EU - Responding to Joe Boot, Part Two

In deciding whether the UK should remain in the EU or leave, Joe Boot believes we need to ask the following questions

"What kind of political arrangement for Britain best guards against the proneness of governments and their bureaucracies to overreach themselves and deify (absolutize) some aspect of the socio-political life of humanity? Which arrangements can place the best check on fallen political power? Which structure most reflects God’s intention for the state? Which arrangement best protects our liberty? Which context provides the best opportunity for our Christian faith to flourish and work like leaven through the loaf of British society? And is leaving the EU or staying in the EU likely to provide the greatest degree of accountability of leaders to their people?"

He adds

"In answering these questions adequately we need to briefly examine two important things. First the unique political inheritance of freedom and justice in Britain and the values and virtues upon which it has been historically based. And second, the European project and the values and virtues upon which it was and is being constructed. Whether these are compatible lies at the heart of the question of ‘Brexit.’"

He fails to define at this point in which sense "the political inheritance of freedom and justice in Britain" is unique. Is it that others don't really care for freedom and justice the way Britons do? Or is that freedom and justice have a unique meaning in Britain? Or is it that Britain got its inheritance of freedom and justice via a different route than others? The remainder of his post hints that all of them apply to some extent. What is clear (for Joe Boot) is that Britain's political inheritance is mostly shaped by the Protestant Reformation, "whilst the major European powers remained within the Roman church." But the really decisive factor was the English Revolution (1640-1689).

"During this period, the absolute power of the monarchy was decisively broken, the rule of law affirmed, and a free English Parliament steadily established."

We can probably see where this is going. The EU seeks absolute power (sees itself as omni-competent), does not acknowledge the rule of law, and Europeans just don't have the respect for parliament that Britons do. What's more, 

"the founding fathers of the European project were dominated by concerned Catholic Christian Democrats connected with Pope Pius XII"

So while British political culture is shaped by Protestant freedom, "the social vision" behind European integration "was to be an essentially Roman Catholic one that emphasized soft socialism and top-down hierarchical government."

"The great majority of these early European lights then were socialists, Catholic politicians and Thomistic intellectuals. It is therefore no real surprise that the EU has developed to become elitist, highly bureaucratic, and out of touch with people, with about as much transparency as the Vatican."

His source is Daniel Hannan which probably explain why the Roman Catholic social teaching is presented in such a skewed way. Laws to protect workers are said to have been the result of "presupposing the Marxist ideology of class struggle" and to have led to a welfare-entitlement culture which resents the clawing back of the welfare state. At this point this still reads like a description of the EU which does not apply to the UK. Later on  the author acknowledges that the UK has in fact the same problems, presumably because (in his view) membership in the EU has turned the UK into a welfare state as well.

Joe Boot even manages to rubbish the concept of subsidiarity (well, it's got to be wrong, it's Roman Catholic).He claims that it is unworkable; its implementation necessarily "arbitrary and subjective" because who is to tell at which level decisions should be taken.

He also finds fault with the social morality aspect. While Britain was shaped by clear confessional values, guarded by "the United Kingdom’s monarch and reformed church," the EU is said to have relied on vague appeals to human dignity and responsibility and this is why what Europeans are left with is

"an almost exclusive preoccupation with money, prosperity and welfare. Economics has become the almost lone criterion for shared values."

And it got only worse with the inclusion of Eastern European member states.

"For many of these countries the simple question has been whether they will be ‘better off’ in or out of this massive political Eurozone, not whether the EU provides a moral, principled and accountable structure for European political life."

Unlike the British referendum debate then?

Actually, Joe Boot recognises that again Britons are not so different after all.

"Sadly, this financial criterion seems to be the only question far too many Britons are asking at this critical point of decision, as though being in or out of this political vision of integration were solely a matter of money and trade." 

But he does not ask why Britain's superior political heritage has not offered greater protection to its citizens. His antithetical presentation of Protestant (= British) and Catholic (= European) political ideals not only ignores the effect of the Reformation on continental Europe but also all that has happened since the religious wars of the seventeenth century.

The claim that "the European Union now consists of 28 member states with wildly diverse political and religious traditions and complex histories" is not altogether wrong but erases the Christian heritage that shaped Europe, even though towards the end the author acknowledges that "the cultural space of Europe as a whole could still be characterized as Christian in its inheritance." What is going on? Joe Boot seems to think that the European Christian heritage is irredeemably lost, while the British Protestant heritage can be retrieved once the UK has left the EU (but only then).

Boot is right to be concerned about the existence of a demos with shared values. I would agree that for democracy to function well there need to be a recognizable demos, not just a conglomeration of individuals who are given the same rights.

