Elections: a vote against Europe

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/26/european-elections-vote-against-europe

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From the Baltic to the Balearics, the European elections reveal a continent unhappy with its lot. The centre roughly held in places, notably Germany and Italy. The malcontent mood elsewhere was expressed through the chauvinism of Marine Le Pen in France, the solidaristic rhetoric of Alexis Tsipras in Greece, and the British bar-room nostalgia of Nigel Farage. Grumbles about immigration and stagnation abound, and yet the far right came out ahead in Denmark , with moderate unemployment, while Sinn Féin is resurgent in Ireland, where emigration is a bigger issue than new arrivals.

The mostly implausible solutions proffered by disparate victors do not relate to specific problems, but to a diffuse sense that established European politics is neither connected to, nor responsive to, the anxieties of ordinary Europeans. Some such anxieties – think of demographic pressures on welfare services – are shared with many other advanced economies. Other problems, ducked by Europhiles for too long, concern how Europe is run.

Most starkly, the arrangements of a single currency have proved catastrophic for the continent's south. Makeshift pragmatism from its central bank, Mario Draghi's famous pledge to "do whatever it takes", defused the danger of an immediate explosion, but the misery of 19 million unemployed lingers on, as does the spectre of deflation. More fundamental than the mismatch between supranational monetary power and national sovereignty in fiscal affairs is the lack of any form of popular counterbalance to the vast power of the European Central Bank. The euro's architects imagined that if they locked the institutions in place, the politics would automatically follow. That was a delusion – but one in keeping with a European way of working in which executive initiative lies with an unelected commission, make-or-break power is found in private horse-trading, and the important work of the European parliament itself is scarcely understood.

Large parts of the European electorate have come to regard this way of working as treating them with contempt; manoeuvring by the parliament's weakened centre-right bloc to install Jean-Claude Juncker as the new head of the commission suggests continuing presumption. Things are not working well; the grave difficulty is that, with no political possibility of rewriting the treaties any time soon, the continent's immediate choice is either to continue to work together, however imperfectly, on issues from climate change to trade that cry out for multilaterialism, or instead to sink into a collectively self-defeating separatism.

Nick Clegg displayed a certain bravery in taking the case for internationalism direct to Nigel Farage in the TV debates, but his complacent statement that Europe would be "much the same" in 10 years' time as today let slip how even staunch pro-Europeans are now more focused on defending a disliked status quo than developing something better. Mr Clegg embodies the politics rejected this weekend, and – make no mistake – the battering endured by the Lib Dems this week poses existential questions for them. As we report, internal polling suggests that the parliamentary party could be looking at something approaching oblivion. Inevitably, the party's internal discussion is turning to the choreography, timing and personnel of the end of the coalition.

It is right for the party to ask all the questions, although it should not kid itself that there are any easy answers, not least because its problems are a distilled concentrate of the poison flooding so much of the European mainstream, including its traditional rivals at home. Ukip won on Ed Miliband's home turf of Doncaster, as well as in Newark, where David Cameron is defending a seat in a byelection. Much of England disdains career politicians who climb up through the hollowed-out traditional parties – politicians who cannot get away with Farage-style sloganeering, but have to come up with something resembling a platform for government. Last week's vote against Europe has posed serious questions, but has produced few serious answers.