However, such contrasts are not the primary concern here, but rather how the development of policy has continued to paint Cameron into a corner.

With that in mind, we might disregard his remarks yesterday about being firm on when a referendum might run, as if this might actually be enough to keep his backbench in order after their recent series of successes. Instead, we should acknowledge that current policy risks making an positive argument about EU membership ever more difficult to make.

Yesterday’s European Council in a case in point. Following the multi-lateral initiative last month on sharing of tax information, the meeting agreed further progress in the field, albeit still having to work around Austrian and Luxembourgish objections. In this, the UK was a key mover, working with the other large member states to address a growing concern at a time of austerity. In short, a classic example of Moravcsik’s liberal intergovernmental European supply to meet national demands.

This is not in question, but we can also note how the government once again has chosen not to make much of their ‘success’ in ‘Brussels.’ Clearly, the news agenda was rather taken over by the events in Woolwich, but there does not seem to have been much appetite anywhere to dwell on a relative success (even the Austrian coverage has been measured). This is not only a British phenomenon, but it has particular implications.

If Cameron’s referendum plan is to succeed – and success here is taken to be renegotiation leading to approval of new terms in referendum – then several things need to happen (on the British side).

Firstly, there have to be some symbolic ‘concessions’ to take home from the renegotiation, things that people can relatively easily understand.

Secondly, there has to be enough renegotiation beyond the symbolic to let Cameron make the argument to his party that it was a success and so peel off some of the sceptics.

But thirdly, Cameron needs to be able to show that a British agenda of market-based integration has traction in the EU and that he is ‘winning the argument’ (telling phrase that it is) on liberalisation, fraud, etc. He needs this because without it, his referendum campaign will sound too negatively framed: ‘here’s what we’re rescued’, rather than ‘we’re setting the standard and leading the way.’ That will be important in building a coalition across party lines to win a vote.

All of which raises the question of why there is not more pushing of the successes, when they happen.

Of course, the reason is that the conditions just outlined are for the medium-term, after a general election that has yet to be won, and which won’t be won on European policy. The current perceived need to be ‘tough’ on Europe predominates. Indeed ‘success in Brussels’ is not a good strapline, precisely because it reminds voters and backbenchers that the government is in Brussels, and not at home, sorting out the economy or fighting terrorism.

It is one of the sad hallmarks of Cameron’s European policy that he has repeatedly had to return home from European visits to deal with urgent business, a strange reversal of the maxim that government leaders like to engage in foreign affairs because it gets them away from home difficulties. Cameron, on the other hand, seems not to want to spend any more time in cultivating his European partners than is strictly necessary. An odd way to go about setting the scene for a renegotiation.

Dr Simon Usherwood is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @Usherwood and @surreypolitics

The widespread view is of ‘Tory splits’ and there is a lot to that, even if the splits are largely between antis and pragmatists, rather than pros and antis. However, it also reflects two deeper trends on which we might more profitably dwell.

The first of these is righteousness. Perhaps the most striking feature of euroscepticism is not its existence, but rather its persistence. For all the bluster, eurosceptics have yet to make any real impression on policy – nationally or at a European level – at any point in the past two decades: even the British decision to stay out of the Euro was driven more by deep-seated ambivalence across the political spectrum of its political or economic value, rather than the actions of the Referendum party or Major’s ‘bastards.’

So the question has to be: why – in the face of such a lack of impact – have sceptics continued to fight their position? For me, a large part of the answer is this idea of righteousness, that the fight is a Good fight and must be fought, whatever the cost, whatever the set-backs.

Too often, non-sceptics assume that with a bit more education on how integration ‘really works’ and some engaged discussion, sceptics will have a moment of clarity and leave aside their views and actions. But this is to misunderstand the often visceral nature of much scepticism, its connection to deeply (and fundamentally) held views on the nature of the nation, identity and democracy. Such views would require a life-time of discussion to move, and a political system that didn’t undermine that message by constantly referring back to them. Even the brightest optimist could not bring that into being and I don’t know that I would want them to. In a political age when most people don’t believe in much and don’t trust in others, they hold on to what they do believe and trust and any challenge to that is a challenge to the fundaments of a democratic system that relies on some notion of community (national or civic).

