Professor Vernon Bogdanor 'The EU without Britain: Never Closer Union?'

well without further ado i'm handing over to professor bogdanor for the most interesting talk thank you well thank you very much and this is the book you mentioned i don't know whether people can see it it's published by the yale university press and i don't really want to go over the um same themes in the book but perhaps to carry my thinking a little further they're based on lectures given two years ago so i hope i've had some more thoughts since then um but the central theme of the book is that brexit was neither an aberration for britain as a whole nor for the european union and i really wanted concert on the second part of that but um at the end perhaps um with this particular audience i might make one or two comments about scotland and the european union because as i understand it the scottish national party would like to see an independent scotland back in the european union but one preliminary point i would like to make which may surprise some people uh in the audience is that brexit has not led to the inward-looking nationalistic britain which many feared particularly it hasn't led to an insult a nativist britain and one remarkable and perhaps unexpected consequence of brexit is that it has liberated britain's liberal political culture let me give some examples of what i mean as you know during the um referendum in 2016 the issue of immigration played a very large part indeed it's probably true to say that was the main policy issue that the brexiteers concentrated upon now the eu principle of free movement was something they objected to but since brexit so far from there having been an anti-immigrant backlash attitudes towards immigrants have softened and immigration has lost its high salience and is now a much more positive attitude towards it it appears the british public are not against immigration per se but against uncontrolled immigration they want immigration managed but not ended let me give an example in 2019 an ipsos mooring poll across 27 countries asked whether immigration has generally had a positive impact and 48 percent in britain said it had which is more than the other 26. then the migration observatory at oxford my old university in 2020 uh made this statement few or no immigrants of a different race should be allowed to enter the country the response in britain was 26 the lowest in the european union apart from sweden and a little lower than for example germany and migrants in britain are much less likely to be unemployed than in germany austria netherlands or sweden now when we left the european parliament the european parliament lost a third of its non-white members we had more non-white members than any other country 19 out of the 28 had none at all and we are six proportionately in europe in terms of the amount of foreign aid we give we give more proportionally and in absolute terms than germany and i think above all we have no racist party represented in parliament like the afd in germany which is the official opposition from national in france um worth saying that in the last presidential election nearly half of 18 to 24 year olds voted for marine le pen in the second ballot of the elections and more young voters in fact supported her than voters in any other age group italy has selvini and in sweden the sweden democrats deny the government a majority let alone orban of hungary and kaczynski of poland so um it's worth asking whether brexit let me say i didn't vote for it i voted to remain but brexit might have proved a means by which britain has avoided populism and uh one of the issues i want to discuss is whether there are trends in the european union excuse me that are in fact leading to populism now what brexit and aberration in the european union it wasn't an aberration in this in this sense that it's unlikely to be followed by the exit of any other member state one obvious candidate for exit perhaps is greece but i don't think she will leave for two reasons the first is that for her as the many other countries in the european union the eu symbolizes an emergence from dictatorship and the acceptance of greece as a european democracy the second is there's not really any alternative for a small country now britain believed perhaps mistakenly that she did have an alternative option now you may say when it's not precisely clear what that option is but still many believed it was there it may be sweden and denmark think they have an alternative option the euro skepticism fairly strong there but i i think it's unlikely but i do think nevertheless that brexit is a real pointer to weaknesses in the structure of the european union and this is something i first wrote about many years ago i wrote about it in a book entitled elitism populism and european politics headed by jack haywood who was a professor at oxford where i was for many years and in this was written at about the time of the master treaty of 1992 more than 30 years ago and um i contrasted the large majorities for the maastricht treaty in the member states and the results of various surveys of voter opinion were the actual outcomes when voters were asked to pronounce on europe now denmark rejected the maastricht treaty which wasn't surprised perhaps and denmark voted for it in a second referendum after some minor amendments were made to the treaty but the referendum in france was more of a surprise it was positive but only by 51 to 49 percent and that was a surprise because france was thought to be a country at the very heart of the european union and the mastery treaty was supported by all the major parties in france except for the fraud nacional and in the voting the moderates of the left and the right uh moderate left and right voters supported but the extremes on left and right were against it and um the extremes were much stronger than many people thought now if you look at britain and germany at the time there were no referendums and all the major parties favored the treaty but even so survey evidence indicated it was by no means certain that maastricht would have been endorsed had it been put to the popular vote and i suggested at the time that the european union was giving rise to that most dangerous and intractable of cleavages that between the political class and the people and that's the cleavage it gives rise to populist parties when these parties can say the establishment is all united they don't represent you whether you vote conservative or labor makes no difference uh they're they're together plague on all their houses and that's been that was said really by farage's party and trump um in america in a different way perhaps by the scottish nationalist party i'm not calling let me hasten a populist party but it's saying the differences between labour and conservative don't really matter that much the key issue is whether you're really a proud national scot or not so um i think all this cast out on the central purpose of the european union which was to create european unity that nationalism seemed much stronger and i suggested that this popular disenchantment if not checked would uh cause serious problems and since i wrote it the rejection in 2005 of the eu constitutional proposed eu constitution by france and the netherlands two of the countries assumed to be at the heart of the european project has confirmed my view and the 2008 credit crunch has led as did the wall street crash in 1929 to a revival of nationalism and populism and a weakening in philosophies of internationalism social democracy and christian democracy in many countries not only in the eu let me say now the eu leaders i think have done very little to counter popular alienation from the project perhaps they haven't in fact read my chapter now brexit challenges what might be called the ideology of europe because it's a serious matter for any democratic organization when a major member state decides to leave and president macron france gave an interview in bbc in early 2017 when he was very honest he said he couldn't guarantee you wouldn't get the same result in france you had in britain if there was a referendum and he said the european union must respond to brexit with appropriate institutional and other reforms and i'll be looking at some of those other reforms a bit later and donald tusk uh the former president of the european council declared as president in 2016 after the referendum it would be a fatal error to assume that the negative result in the uk referendum represents a specifically british issue the brexit vote is a desperate attempt to answer the question and the question that millions of europeans ask themselves daily and before the referendum tuscan said the eu needs to take a long hard look at itself and listen to the british warning signal now i think the central problem of the eu is it's been unable to represent the