A country where 42.4% of the vote gives a party a solid majority in Parliament. A country where a decent and ethical chair of a parliamentary committee is ousted in favour of a government lackey. A country where a report into foreign influence over its democratic procedures is swept under...
At the height of the Eurozone bailout crisis, Alexis Tsipras went to address the European Parliament. Why bother with that? was the cry of sceptical journalists who have never paid attention to the European Parliament. 887000 viewers of Guy Verhofstadt’s response show that this was a worthwhile political exercise –...
The title of this blog entry is intentionally contradictory. Yet it encompasses the central challenge the European Union in facing. To start, what are we supposed to do about democracy in the European Union, viewing democracy in the classical post-World War II consensus kind of way, where multi party representative...
Here we go again. Today Steven Hill has laid out his institutional vision for the European Union on Social Europe journal. His plan – with a bicameral European Parliament – is not too distant from ideas raised by Denis MacShane in the past. Binding national MPs into EU decision making...
What do you do when one of the fundamental things you’ve believed in for years, have spent ages working towards, is actually not anywhere near as desirable as you previously thought? That’s basically the predicament I find myself in these days, and it’s not a very pleasant place to be....
Britain’s relationship with the EU is absolutely vital to the economic and political future of the country, and even to the political and economic future of the EU. The structure of British democracy, the way the country is governed, is a matter of first order political importance – Britain’s membership...
In 2005 I went to France to campaign in the referendum on the European Constitution, making the case for oui. One thing about that campaign has been with me ever since: it was clear what oui would mean (France would ratify) while it was never clear what non would mean....
Denis MacShane has written an essay entitled “Europe’s parliament: Reform or perish?”, a paper which he says is a contribution to the debate about the future of the European Parliament started by Andrew Duff, Julian Priestley, and Anand Menon and John Peet. MacShane tries to take a position in which...
Since news broke on Sunday that three MEPs – Zoran Thaler, Ernst Strasser and Adrian Severin – were prepared to accept money in return for tabling amendments to legislation, I’ve been trying to work out what conclusions to draw from all of this. You can read more on the ongoing investigations and...
It was a Labour Party politics filled evening for me yesterday. First I heard Arnold Graf of the Industrial Areas Foundation from the United States talk at a Labour Values event about how his organisation had built networks of community organisations. Graf works with Maurice Glasman, one of the people...