Interestingly, Friedrich Merz, head of the German Christian Democrats, believes that:
'The continental Europeans were not entirely blameless when it came to Brexit... We lost patience with the special role that Britain always played in European politics. We didn’t do enough to help them come to a different referendum result'!
Bittersweet for Remainers, but an indication that their/our own campaigning failings were compounded by complacency(?) in the EU about the referendum.
This man, Friedrich Merz, is one who knows only one agenda: Himself. Not unlike Davis Cameron, who brought the biggest self-inflicted disaster in the UK's modern history single-handedly upon the country, just in order to boost his electoral chances.
His analysis is incorrect though: The EU implemented several institutional reforms before the referendum with the sole purpose of giving the British government better prospects for the referendum.
undo the devastating effects of 40 years of lies and hypocrisy (mostly by the Tories, but Labour, especially Jimmy Corbyn, isn't free from blame) regarding the European project.
We also have to see Merz's statement in the context of domestic policies: His party is, under his leadership, heavily turning towards neoliberal politics. The UK has always been the home of such policies in the EU (favouring big business, cutting down on social programs).
Merz's Conservatives strongly oppose, he wants to shape the Europe Union into something like a "Common Market", not an ever closer political and social union with improved democratic representation, he is very sympathetic to British politics from Thatcher to Cameron.
Then there is the propaganda effect: Despite Germany being by far the largest net contributor to the EU's budget, the European project is still widely accepted in German politics and part of the country's
He cannot publicly take an anti EU stance. What he can do, is to play the narrative that we (the Germans) have to cut into the organization's unionist agenda in order to prevent centrifugal forces from rising.
Of course, this is an intellectual fallacy: You don't strengthen a union by weakening it, but nowhere in the world have conservatives ever been interested in intellectual sound policies, just think of climate change.
Thanks so much for this context, which is what I love about Mastodon - really interesting to read.
I always thought the left-leaning supporters of Brexit (Lexiters) were actually doing the EU a favour by removing one of the strongest advocates of he neo-liberal direction of EU policy - in this their criticism was misdirected, they saw the EU as 'naturally' neoliberal, whereas the UK had been driving it... in some ways it was an unacknowledged self-sacrifice for the Euro-left (?)
However, neither the UK, nor the EU have ever had monolithic policies.
You can blame the EU for neoliberalism in the sense that it always favoured big corporations, but you can (from a neoliberal perspective) also blame it for being "socialist", as it enforces common standards and dedicates a lot of money into improving economic and social conditions in its poorer areas.
Yes, this is why I always had a problem with the term 'neoliberalism' and for years advised my students to use it carefully & sparingly - I always preferred corporate-driven capitalism, contrasting that with various forms of regulatory capitalism.... my view was always rooted in the varieties of capitalism literature.
Thanks for your engagement this morning which I've really found helpful/fruitful
On your last point; one of my last PhD students (who continues with another supervisor now I've retired), was unpicking the history of 'neoliberalism' entirely on this basis, that it was a betrayal of actual liberalism - he was heavily interested in the role of the Atlas Network, which he saw as being the locus of much of the ideological pivot.
It's a fascinating topic, although I thought that this (the stark difference between neoliberalism and traditional liberalism and the role US think tanks played in the proliferation of their ideology) was already a commonly accepted fact in academia - at least in the "Youtube University"¹ it has been for many years.
That's why it's important that we (people who care about others, personal liberties, solidarity and the environment) all vote in the upcoming European elections!
Yes: This is the essence of his statement and you managed to put it in fewer words than I.
However: I don't think, his party is already willing to form a coalition with the fascists after the upcoming federal elections in 2025. In 2029, it is more than likely, in my opinion.
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