people of europe effectively now the essence of a democratic political organization is that it represents and representation is of course a key concept in in britain and you may argue it's at the very core of what it means to be british you may argue to be british is to wish to continue to be represented in the house of commons and of course if you're a nationalist if you your support of the snp i think that proves my point because they are saying well we do go to westminster but we don't want to continue to be represented there we want to get independence to scotland so we can take our mps away as the irish did after the first world war and be fully self-governing in edinburgh now the idea of representation does imply that decisions are made by a majority and the minority accept that a minority no doubt hoping to become the majority at the next election so there must be some degree of homogeneity or unity amongst the electorate hobbes in levathan says a multitude of men are made one person when they are by one man or one person represented now of course some minorities don't accept that and i mentioned the scottish nationalists they don't say we are a minority in britain they say we're a majority in scotland and that's what the shin fein mps in ireland did in the 1918 election they said we we don't recognize westminster boycotted and the shin feinstein the snp does of course boycotted but they don't see themselves as part of a minority now perhaps there's some analogy between the position of the snp as they see themselves in westminster and our position in the eu we didn't really see ourselves as part of that hole perhaps we didn't feel we had enough in common with the other member states just as the snp doesn't feel had enough in common with people south of the border that we didn't want to enter the other european member states with them into a political union and accept common laws and policies now um this was an issue i think obscured when we entered in 1973 and the heath government issued a statement saying that it involved no sacrifice of essential national sovereignty and that begs two questions the first is what is essential one which people might disagree but secondly perhaps more important the powers and obligations of the european union were not at that time at least a closed category which could be defined in advance they were going to be developed they're going to be new common policies now until the introduction of the principle of subsidiarity in the maastricht treaty perhaps not even then there was no inherent limit to the common policies which the eu might adopt by contrast with federal states such as america there was no states rights clause in the eu structure the american constitution has such a clause in the 10th amendment which says that anything not done by the eu is reserved by sorry by the federal government is reserved to the states now our debate when we entered was only about what might be called peripheral committee stage type issues the length of the transition period the contribution to the eu budget and so on the terms if you like but not the basic principle did we wish to merge our fortunes with a new political unit now after we joined we had all sorts of problems as you all know and the basic issue was avoided through patching up margaret thatcher's budget negotiations which which resulted in a rebate agreed in 1984 and various contrivances in particular many opt-outs we had and also the conservatives had a special relationship with the european people's party which is committed to a federal europe of course the conservatives are not but they were allowed special leeway but we were never made to face up to the full implications of political union very interestingly we thought with poland we had an opt-out on the european charter of fundamental rights but the bencar boosh case of 2017 decided by the supreme court uh here as important i think constitution is factor team show that we didn't that we were as much subject to the charters every other member state that surely follows from a logic of political union because how can a genuine community have different standards of rights in different parts of that community now in britain there's been some discontent not in scotland so much but south of the border in the european convention of human rights and the government has set up a review committee to consider its implications but the european union charter is much more far-reaching than the convention with 54 articles i'll give some brief examples an article 13 right to academic freedom which of course i value very much an article 14 right vocational and continual training a specific article 21 right non-discrimination on grounds such as sex race color ethnic or social origin genetic features language religion or belief political or any other opinion membership of a national minority property birth disability age or sexual orientation and this afternoon like the european convention provides explicit protection for members of the lgbt community article 24 writes of the child article 25 rights of the elderly there's a huge uh catalogue article 34 right to social security article 35 right to health care article 38 right to environmental protection now i wonder if people in britain would really prepare to accept the implication of this charter i think um in passing i might mention i believe the scots are much keen around i believe i i'm open to correction does the snp want to incorporate the charter into the um provisions of the scotland act it's as far as they affect evolved matters but i'm having to correction on that i know they're much more sympathetic to the european convention than england is but my my broad question is to what extent would we have been prepared to accept the implications and all this illustrates my point but a presupposition of effective representation is that those represented feel they belong to a single community and that is what makes majority rule acceptable now there is a second requirement for effective representation it is that there be an effective party system the israeli famously said you cannot have parliamentary government unless you have party government there must be parties broadly united on matters of public policy competing parties so the executive can be accountable to the legislature in which they are represented and if we do not like one government of one party we can turn it out and replace it with another you couldn't do that easily i think if parties were purely regional if there was one party say in the north of britain and another party of the south uh it would be difficult because the south might always have a majority be difficult for either party to win over floating voters and the same is true with a party system based on religion or nationality such as you had in northern ireland uh under storm on the old stormont between 1922 and 72 there was no real possibility of an alternative government since the unionists who were predominantly protestants were a permanent majority so democracy requires some alternative system sometimes called consociational democracy which northern ireland now has system of power now party secures a broad correspondence between the views of the government and those of the electorate not perfect certainly under our electoral system not perfect but broadly and uh clearly a parliament of 650 independents couldn't do that nor could a parliament compose of chance and contingent majorities as was the case with the parliaments for fourth and fifth republics in france and possibly italy today now can these ideas of representation be made effective in the eu now the eu of course a difficult organization to understand i think madeleine albright the former american secretary of state once said to understand the eu you have to be either a genius or french now i'm neither but i shall do my best now an italian political scientist called sergio fabrini has written the european union is like the united states what he calls a compound democracy and by that he means a political system divided not only territorially along federal type lines but with a division of powers at the center in the united states between the president congress and supreme court in europe between the council the commission of parliament and the european court of justice now of course there are huge differences between the two political systems but the one i want to concentrate on is that in the europe there's no um analogy in america to a main institution in the european union which is the commission that is not directly elected but is given the sole power of a legitimate initiative and that we find difficult to understand because we think the power of legislative initiative should be given only to those who've been elected it's a political power and we have as they do in canada australia and new zealand a broad