All One's Eggs in One Basket Case; Review of John Laughland's The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea (London: Little, Brown, 1997)
Eugen Weber
"As a by-product of recent moves toward some sort of international government, the direct control of the elector over national policy is becoming weaker. The spokesmen of the nation, meeting in council with those of other nations, may be outvoted or otherwise committed to agreements involving the country against the wishes of the electors." [Christabel Pankhurst, Pressing Problems of the Closing Age (London, 1924)]
A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of Europe united, of nations abolished, of the administration of things replacing the government of people. It certainly haunts John Laughland, and he has written a book about it that is intriguing, meandering, uneven, not always persuasive even if you agree with much of its argument, as I do, but well worth the detour nevertheless.
Faced with declining competitiveness, low growth, mass unemployment, sclerotic and often corrupt political structures, European countries are undertaking to reproduce their present systems at a supra-national level rather than reform them at home. States limping from self-inflicted wounds hope to walk taller and farther in seven-league Maastricht boots. Political inability to tackle reforms will be overcome by technocratic rules and Common Market protection. A European bloc will cushion the continent against world competition. Business suffocating from overregulation will find a second breath in a broader economic space where everyone will be burdened with similar disabilities. Was this what Churchill meant when, in his great 1946 speech at Zurich, he called for the building of "a kind of United States of Europe"?
