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.
Table of Content
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 author
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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