Readers, particularly those interested in regional integration systems, will have been drawn to follow events in and around the European Union in recent times. In the Caribbean, the lesson derived from experience with the West Indies Federation has been a simple one: if you cannot get along with other member states, or cannot tolerate the prospects of their dependence on you, then leave the integration system, and stand as an independent entity.
Alternatively, where the road to increased integration seems difficult, or threatens to be too onerous for one particular state, the choice is to stay with the status quo, and limp along with it, rather than attempt to break the barriers which hesitant governments impose on themselves. And indeed some observers may claim that this is the point at which the Caricom integration movement stands.
Recent events in Europe, particularly the European Union, are showing us both patterns of movement, as the EU struggles with the situation in Greece, and as Britain prepares for a self-imposed (as against a constitutionally required) referendum on whether that country should remain in that integration system.
As the newly elected Tsipras government in Greece came head to head with opposition within its ranks to accepting terms mandated by the EU for financial assistance to stall a worsening of its debt problems, and others associated with reversing a persistent economic decline, it took what it then believed to be the easier way out by seeking the voters’ opinions in a referendum.
That this recourse was obviously displeasing to both the German government and the EU bureaucracy, did not induce the Greek government to have second thoughts; the government’s obvious belief (as was the case in Jamaica) being that the verdict of the people could influence the behaviour of the integration system and its dominant members.
But as is now well known, the EU management, with the obvious support of Chancellor Merkel’s German government in particular, decided that what the Greek electorate took to be a mandate that could influence the country’s integration partners, should have no force. And so, in spite of a vote in a referendum in favour of Greece’s position, the EU ignored that vote. The EU dominant leadership decided that it would have no influence on their view as to whether Greece should remain in the union and take its medicine, or leave and pursue its course independently of EU support.
The result has been that, even with internal opposition, led by the Greek Finance Minister, and an overwhelming mandate from the Greek people of opposition to the EU’s remedial terms, the government felt that, in the desperation of its situation, it could not stand alone.
So, with the resignation of the Finance Minister, and with constant insistence from the German government in particular that there could be no alternative path, Prime Minister Tsipras has quickly removed the threat of a Grexit (a Greek departure or exit, or secession, from the EU); and he decided to take the available EU medicine, even at the risk of a split in his cabinet and reduction of support within his own party. Withdrawal, or secession, is no longer seen as a viable strategy.
The implication in the Greek government strategizing that secession, or Grexit, was feasible had, of course, a certain precedent in a threat of Brexit, emanating from the United Kingdom. There, in the face of pre-general election assertions by opponents and defectors from within his Conservative Party, in particular ‒ the latter forming the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) ‒ the government of Prime Minister David Cameron decided that the situation in Britain had become such, that a referendum should be held there too, to determine whether there should be a British departure from the EU, that is a Brexit.
The UKIP opposition has been based on the notion that immigration into the United Kingdom by migrants from both the African continent, the Middle East and Asia, had apparently become intolerable to the British people. And Prime Minister Cameron’s recent reference, in the face of recent migrations from North Africa to Europe, has seemed to adopt the theme in his recent reference to the possibility of a “swarm of immigrants” into Britain.
But of course, both Britain and her European partners recognize that that country is more strategic to the future existence of the EU than Greece could ever be. And in that context, it has become clear that rather than the hard line portrayed against Greece, there will be efforts of conciliation that can result in an arrangement, well before the referendum next year, to induce the British population to vote against a Brexit.
A possible fly in the ointment, as mixed by Cameron and the EU leadership, is that the legitimacy of the forces in the United Kingdom opposed to the country remaining in the EU may grow. For the recent elections have shown a certain instability in the British voting population, particularly as this has related to the Scottish National Party’s success in the general elections.
The signs are that the Scottish National Party will simultaneously seek to force an agreement with the British Government for more extensive devolution of power to Scotland. Whether such a concession will be tolerable to the rest of the British electorate is left to be seen. This is so in a context in which the British Labour Party lost much of its support in Scotland, is presently effectively leaderless, and is probably unable to exert itself to strongly support Prime Minister Cameron in the referendum which, if won by the Conservatives, will provide a fillip to the government’s political position.
The British Conservative government, of course, supported the idea of a referendum on Federation in Jamaica in 1961.