"At root, the source of any true unity for a people is religious. Lasting political and cultural cohesion depends on a people sharing a common vision of reality, a common cause, a common identity – in short, a common faith. A common faith is the basis of commonwealth."

(His comments on the importance of sharing a common language maybe relate specifically to monolingual societies; in other parts of the world linguistic diversity is less of a threat to social cohesion because people speak more than one language fluently.)

The problem is the vastly overstated claim to British exceptionalism and the implicit claim that just beneath the surface there is still a cultural consensus within the UK shaped by its Reformation heritage. There is much more we have in common across Europe than divides us and this includes the question of how to respond to the disintegration of a broadly shared vision of reality. This loss of a shared political vision may indeed lead to growing coercion but making governments geographically smaller offers no protection against this. Many of the most brutal, oppressive regimes were geographically small. Larger empires cannot always control their territory as fully as small nation states can. The size of the military and of the police force is a more reliable index of the intensity of coercion to be expected than the number of civil servants who dream of greater integration.

Claiming that the EU is an Utopian project allows Joe Boot to describe it as a failure by simply listing how it falls short of the utopia of a secure world of prosperity without war without the need to weigh up the pros and cons of an arrangement such as the EU.

"Notably it has not prevented war in Europe, for we have seen Bosnia, Kosovo and the Ukraine descend into desperate conflicts in the last 25 years, with Russia successfully annexing Crimea."

The question how relationships between the founding members of the EU might have developed without the European project may be impossible to answer but I hazard the claim that Russia would have annexed the Crimea even if there had been no EU. But the question whether without a EU there would still be warfare, and maybe even more of it than with the existence of the EU, is irrelevant to Joe Boot. There has been war. Ergo, the EU is a failed project because it did not fulfill the utopia of a world free of war.

"It has not provided prosperity. Resentments run deep regarding so-called austerity both in terms of the creditor and the borrower as the welfare states of Europe creak under mounting structural pressure and massive debt loads."

Again, Joe Boot sees no need to examine whether prosperity within the EU member states would be greater or lesser without the EU. There is no need to ask why first the UK and later so many ex-Communist countries wanted to join the economic "failure" that is the EU, or the extent to which current economic problems are related to EU membership or policies. There are economic problems which the EU has not solved. Ergo, the EU is a failed project because it does not give us an Utopian world of prosperity for all.

"Neither has it provided security. The free movement of people through open borders is proving a disaster area and a matter of real consternation in the face of a massive migration crisis of mainly Muslim populations from all over the world into the heart of Western Europe. Both the open borders and welfare handouts of Europe have created a huge security threat in the face of Islamic terrorism and economic migration from Afghanistan to Syria and Somalia. Plus the fact that even within Europe the movement of people has been largely that of low-skilled workers into the more prosperous nations, creating resentment."

Finally, Boot need not limit himself to ticking off the EU for failing to provide the total safety of an Utopian world. There is some evidence to suggest that the EU makes the security situation worse and this in two ways. The free movement of EU citizens within the EU makes it harder for the UK to keep French, Dutch and German terrorists out of the country. This is true. Whether it is a serious problem is debatable. So far home-grown terrorists have not travelled very far within Europe and, from what I know, have rarely been crossing borders with passport controls which is to say that terrorists threats within the UK are still much more likely to come from British rather than Belgian terrorists. Still, one can minimise the risk by keeping the Belgians out. Brexiteers by and large claim that this problem could be solved by leaving the EU while remaining in a free-trade relationship with it. But this does not seem likely, see Norway and Switzerland. Those who think that the terrorist threat from fellow EU citizens is a substantial risk should be prepared to get out and stay outside the EEA, not just the EU. It is little surprise that it is hard to find Brexiters who would honestly admit this.

In addition, there are refugees and economic migrants. The EU struggles to keep them out, partly for geographical reasons, partly for humanitarian ones. Being an island gives the UK a better chance to claim that this is someone else's problem. Maybe for now the UK manages doing precisely that (claiming all this is someone else's problem) even while inside the EU but it is true that some of those migrants and refugees at some point in the future might get, say, German or Italian citizenship and then they could come to the UK. And who is to say that the Germans and the Italians might not award citizenship to terrorists? Still, if one of the big fears is Islamization (and it is for Joe Boot), will the UK really be able and willing to minimize this by regulating immigration accordingly, maybe by way of setting a maximum number of Muslim immigrants?

