JEREMY CORBYN’S insistence that the political elite respect the settled will of the people has exposed his opponent Owen Smith’s subliminally subversive and fatally flawed plan for a second referendum.
With a substantial chunk of Remainers firm in their belief that popular sovereignty demands that the vote be respected, the argument now shifts to what kind of exit from the EU is needed.
A progressive Lexit, in which the vestigial labour rights that the EU conferred are buttressed by a restoration of the workers’ rights salami sliced by Thatcher, along with scrapping the anti-union laws New Labour promised to repeal but failed to under both Blair and Brown, is the least we should demand.
Obscured by the tendentious terms of the debate which our political system and media bias permit is the essential role the European Union plays in shaping the institutional form in which austerity policies are imposed on our sister European states. And on us.
Deepening the popular understanding that a progressive governmental programme is impossible if bound by the terms of the EU treaties is helped by an acquaintance with European realities.
Thus this new publication from Manifesto Press, written by expert political actors in Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Portugal and Cyprus, is essential reading in offering a hidden perspective on the operations of the EU.
Eoghan O’Neill demolishes the lie that the Irish people created the crisis through an orgy of property speculation.
Detailing the cataclysmic effect on jobs and housing, welfare and education he identifies Ireland’s role as “facilitator between European and US capitalism” as key to its position as a low-tax springboard into the EU.
Financial journalist Lucas Zeise describes how EU austerity policies  allowed Germany to profit from the crisis. “Money and capital leaving crisis-hit countries headed straight for Germany,” he says.
Exposing the complicity of the Social Democrats in Merkel’s imposition of extra burdens on the German people, while corporate and banking profits rose, he contrasts constraints on regional public spending to a €480 billion subsidy to German banks — one-and-a-half times the federal budget.
Denmark still retains something of its much admired welfare state.
But Betty Frydensbjerg Carlsson shows how both employment rights and unemployment benefits have been eroded, along with an ideological attack on trade union organisation. Job opportunities for young people are vanishing and when, in 1992, the Danes voted down the Maastricht Treaty their will was disregarded.
Charis Polycarpou describes how the austerity terms imposed on Cyprus mean EU “supervision” of its economy, while an effective end to its sovereignty will continue for another decade.
And, from Portugal, Pedro Guerreiro shows how since joining the EU labour’s share of national income has dropped from 56 per cent to 44 per cent while the burden of debt imposed on the people has led to a loss of productive capacity and the transfer of millions of euros in public money to the banks.
NICK WRIGHT
The EU Deconstructed can be downloaded as a free ebook at www.manifestopress.org.uk