The Left, the Nation-State, and European Citizenship

As the European Union (EU) moves steadily toward fuller political integration in the form of the single European currency, attitudes on the left toward projects of supranational governance remain ambivalent. Currently in Britain, the Labour Party under Tony Blair presents itself as markedly more Euro-friendly than the defeated Conservatives, but historically the two parties have not always aligned themselves in this way. Both parties have been divided between pro- and anti-Europeans, but until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, enthusiasm for the European project ran higher among the Conservatives. On the Labour left, membership in the European Economic Community (as it was called then) was seen as imposing a straitjacket of economic orthodoxy on the policies of national governments, and although this point of view has become heretical under New Labour, we can expect to see it expressed more often as the debate about whether to join the single currency heats up. Equally, pressures fr...