If sceptics are righteous, and we cannot change their minds, then we need to think about how we construct institutions and policies that let them come inside and play a constructive role. In the case of the EU, whatever happens in the future, the UK will always be geographically, politically, economically and socially close to the continent, so we need to have some modus vivendi.  Indeed, I think we could argue (a la Beck) that this is a general problem across Europe rather requires some new form of social compact: we should not let the British case distract us from the structural dynamics in operation.

Unfortunately, this brings in the second element, of risk. Sceptic righteousness is inchoate, in that it is essentially negative (‘we don’t like the EU’) and does not offer a positive alternative. At the same time, no one seems to offer a positive alternative: neither ‘more Europe’ nor ‘less Europe’ really cut the mustard as rallying cries. This goes to the heart of David Cameron’s problem, in that his inability to articulate a clear vision of what the Union should be leaves him open to bidding by those around him. This is what the current ‘debate’ is about: how far can we move the Conservative leadership one way or the other?

It is – seemingly – only the pragmatism of government that seems to hold back the sceptics, and pragmatism isn’t a positive agenda, just a holding pattern. Like a besieged king in his castle, Cameron awaits a white knight to ride over the hill and rescue him, or hopes that some blight will kill off the gathering masses outside. Both those options are not inconceivable, but as time passes more and more of those knights will decide it’s not worth the effort and the growth in the number of besiegers will offset the loses to blight. To over-extend the metaphor, Cameron needs to break out of his castle, flying a bright standard under which both besieged and besiegers can rally.

All very nice, but not very likely. European integration is still not important enough to the electorate to make such a fight worthwhile, for one thing. However, this shouldn’t stop us trying to sketch out new options and work to find understandings and accommodations. Let us not forget that the EU itself is the product of a wave of righteousness that swept across the continent after the Second World War: that initial wave has passed, but we should not forget the value of the structures it has left.

Dr Simon Usherwood is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @Usherwood and @surreypolitics

That I even pose the question suggests that the answer is not in the affirmative. Most people don’t know or care and I think that it not only unfortunate, but also potentially damaging.

The traditional ‘solution’ to this lack of knowledge has been to suggest more education, either through schools or public media. I can see the logic of that, but as countless politicians and civil servants can testify, that approach very quickly runs into very deep sand, with charges of propaganda or undermining national identity being thrown around. Even if such charges are ill-founded, the mud has stuck and we are no closer to resolving the matter.

With this in mind, my suggestion here is that rather than focusing on education per se, we should instead concentrate on building discussion and debate across society.

As Albert Tapper writes, sceptics in the UK have too often taken their opposition to the EU to visceral levels – opposing without reflection – while pro-EU elements have felt themselves too constrained to speak out publicly. Thus, too often we end up with a ‘debate’ that is little more than cant and invective, not least because levels of mutual distrust are very high. The old pro-EU approach of ignoring opposition no longer works, especially since the sceptics have recast the debate in terms of ‘democracy’, rather than ‘Europe’.

It is tempting to bemoan the quality of public political debate generally in this country, but I don’t actually think that this is the issue: politicians, the media and publics have proven more than capable, when the occasion arises. The concern here is that the occasion hasn’t arisen, despite what both pro- and anti-EU elements would agree is becoming a critical juncture in the Union’s development.

Days such as today should be opportunities to talk about what we want from European integration and how we can achieve it. That means not only discussion within countries, but also between them. If we have learnt one thing from the eurozone crisis, then surely it is that European states are deeply interconnected, even when they aren’t part of the single currency: what happens in Nicosia matters to Berlin, decisions in Madrid have an impact on London.

In my many years of working on euroscepticism, I have almost never heard of sceptics advocating a policy of autarky, of shutting their country off from the world, a la North Korea. Instead, they talk of international engagement, of participation in the globalising economy, which they see as offering more opportunity than the European one. In essence, that is a difference of level of operation, rather than of fundamental principle and we might do well to consider that there is more in common between sides than we often care to imagine.