I am not confident that it is true that within the EU the main movement has been of low-skilled workers into more prosperous nations, as Boot claims. Sending countries often make the contrary claim that they loose their best people. What I do know is that EU citizens moving into the UK usually get jobs. It is often claimed that this is because they are prepared to work for less. Maybe so, although the minimum wage seeks to ensure that this is not simply a race to the bottom. Anecdotally it is also frequently claimed that those pesky Roman Catholic Poles have a very Protestant work ethic...

Probably because he does not believe in subsidiarity, Joe Boot does not get the idea that some people might genuinely believe that there are things that are best addressed at the local level, others at regional, still others at national, and still others at European level and that therefore there is a place for European governing authorities alongside national ones. Also, he does seem convinced that this is all a con with the real aim being the abolishing of lower tiers of government in favour one one big Brussles government. So for John Boot supporting the EU can only mean bowing down to the idol of global government and "a technocratic utopian delusion of elitist coercion". It is a typical case of "because I could only support x, if I wanted y, you who support x must want y."

As indicated above, and to his credit, Joe Boot recognises that leaving the EU in and of itself does nothing to address "our welfare-dependent, sexually promiscuous, irreligious, politically indifferent and morally vacuous popular culture". So wherein lies his hope? In the Gospel, yes, even "in the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit." Alas, and this does not sit well with Reformed theology, he seems to think that the grace of God needs something with which it can co-operate, something it will find in British Protestant traditions but not in the wider European Christian heritage.

EU - Responding to Joe Boot, Part One

Joe Boot has offered his thoughts on how Christians should understand "the practice of voting, the role of the state and the true nature of freedom" and what implications this has on how we think about the EU. I do not know Joe Boot but I know people who have been taken in by his argument. I felt compelled to discuss his presentation at length not so much to defend the EU but to question the idea that an aversion to rules, pride in one's Protestant heritage, deep suspicion of Roman Catholicism, and fear of Islam add up to a coherent Christian political vision.

(It's possible to get the gist of this first part by scrolling to the section that begins with the question "What are the implications...?")

The first section, on "Navigating Britain's EU Referendum Decision," sadly employs the sort of language we have come to expect in this referendum debate and sets the tone for what follows. Speaking of the IMF (described as "closely aligned with EU institutions") as "suitably obliging" the UK government excuses Boot from engaging with the economic argument presented by the IMF. A slur will do. And maybe to warn us against taking the arguments of the Remain campaign too seriously, he considers it important to notice how "highly emotive" it is; he does not note that this is true for the Leave campaign as well. Clearly, we are not to expect a balanced presentation in this post. This is a fight between big, bad Goliath and heroic David and Joe Boot intends to give David all the help he can. He is right about this:

"Remarkably, then, the popular case being put forward for remaining in the EU is conspicuously missing any substantive appeal to a sense of shared European values, the public good of European institutions for Britain, of a shared European identity, or the importance of an ‘ever closer union’ that has actuated the expanding European dream for decades. Instead we are essentially hearing appeals to people’s immediate fears of potential economic problems rather than a more robust defense of and advocacy for the European vision and its institutions, in which Britain is currently embedded and continuously funds with tax-payer money."

Except that this is not really remarkable, given who does the arguing. Did anyone really expect that David Cameron would admit that his much touted "British values" are actually shared across Europe? Does the Conservative party have more than a small handful of politicians who dare to speak of the shared Christian heritage of Europe? The failure to see the public good of European institutions or to admit a shared European identity or to speak up for shared European values is widespread within the Tory party and certainly by the time Joe Boot wrote his post the whole referendum debate was still a matter of Tories debating each other. But this itself does not yet us whether there are in fact shared European values etc.

The economic argument is predictable. We are asked to look at Norway and Switzerland, noticing that they are doing well outside the EU. As always, this ignores that main motivations for Brexit are the desire to limit immigration from EU countries and to do away with requirements to submit to EU standards. In what sense can Norway and Switzerland who have to abide by EU rules and standards and have a higher proportion of EU immigrants than the UK be held up as examples now? But our interest is not really in the economics and we agree on how impossible it is to make reliable predictions. Martin Lewis is eloquent on this.

