The four Bastanis and the EU

Submitted by SJW on 21 June, 2018 - 12:59 Author: By Martin Thomas
Bastani debating the EU

The commentator Aaron Bastani, who has gained some profile on the Labour left from his Novara Media platform, will debate us on Brexit at our summer school, Ideas for Freedom, on 23-24 June.

In late May he responded to an article in the Observer by political editor Toby Helm, reporting pressure from Labour members for a real debate on Brexit at Labour conference 2018, by accusing Helm (a routine journalist who used to work for the Daily Telegraph) of publishing an “AWL press release”.

We challenged Bastani to debate Brexit.

He agreed to debate Brexit with us two years ago, in a fringe meeting at the NUT teachers’ union conference, shortly before the referendum. He pulled out at the last minute, saying that he had changed his mind and was no longer pro-Brexit.

He wrote about in on the Open Democracy website (9 June 2016). He had previously been for Brexit, he said, because of the bad effects of the EU’s trade policy on poorer countries.

“Britain outside the EU would have a trade policy just as objectionable as the EU does at present”, he conceded. But inside the EU, citing the right-wing direction of major EU governments in recent years, he saw no openings for democratisation.

A separated Britain could be different. It could do a “Left Exit”, with “industrial policy” and “tariffs”. That wasn’t a nationalist choice, because Lexited Britain could also introduce a more liberal policy on immigration from outside the EU.

And, claimed Bastani, it could “aim at reforming some of the world’s most important, and screwed up, institutions: the IMF, WTO, and the UN Security Council”.

Workers of Europe, Unite? Unrealistic! British bourgeois diplomats, change the world? Just the answer!

It was no sobering-up from that scenario that made him flip. No, it was that “the unexpected event of high office [for Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, etc.], and potentially forming a future government, has made a radical left exit campaign impossible this time round”.

The only real Brexit campaign was a right-wing one. Whatever Bastani’s criticisms of the EU, “the current context – of euroscepticism now transitioning to outright xenophobia – is simply too great an overhead”. So he would vote remain.

The argument seems to be that if Jeremy Corbyn had remained an isolated Labour back-bencher, then he could have run a good “Left Exit” campaign. But since Corbyn was in a position where he might gain government, he had to go with “Remain”. “Left Exit” was a good idea, as long as it had no possibility of being implemented?

After the referendum result, Bastani said: “What the left has to focus on now is remaining in the EEA”. The EEA is the European Economic Area, including Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Croatia, a sort of outer-tier three-quarters membership of the EU.

As Bastani noted, Britain in the EEA would “guarantee freedom of movement for Brits but also for the current European nationals who are residents of and working in the UK”. It would also tie Britain to EU trade policy and deprive a left government in Britain of a voice in EU affairs, but he didn’t mention that.

He wanted Corbyn, the Greens, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats to “build a coalition around staying in the EEA”.

Since then, as his angry response to Helm’s report of pressure inside Labour indicates, Bastani’s line has been pretty much that the Labour left should back Corbyn’s choices come what may (even though Corbyn currently rejects the EEA).

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