The European Union is an "undemocratically corporatized leviathan" and a "proxy for the agendas of the Western Establishment".
This is the view of Steve Topple, breaking with the perspective of much of the proclaimed British political left. Captured in an op-ed at PoliticalSift on 9 October 2015, Topple advocates a strategic British exit ("Brexit") from the EU before 2017.
From the op-ed:
Everything else we now recognise – the EEC, free trade agreements, free movement of people, the ECB – have all been installed as nothing more than levers to further (and protect) the rise of globalised capitalism.Topple quotes Robert Griffiths, who described the EU as a "monopoly capitalist United States of Europe", explaining that it has become an imperialist actor competing at an increasingly military and economic level with other powers. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which the EU and the US have been negotiating, is sure to undermine the rights of workers and the sovereignty of the public by enabling private firms to sue the public (i.e. their national government). Further criticism is aimed at the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors, both of them being corrupt as their members belong to the same financial and corporate special interest groups.
The op-ed warns us that in 2017, EU states are projected to lose their veto rights over key areas of legislation. The EU will become drastically more powerful, with a mere 55% approval for a law in the EU resulting in the implementation of the law, thereby potentially being forced down the throats of entire populations protesting such law. According to Topple, this means the surrender of popular self-determination.
Even more worrying is the fact that states will in that year become unable to withdraw from the EU, according to the EU's new rules, Topple argues. Countries will need, again, 55% approval by the other countries in order to withdraw, and their own people's demands are to be excluded from any say in the process.
@MrTopple @PoliticalSift Curious what mechanism the #EU has in mind for blocking a country unilaterally exiting after 2017. War, perhaps?— L'Ordre (@LOrdreNet) October 11, 2015UK Prime Minister David Cameron promised a referendum in late 2017, after the British people will have lost any sovereign right to withdraw from the EU, if Topple's analysis is solid. While the possibility of unilateral withdrawal would still exist, the EU's increasing federalization and calls to construct an army hint at a possible conflict in the event of such "separatism".
Rather than a pure chauvinist iteration of Britain demanded by rightists as the alternative to the EU, however, Topple advocates a "borderless, socialist union" based on majority citizen interests rather than minority financial interests.
Look how @reason got schooled by @c4ssdotorg's @KevinCarson1 on @Pontifex's anti-#capitalism http://t.co/H1BULRHAep pic.twitter.com/rNhrGj8rHJ— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) October 10, 2015