So what about the distinctly Christian argument? Joe Boot notes that Christians want to have their view of all human institutions controlled by Scripture and that there are four such institutions which God clearly established, namely marriage, family, the church, and the state. The separation of marriage and family into two institutions is debatable but we need not concern ourselves with this here. The use of the word "state" is potentially problematic for the discussion at hand. It is not used in any of the Biblical references given and not defined by Boot. The most important reference he cites is surely Romans 13:1-7, a passage that speaks of God instituting "governing authorities" and appointing "rulers" rather than establishing "states", let alone "nation states". Within the Roman empire in which Paul's letter travelled there would have been a good few layers of "governing authorities" and "rulers" from city magistrates via local kings to the Emperor, just as residents in Monken Hadley find themselves subject to layers of authorities from the Barnet Borough Council and Mayor of Barnet to the European parliament and EU presidents via Greater London authorities and Westminster. What might be the distinctly Christian argument for withdrawing from the authority of one of those rulers? Boot will not go as far as to claim that only democratically elected rulers are instituted by God or that only governing authorities covering a mono-cultural group are legitimate but neither is he going to tell us more about a Biblical concept of statehood.

He highlights the distinction between structure and direction. 

"The structure of something concerns God’s laws and ordained pattern – for example, for the family, church, and state. The direction of these spheres concerns the orientation that they have. There are various structures in God’s creation but only two directions. We are either oriented toward God or toward idolatry in marriage, family, church, and state."

This is an important distinction because it allows him to affirm that when marriages or states "fail", it is not the structure of marriage or state that has failed but the various actors involved. The true meaning here is that when marriages or states "fail" this does not question the principle or the rightness of having marriages or states (governing authorities). But the way he puts the distinction allows him to overlook the possibility of structural problems and failures. Some marriages and states are set up badly. Hence the following is an oversimplification.  

"In short, political challenges are at root fundamentally religious and moral challenges."

Yes, often they are. But sometimes there are practical and structural problems that need addressing and can be addressed without having to accuse anyone of idolatry or immorality.

What are the implications for our understanding of the EU? 

"First, the inescapable reality of sin means that the close accountability of civil government and its public officials to the people being governed is central to a Christian understanding of statecraft. The more distant and removed from direct accountability governments and their bureaucracies are, the greater the threat to people’s freedom and self-determination under God."

This is of course a standard argument. The EU is bad because it's far away. There are some practical issues that would need to be addressed here about how accountability should and can work in a global economy but, being entrusted with teaching the word of God rather than with state affairs, what worries me most  is the phrase "central to a Christian understanding of statecraft". It is of course not backed up by any reference either to the Scriptures or Christian tradition. From where did the ideal of "people's freedom and self-determination under God" spring and how is it defined? Why and in what sense is democracy central to an understanding of statecraft that seeks to be Christian? (I myself would want to explore what Orthodox Christians, Western medieval theologians, and the Church Fathers thought about this. I suspect that Boot's version of Protestantism makes such questions irrelevant.) And if "Christian" means "controlled by Scripture", where is the Scriptural argument for the supremacy of (national) parliaments?

"Second, what especially arises from the Christian understanding of the state, that is peculiarly relevant here, is the importance of maintaining realistic expectations of political institutions and so limiting institutional political power in the light of sin."

Apparently the founders of the EU had Utopian dreams and usurping the role of God. Sorry, I just don't think that having too high expectations of what the EU institutions could do if we only let them is the problem of our time. And Boot assumes rather than argues that reducing the geographical reach of political institutions equates with limiting institutional political power. The opposite may be true in all sorts of ways. People might have fewer unrealistic expectations of a government that is further away. Also, those who set their hopes in "a planned society, created by political engineering" will seek to reduce federalist arrangements (governments at different levels) in favour of centralisation. The suggestion that Eurocrats are planning for a Gleichschaltung of Europe is fear mongering. The EU will not overcome the problem of sin but neither will the UK leaving the EU lead to a significant reduction of sin, let alone overcome the problem of sin. Joe Boot acknowledges this. Yet he skews the discussion by suggesting that the case for remaining in the EU rests on the hope of "providing socio-political salvation through technocratic means."

For Joe Boot this is as a black and white issue. On the one hand is an idolatrous vision of salvation through the state. On the other hand, a state that humbly sticks to its basic tasks, "the restraint of evil and the commending of righteousness" and leave other things to human institutions that are not mentioned in the Bible such as charities and corporations and therefore should be allowed to operate without too much communal oversight by way of law and order. Anglicans might be tempted to dismiss this as the result of a faulty "regulative principle" found in some versions of Presbyterianism (if it's not mentioned in the Bible, it's not allowed; so no organs and no national health service either). But the problem goes deeper. Boot does not have a sufficiently broad view of evil. If companies can gain an economic advantage in the marketplace by exploiting workers and ignoring safety standards, by selling fake products or by using misleading labels etc., is that not evil? And is it therefore not the responsibility of rulers to enforce certain rules and regulations? If certain ways of going about your trade or engaging in fishing and agriculture come at a huge environmental cost which is borne by communities that are not party to the transaction rather than by the seller and buyer, is that not evil that needs to be restrained? Is evil no longer evil if addressing it might interfere with free trade?

