EU-US Relations: A Biden Victory Could Reset Transatlantic Relations : by Alex Soros

NEW YORK – In his opening address to the European Council on Foreign Relations’ (ECFR) annual meeting, German Foreign Affairs Minister Heiko Maas claimed that regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election this November, Europeans “will have to think about how to better contain the conflicts in Europe’s vicinity, even without the US.”

His view is a popular one. Many European pundits, such as Janan Ganesh and Wolfgang Münchau of the Financial Times, have argued that US-EU relations would not change significantly even if a Democrat were to defeat US President Donald Trump. A Democratic president, the argument goes, would still be protectionist on trade, sympathetic to the American public’s supposed isolationist instincts, and equally unenthusiastic about writing checks to defend Europe. This description was initially applied to Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, despite their strong support for international cooperation and human rights. Now some Europeans are extending it to Joe Biden.

But the idea that Biden would bring no real change to US policy toward Europe beggars belief. Biden has always been a staunch transatlanticist, and over the course of his decades-long political career, he has forged close relationships with key European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. As vice president from 2009 to 2017, Biden was always available to provide personal diplomacy when President Barack Obama was not.

While European pundits are correct to doubt that the old transatlantic alliance will simply return to its pre-Trump state, they are underestimating what a Biden victory would mean for US foreign policy. The Democratic Party is still a party of values, and a Biden administration would pursue a full reset after four years of Trump, restoring America’s historic commitment to responsible leadership on the world stage

Whereas Trump has spent his time in office starting fights with Europe over climate change, trade, and human rights, Biden would bring America back to the diplomatic table. The United States would rejoin the Paris climate agreement, pursue new trade deals, and participate in cooperative efforts to ensure that technological innovation conforms with human-rights standards.

In the European Union, America’s image is at an all-time low, thanks to the Trump administration’s slow, incoherent, and ineffective response to the COVID-19 crisis, a major part of which comprised blaming other countries, rather than cooperating with them. Instead of combating the crisis using the resources of the World Health Organization and other multilateral organizations, the US banned travel from Europe without warning and announced it would defund the WHO. One of Biden’s first foreign-policy objectives will surely be to rectify this and to treat COVID-19 as the global crisis it is. That means leveraging international cooperation to protect Americans from the pandemic (and its attendant economic devastation), as well as lead global efforts to combat the threat.

With Biden in the White House, European telecoms like Nokia and Ericsson would be recognized and supported as the transatlantic alliance’s 5G champions, and the US would help Europe wean itself off Russian gas as it works toward its clean-energy transition. A Biden administration also would recognize the wisdom of negotiating a renewal of the New START nuclear-weapons treaty with Russia when it expires in 2021. And it would pursue other forms of arms control to advance European and US security interests and prevent a new arms race.

More to the point, a Biden administration would uphold its end of any bargain, and would be trusted to maintain America’s commitments to partners and allies around the world. The only question is whether Europe, too, would be prepared to make the tough choices needed to reinvigorate the alliance.

Trump has allowed Europe to avoid such choices, because his outlandish behavior has distracted attention from most other issues. For example, with all eyes on the intensifying Sino-American feud, the EU has become more accommodating to China. In early June, Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, declared that Europe does not regard China as a military threat. And while US political leaders from both parties have loudly condemned China’s imposition of a new security law in Hong Kong, the EU’s reaction has been relatively meek.

Lest we forget, the EU is the world’s largest trading bloc. With enough determination, Europe, working closely with the US, could have considerable leverage when it comes to promoting a rules-based multilateral system. But to do so, it will have to expend political and diplomatic capital.

Read the complete report at: 
A Biden Victory Could Reset Transatlantic Relations by Alex Soros - Project Syndicate

The Coronavirus: returning to "status quo" after the storm has passed is impossible - Democrats here is your chance to shine - by RM

What must be clear to everyone, is that the Coronavirus has exposed that no country can be going back to what their governments considered normal before the coronavirus.

In the case of America, "We the people", must demand, and if necessary, force, our politicians, to make some radical changes to our country's present economic and political structures.

For starters, here are just a few, of the many changes, as expressed by many people I spoke to, that need to be urgently looked at.

Obviously, only really possible if the Democrats win the Presidency and the Senate in November :

*The Tax system must be radically revised to provide a more balanced source of income for the US budget, than the present Tax system does. 

*Education must be free for every citizen.

