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If the results of the local and Europ ean elections look dire
for new Labour, they look bett er when comparedwith the r esults
across the C ont inent. Tony BlairsLabour polled 23 per cent, the
partys worst perfor -mance in a national election since 1918. In G
ermany,
Gerhard Schrders ruling SPD plumbed even greaterdepths, with
21.5 per cent, while Polands ruling social
democrats got a mere 9 per cent on a 20 per cent tur nou t.
InBritain, the UK Ind ependence Party reached 18 per cent; inthe C
zech Republic, the Eu rosceptic Civic D emocrats got30 per cent, in
Sweden a new E urosceptic party called JuneList won 15 per cent,
and t he far-right Vlaams Blok got aquarter o f the vote in th e
Flanders region of Belgium. U Kturnou t was 38 per cent; Slovakia
managed only 17 per cent,the lowest ever in a European
election.
Are these results a defeat for social democracy? O r a r
ejec-tion o f the European ideal? They are neither. Where the
rightis in po wer, as in France and It aly, it did as badly as the
left didin Britain, Germany and Poland. Eurosceptics in Denmark
took a kicking and in Austria suppor t for Jrg H aiders anti-
Europ e Freedom Party fell by more t han 17 per cent.Some of
these bewildering results can be explained by local
factors, or by sluggish economic growth and high unem-ployment
across the eurozon e. But the real story of th e elec-tions is that
nobody knows what they are voting for. JacquesD elors once
described the EU as an un identified flyingpolitical object and its
workings will be abou t as clear to th e
average Polish peasant (or professor, for that mat ter) as
thoseof a flying saucer from Alpha Centauri. Is the Eu ropean
Par-liament, for example, a legislative body, as one would expectof
a parliament? Well, yes and no. T he usual pr ocedure iscodecision,
whereby t he Parliament and th e Cou ncil of Ministers together
adopt legislation proposed by the Com-mission. The best th e
Parliaments own website can make of this is that it enhances its
ability to influence European legis-lation. Top of the list of
achievements, according to the web-site, are the right to watch
some big sporting events on un en-crypted TV and mor e visible
warnings on cigarette packets.This may b e exciting news to a
Polish peasant, but he will
prob ably be more interested in farm prices. Indeed, ask
mostpeople what the EU is about, and they will mutt er
somethingabout the C ommo n Agricultural Policy. Alas, the
Parliamentcan on ly express an opinion on farm prices and the Cou
ncilhas the final say on agricultural policy, which account s for
46per cent of all EU spending. N o won der east Euro peansstayed at
home in their millions: the Parliament must look sus-piciously like
something they remember from the Soviet era.
Related to t his is the sense, amon g peoples across Eur
ope,that the r uling elites have a private agenda th at is
entirelydifferent from the concerns that move their
constituents.Among the elites, the talk is all of reform:
privatisation,labour market flexibility, public sector efficiency,
theoverhaul of pension and health schemes. There is no p
ublicdemand for th ese things. Quite the contrary, as shown by
theenormous unpopularity of the reformist German govern-ment and
the strikes against electricity privatisation inFrance. People are
told that reform is necessary. They do no tbelieve it. They t hink
the agenda is set by business and finan-cial interests which see,
in p rivatisation and the reduction of pub lic pensions, for
example, the chance to enter n ew mar-kets. They suspect that any
savings to the pu blic purse willnot go t o pro mised tax
reductions on p ersonal incomes andpurchases but to tax relief and
other sweeteners for multi-national companies. This may be an
inescapable aspect of
Why Europesvoters stayedathome
6 new statesman q 21 June 2004
The workings of the EU will be aboutas clear to the average
Polish peasant(or professor) as those of a flyingsaucer from Alpha
Centauri
n s leader www.newstatesman.com / leader
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leader q 21 June 2004 q new statesman 7
globalisation if it doesnt like how a countr y is run ,
businesscan take its jobs and p rofits elsewhere but there is no
pointpretend ing there is anyth ing democratic abou t it. Why
par-ticipate in democracy if real politics has moved elsewhere?
The curiou s disconn ect between elite preoccupations andpop
ular sentiment is amply demon strated in Britain. MrBlair can boast
of significant success: schools and hospitalsthat are wor king
better th an for years, after big injectionsof public money. There
is scant evidence of consumer d issat-isfaction. Polls suggest
that, despite the occasional andinevitable horror stories (most of
them in the London areaand far exceeded in nu mber b y stor ies
about privatised rail-ways), people are satisfied with the schools
th eir childrenattend and th e N H S treatment t heir elderly
parents get. YetMr Blair insists that continuing reform is
required, withmor e choice and mo re p ersonalised services. To m
any ears,he seems to use coded language to suggest that mo re of th
epub lic sector should be handed over to p rivate business.
H istory n eeds constant revision. Th e Pope, in thespirit of th
e teenager who tells her father t hat sheis only a little bit
pregnant, has apologised for theInquisitions error s, but insists
that it did not actually killvery many heretics at all. Indeed,
allegations of w idespreadtort ure and b urn ing, explains the
Vatican, were got up bythe pr ess some time o ver the past 500
years. It says thatout of 125,000 tried for h eresy in Spain, 1 per
cent w erecondemned to death. To be sure, many were sent to p
risonbut , like prisoners thro ugh the ages, they probably had
SkyTelevision in their cells, roast tu rkey on Sundays and
oppor-tun ities to play snook er all day. It is necessary to
haveprecise knowledge of the facts, says John Paul II . And
theCatholic Chu rch, whether considering miracles, the Immac-ulate
Conception or the Resurrection, has never proceededon any thing
less than p recise know ledge. H as it?
Those heretics had it too easy
