Progressive as in “progressively reducing benefits for the poorest”

This piece about Catalan #indyref crystallises everything I hate about what I call Euro-nationalism. It’s wonderful that they’re all so engaged:

Kilted men wearing saltire capes and foam fingers on both hands danced in the aisles as “The Red Hot Chilli Pipers” played a bagpipe version of Don’t Stop Believing.

Sorry. That was the other lot. Let’s try that again.

Clara, 20, a university student, is one of nearly fifty thousand volunteers who made Sunday’s vote on Catalan independence possible. I meet her sitting behind a ballot box in a school-turned-polling station in Barcelona, a big smile on her face…

But what is it they actually want to do with independence? Well, stop paying into the Spanish government’s finances. What this means is nicely demonstrated by the following map from here. Blue regions’ per capita GDP is at 90% or more of the EU average. Yellow ones are between 90% and 75%. Red ones are 75% or lower.

European_regional_policy_2014.svg

So what we’re really saying here is “Stop paying social insurance for people in places like Extremadura, some of the poorest people in Europe. Punkt, ende.” That fundamentally selfish and meanspirited impulse is what unites Clara, the SNP, and UKIP; the Euronationalists have spoken and they said “Want! Me! Me! Me!”

12 Comments on "Progressive as in “progressively reducing benefits for the poorest”"


  1. Crikey, look at Italy – and that “let’s stop funding the oiks” attitude is right at the core of Northern League ‘nationalism’.

    How come Scotland’s so blue, the empty bits apart? Doesn’t look much like e.g. Wales, or even NI.

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  2. I think it’s fair to say that the history and attitudes of the PP in Spain still give Catalans a lot to worry about. So it’s not quite all about the selfishness. And if you think any of the bad stuff can’t happen in modern Europe, I invite you to take a look at Hungary.

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  3. So what we’re really saying here is “Stop paying social insurance for people in places like Extremadura, some of the poorest people in Europe. Punkt, ende.” That fundamentally selfish and meanspirited impulse is what unites Clara, the SNP, and UKIP

    Good point. The “Yes” campaign was all about how rich Scots were subsidising poor English people and why that should stop.

    Wait, no it wasn’t.

    In fact, wasn’t that the argument on the other side? Scotland is full of subsidy junkies, it would never survive alone, Barnett formula etc etc?

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    1. The Yes campaign was also all about how the UK was stealing all the oil, how without the vast profits extracted from Scotland its fake financial economy would come crashing down (and that was a good thing)…

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      1. Not the same thing. There were a lot of Yes supporters pointing out that Scotland hadn’t seen much benefit from its oil wealth, but they were not complaining that it had gone south to pay benefits for poor English people. They were complaining that it had gone south to pay for tax breaks for rich English companies – as you, in fact, have just acknowledged.

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  4. It is also pretty grubby to say that “Clara” is really saying “Stop paying social insurance for people in places like Extremadura, some of the poorest people in Europe.”

    What is Clara really saying, in reality rather than in the imaginary world of Harrowell? Let’s look at the article:

    “We will start from scratch, we’ll make sure young people don’t have to leave the country to look for a job. We will have more say on many policies that effect us directly, and that the Spanish government is now managing badly, like the abortion law.” …many young people like Clara feel this is a unique opportunity to build a fairer democratic system, and a more equal economy, free of Francoist inheritance

    Wow.

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      1. Then you should have said something like “Clara is in favour of independence for various good reasons but she is being naive: other independence supporters admit that the main reason they want independence is because they are sick of paying for benefits for poor people in other bits of Spain”.
        And then you should have, you know, quoted them saying so or something.
        Though there’s no one actually saying that in the article. The closest is the economist who points out that it is all very well for richer Catalans to pay more, but it’s not fair that they should receive _less_ than other parts of Spain. There are, presumably, poor Catalans too who would like free vaccinations for their kids.

        As it stands you’re explicitly misrepresenting what Clara said.

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  5. Alex: can I repost this? You’re more direct than I am. “Cramped nationalism,” indeed.

    Ajay: Abandoning the poor people elsewhere is exactly what the Catalans want to achieve. Clara cares about youth in Cataluna, not in Spain.

    Alex has this one right.

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  6. Is it news there’s no common fiscal policy across Europe? There’s no nation state of Europe I thought we all knew the project went unfinished?

    And, by the way, with regards to the casual mention of UKIP in your analysis, the clue is in the name mate… the ‘UK’ in UKIP stands for United Kingdom…. and when it comes to the EU that is already a nation state unlike the other groups you mention that represent regions within states. But hey, only details eh?

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  7. Hmmm: I don’t object to the SNP because its main argument, or even one of its main arguments, is ‘Don’t take cash from Scotland’s middle classes and give it to the English benefit claimants’. I don’t see that they are saying that. Quite possibly some of the better-heeled SNP voters are thinking it, but as far as we can judge the ‘Yes’ vote was strongest among lower-income voters, especially defecting Labour supporters in Glasgow and Dundee. Those people aren’t amenable to noises about screwing over benefit claimants, and the SNP aren’t making them. (Not to disagree that an SNP-run Independent Scotland could probably turn out to be a nastily right-wing place in a lot of ways: I always said that one of Premier Salmond’s first actions would be a sweetheart deal for Rupert Murdoch, followed rapidly by the same for the nutty homophobe Thatcherite Brian Souter. Any Scots Nats reading this may now foam at the mouth.)

    My main objection to the SNP, for whatever that is worth, was and is that they are busy promising something rather like paradise- a fairer, more left-wing place when they are talking to working-class Glaswegians, though they probably don’t use that kind of language when asking Brian Souter to cough up his latest donation- but they just aren’t looking at how such a state would be brought into being. The number of fundamental questions that Salmond et al just didn’t address was staggering. As I said to a friend, Nye Bevan said that the language of socialism is the language of priorities, but Salmond seems to think that the language of social democracy is the language of wishful thinking.

    UKIP: yes, to a degree it’s about ‘don’t take my hard-earned cash to pay for all those wogs in (insert name of Euro-Hellhole here)’. I suspect that like many Brits they don’t realise just how many of the UK regions are net recipients of EU regional aid packages. But it’s about more than that: it’s about closing the borders (especially that), ending the supposed tyranny of the European Court of Human Rights, above all about just being ‘real conservatives’ and ‘having some guts’ and ‘ending all this nonsense’ and going back to something that looks rather more like an idealised Britain in 1955.

    I’d say that the rise of UKIP is, at least in part, the latest and perhaps the last manifestation of the power of the right-wing British press. They’ve been telling their readers for decades, at least since Thatcher’s ousting, that Britain could be great again if only it shook off the Eurocrats abroad and the lefties at home, but that alas even a Tory government can’t do that within the EU. This was a useful line for the voters, but it’s doubtful how many Tory politicians, even on the Right of the party, ever believed it. But a lot of the voters have started to believe it, and when times get hard- as they have been for a good many years now- they might just act on that belief.

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