*Health care insurance must be available to everyone, and premiums based on the income of the insured individual. 
*The Environment needs to be considered a major priority in any new Government's strategy; the present unacceptable strong influence of the private sector, and special interest groups, over the US political system must be curbed. 
*The US infrastructure will need a complete emergency overhaul to keep America competitive. 
*And finally, to combat unacceptable violent crime, gun control laws needs to be legalized.

And all that, even if it is only the tip of the iceberg, would be a good beginning.

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EU-Digest

EU The Academic view: A vision for Europe is desperately needed – by Maria Graczyk

 Liberals are better at pointing out others’ faults than at doing self-reflection. They spend more time explaining away the popularity of populism than explaining the fall of liberalism, says Jan Zielonka, adding that the EU has become a caricature of a neo-liberal project and needs a new vision.

For now, we are treading water. We are faking reforms, re-heating old ideas we did not accomplish at a time when there was a better economic situation. Real changes will therefore probably have to be forced by external shocks and therefore will be chaotic and painful.

Nevertheless, nothing happens, politicians dig into the wells. And they return to their discredited policy in previous years. Example? Refugees. For many years we have dealt with warlords and we know how it ended. Today, we are returning to the same model. We have become hostages of Erdogan’s policy with his refugee camps. First of all, I would not like to be hostage to his policy, and secondly – it is a denial of all the values on which liberal Europe was built.

It takes two to tango. Not only is Erdogan responsible for what is happening in Brussels-Ankara relations. When he came to power, he was very pro-European. Nevertheless, none of his efforts to get closer to Europe were successful. He was always told “tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.” In this way, we have deprived ourselves of credibility and instruments of influence on Turkey.

Most EU countries were reluctant towards this enlargement. Just as the Turks were stuck in the EU’s waiting room for years.

Turkey must either be accepted or it needs to be said openly that “we do not accept, but we want to expand our relations in specific areas”. Instead, Turkey has been a candidate for years while we have set its terms.

 It was unbelievable. We left our cosmopolitan, pro-European friends in Turkey on the ice. It was similar with Ukraine. I’m not saying that all these problems were solvable, but I know that if we had followed what we declared, it would have not been as bad as it is. We did everything to destroy these good relations.

Read more: Academic: A vision for Europe is desperately needed – EURACTIV.com

Global Economy: Back to the Global Vertical -a politically dangerous development - by Andres Ortega

There are horizontal periods – indeed some people, Thomas Friedman among them, believed some years ago that the world was definitively flat. And then there are periods in which verticality imposes itself again.

In many ways, we are once again moving from the horizontal to the vertical dimension of global affairs.

This “verticality” is making itself especially felt in social terms. Social classes are back on the agenda, although not in the traditional Marxist sense of class struggle.

Rather, we are now coping with the decline of the middle classes and the emergence of a broader “precariat.”

The social escalator is not working as in previous eras, despite renewed growth in many economies following the crisis. Benefits that were taken for granted, such as full-time jobs with social security protections, are disappearing in significant numbers.

Perhaps we are witnessing what Dennis J. Snower calls the “great decoupling,” which he labels “dangerous,” unlike its predecessor, which was “convenient.”

When economic progress is not mirrored or is not linked to social progress, discontent is generated in those left behind. This decoupling ends up manifesting itself in politics.

This is what may be going on in many countries amid the prospect of recovery, an uneven emergence from the crisis and, before that, globalization, which is now generally acknowledged to have produced winners and losers.

The decoupling phenomenon is arising when the advanced economies, both industrial and post-industrial, are recovering from the crisis.

As Marc Fleurbaey of Princeton University argues, we must “prepare people for life and support them in life.”

Central to that is the commitment to education, particularly amid the challenge of technology and its controversial impact on employment and the concept of work.

A smart policy approach in that regard, as Ylva Johansson, the Swedish Employment Minister, points out, is not protecting specific jobs (which may be dying) as protecting workers (which need to be actively equipped and/or a guided toward a new one).

Somehow or other, although no one knows how, remedying the great decoupling will induce the vertical to become more horizontal again. Or so one hopes.

Failing to achieve this will only accentuate more verticality. And vertical moments, as we know, tend to be the more dangerous ones.

Editors note EU-Digest: but the situation is not hopeless. Change is possible. People can and will make the difference. All that is required is for responsible, well educated, socially conscious people, with new ideologies to start speaking out. The outdated, corrupt, political systems in many places of the world must be replaced before it leads to a catasthrophy

If it was possible in France, for a new party to be created within a one year time span prior to their Presidential and parliamentary elections, and for that party to win decisively, in both the Presidential and Parliamentary elections, it can also be done elsewhere. 