However, if we don’t discuss that, then we risk continuing to stumble along, which will serve no-one’s interests at all, least of all the peoples of Europe.

Dr Simon Usherwood is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @Usherwood and @surreypolitics

Just to be clear, my prejudice is that the EU’s foreign and security policy is much more an object of academic study than it is a reality on the ground: I’m often struck at conferences by how many panels there are, talking so much about so little. Indeed, it might be fair to argue that any notion of a European security community is more a function of that academic interaction than it is of politicians or military types.

But no matter, since the seminar was precisely about the future paths for CFSP, and both Sven and Anand were more than aware and candid about those prospects.

Of course,  a key part of my attending was to help my thinking about the things that I usually work on, namely euroscepticism and the nature of integration. A couple of remarks made a real connection on this front.

Firstly, Anand noted that the EU is not designed to project power, but was rather conceived as a power-diffuser. Much as it might seem like ancient history, the EEC was founded in significant part to allow for the reintegration of West Germany into the international system – both politically and economically – in a way that would tie it in close to other states, thereby reducing the likelihood of it pursuing a path of autarky.

The side-effect of tying in Germany in an equitable way is – of course – that others are tied in too. As Scharpf’s Joint Decision Trap swings into effect, states want more and more to come out of the system, just as the system becomes less and less able to produce such outputs.

Much of the debate we see about the EU is on its failings to provide. In the absence of a European demos, output legitimacy is obviously front-and-centre. But it’s not the only story here.

A core tenet of all democratic systems is that they constrain power. We separate executives from legislatures from judiciaries precisely in order to stop an individual (or group of individuals) taking all power to themselves. We create constitutional orders so that we can hold government to account. The pay-off is a drop in efficiency, but that is a price we accept.

The EU is not a state, but the same ideas apply. The myth of ‘Brussels’ is a powerful one, but a myth nonetheless. We are the EU, not some anonymous bureaucrat.

States are pervasive in the EU: they structure public debate, work with the Commission to find appropriate legislative proposals, work with each other and the EP to agree those proposals into law, then implement them in national contexts. States lend their authority to the Union, but do so with a very close eye to keeping a say.

That say is in turn limited by the necessity of working with other states, hence a logic of negotiation and compromise that pervades the system. That doesn’t mean giving on everything, but rather that states work to accommodate the interests of others, just as others accommodate their own. And yes, often that means moving slowly or even not at all.

Without an understanding that the Union is constrained for a reason, we risk throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. If we have difficulty with a bargained and negotiated system, underpinned by a robust legal order, then are we not likely to have more difficulty with an anarchic free-for-all that does not safeguard national interests at all?

Dr Simon Usherwood is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @Usherwood and @surreypolitics

In the midst of other events, one story that nearly slipped under the radar was the announcement between the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy that they will now engage in more automatic sharing of banking data, in order to combat tax evasion. This (not so coincidentally) comes in the same week that other member states with more secretive banking sectors have finally signalled their willingness to open up on disclosure.

This is a good example of soft coordination. The genesis of the idea appears to lie in the US’s FATCA model and an emerging international consensus on the need to capture increasing volumes of tax evasion/avoidance.

What is particularly striking is the clear intention that this is meant to serve as a potential model for more formal EU regulation in a later phase. Even though it sits outside the enhanced cooperation provisions and is described as a pilot, the membership of the group clearly points towards this being rolled out much more widely. In so doing, it highlights the flexibility of the system, the primacy of member states and – importantly – the constructive contribution that the UK can make.

This last point is rather telling, since that contribution is not being made very much of. Notwithstanding Thatcher’s upheaval of the news agenda this week, the Treasury website has limited itself to a press release - quoting a junior minister, rather than the Chancellor – while that has only been picked up by a couple of news outlets.

Just as David Cameron’s EU tour has fallen victim to the new schedule – notwithstanding his impending meeting with Angela Merkel - so the lack of willingness of either the government or the media to make much of a constructive advance with European partners is telling, especially when we consider that even the usual sceptic suspects have not made a fuss about it.

