name_here wrote:So far as I've heard the only compelling reason to specifically get rid of the current EU is the way it's been screwing over Greece, who might be better off if they were monetarily sovereign and had to run their own central bank but not meet stupid punitive dictates.
You forgot Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus. All of those countries were required to sacrifice themselves on the altar of austerity in order to receive assistance. Altogether that's about 15% of the EU's population. Beyond that, many other countries elected conservative governments and took their cyanide capsules all on their own, but at the same time the EU likely could have done more to prevent that by using aggressively expansionary monetary policy to ease the pain caused by the crisis - which would have decreased the political backlash and weakened the case for austerity. Greece gets the most attention, but in truth unemployment in the EU as a whole peaked at ~12% in
2013, and has since fallen to ~10%. Meanwhile unemployment in the U.S. peaked at ~10% in
2010, and has since fallen to 5%. No, the crisis did not hit Europe later. No, the crisis did not hit Europe slower. EU unemployment has a double peak thing going on, where the first peak matches the U.S. and the second peak is the EU successfully derailing their own recovery suspiciously close to the start of the bailout programs.
name_here wrote:Otherwise, leaving the EU means getting rid of something flawed but still useful and replacing it with nothing.
Why do you people keep saying "nothing?" The referendum is not actually effective immediately. David Cameron has said that what will actually happen is that the government will spend up to two years negotiating new treaties before actually leaving the EU. That's the
conservative position. Even UKIP has been pretty clear that their actual plan is to replace the EU with simple free trade agreements, which are deeply inadequate, but still not nothing. There are a lot of question marks involved, because what goes in those treaties will depend entirely on who's in power when they're signed. But even the assholes who
want Europe to burn are interested in a slower burn than the one you're imagining.
name_here wrote:The only reason to do that is if the current rules specifically prohibit doing what you'd do if starting fresh, and even if they do it's still best to get a headcount of who will help start fresh beforehand.
The EU was designed to be a compromise between European unity and individual sovereignty. It was built to be weak (because everyone was at least as afraid of it as they were enthusiastic about it) and undemocratic (because none of the major players would sign the dotted line if it meant actually being bossed around). Since then, it's continued to accumulate further powers (sometimes deliberately and sometimes by accident) without anyone thinking to attach any democratic checks and balances to go along with them. It's a set of institutions that make the U.S. senate look functional, and while it really cannot be fixed from within it can still wave its dick around and fuck your country up. The articles of confederation weren't overhauled, they were overwritten. The people who wrote them declared that they were shit and wrote a new document to go in effect overtop of them. It would be
really nice to not have to explore dissolving the EU piecemeal and instead have that sort of collective "we fucked up, do over," but the fact is that the EU told progressives their economics would no longer be welcome in Europe six years ago and the mainstream left hasn't so much as blinked. The political elite of Europe is self-destructively committed to this project
as is, and as a result the left pissed away the chance to sit down and have a dialogue about replacing the EU with something less harmful. Oops. But we don't have a time machine, so like it or not we're playing off that mistake with the choices we have left. And realistically, those choices are "messy exit" or "fascist exit."
FrankTrollman wrote:So let me get this straight, you think that Labour should drop everything they are doing to endorse UKIP's positions and then contest the snap elections as the kinder gentler version of UKIP? How many years of professing love for scrapping open borders treaties do you think it would take to get the British people to take Labour seriously as EU Sceptics? The Brexit referendum is next month, how the fuck is this etchasketch supposed to work?
Here's that begging the question thing again. If UKIP declares that three lefts make a right, agreement is not "endorsing the UKIP position." UKIP does not have a monopoly on that position. Or rather, if UKIP ends up with a monopoly on that position, it's because everyone else are clearly a bunch of fucking idiots. The left-wing case for exit is that the EU is an undemocratic institution which allows conservatives to undemocratically block progressive fiscal and monetary policy in member states, and that it's not going to be realistically possible to stop the EU from doing that because conservatives have a massive institutional advantage within the EU. That is not endorsing the UKIP position. For fuck's sake, UKIP is pro-austerity and gives zero fucks that the EU is threatening the future of progressive economics. UKIP's grievance with the EU is that leaving the EU is the first step to getting rid of all the brown people. It's a very different position.
And yes, it is a shame that labour has had six years to accept that the EU has failed its first serious test and instead they stuck their heads in the sand and tried to wait out the storm. The correct moral of that particular story is that sticking your head in the sand doesn't fucking work so stop doing it. Not "just a few more years and the fascists will stop gaining in the polls, I promise." I still don't even know what the fuck your actual plan is beyond "wait it out." We're probably going to have another major economic crisis soon(TM). Shadow banking is still out of control. Student debt is still out of control. China's desperate attempts to stabilize are eventually going to fail. Do you really think the EU is going to handle those crises any better than they've handled this one?
Really? Or do you think it's more likely that they'll fuck it up again, and vindicate everyone holding the eurosceptic banner (i.e. the fascists, if you get your way)? Seriously, where is your faith in the EU coming from? I can remember all the times you predicted Germany would blink during the debt negotiations. They didn't. Do you think maybe it's time you stopped being optimistic and started being
right?
FrankTrollman wrote:You can run a moderate leftist EU reform platform and beat both the status quo and the fascists. This is a real thing that legitimately can be done. And you just seriously own goaled yourself by even mentioning the Austrian Greens.
So, if the fascists win the next presidential election (or just make significant progress in the next parliamentary one) does that mean you have to eat your fucking crow? Before you declare victory for the Greens, you should probably know that in the past ten years they've picked up
three seats in the National Council while the FPO has picked up
nineteen. Hofer was .6% away from winning the presidency. That is not what defeat looks like. That is what narrowly averted catastrophe looks like, and it's a catastrophe that will play out again in four years.