The old and established parties have failed the people. The political establishment on both the left and the right have become corrupted by corporate influence and greed. It is high time for change, because the status quo is not acceptable anymore.

Read more: Back to the Global Vertical

The New Age of Political Discontent: Hammering Hard on Global Businesses

The new global era has created discontent

Around the world, people are unhappy with politics.

In the United States, only 18 percent of Gallup respondents approve of how Congress is doing its job. Across Europe, only 33 percent of Eurobarometer respondents say they trust the European Union policies. Over the past year, violent labor protests have erupted in South Korea and France. In Latin America, prominent politicians are harassed in restaurants, malls, and airports, and their humiliations are posted on YouTube.

This intense public unrest is driving global politics and policy making in powerful ways, and the consequences for multinational companies are significant. And, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each unhappy policy is different.

Understanding the whys and hows of each national family’s unhappiness is essential if corporate executives are to navigate the risks and opportunities of this new era.

Globalization Reaches Its Tipping Point

Underneath this worldwide frustration, there are some common elements: slow economic growth and rising inequality, structural unemployment, political incompetence, and venality. The financial crisis of 2008 - 2009 was not the beginning of this new era of discontent, but it did catalyze some of the responses. That crisis began in the developed markets of the United States and Europe. But as these economies slowed, the fall in demand for commodities and manufactured exports quickly spread the pain to emerging markets. And while global economic downturns have occurred before, this time disruptive technologies and digital communications intensified and magnified popular angst.

But while the underlying conditions may be similar, political and policy responses to it have been strikingly different, particularly between developed and developing countries. In developed countries, popular frustration is leading to increasingly unpredictable populist politics and policies that are often anti-trade and challenging for businesses. In developing countries, popular discontent is driving a more business-friendly set of responses.

The most compelling explanation for the difference in policy responses in developed and developing countries is their differing experiences with globalization – the movement of goods, money, people, and ideas across borders. While globalization has lifted millions out of poverty in developing countries, the Western middle class has suffered as manufacturing and blue collar jobs moved abroad. And while globalization has led to new opportunities for large numbers of newly mobile immigrants from the developing world, their arrival has stirred up fear, anger, and prejudice in many parts of the West.

Globalization has opened a rift between the developed and developing world.

In the developed world, anxiety over the economy has translated into the view among some citizens that the political establishment does not care about their welfare. The financial crisis and the threat of terrorism have convinced them that their leaders have failed to provide either effective economic management or public safety. The result has been a populist and nationalist surge across the United States and Europe. As a result, ideas that were previously out of bounds have now entered the marketplace of ideas.

In Western countries where politics is dominated by two parties, anti-establishment sentiment has propelled the rise of fringe candidates within the main parties, including Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn of the UK’s Labour party. This has hollowed out the political center, increased partisanship, and widened the array of possible policy outcomes.

Among many developing countries, the story is different. The developing world benefited from the commodities supercycle, in which natural resource extraction supported economic growth that swelled government coffers. It also allowed governments to avoid hard policy choices and structural reforms, creating an environment in which corruption could flourish. Today, with exports and commodity prices in the doldrums, those economies are suffering, and the reckoning has arrived.

To be sure, there is plenty of anger directed at politicians in the developing world for sins ranging from indifference to corruption to incompetence. In Brazil, the president was impeached and removed from office; in Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea, incumbent presidents are suffering dismally low approval ratings; and in Taiwan, Nigeria, Indonesia, and India, voters rejected establishment parties in favor of new leadership. But in all these cases, the response by policymakers has been to pursue market-friendly reforms. Why has there been such a relatively orthodox set of policy initiatives across such a diverse set of countries even as the developed world is rushing pell-mell in the opposite direction?

FOR THE COMPLETE REPORT CLICK HERE: The New Age of Political Discontent: Hammering Hard on Global Businesses - Lexology

The US Political Establishment: The American system mobilises to save itself - again - by Geoffrey Aronson

For the second time in less than a decade the American establishment - the political, economic, and social titans of the United States' economic and political life - is mobilising to protect a system in crisis, one that could be said without exaggeration to be in danger of collapse.

Just as they did during the Great Recession, Democrats and Republicans alike are uniting with Wall Street and Main Street in the aggressive defence to rehabilitate the US' battered economic and political status quo.

