat.

The left therefore has tried to mimic the winners, instead of trying to be an alternative to the process of neoliberal globalisation and, since the beginning of the world financial crisis in 2008 (with its bail-out cost so far of over four trillion dollars), it has had no real answer to the crisis.

Ever since the industrial revolution, the identity of the left had been to press for social justice, equality of opportunities and redistribution, while the right placed the emphasis on individual efforts, less role for the state and success as motivation.

Continuing with this brutal simplification, we have to add that the left, from Marx to Keynes, always studied how to create economic growth and redistribution – Marx by abolishing private property, social democrats through just taxation.

But it never studied the creation of a progressive agenda in the event case of an economic crisis such as the one we are now facing, with structural unemployment, young people obliged  to accept any kind of contract, new technologies which are making the concept of classes disappear, and rendering trade unions – erstwhile powerful actors for social justice – irrelevant.

It is unprecedented that the top 25 hedge fund managers received a reward in 2014 of 11.62 billion dollars, yet neither U.S. President Barack Obama nor Ed Miliband, then still leader of the Labour Party at the recent British general elections (until he resigned after election defeat), saw it fit to denounce this obscene level of greed.

Meanwhile, Europe as a political project is clearly in disarray, and now faces a “Grexit” on its southern flank and a “Brexit” on its northern flank.

In the case of a “Grexit” (the possible abandonment of the European Union by Greece), Greece faces the prospects of having to make substantial concessions to Europe, thus reneging on the promises of Alexis Tsipras who was voted in as prime minister in rebellion against years of dismantlement of public and social structures imposed in the name of austerity.

What is at stake here is the very neoliberal model itself and not only is ordoliberal Germany supported by allies like Austria, Finland and the Netherlands erecting a wall against any form of leniency, but countries which accepted painful cuts and where conservatives are now in power, like Spain, Portugal and Ireland, see leniency as giving in to the left.

A “Brexit” (the possible abandonment of the European Union by Britain) is a different affair. It is a game being played by British Prime Minister David Cameron to negotiate a more favourable agreement for Britain with the European Union.

A referendum will be held before the end of 2017 and the four million people who voted for the UKIP in the recent elections, plus the country’s “Euro-sceptics”, threaten to push Britain out of the European Union, especially if Cameron does not manage to obtain some substantial concessions from Brussels.

Meanwhile, if Europe is in disarray, the United States has a serious problem of governance. Analyst Moisés Naím, who served as editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine from 1996 to 2010, has pinpointed a few examples of how this has translated into self-inflicted damage.

One concerns China which, after waiting five years trying to get the Republican-dominated Congress to authorise and increase in its stake in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from a ridiculous 3.8 percent to 6 percent (compared with the 16.5 percent of the United States), got fed up and established an alternative fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Washington tried unsuccessfully to kill the initiative by putting pressure on its allies but first the United Kingdom, then Italy, Germany and France announced their participation in the new bank, which now has 50 member countries and the United States is not one of them.

Another example was the attempt by the Republican-dominated Congress to kill the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) which has provided support for U.S exporters to the tune of 570 billion dollars since it was set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934.  In just the last two years, China has provided 670 billion dollars in support for its exporters. Moral of the story: U.S. companies will be at a clear disadvantage.

As Larry Summers, a great proponent of U.S. hegemony, put it, “the US will not be in a position to shape the global economic system”.

The latest snub to the U.S. role of world leader came from four Arab heads of state who snubbed a U.S.-Gulf States summit at Camp David on May 14. The summit had been called by Obama to reassure the Gulf states that the ongoing negotiations with Iran over a nuclear agreement would not diminish their relevance, but the rulers of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain deserted the summit.

However, there is no more striking example of mistake-making than the joint effort by the United States and Europe to push Russian President Vladimir against the wall over his engagement in Ukraine by imposing heavy sanctions.

There was no apparent reflection on the wisdom of encircling a paranoid and autocratic leader, albeit one with strong popular support, by progressively also bringing in all Eastern and Central European countries. The result of this encirclement of Russia is that China has now come to the rescue of Russia, by injecting money into the country’s asphyxiated economy.

China will invest around six billion dollars in the construction of a high speed railway between Moscow and Kazan, is financing a 2,700 kilometre pipeline for the supply of 30 billion cubic metres of Russian gas over a period of 30 years, plus several other projects, including the establishment of a two billion dollar common fund for investments and a loan of 860 million dollars to the Russian Sberbank bank.

So, the net result is that Russia has been pushed out of Europe and into the arms of China, and the two are now starting joint naval and military manoeuvres.  Is this in the interest of Europe?

At the end of the day, the decline of Europe and the United States perhaps comes down to a decline of political vision, with democracy being substituted by partocracy, and the statesman of yesteryear being substituted by very much more modest and self-referential political leaders.

This is all taking place amid a growing disaffection with politics, which is now aimed basically at administrative choices, making corruption easy. At least this is what around one-third of electors now appear to believe when they are asked if they think that they can make a difference at elections … and this is why a rapidly growing number of people are deserting the ballot box. (END/COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

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