As has been argued repeatedly here, too often does the normative agenda overshadow the practical benefits of integration: without a step back from the former, the latter will become ever harder to achieve, which is to no-one’s benefit. If we look at the UK’s relations with the Union, there are many examples of a real benefit resulting, on both sides. Some calm reflection on this might do everyone some good.

Dr Simon Usherwood is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @Usherwood and @surreypolitics

“In many towns across Europe, there is the tradition of parading the holy relics of the saint. As time has passed, these relics have been endowed with special powers, a manifestation of the power of the divine. Questions about the origins of the relics or the sanctity of the individual are barely discussed or are considered disrespectful. Thus it is that even if there are enough fragments of the Cross to build an ark, their status and veneration continue, through the value that the faithful give to them. I would argue that a somewhat similar process has taken place with Margaret Thatcher, in regard of her European policy: an abstraction from reality.

In the twenty years since the end of her premiership, Thatcher has loomed over British politics in a way that few other individuals have ever managed. This presence is the result of the caesura that occurred in 1979 with the Conservative victory in the General Election : the neo-liberal turn and the reconfiguration of the state’s role that marked a deep change in the pattern of British public life. Moreover, there was also the long period of her premiership, during which the Cold War ended and the political, economic, social and cultural imperatives that flowed from that began to crumble. All Prime Ministers since Thatcher have been defined by her and in opposition to her: it is no accident that all her successors have been conspicuous in inviting her back to Downing Street to make the association manifest.

However, it is precisely in the scale of her importance in British politics that Thatcher loses her substance and her own voice. It is largely impossible to discuss her personality, politics or policy objectives in the UK without entering into a Manichean debate about her intrinsic goodness or badness, a screen onto which the individual can project their own attitudes and prejudices. Margaret Thatcher is a subject on which there is precious little middle ground.

Notwithstanding this, we might return to Thatcher’s time in office and consider her actions as they appeared at the time, rather than in subsequent justifications, analyses and reinterpretations. In particular, we might seek to identity the underlying motivations behind Thatcher’s approach to European policy. Rather than the conventional representation of this being a central (indeed, the central) part of Thatcher’s political identity (mostly obviously in the importance accorded to ‘Europe’ in her leadership defeat in 1990), I would argue that it was instead a function of her pragmatic, problem-solving approach, which in turn meant that it was much more fluid and flexible than often noted.

We could also reflect on the extent to which Thatcher was responsible for the re-birth of British Euroscepticism in the early 1990s. A relatively mainstream and successful grouping of politicians and decision-makers had been able to challenge any British involvement in European integration for much of the post-1945 period, but following the 1975 referendum, it lost its momentum, its organisation and its members. Here again, the conventional wisdom is that Thatcher – most obviously with her Bruges speech of 1988 – was central in reawakening people to the perils of ‘Europe’, was then a ‘victim’ of some European treachery and was instrumental in catalysing the new wave of opposition that persists to this day. However, this would be to ignore a number of other factors that arguably played a much more important role.

Thatcher emerges from this analysis as neither a saint nor a sinner, but a politician caught up in a set of circumstances that demanded action. It cannot be denied that her view of the integration process was largely negative, but her political instincts about what was possible – as against her core beliefs about what was right – seemed to have been most at play. Moreover, despite the gnashing of teeth and rolling of eyes at the mention of her name, it also has to be remembered that Thatcher’s view of how integration should progress has largely come to be the conventional view. In so doing, it asks us to consider the utility of labelling individuals or ideas as ‘pro-‘ or ‘anti-European.’”

In the coming days and weeks we will hear a lot about Thatcher and her ‘meaning’: we might all do well to consider our own biases and interests in the construction of that meaning.

Dr Simon Usherwood is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @Usherwood and @surreypolitics

However, I will focus here on Cameron’s statements about removing free movement for Greek nationals in the event of a withdrawal from the Euro.  This seems to encapsulate much of what is wrong about the way the UK approaches the EU and why it encounters so much resistance to its positions, even when they make good sense (NB: this is not one of those occasions, but still the point stands).