separation of powers between those who are elected and accountable to parliament who form the government and civil servants who are not accountable to parliament who are career officials non-partisan neutral and serve governments of any political color and of course you have that in scotland if the snp were defeated in the elections to holly roode then the civil service would serve just as loyally a conservative labor or liberal democrat or coalition administration whatever it is um so um we find it difficult to understand the continental conception of the unelected politician or the elected official and many years ago i heard a conservative mp address a member of the commission the late mr thin gundala as an official and mr gundam bristled and i suspect that jacques de la would have brittled even more but we don't understand how a non-elected person can enjoy such wide powers as those wielded by the law now the commission has admittedly become weaker since the end of the laws reign in 1995 he was the most activist president of the commission that europe has known but nevertheless it does retain a distinctly political power now how can you get effective representation and democratic accountability in a system of this kind there are two answers the first is by analogy with other separation of power systems such as the american or the french where there's a unifying element in the direct election of the executive a presidential system now that system just like the british system of parliamentary representation requires a fairly unified and homogeneous community now american its history of course had a problem in this regard because in 1861 the southern states declared they were not a minority in the united states but a majority of their own in a new confederate nation which they sought to create then gladstone said the south had created a notion and possibly on grounds of self-determination he was right but whatever the arguments the north had superior force and so the indissoluble federal union came into existence the second method of securing accountability is through a parliamentary parliamentary method through a european parliament elected as it is by universal suffrage and through a broadly common roughly similar electoral system that itself raises two problems the first is the problem of what is the eu executive which is responsible to the european parliament what is the common government and to whom it is accountable now the founding fathers such as john monet believed that the commission would be that government and that in the unified europe the council of ministers representing the member states would be the upper house of the european parliament on the model of abundant germany which represents the german states and angela merkel speaking to the european parliament in november 2010 reiterated that view and she actually predicted the commission would eventually become the government of the eu now if you hold that view the commission must be not what it is now a commission representing broadly all streams of opinion in europe but a partisan commission representing the left or the right and that would mean if the european parliament doesn't like its policies it could remove the commission and replace it with one more to its liking or if the voters do not approve of the commission they can turn it out through their votes at the next european election and replace it by another in addition if a commissioner makes a mistake as ursula van der lion did over vaccinations she would be accountable to the european parliament through a vote of confidence as ministers are both in in london and in hollywood now perhaps of underlying mistake uh in invoking article 16 of the northern ireland protocol to prevent eu vaccines coming into britain via northern ireland casts a shaft of light on the central weakness of the institutional structure of the eu because does it not show the failure to anticipate public reactions both in britain and ireland is dangerous for a body which is only indirectly accountable if at all to the people and whose members have not had to undergo the gamut of popular and media scrutiny now some argue the commission is too much peopled with politicians who put it mildly have not always been successful at national level and the parliamentary system someone who makes a mistake of this sort would be immediately met with a no-conference motion that didn't happen with mr underlying and um her name was not before the voters of europe in the 2019 european parliament no one voted for it and apparently she didn't even apply for the post as president of the commission now in theory the transnational political parties in the european parliament could yield left or right coalitions which would make accountability of the commission feasible but a partisan commission would of course be a great innovation and would alter its role it would no longer be a kind of neutral power over and above the member states the body dedicated the common good rather like the body in the fourth french republic the kamisara du plan from which the idea of the commission derives that kamisari incidentally was chaired by jean monet and i think that's where he got the idea but parliamentary accountability in the eu requires as i've said a fairly homogeneous and unified electorate in the 27 member states it would entail that europe had genuinely become a community now perhaps it was when it was founded in 1958 with six member states excluding britain of course and perhaps if there was an inner core of just a few member states which favored further integration uh it might be a community but is a media community amongst 27 states i think we're very far from that now all sorts of measures have been produced with the purpose of helping to make europe a political community a customs union which helped make germany a political community in the 19th century the so-called zolvarim direct elections for european parliament the creation of transnational political parties creation of the single market creation of the single currency co-decision of the european parliament of the council the spitzer candidate idea and now banking and fiscal union but none of them have succeeded in achieving the aim of securing a unified and homogeneous european community all were thought to be game changes but none of them have in fact been they have not succeeded the main divisions in the eu remain those between member states on burden sharing between the so-called hanseatic states led by the netherlands and others on the use of the rule of law between the ex-communist states in the east and those in the west there is not that sense of common and unified allegiance needed for a system of parliamentary accountability to work and the transformation from a technocratic to a political system rather than a confederal system cannot i suspect be achieved by institutional reforms at all but only by a slow transformation of the culture of the european electorate into a more homogenous whole and that's likely to be a long process now some federal states have sped up that process by the use of force after the war the america i've already mentioned germany with bismarck's wars and switzerland with the war in the 1840s but a war is not really an option i think available to the european union so it follows the european parliament does not have the same relationship to the peoples of europe that domestic legislators had to their own peoples most europeans continue to give primary allegiance to the legislatures of their member state not the european parliament whose elections attract a much smaller turnout people feel more represented by their national parliaments rather than the european parliament and some see the european parliament representing not the european people but the political class them and not us it seems remote from those whom it seems to represent and indeed many in europe do not know who their mep actually is i wonder i won't ask to embarrass anyone but i wonder if those in the audience especially those who were enthusiastic about the european union could have named who their meps were when we were actually in the european union but as i won't embarrass the audience by asking for show of hands now the commission is not only geographically remote like the parliament it's also institutionally remote because not chosen by the people of europe inherently remote and it's seen even more than the parliament as part of an alienated superstructure in practice of course the real decision-making body of the eu is the council of ministers the executive and that can't be responsible european parliament because it's composed of ministers of the member states responsible to their own parliaments and it's only accountable to the voters in a very indirect way no doubt in theory it would be possible that each of the 27 states to remove their governments