09 April 2018

Yanis Varoufakis and Benoît Hamon: Our new European party can unite Britain’s feuding remainers and leavers

The leaders of a new political movement reunited around a common manifesto that will contest in the next European Parliament elections write in The Guardian that they will campaign in Britain in 2019, "because all the peoples of Europe – inside the EU and out – face common crises."

Next year’s European parliament elections will not, sadly, be contested in Britain. And they are not capable of toppling the current EU regime, since the European parliament has no such authority. Nevertheless, this vote involving the electorates of 27 member states offers us a splendid opportunity to have the debate that we have been denied so far across Europe.Britain’s people – indeed, its MPs – never got a chance to debate the relationship they want the UK to have with the EU post-Brexit. Similarly, the peoples of mainland Europe have never had an opportunity to debate the clear and urgent changes that the EU needs to implement if it is to become a force for good.

We think that we have a duty to spearhead these debates in both Britain and on the continent, using the European parliament elections as our focal point. We also think that this is an opportunity to heal the rift between progressive remainers and leavers in Britain, as well as between continental progressives who have given up on the EU and those who disagree that the EU’s disintegration is the right agenda to take to Europeans.

To this end, we have decided not only to contest European elections in May 2019 on the strength of a single manifesto, mapping out a clear path to a democratic, ecological, egalitarian and ambitious Europe, but also to campaign in Britain. Naturally, we intend to do so in association with our natural allies in the country: Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, our colleague Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green party, and other progressives in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Why campaign in the UK? To what effect? We believe strongly that a common crisis is undermining our societies and our democracies. As with climate change or tax avoidance, solutions cannot emerge either from the British establishment or from Europe’s pseudo-technocracy. “More of this Europe” won’t do the trick, nor will re-nationalisation of policy. What we need, in the UK and in the EU, is a combined municipal, national and pan-European strategy to tackle our common crises: private and public debt; the low levels of investment that contribute to precariousness, unemployment and poverty; environmental protection; solidarity with refugees etc. [...]

Full op-ed on The Guardian

© The Guardian