Bipartisan support for Hilary Clinton's candidacy is the focus of this effort - engaging a broad coalition that includes "wise men" of the diplomatic and national security establishment, prominent Republicans, and most of the "respectable" press.

The stakes of this battle are extraordinary - no less than the system of wealth and political life that have come to define a century of American progress and international leadership is at stake.
No wonder then that the traditional shades of partisan political and economic difference pale before the pressing task of keeping the system afloat and repelling the challenge now being mounted by Donald Trump.

The economic crisis that exploded on September 15, 2008, threatened no less than the destruction of American capitalism.

The first unavoidable signs of this danger appeared with the collapse of the investment firm Lehman Brothers. The unprecedented bankruptcy of this firm - a scion of Wall Street - soon cascaded into the Great Recession.

The commanding heights of the US economy, along with Americans from all walks of life - were on the ropes.

The insolvency of the venerable anchor of the American dream - General Motors - of which it was once said "What is good for GM is good for America" - was a poignant and once unimaginable demonstration of the brutal shortcomings of the modern US economy - and the price to be paid by all for its failure.

The Great Recession was in the first instance economic to be sure, but the failure of the US institutions exposed by the financial collapse was far broader.

Not only were the banks and investment houses tainted by failure, so too were the government regulators meant to police them, the financial watchdogs paid to evaluate their credit worthiness and investment soundness, and above all a ruling political establishment - Democrat and Republican alike - that failed to create and regulate an economic system that served the public good.

Little wonder then that all of these forces, not without difficulty, put aside partisan differences and mobilised to rescue the system - and themselves.

Some of the legislative and economic measures taken to re-float the economy may have been radical but their objective was decidedly conservative - to rescue and reform a system in order to prevent a more radical restructuring of American economic life.

The breach in the system opened by the Great Recession is now convulsing the US politics. The folly of assuming that the economic crisis was a discrete and limited event has been smashed by the unlikely candidacy of Trump.

Read moreThe American system mobilises to save itself - again - Al Jazeera English

Is History Repeating itself?: End of History 2.0, beginning of gloom ?

The collapse of the Soviet Union and its allied Communist regimes in Europe was hailed as the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy and capitalism. Francis Fukuyama, the American academic, called it the “end of history” arguing that the West had finally—and for good—won the battle of ideologies. Scenes of joy swept Western capitals; darkness at noon had lifted! Hallelujah. Anyone caught expressing scepticism or urging humility risked ridicule and humiliation.

Twenty-five years later, we seem to be looking at another “end of history” episode. Except that this time it is playing out not in Moscow, Budapest and Warsaw but in the heartland of Western democracy and  capitalism – London, Washington, Paris, Rome and Berlin. The same remorseless cycle of ideological boom and bust that brought about the demise of Communism is now paying a visit to the capitalist West. Liberal democracy and capitalism—the two great pillars of self-proclaimed Western supremacy—are in deep crisis, spawning in its wake a politics of rage and hate on either side of the Atlantic.

It’s by far the gravest crisis since the Second World War, and threatens the post-War political and economic stability the West has come to take for granted. Economy is already in a tailspin and political and social stability hangs in the balance. There’s a worrying erosion of public confidence in the political class and democratically elected representatives—in effect in parliamentary democracy itself. Demagogues are taking over, prompting fears that power might be shifting from Parliament on to the streets, reminiscent of the 1930s Germany. That may be an exaggeration, but it’s hard to escape a growing sense of public contempt for mainstream politics and a desperate search for alternatives even if it means plunging into unchartered waters.

It is a culmination of years of pent-up grievances exacerbated by the fall-out of the 2008 financial crash whose worst victims were the poor. But what happened next was like rubbing salt into the wound. While millions of middle and working class people lost their jobs and had their homes repossessed, pushing them further into poverty for no fault of theirs, those responsible for the crash—bankers and their cronies in government and elsewhere—got away with it. There was much hand-wringing, mea culpas, and talk of market reforms. A new 21stcentury brand of “capitalism with a human face” was promised, but nearly a decade later it is pretty much business as usual with obscene salaries and bonuses still very much the norm in the corporate sector.