and replace them with 27 other governments committed to a different policy in europe but that's unlikely so the european parliament can't in practice replace one eu executive with another or one set of policies with another nor can european voters and the council clearly isn't accountable to national parliaments once majority voting was introduced with a veto you could be because you could say to a minister why didn't you use your veto but now with qualified majority voting the minister might say well i argued against but was overruled and no one can tell what the minister did argue against or how effectively he or she argued so national legislatures can't really scrutinize the council and if the legislature can't scrutinize the process how can the people how can the people say we do not like what you've done we want an alternative policy so the council remains outside the area of political challenge it is difficult to make it accountable before decisions are made since that a bit of subject in negotiation and governments say as john major famously did in 1997 in relation to the common currency please don't tie my hands in the negotiations trust me to get the best possible deal for the country now parliament could perhaps in theory seek to limit the scope of what a government can do and sometimes westminster did that and it's often done in denmark i think which has special machinery because they have regular minority governments which the single chamber parliament wants to bind but i don't think the eu could operate if all 27 governments were to work in that fashion now after when negotiations have been completed it's very difficult for a legislature to untie the package so national parliaments are commentators on the process rather than bodies to which their governments are accountable so there's a power shift from national parliaments national governments national executives and the powers of each government come to be shared with the governments of the other member states powers external to themselves with which national parliaments and national electorates have little control now i mentioned earlier president macro and he's put some what some wide-ranging proposals forward for the reform of europe in a speech in the sorbonne in september 2017 and a further speech to french ambassadors shortly afterwards he said there should be reform of the eurozone so to secure a coordinated european economic policy and a common budget under the control of a common minister and subject to parliamentary controlled european level he also advocated convergence on tax and social policies now past crises in europe have indeed led to further integration and the some talk today about a conference on the future of europe the re-launching of the european union much talk on new economic and budgetary instruments to place the euro on stronger foundations some talk of a fiscal union and covet has already led to an extension of the eu's reach with a 750 billion euro recovery fund the eu is now borrowing and redistributing money something fairly new and for the first time it's agreed to a common fiscal response to an economic shock and this is seen by some as a first step towards fiscal union but if what i've said is right the more common policies the eu develops the more remote it becomes from national governments and the people more common policies therefore in my view are dangerous now suppose the eu were to embrace fiscal union so that it rather than national governments made decisions on tax policy what would be left for national government and general elections after all these issues of economic policy are the issues on which domestic elections are fought monetary policy interest rates exchange rates fiscal policy tax rates now that wouldn't matter if the eu had acquired the same sort of allegiance that federal state has out of germany the united states canada and australia but really as we've seen i think it hasn't so brussels would be developing a fiscal capacity without the politics needed to hold itself to account the eu would have become an economic entity without the political infrastructure that would increase popular alienation from the eu and strengthen the appeal of populist parties and for this reason further integration seems to be the very last thing that europe needs there's a fundamental contrast between the eu and federal states in federal states to transfer powers say to them the american government the german government and so on is uh to transfer to an accountable government elected in europe it isn't it's to transfer powers in effect to an indirectly elected council of ministers which means further isolation from the people let me repeat my quotation from thomas holmes a multitude of men are made one person when they are by one man or one person represented has the eu succeed in creating that one person from a multitude clearly not in consequence populist parties have resurrected the question who in fact represents the people the european parliament or national parliaments the answer i fear is obvious and i also fear that the more common policies the eu develops the more targets there will be for the populist parties the more policies have transferred to the european level the greater the democratic deficit ministers will have to say even more than they do now not me chum i'm sorry you don't like this policy but there's nothing i can do about it and nothing you can do about it even if you change the government it won't make any difference because the limits on national accountability are also the limits on the ability of voters to alter policies of which they may disapprove and this leaves a vacuum which the populist parties have sought to fill and it's clear to me the problems faced by voters who've come to support the radical right in europe economic deprivation unregulated markets housing educational inequalities undermining of local communities lack of social mobility and so on these problems must be resolved at domestic level not at the level of europe now it's not surprising perhaps there are fundamental structural weaknesses in the whole eu project because the basic principles were laid down over 60 years ago in 1957 in the treaty of rome perhaps even earlier in the european coal and steel community in 1950 in very different conditions if you bought a set a car or radio set then how useful would it be today now i think the institutional remoteness of the eu is not an accident it was inherent in the conception of european integration held by jean monnet its founding father now monet was a great man who understood that european unity could not be achieved by goodwill goodwill needed instead to be embodied in common policies and common institutions but he exercised influence from behind the scene he never in his life held any elected position and perhaps it was for this reason he never fully appreciated that political legitimacy is secured primarily by direct election the principle fundamental to the british conception of parliamentary government the epigraph to monet's memoirs declares we are not forming coalitions between states but union among peoples but the people he had in mind were the elites who would construct europe by stealth using economic means to lock nation states together with the people perhaps being almost unaware of the process until it had become irreversible he hoped to achieve a united europe without it being wholly noticed by the people that might have been possible in the more deferential europe of the 1950s when the leaders led and the followers followed and an era when unelected officials enjoyed great pristine it is hardly possible in the europa today now in this sorbonne speech of 2017 president macron declared the founding fathers built european isolation of the people because they were an enlightened vanguard but as he then went on to say european democratic doubt put an end to that chapter and i think we were wrong to move for europe forward in spite of the people we must stop being afraid of the people we must simply stop building an isolation from them my basic proposition then is the european union needs to confront the problem of the democratic deficit and the greater the integration the greater the danger monet did not see this another frenchman president de gaulle did see it and some french gaulists have suggested bringing the commission under the control of the european council which represents the government of the member states the power to initiate legislation should be transferred from the commission to the council which would then be seen to be the executive of the eu the commission would become a secretary of the council and would lose the power to initiate legislation such a reform would help to undermine euroscepticism which thrives on the anatomic unelected and unaccountable legislative body something that we in britain in