Firstly, it conflates two largely unrelated issues: the Euro and immigration.  The latter has become a much more sensitive issue over the past decade and successive governments have suffered at the hands of the opposition on the charge that most immigration is uncontrollable, because it comes from EU member states.  I cannot think of any one else talking about large-scale emigration from Greece in the case of a Grexit, so it would appear to fall into the same camp as the referendum issue; namely, talking tough to sound tough, rather than to actually do it.

Secondly, it doesn’t really make sense as a policy position.  On a purely logical basis, any Greeks leaving the country would be taking their Euros with them and would be more likely to be high SES individuals, two things that HMG says it wants in immigrants.  Moreover, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination at all to think that the Commission would launch proceedings against any limitation of free movement, which would cost the UK more political capital.

Thirdly, it constrains the UK in future debates, by setting out a marker that must be addressed.  If a Grexit does happen, then that might be useful for the UK, but is very unlikely to be the main issue to be dealt with.  If it doesn’t, then it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth about the sincerity of the UK to what they have long claimed to be at the heart of the value of European integration: think about how all budget framework negotiations are conditioned by Thatcher’s handbagging at Fountainebleau in the 1980s.

Finally, it demonstrates the continuing failure of the UK to find a constructive line on the Eurozone crisis.  The main wonder is that Cameron hasn’t been marginalised even more than he has, with his repeated calls for the Eurozone to ‘sort itself out’, without coming with a constructive proposal about how to achieve this.  To say that Eurozone governments have to take the lead completely ignores both the deep interlinkage between Eurozone and EU and the knock-on effects of any withdrawal or collapse. Even the US government seems to have realised this to a greater effect than the UK, which seems hampered by backbench opinion and a fear about a public backlash.

Just as Eurozone governments have lost too much time hoping that the crisis will just go away, so too has the UK. As the past three years (including last week’s European Council) have shown, that simply doesn’t fly and we need to change that debate.

Dr Simon Usherwood is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @Usherwood and @surreypolitics

By Dr Theofanis Exadaktylos

My German colleagues were certain: Germany was going to kick Greece out of the euro: but which one? I considered it unprecedented luck being in Berlin on the day of the Greece v. Germany football match for the semis of the Euro 2012 championships, during my participation at the EPSA annual conference. Walking alongside the former East and West Cold War borders, fans had been gathering by the Brandenburg Gate early on to watch the game on the big screens. I was surrounded by thousands of Germans in full attire of flags, face paint and other team paraphernalia and had to remain under the radar about my national identity. The outcome of the game was humbling but the excuse was that a small team like Greece was taking up one of the strongest teams in the world. Nonetheless, the message on the posters on Karl-Marx Allee was clear the following day: Ouzo and Out! (Yet still in the Eurozone.)

But are things as simple in the political arena? Last week’s election results in Greece were met with a sense of relief by the European partners and the international markets—albeit in the latter case it was quite short-lived. The challenges the Eurozone is facing are getting more complex, the pressures are growing stronger, and the attention is shifting (quite rightly) to Spain as well as the most recent Troika-bound member state, Cyprus. The European atmosphere, although still quite tense, has been infiltrated by a rhetoric that starts bringing into focus a consideration of which terms of the bailout agreement for Greece can be relaxed (and for how long). At the same time, ideas on a banking union, measures of growth and other similar topics that reveal a stealth shift towards balancing pure austerity are now on the table.

But can the new Greek ‘coalition’ government take advantage of the situation? Achieving consensus is hard—especially in a country where no prior history of political consensus actually exists at least by standards of comparison vis-à-vis the hallmarks of consensus politics countries like the Netherlands. The tendency that regularly develops is one between consensus as the lowest common denominator for policy-making, and efficiency/effectiveness of public policy itself. In that regard, the minimum standards set out between the partners in this coalition government do not necessarily guarantee either achievement of the goals set in the bailout agreement or successful balancing measures against austerity.