Meanwhile, globalisation has failed to work for the vast majority of lower, middle and working classes. Its promised benefits have bypassed them while benefitting big corporations and a small urban elite. Globalisation was sold to the public as a bold mission to bring the world closer to the mutual benefit of everyone, by breaking down trade barriers and promoting the idea of effectively a single world market. But it was really always about developed nations gaining access to lucrative new emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere. And about Western companies being able to save labour costs by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries—India, China, Bangladeshi, Sri Lanka, etc. Even Britain's Labour Party’s ultra-Left  leader Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign T-shirts, which sell for up to £17 a piece, were made by “slave labour” in Bangladesh who were paid just 30 pence an hour.

Globalisation has also led to increased economic disparities and a widening of the rich-poor divide as its benefits have not been equitably distributed; and blue-collar workers especially find its gains outweighed by losses. This has got conflated with anger over other issues like racial discrimination, immigration (the Brexit vote was driven solely by concerns over large-scale immigration from other EU states), and corruption in high places completing the image of a system that is not working for ordinary people.

“A big factor in the anger and frustration that people are feeling today… is the realisation that regardless of who is formally elected, an insular ruling elite is actually in power, pursuing a technocratic agenda that serves the interests of rich and well-connected insiders rather than the public,’’ wrote  Steve Hilton, a former adviser to David Cameron, in The Times.

So, when an insurgent pretender promises to bring “our jobs back home”, bring down immigrant numbers, and crack down on corporate greed, people cheer them seduced by the idea that someone is “listening” to them and speaking their language. (We had a glimpse of it in India in the 2014 elections.) In Europe, the anti-establishment mood has been fuelled by European leaders’ strutting and confused response to the Eurozone and refugee crises—the former resulting in massive job losses and welfare cuts; and the latter igniting xenophobia. Like globalisation, the EU is also deemed as a failed project. Both have had the opposite effect of their intended aim. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the EU was intended to foster unity and a sense of shared interests but, instead, it has ended up causing distrust and grievances. Ironically, even its poorer constituents (the ex-Communist East European nations) which have benefited enormously from their EU membership by way of subsidies and the right their citizens enjoy to settle and work in other member states are not happy, accusing Brussels of bullying.

But to cut to the chase, trying to find specific causes for the crisis gripping the West is to miss the wood for the trees. The short point is that an exhausted West has run out of tricks in the face of a new emerging global order; and an increasingly assertive citizenry not willing to be taken for granted. There is a feel of decay that it cannot remain business as usual for too long. If someone, somewhere is contemplating an “End of History 2.0” thesis, time to rush it out.

Large swathes of middle-class Americans and Europeans are willing to take a punt on anyone who doesn’t sound like a conventional politician. The Trump-isation of American politics, the Brexit vote, and the increasing appeal of populist right-wing figures such as Marie Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and groups like Alternative for Germany (APD) in Germany are a manifestation of this crisis. According to The Economist, “populist, authoritarian European parties of the right and left now enjoy nearly twice as much support as they did in 2000, and are in government or ruling coalition in nine countries”.  This is no mid-summer madness that has suddenly seized millions of people; nor is there a right or left-wing conspiracy to destabilise the West.

How did it happen?

It is a culmination of years of pent-up grievances exacerbated by the fall-out of the 2008 financial crash whose worst victims were the poor. But what happened next was like rubbing salt into the wound. While millions of middle and working class people lost their jobs and had their homes repossessed, pushing them further into poverty for no fault of theirs, those responsible for the crash—bankers and their cronies in government and elsewhere—got away with it. There was much hand-wringing, mea culpas, and talk of market reforms. A new 21stcentury brand of “capitalism with a human face” was promised, but nearly a decade later it is pretty much business as usual with obscene salaries and bonuses still very much the norm in the corporate sector.

Meanwhile, globalisation has failed to work for the vast majority of lower, middle and working classes. Its promised benefits have bypassed them while benefitting big corporations and a small urban elite. Globalisation was sold to the public as a bold mission to bring the world closer to the mutual benefit of everyone, by breaking down trade barriers and promoting the idea of effectively a single world market. But it was really always about developed nations gaining access to lucrative new emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere. And about Western companies being able to save labour costs by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries—India, China, Bangladeshi, Sri Lanka, etc. Even Labour Party’s ultra-Left  leader Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign T-shirts, which sell for up to £17 a piece, were made by “slave labour” in Bangladesh who were paid just 30 pence an hour.

Globalisation has also led to increased economic disparities and a widening of the rich-poor divide as its benefits have not been equitably distributed; and blue-collar workers especially find its gains outweighed by losses. This has got conflated with anger over other issues like racial discrimination, immigration (the Brexit vote was driven solely by concerns over large-scale immigration from other EU states), and corruption in high places completing the image of a system that is not working for ordinary people.