particular found difficult to understand or accept now the monetary law conception of europe which was responsible for the early successes of the european unity is now coming to appear moribund and as long ago as 1990 when the law told the european parliament strasbourg that he wanted europe to become a true federation by the end of the millennium french president mitterra watching a speech on television burst out but that's ridiculous what's he up to no one in europe would ever want that he by playing the extremists he's going to wreck what's achievable now you may find this ironic but there's a sense in which brexit britain together with gallis france could be said to have been in the vanguard of european development rather than hindrances to it because they appreciated britain thanks to a long evolutionary history and gaulists as a result of france's experiences during the second world war what the sacrifice of sovereignty would actually mean in practice some member states especially those which had recently emerged from dictatorships did not fully appreciate what the sacrifice of sovereignty would in fact mean in practice it was easy for them to say rhetorically that they favored sacrificing sovereignty but the new hansiatic league led by the netherlands when it comes to sharing debts greece when it came to budgetary restrictions and the visigrad countries of central europe czech republic hungary poland slovakia when it came to accepting a due quota of syrian migrants all found that their acceptance of shared sovereignty was subject to very strict limits questions affecting the fundamental national identity of member states cannot be settled by the qualified majority voting introduced in the single european act of 90s no issues relating to the single market so my conclusion is that europe can only be unified on a confederal basis what are the realities of europe to go last in his memoirs what are the pillars on which it can be built the truth is these pillars are the states of europe it europe will remain what de gaulle called a europe desert but a confederal europe would be an intergovernmental organization with a difference because member states would consider not only their own national interests but the entrance of europe as a whole the continent has suffered in the past from the absence of such a transnational perspective had it been there in 1914 had the states of europe considered the interests of the continent as a whole rather than restricting their gaze to their own national ambitions war would have been avoided perhaps then it is the gaul rather than ramone who should be regarded as the prophet of today's europe and perhaps in a confederal europe britain could have an honored place which it does not have in the european union moving towards integration towards ever closer union now i don't think it will ever achieve that in now let me add a coder to my talk how all this might apply to scotland now when discussing um scottish nationalism i used to speak of scottish separatism and i was taken to task by the snp and they were right to take me to task because um an independent scotland would not be separate it would be not part of the united kingdom but it would be part of the european union i should perhaps say this is a comparatively new policy for the scottish national party in the first eu referendum in 1975 the snp was the only party in scotland recommending that britain should leave the european union or european communities it was then they said that europe was even more remote than westminster from scotland's point of view and um the fear then in the referendum oddly enough in 1975 was that fairly opposite to that of 2016 that the rest of britain would vote yes to stay in europe but scotland don't know though in the event scotland did vote yes and only the shetland isles and the western isles voted to leave but the snp has in my view of paradoxical [Music] stance because it wants to leave a loosely organized european community in 1975 but wants to stay in a much more tightly integrated european union and it's odd in a way it seems to me that a national or nationalist movement wants to call it an outside power to help it in in running its affairs now the scotland would face the same question as britain faced does does she have enough in common with the other 27 member states would her interests be better guaranteed by the 27 states than westminster let's look first representation where scotland has 59 out of 650 seats in westminster and certainly the snp would not wish to form a government but scotland can sometimes have a government uh in accordance with the majority views as of course it did with labor in night between 1997 2010 earlier labor governments and then the conservatives in 1955 when the majority both of seats and voters supported the conservatives so in in the united kingdom scotland belongs to a parliament to which government is accountable now in the european union scotland would belong to an organization whose decisions we have seen are not accountable either the european parliament nor to hollyrood and therefore not to the voters and the limits to accountability would as it would britain be also the limit to the power of scotland's voters the powers of scotland's government would be shared with other governments external to itself over which it has no control and of course some powers would go back to the european union primarily fisheries and agriculture and from this point of view brexit meant a restoration of power for scotland because the evolution of agriculture and fisheries didn't mean much when policy in these areas would decide in brussels now scotland hasn't got as much devolution as it wanted in these areas the scotland act says that all powers in those areas should go back to scotland but some powers have been retained at westminster for good or ill but nevertheless returning to the eu would weaken the evolution in scotland and weaken it further if scotland joined the euro the common currency and matters flowing from that how to do with inflation for example scotland's current budget depth is eight percent under the eurozone rules it would have to be reduced to three percent and i fear the policies needed to reduce it to three percent would make george osborne uh look a bit like santa claus or father christmas because they would involve very heavy expenditures in um sorry heavy cuts in public expenditure heavy tax rises now it's um remembering that the freedom we had from being out of the eurozone enabled gordon brown at the time of the currency the the credit crunch of 2007-8 to devalue the pound in effect by 25 which i think reduced unemployment certainly compared with the eurozone countries now um the eu can of course develop more common policies i've said there's no obvious limit to the powers and obligations which scotland has to accept in advance and so with more economic powers under the eu scotland might have as little autonomy in economic affairs as she has under westminster and also the snp defense policy might be under threat if the eu develops or some wishing to do a common defense and foreign policy and then of course as a hard border with the uk as the uk now has with france now sometimes when i've talked about scotland some people i think none in the audience now i'm sure but some people have been rude enough to say who are you as an englishman to discuss these matters with scotland and tell us what to do you should keep off the grass leave us to make our own decisions none of your business to give us advice well fair enough but in the european union people from 27 other states will not only be giving advice to scotland but telling her how she should organize her affairs in certain areas the eu legislates for scotland and parliament can do nothing about it the supreme right to legislate and the power to impose certain taxes will be with europe and hollywood will not be able to call europe to account but will be in the position of a commentator on eu policy scotland as i understand it has a principle not of the sovereignty of parliament but the sovereignty of the people and that was shown in the 2014 referendum and of course in the devolution referendum that principle cannot be maintained in my view if scotland were to join the european union so i come back to my book that uh the conclusion of the book is that brexit was not an aberration either britain off the european union it's yesterday's issue in a way and i think instead of saying it was a good thing or a bad thing we should start to learn the lessons and perhaps one good place to start learning the lessons is the glasgow philosophical society and so i look forward very much to your comments thank you for listening to me here we are back again right that's a lot of questions uh i think can you hear me yes yes well why don't we start off with um a simple question