Earth: Mostly Harmless

Talking about European politics

This is probably a complete brain-fart, but I thought I should post it anyway. I’m studying for an exam on the subject of European integration, and I came across this paragraph by Brigid Laffan. It’s the most eloquent description of the problem of the national political environment within a transnational/supranational body like the E.U.

Political players within the member states have so far not communicated the realities of power in contemporary Europe to their electorates. They persist with an old language of national interest when in reality, janus-like, they serve both the national governments and collective European government.

Laffan, B (1999) ‘Democracy in the European Union’ in Cram, L.,
Dinan, D. and N. Nugent (eds.) Developments in the European
Union, London: Palgrave.
WorldCat reference

Things like the 2004 and 2007 accessions make me nervous about dealing with these things in Britain. They were presented consistently and positively by the media as being in Britain’s national interest, or ’supported by Britain’. The accessions were positive, but for different reasons: historical imperative, for one, and expanding and improving the single market by extending the same freedoms of movement, work and consumer protections as exist here to eastern Europe. But we must do a better job of discussing these things in the UK.

The European Union is not a series of treaty negotiations every few years, where the coffee is brewed strong, tempers get frayed, and we either ‘win’ or ‘lose’. It’s much more important than that. It reaches into almost every aspect of our political lives despite the disingenuous effort, or perhaps unconscious ignorance, of political actors and (sadly) the media to present it as if it is something which the national political space can exist alongside, but separate from.

Sovereignty is dead. Long live the new sovereignty.

SNP executive: what now?

On the week of the 300th anniversary of the Union of the Parliaments, an explicitly separatist party came into a position of government in the mainland United Kingdom for the first time (Welsh parties are crap and don’t count).

Still, it wasn’t a clean victory for the Scottish National Party. My good friend C.B. Buckland was working as a canvasser for the SNP, and also as an electoral assistant at a polling place last night. He has this to say of the much criticised voting arrangements:

The BBC are massively overstating the problems with [the electronic counting] machines. As expected I suppose.

The management of the election was at fault for the lack of information, the poor ballots, the lack of knowledge amongst the polling clerks (some were telling people to fold them, contrary to the guidelines) and the general mess of the forms. The DRS company were at fault for their poorly tested and expensive machines (£4.3 million this is costing you, by the way). The public were at fault for simply not making an effort to understand their democracy. The media were at fault for misinforming once the disaster had had happened. Blokes with golf clubs didn’t help either.
Full post

As for the result, it remains to be seen how the SNP will take the independence argument forward, if at all, in the next few years. The election contest was very noticeably fought on issues other than independence, yet the SNP manifesto contains a commitment to hold a referendum on the issue in the lifetime of this Parliament (probably in 2010). The polls show a fairly clear trend against separation at the moment, but all that could change if Westminster and Edinburgh antagonise each other enough in the meantime.

The subject of independence poses numerous intractable questions about the modern state, citizenship and political obligation. The matter of establishing the citizenship of each person at such time as a separation should occur offers myriad challenges in itself, but could perhaps offer a unique opportunity to change the nature of citizenship itself. For example, it’s impossible to imagine any kind of border controls between Scotland and England, so why not use the opportunity to build upon the freedom of movement and cross-border working that this and EU citizenship in general imply. This could mean both countries joining Schengen. Or they could go even further, and establish transferrable or pooled citizenship.

Why? Because interdependence is going so far as to render the concept of national independence almost moot, and indeed independence is often now more of a contingent effect of peoples’ general desires for closer and more multi-level governance than anything autarkic or Westphalian.

The reality is that ‘independence’ in the contemporary world, and especially in the EU, means little more than more control over issues of ‘hard politics’. Not absolute control, but certainly enough to keep from being dragged into offensive wars with which the minority nation disagrees. I think it’s significant that it’s taken an issue exactly like that (Iraq) - among other things - to bring an independence party to the fore.

But if independence really did become something the people of Scotland wanted strongly, the trump card played by Westminster will be exactly that played three-hundred years ago - a good old-fashioned buy-off.

Or they might just let us go.

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Just wanted to get my thoughts on the AACS revolt out there…

AACS 101:
AACS, an ‘uncrackable’ digital rights management system ‘protecting’ content on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, was cracked several times and in many different ways (all forms of reverse-engineering) by geeks and hackers. The AACS Licensing Authority is attempting to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force the removal of the large hexidecimal number in the post title, an AACS master key, from all web sites in U.S. jurisdiction (this one is hosted in Los Angeles so it is a potential target). Digg founder Kevin Rose was forced to back down in his compliance with requests he received from AACS-LA after Digg users staged a mutiny against the site.

The disturbing thing is that the AACS-LA seem to have perfect legal justification for doing this, arguing that the number is part of a technology protecting creative works, and therefore subject to anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.

Cartoon copyright Randall Munroe - Creative Commons licensed.