“A big factor in the anger and frustration that people are feeling today… is the realisation that regardless of who is formally elected, an insular ruling elite is actually in power, pursuing a technocratic agenda that serves the interests of rich and well-connected insiders rather than the public,’’ wrote  Steve Hilton, a former adviser to David Cameron, in The Times.

So, when an insurgent pretender promises to bring “our jobs back home”, bring down immigrant numbers, and crack down on corporate greed, people cheer them seduced by the idea that someone is “listening” to them and speaking their language. (We had a glimpse of it in India in the 2014 elections.) In Europe, the anti-establishment mood has been fuelled by European leaders’ strutting and confused response to the Eurozone and refugee crises—the former resulting in massive job losses and welfare cuts; and the latter igniting xenophobia. Like globalisation, the EU is also deemed as a failed project. Both have had the opposite effect of their intended aim. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the EU was intended to foster unity and a sense of shared interests but, instead, it has ended up causing distrust and grievances. Ironically, even its poorer constituents (the ex-Communist East European nations) which have benefited enormously from their EU membership by way of subsidies and the right their citizens enjoy to settle and work in other member states are not happy, accusing Brussels of bullying.

But to cut to the chase, trying to find specific causes for the crisis gripping the West is to miss the wood for the trees. The short point is that an exhausted West has run out of tricks in the face of a new emerging global order; and an increasingly assertive citizenry not willing to be taken for granted. There is a feel of decay that it cannot remain business as usual for too long. If someone, somewhere is contemplating an “End of History 2.0” thesis, time to rush it out.

Read more: End of History 2.0, beginning of gloom

Brexit: History Says Brexit Will Be Beaten

The “Brexit” camp should enjoy its current slight bounce in the polls, for it may not last. If history is any guide, then “Remain” is still heading for victory on June 23. Past referendums in Britain have tended to produce a late move to the status quo. The record from six such contests in the past four decades is striking:

1975 U.K.-wide referendum on the Common Market
 Gallup’s polls during the final five weeks of the campaign showed that support for leaving the Common Market peaked point with two weeks to go — though the lead for “staying in Europe” was still a massive 28 percent. Gallup’s final eve-of-referendum poll put the lead for the status quo at 36 percent (68-32 percent). The result: a 34.4 percent gap (67.2 percent in, 32.8 percent out).

1979 Scottish referendum on devolution
Just over two weeks before the vote, Mori reported a 28 percent lead for the pro-devolution camp (64-36 percent). With one week to go, the margin was 20 percent (60-40 percent). The swing to the status quo accelerated in the final week. Mori’s eve-of-referendum predicted a 50-50 percent outcome. The result: a narrow 51.6-48.4 percent lead for devolution—a margin too small to reach the winning line set by Parliament, which insisted that 40 percent of Scotland’s entire electorate should support devolution; on the day only 33 percent did so.

1979 Welsh referendum on devolution
With three weeks to go, an Abacus/BBC survey said that 58 percent would vote for the status quo and against devolution. By referendum week, that figure had jumped to 75 percent. On the day, 79.7 percent of voters opted to reject a Welsh assembly.

1997 Welsh referendum on devolution
Three weeks before the vote, Beaufort Research showed a majority of almost two-to-one for devolution. The appetite for change receded significantly towards the end of the campaign; but an eve-of-referendum poll by NOP still indicated a 12 percent lead for devolution (56-44 percent). In the event, Wales did vote to set up its new Assembly, but by the narrowest of margins: 50.3-49.7 percent. Support for the status quo had jumped by 16 points in the final three weeks.

2011 U.K. referendum on the voting system
Three weeks before the vote, telephone polls showed an average 12 percent lead for the status quo (46-44 percent), while online polls showed the two sides neck-and-neck (49 percent for the Alternative Vote, 51 percent for first-past-the-post). With ten days to go, support for the status quo had climbed to 60 percent in telephone polls and 57 percent in online polls. The final online polls showed a 22 percent lead for first-past-the-post (61-39 percent), while the final telephone polls put the margin at 34 percent (67-33 percent). The result: 67.9 percent for the status quo, and 32.1 percent for change—a victory margin of 35.8 percent.

2014 Scottish referendum on independence
The u-turn pattern here was even more dramatic than in the 1975 referendum on the Common Market. For much of the spring and summer, ahead of the September 18 referendum, support for independence hovered around 40 percent. Then, during August and early September, the appetite for independence grew, and with around two weeks to go, three polls by different companies showed the race neck-and-neck.