from colin brown why would scotland in the eu be any less sovereign than the other 27 sovereign nations in other words if they're happy with it why wouldn't scotland well she wouldn't be less sovereign than the other 27 um she'd be less sovereign than as part of the united kingdom because the um other countries are not sovereign either and their traditions are different from those of scotland which has tradition not only perhaps or not mainly a parliamentary sovereignty but sovereignty of the people and that is weakened in the european union the other countries had different motives primarily to overcome a past in in the case of germany france italy and so on or to escape from communism i mean scotland doesn't have that problem and it is odd to say you want to be independent but then to be a subordinate unit in a larger um body that's not independence because a lot of decisions on economics particularly trade and all sorts of other things are made elsewhere now you may say some of these decisions are made elsewhere now westminster but these are represented there and the ministers are accountable to you and it's possible for scotland to choose play a large part in choosing its own government they elect one in 11 of the mps sitting at westminster that's my answer of course i suppose it comes down to a sense of identity doesn't it which seems to play such an important part emotionally in people yeah now i can understand that i have more sympathy with someone who wants an independent scotland outside the eu and say you know we want to be on our own like norway or iceland or switzerland i can see that what i can't see is how that sense of identity um is compatible with um eu membership which wants to merge the identity to a larger political unit um that's what i find odd well many people in in scotland look to ireland i have a question from trisha ford who says why are other small countries in the eu eg island doing well have ireland done so well look at what happened to her in 2010 when she had to be bailed out by the rest of the eu and also by britain which is often not remembered gave her a loan on uh less onerous conditions in the eu at a lower rate of interest ah had heavy unemployment because of her membership of the euro which we avoided now um i'll have special reasons for for a european orientation because it gives them a separate role from that of the rest of the united kingdom of course but um the position of many people in ireland been weakened i think because for example there was for a long time after irish independence there was discrimination against the minority catholic population of northern ireland i had irish mps as a whole been at westminster that have been a very powerful pressure group on their behalf and that wasn't there now of course there's no similar problem in scotland but like you're saying you see what they're saying or your question is saying really and i put this in an article in the daily telegraph there's a marriage which has gone on for 300 years it's very very irritating and there are a few marriages that at some point people aren't irritated and perhaps there are many in which one of the partners says i'd like to leave but do you leave a marriage to be not on your own but to have 27 other mistresses now i mean you know some of these mysteries are far away isn't latvia or poland or slovenia are they going to be actually interested in scotland leaves their needs are quite different from those of scotland and as i say some of scotland's powers in fisheries agriculture go back to the eu so you get less devolution than you've got under westminster under the current system so i can't see it i'd have more sympathy in a way i wouldn't support it like more simply if scott said we want independence but not in the we don't want an outside body we've got full confidence around our own affairs we don't need to be helped by an outside body like the eu and that was the snp's position in 1975. i mean it's odd now that when the eu's much more integrated they say well we'd like to be integrated with them too that's not it just strikes me as rather odd somebody is asked should the uk also be built on a confederal basis in the way you were suggesting might be suitable could that could you see that vernon happened you can't have conflict with in britain some people have argued with federal which i think is is absurd because i think it doesn't suit england but scotland has a lot of the powers that the federal the youth and federal government would have it's got very wide devolution and i think the important thing now in our constitutional arrangements with regard to scotland and wales for that matter it's them to use the power they've got effectively i mean there are problems that everyone knows with education and health in scotland and it's arguable these powers aren't being used as effective as they might be used and it's important to say you see that this is a matter of uk concern for example a bit of a skills gap in scotland because the government cut places in further education to pay for free university tuition now if there's a skills shortage in scotland which i think there is a matter of concerns with the whole united kingdom and we are we i mean british government i think might should do something about it uh actually i'm not sure the eu would be very bothered frankly we've got another question on about the eu and the uk should the uk treat the eu as a country or an international organization as far as diplomatic recognition is concerned no it's more than an international organization i i think we want good relations with the eu and i i don't get any point in having pinpricks i mean they've been pinpricks on both sides it's fair to say not just for british government i think frankly have been more pinpricks on the eu side but still um no i i see no reason against recognition somebody's challenging you uh leslie buchanan says on a point of fact the professor wildly overstates the power of the commission which is in fact the eu's bureaucracy subject controlled by both the council of ministers and the european parliament both of these are elected directly and indirectly my question is can the professor not see that he advocates a council of despair where the uk leaves a multinational group run by consent to return to the joys of the nation state which gave us 1914 and 39. well there are two points here firstly on the commission i agree its powers are not what it had under the law but it is the only power that can initiate legislation that is a key power that's why i'd want the positions suggested or the position the question would like to see i think actually put into effect with the commission being a secretariat of the council of ministers i think that would regularize things and make the position much clearer on the broader point yes i think it's a pity we left i voted remain and partly for the well mainly i think for the reason that um the questioner gave the eu's basically a peace project and it's not an economical federal project in a way and i wanted britain to be part of that but we're not and we have to make the best of it uh and brexit was was a mistake but that argument's over now it's yesterday's argument um and we're not a nation state we're a country of sometimes had four nations actually three nations northern ireland in the nation uh we've got three nations and a contested province i think we've done quite well in holding nations together with scotland over 300 years wales since 1536 i think we've done too badly um i think it's a bit i say pity to break up a marriage over irritations one of the worst arguments used to break it up i think is that people don't like boris johnson but boris johnson prime minister for a given period of time he should break up the union and break it up forever now other people wonder about the long-term future of the eu is it likely to have a long-term future other multinational unions like the soviet union have broken down and become separate countries again could that be the outcome we might not want it but could that happen it could happen i hope it doesn't i mean it might well happen i think if for example marine le pen won the french presidential election certainly a possibility or perhaps if the afd came to power in germany which i profoundly hope they won't it could happen i deeply regret it did happen because i think the cause of as your previous question said was she's absolutely right nationalism and my conception of the eu would contain national through a con more confederal unit of people thinking about europe not just their own countries i profoundly hope the european union doesn't break up but of course it is a possibility it's uh it can't be excluded um why did the principle of subsidiarity disappear yeah has it been retained do you think it would have been prevented or mitigated any of the problems