Good to see that the Radical Independence Conference was so busy in Glasgow, to-day.

Included in the agenda was a presentation by Clara Ponsatí. The audience made it clear that they opposed the curtailment of political freedoms in Catalonia.

The proceedings were filmed. I'll post a link once the video is available online.

#RIC #Scotland #independence #Catalonia

@fitheach I was re-reading Democracy in Europe by Larry Siedentop earlier - it's a Tory take on events from back in 2000 but none the less enlightening for that - and got to thinking of the chance of an independent Scotland helping to improve the currently dire level of debate relating to the EU's institutions, federalism, and democracy. An independent Scotland could punch above its weight in terms of the necessary reform of the EU. Civil society there seems exceptionally strong right now.

@krozruch
That might be the case, but I'm not counting our chickens. Scotland has to achieve independence before we think of anything else. For sure there are many areas where the EU could do with reform. Aren't there some small Euro states trying to do this already?

@fitheach Quite so though I suppose this is one vector of a favourable outcome in the context of my pessimism in terms of both Britain's future & Europe's.. Small states in the EU are having a hard time getting their voice heard, I'd say. And not all of them are reacting to this with constructive criticism - to do so is a risk. Those that are the most constructive are closer to the status quo. Any post-Brexit independent Scotland would be a new entity, peculiarly visible as such for a few years.

@fitheach Little more than an idle thought, then, but Scotland's intellectual heritage is rather exceptional and independence could lead to rediscovery and reinterpretation... A long way to go but things could happen quickly IF - a big if - pro-independence folk play their hand well in the next few years. English is a plus; no less so for Brexit... Anyway, one can hope.

@krozruch
Well...
This is supposition, but one possible constraint might be the concern that a smaller state might be punished economically by the bigger states, if they create too much trouble. I'd be surprised if that were the case for Swedenor Finland or Ireland, but you never know.

What would be your top priority for reform?

@fitheach The Common Agricultural Policy and the parliament shunting between Brussels and Strasbourg, but reform may be the wrong word for the main work which needs to be done. Siedentop frames his discussion of the democratic deficit in the EU (which he plausibly claims to support as a project) with the Federalist Papers and the discussion that preceded the founding of the USA. He claims, rightly in my view, that this has been absent in the EU.

@fitheach Language complicates things. The US shares a language and, broadly speaking, a culture, though it has become more multicultural since the foundation, and Native Americans have generally been ignored in all discussions. The EU has 24 official languages (some are overlooked, I think). In my experience this means that both its legitimacy and the tendency of people to identify with it is significantly higher the higher the educational level. This is a major problem.

@krozruch
The USA has hardly any homogeneity. This is normal in any big country. There will be certain things that bind the country together, but they are possibly different from what we normally think of as culture.

For the same reason it should be possible for an EU to operate certain things on a shared basis. Though I do hesitate to go as far as advocating a "super state".

@fitheach Yes, this is Siedentop's argument circa 2000. It was a fiction even then, but I do think that in terms of federalism a single shared language is a boon. At that point the debate about a European federalist state as a key goal was more prominent than it is now. The hetereogeneity of Europe is a great strenght, of course, and I consider the same to be true of the UK, but in terms of a shared notion of European identity it poses difficults not resolved by the EU's bureaucratic nature.

@krozruch
Everyone in the EU probably feels European, but not every European is in the EU. I'm sure the Swiss and the Norwegians feel European, too.

It isn't necessary for everyone in the EU to think in the same way or share the same culture or language. It is sufficient for people to share some values, objectives, and a means of achieving them.

@fitheach I think a lot of people in the EU don't feel European. I'm certainly talking about plenty of people here in the Czech Republic where even among young people that's not a given. Swiss and Norwegians more so.

@krozruch
If not European what then, Slavic?

@fitheach Not so much - for those I know. Here there are strong regional identities such as in Moravia, but for many people identity doesn't reach much further than the national level even outside of Central Europe.

@fitheach Here there is the additional complexity that there are those who believe things were better before the revolution (you hear them grumbling to themselves on trams in Prague, but there's many outside of the city), and also that these countries have rarely been independent for long and their countries appear marginal and voiceless in the EU.

@fitheach But a lot of the people I grew up with in the Black Country absolutely did not view themselves as anything but tangentially European if that. They were English in a way I have never been. For a time I read think pieces about the Erasmus Generation. Self-evidently, that is not a generation but a privileged demographic, and those (like myself) who view themselves as European tend to be university educated and materially well-situated. That is a problem for democratic legitimacy.

@krozruch
I'm a Highlander first, of course, but that doesn't stop me being Scottish or European. Are people equating Europe with the EU? Have EU politicians using the term Europe when they mean EU, poisoned the well?

@fitheach People in the Black Country used to hate me for watching French films with subtitles. In many working class circles not only in England, people are suspicious of cosmopolitanism and carry with them a Tabloid-style suspicion of Johnny Foreigner to a much greater degree than might be suspected by commentators who live in capital cities or outside of the struggling periphery. Some of this is the conflation of Europe and EU, but I think not all of it.