Does the new government represent the interests of Greeks as expressed in the electoral results in a fairer, more proportional way? Certainly, coalition governments tend to represent different strata of the electorate on a more equal basis, but this needs to be linked with consensus above. Consensus models of democracy are based on sharing of power, with minorities formally included in the process and decentralization of government. In Greece, despite the move towards a coalition based on consensus, the political system still remains majoritarian-based. The winning ‘party’ or ‘coalition of parties’ exercises virtually limitless power within the political system since it maintains an absolute majority in parliament. At the same time, it is effectively still creating winners and losers as the two camps have been clearly demarcated: pro-bailout and anti-bailout. Therefore, there is an evident lacuna regarding the capacities of the new government to actually create a system of fairness across social groups; one that is based on what the leading government partner, New Democracy, coined ‘Unity government’—especially with the level of involvement by the other partners that we see now.

On the same level, this coalition government cannot guarantee necessarily better quality of policy output—the risk here is that on the one hand, the lowest common denominator is agreed at least at the coalition partners level, whereas on the other, the Troika may come in with higher demands than those that can be agreed upon at this stage domestically, they may even ask SYRIZA to co-sign any new agreement. The process will then come to a halt with unprecedented consequences.

The challenges ahead are based on internal and external interactions. The new government will have to convince the international markets and the European partners that (a) it can be credit-worthy and (b) that the proposed changes to the memorandum agreement that it is about to bring forward will yield concrete results as a counter-balance to the austerity measures. Yet, it is not so much the Greek government being ‘scrutinized’ from outside—recent reports reveal that more than 70,000 new public sector employees were hired in the last two years of austerity. The determining factor for success is the toleration of the electorate for favouritism. The question remains then, whether the electorate will treat the ‘new’ political elites in the same way that it did over the past few decades, or whether it is mature enough and ready to move away from those practices. Although the laws of economics teach us that ‘supply creates its own demand’ on many occasions, the absence of demand for such practices by the electorate may turn the political system away from clientelism. In any case, this is the cornerstone of all evil in Greece, and I think that it takes sincere effort and political leadership to achieve such a clean break from the past (let’s refer to similar efforts by the post-communist countries in their transition periods). Unfortunately we don’t experience any of the two in Greece so far.

So overall, it remains to be seen whether the new government will manage to keep up with the expectations, or will get entangled in the never-ending spiral of Greek politics of succumbing to specific social, professional, economic and political interests and agendas. The first test lays ahead in the EU Summit this week, and I hope it’s not “ouzo and out” this time.

This post first appeared on the Greece at LSE Blog  the 27th of June and we thank them for allowing us to cross post it.

Dr Exadaktylos is a Lecturer in European Politics at the School of Politics, University of Surrey.

Twitter: @euforeignpolicy and @surreypolitics

On June 19^th, a Russian cargo ship, the Alaed, allegedly carrying military equipment toSyria, was forced to turn back after its London-based insurers, the Standard Club, withdrew cover. The move was received with approval in theUK, where diplomatic efforts to bringRussia round to their way of thinking onSyria have so far failed. It seems self-evident that in the absence of (more) Russian helicopters and missiles, the number of civilian deaths inSyria will be reduced. Cause and effect is notoriously difficult to establish. Not so here. Standard Club withdraws insurance cover. The Alaed is forced to turn back because without insurance, it cannot refuel, nor unload its cargo in any port. The lives of innocent people are saved.

As for what forces the withdrawal of insurance cover? An EU arms embargo onSyria.

We have a habit in theUKof too readily believing what our politicians and journalists tell us. EU bad,UKgovernment good. Simplistic, you think? Yes, so do I. But I stand by that analysis. TheUKhad a small Foreign Policy victory this week but it managed this through its membership of the EU forum, where all the member states agreed that sanctions againstSyriawere necessary. We talk a lot in Politics about the power of corporations but in this case what we see is the power of states over corporations when states come together to agree a sanction that is representative of 27 countries, rather than just one or a handful. With an arms embargo in place, corporate entities such as the Standard Club have a responsibility to act on any information they receive that suggests those for whom they act are in breach of said sanction. Failure to do so would bring negative repercussions for the Standard Club itself.