EU - Some Thoughts

Ros Clarke posted some questions on the EU. Here a few thoughts

Questions of principle:
1. Is there greater political accountability in the EU or out of it?

Political accountability here presumably refers to what Nick Clegg calls "the basic democratic principle that those who makes the laws of the land should be elected by those who obey the laws of the land" or something like that. (I have obeyed UK law for close to two and a half decades without having a say in who makes the laws but I am not complaining.)  Unlike some Brits Nick Clegg is not convinced that Westminster and Whitehall are more democratic than Brussels and Luxembourg. I reckon the democratic deficit in either is indeed higher than in Berlin and Stuttgart for all the problems there are in Germany as well. Surely political accountability could be improved both in the UK and the EU. Ironically, the latter has been resisted most forcefully by those who most want the UK to leave the EU. For them giving the European parliament a greater role would be an erosion of national sovereignty.

2. Are the curbs on political corruption greater in the EU or out of it?

Adding political layers may increase opportunities for corruption. Then again corruption comes from those with money and power and in our world those with the most money and power are multinationals. It stands to reason that smaller nation states have less power to curb undue influence from big corporations. As for other forms of corruption, I see no reason to think that expenses scandals and "jobs for the boys" maneuvers in Westminster are best prevented by taking the UK outside the EU.

3. Will the increasing economic ties between EU countries continue to force increasing political ties? And if so, what does that mean for national democracy?

It may depend on how one defines politics and political ties. One of the errors of our time is a tendency to look at economics as if trade could ever be a-political. There is an appetite for greater democratic accountability and this likely means stronger political ties.

4. Is there any inherent benefit to having a smaller government or a larger one?

Instinctively, I like the idea of small governments but we live in a very complex world where reduced state interference (which is what small government is mostly about, I suppose) means less regulation which in turn means greater freedom for the powerful to abuse people and the planet. Eating local food (and less meat) is obviously better for the health of the planet but in a deregulated universe the costs of flying in food from far away places is not borne by seller or consumer of the particular good but by the wider community and so with much else. Government of God's creation is our vocation as humanity created in the image of God and not as individuals but as communities. If we want communities to act together and if we want decisions that affect the whole community to be made by the whole community (or their elected representatives), there is a limit to how small we can allow the state to get. Health care is another example. In the days when doctors could do little more than prescribe a little medicine and let some blood, there was less need of a national health system. Now the finances involved in medical care are such that most of us think it best to have some sort of insurance system and a case can be made for this to be best in public hands. This is not compatible with really small government. The quickest way to reduce the size of government is to privatise the NHS. Some of course want this but few admit to it.

5. Nation or empire? Superstate or federal state?

What actually is a nation? And what is an empire? It is often said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman, was it an empire? (Surely it is not simply a question of whether there is someone called an emperor. The likelihood of the EU acquiring an emperor seems slim.) What is a superstate?  I have no great fears of the EU becoming centralised. After all, even the UK, traditionally no less centralised than France, has been moving towards federalism with a parliament for Scotland, an assembly for Wales, elected mayors etc. 

6. What is the role of the monarchy in an EU nation?

Many Brexiteers seem to seriously believe that a United States of Europe is on the cards, a political entity which ushers passports for its citizens. I don't. National parliaments won't be abolished, why should the role of monarchies change?

Questions of pragmatics:
7. Does the EU really give us greater national security?

I doubt it. Nor would leaving the EU.

8. Has the EU been effective in preventing armed conflict in Europe?

How would one measure this? I suspect that the greater movements of people, not only goods, makes armed conflict within the EU less likely. The greater interrelationships make it more obvious that everyone would suffer.

9. Is there any reason we couldn’t have generous and compassionate immigration policies if we left the EU?

Not in theory but the British mood is for more self-serving immigration policies and the more removed from the EU the UK becomes the easier it is for British people to think that the arrival of thousands of desperate people on European shores is surely "someone else's problem".

10. Is there any reason we couldn’t establish good trade agreements with EU nations if we left the EU?

Define "good trading agreements". There is little reason to think that the EU would budge on issues on which it did not budge in relation to EFTA countries. So if you want to limit immigration of EU citizens, you should be prepared to trade with the EU without a trade deal.

11. If we left the EU, how likely is that to trigger similar decisions in other EU countries and potentially cause the whole project to fail? What would the consequences of that be?

I find this impossible to predict. There is little chance that the UK would turn into an economic and democratic paradise as a result of leaving the EU. I suspect that developments in the UK might well discourage others from attempting a similar move.