Read more: History Says Brexit Will Be Beaten

United States: The End of Establishment Orthodoxy - by Richard Phillips

When Trump took his escalator ride, the Republican Party had become little more than a Ronald Reagan fetish, a parody of Reagan’s construct of “smaller government, lower taxes and stronger defense.”

Reagan’s acolytes, seeking to outdo each other and then to outdo Reagan himself, decided that if “smaller” government was good, “no” government was ideal.

Republicanism became a race to the right, fueled by the anger, acrimony and sulphur-laden rhetoric of the right- wing media. Going into the election, GOP policy had been reduced to a series of impractical ideological slogans. It subsisted on a steady diet of “Barack Obama.”

This approach did not serve the Republican electorate well. The Republican base, which had grown increasingly disenfranchised economically, was ripe for a politician who spoke in absolutes, challenged convenient assumptions and demolished all concept of orthodoxy.

Right-wing media dutifully teed up the balls for Trump. Meanwhile, mainstream media acted as if they were deer caught in headlights.

All Trump needed to do in order to win a big part of the Republican electorate was to make “policy” pronouncements that were even more extreme than any of his competitors.

But as outrageous as many of the positions Trump took were, they came down right in the middle of the fairway for a plurality of GOP primary voters.

And so it was that Trump went further right than any of his opponents on issues like “the Mexicans,” “the Muslims” and “the Chinese.”

The important point to realize is this: Donald Trump did not take the Republican Party to this place; the Republican Party took Donald Trump there! All he did was throw away the dog whistle.

When Trump discredits the (mainstream) media – which Sarah Palin and her cohorts call the “lamestream” media — for treating him unfairly and enforcing “political correctness,” he is merely trumpeting Republican dogma.

And what is the Republican alternative? Until Trump came down that escalator to announce his candidacy, no one seemed capable of getting further right than Cruz.

But now he is considered the moderate one, even though his policy proposals mirror Trump’s. Cruz is merely Trump without the flexibility Trump promises when he touts his deal-making prowess.

Insanely, Cruz is the last best hope for the GOP to get back to a sane course!

On the other side of America’s political divide, we find an unabashed exercise in political correctness. But in spite of the relative civility with which the Democratic primary campaign has been conducted, deep fissures have been revealed within the Democratic Party.

Americans seem to rankle at the idea of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Many are unable to identify any of her accomplishments — other than those accomplishments that benefited Hillary herself.

She stands for the status quo. But because Hillary Clinton is unwilling to say outright that she stands for the status quo, she seems to stand for nothing – nothing tangible, at least.

Read more: United States: The End of Establishment Orthodoxy - The Globalist

European Unity: The only plan B for Europe is rebuilding power for change - by Lorenzo Marsili

Europeans today are caught between a failing and undemocratic EU and equally failing and undemocratic national states. As Yanis Varoufakis prepares to launch a new movement for the democratisation of the EU, what’s the way out of the impasse?

There is no need to believe, with George Soros, that the EU is on the verge of collapse to believe that it is on the verge of irrelevance. Becoming little more than a dysfunctional common market shunned by its citizens and promoting tensions and antagonisms between states and between people.There is no Plan A for Europe. Mild adjustments to the status quo - the Juncker investment plan, the youth guarantee, additional fiscal leeway of a few decimals points or a banking union already surpassed by history - are unable to seriously address the historical challenges banging at our doors each day.

Plans for increased integration of parts of the European Union get regularly touted. There are some grounds to being diffident of such plans. Any deepening of integration risks in fact reinforcing the undemocratic nature of a Union of financial rules deprived of democratic accountability.

At the same time there is no viable national Plan B either. There is no space for political emancipation through a more or less harmonious abandonment of the European Union. The sirens of nationalism - be they on the right or on the left - sing a song of destitution and disempowerment.

Sovereignty belongs to the people, not to states or to institutions. Too often is this forgotten. Popular sovereignty is not going to be recuperated by the construction of micro-nations barricading and barking against flows of people and of capital but ultimately at the mercy of decisions taken elsewhere. There is no return to the golden age of the Bretton Woods agreements, when financial capital could be trapped within national boundaries for an emancipatory vision of “capitalism in one country”. Today, national boundaries can only trap refugees escaping war. Their invocation plays squarely into the hands of the far-right.