to my knowledge it hasn't had much practical effect i'm open to correction on this but i don't think the courts have used it to strike down um uh european union laws um [Music] but i'm open to correction others may know more about this than i do good could uh i got a question could could we play uh a constructive role even though we're outside the eu could we play some sort of constructive role in helping europe rethink its whole agenda we i mean we're used to historically playing a part in europe trying to keep the people from warring each other and holding a balance of power we still have a lot of respect and influence maybe when this government has changed well yes i think we should be constructive i think particularly on defense policy we're the only nuclear power with the french and i think we should certainly cooperate with the french and other european countries on defense and foreign policy if we can more generally if president macron's idea of concentric circles comes in he did say britain would have a place in such a europe if there were such europe and with a loose outer ring we might well find a place there we haven't got a place in the current integrated europe but we might have a place in that and i mean i'm in very much in agreement with your with the idea of your question of a bit of us making a constructive approach to europe yes and what's happened to bodies like the ea somebody else wants to know well yes that's um norway's um part of that and that the eea is in the internal market but not the customs union and the problem with that is that um that requires free movement of people and of course one of the motives behind the brexit vote was we don't want the free movement of people now the internal market would give us closer access than what we've got at the moment under the free trade agreement but as i say it involves free move to people it may be the labor party takes up that issue and argues the election for a closer relationship with europe what about the council of europe vernon yeah that's um that's um an intergovernmental body and the european convention of human rights comes from the council of europe not the european union that's an older instrument from about 1950 51 um which the human rights act broadly brings into our law the scottish government actually incorporated it into a system excuse me um that still exists yes but it has no the european union is distinctive in its a superior legal order to westminster just as in america the federal government to appear a legal order to that of the member states and in australia canada and so on it's a distinctive organization um it's obviously pretty confusing sometimes for the electorate to understand the range of these bodies you hear people getting confused about human rights where it comes from yes it makes you wonder whether there's a better communication system would be helpful across europe there's a question here about northern ireland which is bugging a lot of people now i've lost it but um question is the issue of northern ireland straddling the uk and eu customs there's got to be a border somewhere it seems to me and everybody else what do we do well one of the sad things about brexit is that it resurrects the irish question and the whole point of the good friday agreement was that it matters less whether you're a unionist or a nationalist and um one of the effects was that someone in northern ireland who wished could be an irish citizen as an alternative to or in addition to being a british so it is now the um the brexit resurrects that issue and it polarizes nationalists and unionists and one issue in which it polarizes the question of the border that obviously as you say must be a border with the eu and that border could be in one of two places it's either in the irish sea which it is in effect at present or it's on the island of ireland our problem is if it's in the irish sea it bisects the united kingdom and i wonder whether other countries put up with that would france agree to a customs border with alsace lorraine or italy with the alto rdj i think probably not and after the grace period some goods coming into northern ireland will need customs declarations now the unionists say and i have some sympathy with them this is unacceptable it's one country but as i say you're faced with a binary choice the borders either in this irish sea or it's on the island's island having people tried to think of ways in which to mitigate the border a bit by having things like trusted traders because it's really about whether what we do about trade and if we could have a system whereby some people just were trusted to behave and fill out the forms without inspection except for snappy pensions from time to time might it seem less of a problem you can mitigate it yes i wonder if you the method you've suggested can stop smuggling or people taking advantage of different regulations you see suppose we have an agreement with the americans and we have the dreaded chlorinated chicken now that's not getting the alcohol it's a good thing or not but let's say we have a trade agreement with them now the eu says well our standards don't let chlorinated chicken in how can you ensure that people aren't sending chlorinated chicken from great britain's and northern ireland the only way you can do it is i think by checking its standards it's not so much the customs duties perhaps but the standards the regulations as i say it raises the question of where these checks are to take place they have to be such checks but they didn't actually take place at any border wherever it is you can have an electronic border have the checks elsewhere but the conceptual border must be somewhere okay another question um from jamie burton isn't the problem that a genuine free market requires fiscal governance which requires a political union in other words it is all or nothing so long as the eu remains a free market union no look you can you can have free trade with anyone without ex and obviously you have to accept their rules if you want to trade with them um if you're trading with um i don't know um let's say france and they won't accept chlorinated chicken obviously you have to accept that but you don't need political unions and traders we have we can have free trade with australia or new zealand or japan without getting into a political union the element the key element of the um uh eu is the zolvarine the customs union and the purpose for that is to create a political union and the customs unit and then the internal single market those do require a political uh supervision if you like but free trade doesn't we we were free trade country from 1846 there wasn't any question political union with the rest of the world could we now turn to the question of the commonwealth which you talk about in your book when we when we were debating whether to join or not one of the big questions was what about the preference of commonwealth getting cheaper food instead of having to pay the cap and having to pay for expensive yeah but i haven't noticed since we've left a great flooding of cheap food from the commonwealth why not well let's see but look um the whole point the common agricultural policy would have no point if food in europe was cheaper than food outside it only has a point by keeping out cheaper food but you wouldn't need a common agricultural policy if eu prices were lower they're not and therefore it's open to us to have cheaper foods open to us to alter our system of agricultural subsidies back to the old efficiency payment system we don't need to have guaranteed high prices and that was one of that we were naturally a free trade nation from 1846 as a commercial and industrial nation we had a small agricultural sector by contrast with the most of the countries in the eu which is why they had the cap and it suited them it didn't suit us you see what would have suited us would have been free trade in agriculture but not in industry to shelter inefficient companies but of course the germans and french didn't want that they wanted free trade where they had the advantage but not uh in agriculture where they had um an uneconomic agricultural set large peasant sector partly political reasons for them to keep it strong and so they had a policy which suited their needs but not our needs and was there before we joined the same with the common fisheries policy which surely scotland has suffered from uh which suits them but not us and that was the price we paid for getting in one of the reasons why we were heavy net contributors always have been yeah so we i suppose i was sort of wondering whether new zealand australia and africa would would suddenly see an opportunity to to sell us more produce anyone anyone have said to buy food in the cheapest market yes as our agricultural subsidy system before we joined europe was a deficiency payments made