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Building Progressive Alternatives, 23

Europe and the British LeftBeyond the Progressive Dilemma

By Owen Parker, Matthew Louis Bishop and Nicole Lindstrom

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£95.00

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About this book

The European question has divided the Labour Party and the progressive left for over 50 years. The contemporary left-wing antithesis to the EU harks back to Bennite anti-marketeer narratives: a neoliberal EU undermines the potential for national progressive policies in relation to labour markets, state intervention and finance. However, many make the case that the EU’s four freedoms support a progressive politics: the single market project embeds social and workers’ rights, challenges member state support for large corporate interests and facilitates free movement for EU citizens.

There is, in short, a progressive dilemma for the British left in relation to the European issue, which the authors navigate through the analysis of four policy issues that arose during the Brexit debate and remain significant for British politics and for the left in particular: free trade and the single market, industrial policy and state aid, free movement of persons and finance. Crucially, they point to a route beyond this dilemma for both Europe and the British left.

Reviews

This is a well-researched, realistic, and very fluent treatment of the past, present and future association of the UK with the rest of Europe, and of the attitude of the British left of all shapes, sizes and strategies towards our continent. It is filled with truths that point the UK towards a meaningful new economic, social, political, security and cultural relationship with the changing EU.

Much has been written about the British political right in relation to the EU and Brexit, but very little about the political left. This thoughtful and thorough volume fills that major gap in the literature. It incisively dissects the past and present schisms and debates and, perhaps more importantly, analyses the options for the British left in approaching post-Brexit UK–EU relations.

Will the British left continue to hesitate on the EU or endeavour to rejoin and help reform it? Can Labour overcome its own progressive dilemma in politics – between its cosmopolitan urban constituency and the traditional heartlands – and in policy – between interventionist nationalism and pro-market cosmopolitanism? This inspiring book provides the answers in a brilliant vade mecum on how to reinvent the UK and the EU through a mix of more cosmopolitan interventionism in the EU and national interventionism in the UK. A must read for the Labour Party and progressives more generally.

Table of contents

Introduction

Part I: Europe and the Progressive Dilemma: a conceptual framework

1. The British Left for Market Europe

2. The British Left against Europe

3. The British Left for a Social Europe

Part II: Europe and the Progressive Dilemma: four policy areas

4. Trade and the European Single Market

5. Industrial Policy

6. Free Movement of People

7. Finance

Conclusions

About the contributors

Owen Parker

Owen Parker is Senior Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Cosmopolitan Government in Europe (2012), co-author of the textbook Politics in the European Union (2015) and, most recently, co-editor of Crisis in the Eurozone Periphery (2018).

Matthew Louis Bishop

Matthew Louis Bishop is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Sheffield. His books include The Political Economy of Caribbean Development (2013) and Democratization: A Critical Introduction (2nd edition, with J. Grugel, 2014).

Nicole Lindstrom

Nicole Lindstrom is Professor of Politics at the University of York. She is the author of The Politics of Europeanization and Post-Socialist Transformations (2015) and Transnational Actors in Central and East European Transitions (2008).

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