Recent years have marked a watershed in a post-1989 world-view characterised by talk of the end of history and of a third way of non-conflictual management. This is evident in the return of a political rhetoric that dares put into question the fundamentals of our economic and democratic system - from Sanders to Corbyn via Spain and Portugal. While, less promisingly, it is equally evident in the rise of a new far-right in Hungary, Croatia, Poland, and France.

One thing is for sure. This is no longer the time for the status quo. And that means relinquishing despondency and melancholy and rebuilding the ambition for root-and-branch change - at all levels.

We need to stop portraying the EU as an all-powerful behemoth impeding any real change at national level. 

This rhetoric is false and only benefits supporters of the status quo. What we lack is the capacity for articulating and promoting a new vision for all those policies over which national sovereignty makes sense. Ambitious plans for income redistribution, fighting privations and the protection of the commons, fair integration of migrants, tax justice, fair and free access to education for all, and more. In this sense, the campaign of Bernie Sanders is inspiring. 

Failure to achieve progressive national policies is not due to the EU. It is due to the incapacity of the progressive field to win popular consent. I have much sympathy for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Oskar Lafontaine, and other old left leaders who met recently in Paris to expound a Plan B for Europe. But I often feel their attacks on the EU have more to do with justifying their political failure nationally than opening up a new field of action for their countries.

At the European level, ambition means returning Europe to being the place where we can regain power to define all that is no longer possible at the national level. Not because the EU impedes it, but because on certain issues medium-sized nations no longer have a say.

Europe is the only space large enough to be able to rein in the rule of financial capital, forcefully addressing the scandal of 62 people in control of half of global wealth. It is the only space where it will be possible to free Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and provide a new technological infrastructure free of surveillance. Where a new ecological understanding of development can be fostered and forced on the rest of the world through commercial treaties based on climate justice and not competition to the bottom. Or, again, where we can nurture a multipolar alternative to US militarism and the rising nationalisms - often with an ethnic basis - of many emerging powers.

It is the capacity to decide through political struggle how to tackle systemic and historical issues such as these that popular sovereignty should really be about.

Until today European parties have failed to articulate and organise a convincing way out of our multiple crises. National parties have hidden behind unpronounceable acronyms at the European level - who knows the meaning of GUE/NGL? - creating umbrella-groups where they individually maintain their feeble autonomy and collectively maintain their tragic impotence.

A genuine multi-level political force  - and not necessarily a political party as traditionally understood - is long overdue. A transnational coordination summing up the plurality of national forces into a single and recognisable European political actor capable of campaigning and organising over all those issues that require European-level action. 

We have an example of this multi-level dynamic – albeit limited at the national level – in Spain. Where a clearly Catalan force such as the list headed by Ada Colau participates, at state level, in a political project that is able to act as a national political subject in its own right.

Rebuilding power for change ultimately means rebuilding ambition and innovating political practices. Beyond sterile arguments over the benefits of an independent nation-state or of a united Europe, what we should really be talking about is how to organise to transform both.

EU-Digest

Russia Has Become Dangerous Again - by David Frum

Vladimir Putin

It was not even a month ago that Vladimir Putin stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the elected leaders of the Western world to commemorate the D-Day invasion.

I hope whoever issued that invitation has the decency to feel some embarrassment today. Through the past eight months of escalating Russian violence against Ukraine, too many European governments have treated the Ukraine issue as remote and marginal: regrettable, yes, but not a threat to the peace of the continent. It was more important, they felt, to sustain a normal relationship with Russia. That illusion died yesterday along with the murdered passengers of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Russia is funding, arming, and urging forward a violent insurgency against an elected European government. In Crimea, Russia sent troops across an internationally recognized border, seized territory, and intimidated and abused the conquered population. This is not a bilateral Ukraine-Russia conflict, in the way that, for example, the conflict between Russia and Georgia in 2008 could be dismissed as a bilateral conflict. It’s a challenge to the stability of the whole continent.

For a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Europeans hoped that Russia would and could evolve into a country at peace with itself and its neighbors, as Germany has so notably done since 1945. Russia was invited to join the Group of Seven industrialized nations (G7).

NATO redefined its mission, reorienting itself as a global peacekeeping organization rather than a Western alliance designed to contain Russia. NATO extended a kind of associate status to Russia, and Russia was assured that no U.S. troops would be stationed in former Warsaw Pact territories.

Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power crushed those hopes.


Read more: Russia Has Become Dangerous Again - David Frum - The Atlantic