by the government through the tax plan which didn't involve higher prices but paid the difference between what the food was on the market and what the farmers needed now the government as i understand is adopting a variance of that system uh to encourage environmental protections on so you may be paying a little more for that but obviously we can now buy the cheapest market in terms of agricultural goods and motorcars as well but yes we can we can buy from where we want we no longer it was a protected market here agricultural market let's talk about services for a minute i think you mentioned in your book there's some 300 services which were never really unified under yeah membership yeah we were expected to accept free movement of capital and labor but not of services yes wasn't that a big i mean there's a bit of hamburg there you're right um they wouldn't give you one of the reasons i i thought we had a good deal in europe because we had a balance and we had the opt-outs and things we didn't like but they wouldn't give us that on free movement they were dogmatic about it but as you imply they're not so dogmatic about free movement absurdity you try setting up as an architect in france or germany or dare i say to the hairdresser you'll find lots of the examinations and quality occasions which are really forms of protection and they they might have given us to the eu always puts forward high principles but these principles are very very flexible when you suit their interests would be flexible um as ms von deland found out and um so you know i think the the angle american arrest mr trick there but there but perhaps cameron wasn't false enough who knows but i think if we'd been given concessions on immigration we'd have stayed in the eu on the other hand dr julie armstrong says that shared research and development in technological developments is a major success in the eu and we've been a major leader in research and development and it's good to have that you know on food regulation environmental regulations etc shared intelligence we're going to be worse off aren't we now well you can do that without political union if you look at research the israelis share a lot of research with europe they're not in the eu we can do that um and we can we can arrange bilateral agreements on particular things that we want to um this is valuable as the question says but it doesn't necessarily require political union um [Music] and that i say the presupposition of political union is that you feel part of one large community which i don't think the british do and i suspect frankly the scots don't either actually but i may be wrong yes somebody's asked a question about the border between scotland and england yeah would you like the border problem in northern ireland well there'd be a hard border of course because britain is outside the customs union and the um internal market it's the heart brexit if you like and therefore there must be some means of checking on my chlorinated chicken example suppose the rest of the uk signed an agreement with america free trade agreement bringing chlorinated chicken and the eu doesn't want chlorinated chicken they'll have to stop that happening and then they'd have to be passports because we don't have the free movement of peoples so uh there'd be gonna be there are restrictions already on eu immigration and those restrictions would apply to scotland so families and friends would be divided would be less so if we'd have a softer brexit that like theresa may's which kept us in the customs union but even so i think with different immigration policies you need passports um yes it's a hard border which um i think lessens the case for scottish independence in my personal opinion obviously the snp doesn't agree but that's my personal view the harder the border the less viable independence is really and it would divide a lot of families and friends it's interesting isn't it that i've noticed that when we've got big i mean i'm just as bad when we've got very complex discussions people leap to a single image like having to have straight cucumbers which was boyce's thing yeah fluorinated chicken i wonder whether we don't fall into a trap where we use these things as tokens for something that they're not really able to carry i was in america last year and talked to quite a lot of americans and they were appalled to think they were eating chlorinated chicken they said we're not where do you get this idea from we wouldn't eat that we're very keen on our food being pure now they may have been liberal west coast people but i do wonder sometimes whether we throw these things around instead of really trying to understand the issue well that may be but the standards and regulations of other countries are obviously different why should they not be america japan australia wherever you like to look countries with which we trade and the eu does insist on certain standards they may be right they may be wrong you can argue without some say they're protectionists others say they're necessary for health and so on but there's a difference and therefore the eu will need to check this why it has these standards um if the standard the same the goods can go through but they have to check i mean if if there's no chlorinated chicken the eu says fine this can come through but i say they have to check to find out and forms have to be filled and a lot of extra bureaucracy another reason i was against a lot of extra bureaucracy uh amount of your forms filled in and checked and so that's the cost of business and then that's uh one of the disadvantages of brexit i think right well then we're coming near to an end now could i and we've had lots of interesting questions i've managed to get most of them in could could you sum up you could you mentioned very very nicely at the beginning that you were pleased to be speaking to this 219 year old philosophical society could you leave us with a two or three thoughts on what we as a society should be over the next two or three years trying to promote by way of discussion and debate to try and move this forward in some creative way well i think there probably does need to be a discussion about the constitutional future of the united kingdom not i think so much scotland but how england should have devolution for itself if that's what you're interested in i think another discussion is very worrying about scotland the educational standards particularly skills as i mentioned um but also i think standards in the schools but one of the problems we have outside brexit is that we're much more dependent on our skills and our brains and if you look at those countries that are broadly successful economic in the modern world places like singapore um taiwan hong kong and so on they've got very few natural resources but they you they use their brains they place a very high premium on education which traditionally the scots have done much more than the english and um if the scots could tell us how to adopt a more radical skills policy um that would be doing a lot of good you see that the model the brexiteers had um was really um a model a kind of factorized model but outside the eu we could be more competitive we deregulate we reduce subsidies and tariffs we would uh ideally before covid reduce personal and corporate taxes to get entrepreneurs here to make us a kind of singapore or new zealand or australia whatever it is now that probably won't happen but whatever sorts of policy adopt we do need much greater skills and adaptability which we haven't got it's been a problem britain as a whole has faced less so scotland i think for many many years and if you could do something about that and suggest a skills policy both for scotland and the rest of the country so we've got wonderful universities our universities both in england and scotland edinburgh glasgow other universities amongst the best in the world no question but we do badly on those who are interested in technical and vocational education always have them we look down on people like sort of dirtying their hands as it were we do very badly there we do well academically but not on this other area and this is i think something you might look at really well thank you for that we that's a very good point and we'll take that up and now on behalf of all the people we've had a hundred and over 140 people joining in i'd like to thank professor bogdanor for most interesting stimulating talk and especially on the q a part at the end i hope you uh i'd love to uh give you a bottle of whiskey or something it'll have to be from the moment i'm not enjoying to think i'm sorry i wasn't able to be in glasgow it's a wonderful city but um before the passports are needed i'm sorry i couldn't come but um

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Length: 81min 33sec (4893 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021