So, Russiareceived a lesson in what it means to live in a global economy. Russian shipping companies can, of course, seek insurance elsewhere. However, insurance is about protection against risk, and risks are extensive at sea. Therefore, an insurer’s reliability and the level of its reserves are important. The Standard Club is, according to its own website, a member of the International Group of Protection and Indemnity (P & I) clubs with free reserves of $353 million. The Financial Times points out that: “Around 95 per cent of the world’s ocean-going ships insure … through mutually owned [P&I] insurers, all of which reinsure through the London-based International Group of P&I Clubs.[1]

The interconnectedness of the world in which policy is made is undeniable. It is something theUKneeds to remember in the event that we are ever faced with a piece of paper that asks whether we want to be part of a European union or not. And before I get accused of being an apologist for the EU, let me just point out that I do realise it is a flawed entity but those flaws are infinitely preferable to where we would be without it. And you really do not have as much impact on another actor from without as you do from within. When listening to our politicians and media pundits, I am too often reminded of my experiences in the playground, when I or my friends didn’t get all we wanted just the way we wanted it. It is well past time to begin highlighting the successes of the EU rather than just its failures. I can’t bear the hypocrisy of a stance that points to the EU in answer for all our ills but which barely acknowledges its triumphs. And if people can’t think of any triumphs, perhaps that says far more about their ignorance than the EU’s failings.

Think Churchill and his comments on democracy. Now apply them to the EU.

Dr Maxine David is a Lecturer in European Politics, University of Surrey.

Follow @MaxineDavid and @SurreyPolitics

As those of you who have taken my modules will know, unlike my colleagues, I’m not really one for European Politics. It’s all bratwursts and talking and complicated voting and irrelevant bodies and banana straightening and the French. For me, it lacks the, y’know, global relevance of American foreign policy or the immediacy of British politics. I do, however, indulge in a bit of Australian foreign policy. Best to keep that one quiet, I suspect. Anyway, following the heady-heights of Eurovision, our continental neighbours have once again been launched into combat with the start of Euro 2012. [Ed – what’s this? Running and now football? Thought you were an academic?!]

The Euros have been rather entertaining. Not a single goalless draw and hardly a clean sheet kept, despite (for once) what appears to be a football that wasn’t designed to be toe-punted on a beach. There have been upsets and epics alongside predictable inevitability. As the Germans (sort of) say: the ball is round, the game is 90 minutes and at the end Germany win. They suspect, I hear, that God might be Bavarian. That’s not necessarily the view from Greece. And this is what has particularly delighted me about the Euros this summer. Greece sprung a huge upset by qualifying for the quarter-finals via a hard-fought victory against a good Russian side. It affords them the opportunity to go head-to-head with the country that has effectively decided to bail them out or hold them to ransom or possibly both. Greeks and many neutrals alike will enjoy the possibility of (imagined) poetic justice as the Greeks attempt a shock of Trojan Horse proportions against the nation perceived to be gripping the fiscal reins a little too tightly.

Other countries have also seized the opportunity to take a swipe at Europe’s economic and footballing powerhouse. Even when they aren’t actually playing. Spain versus Ireland saw two of Europe’s other nations with struggling and bailed out economies come together on the football pitch and, it seems, in the stands. Our very own PhD student, Graduate Teaching Assistant and man-in-the-stand Ciaran Gillespie tells me that the unifying chant amongst Irish and Spaniards was: “we’re drinking German money!” It appears that concerns about the Germans continue to unify Europeans. The Spanish PM had been criticised four days earlier for attending the Spain-Italy game just as the bailout was announced. Perhaps he was hoping that, with Spain playing in Poland and Nadal winning in Paris, sporting excellence might distract from economic woes at home?

On Twitter, the footballing success of states with left-of-centre governments hasn’t gone unnoticed. Virtually gathering at the #leftwhip hashtag, “Political Animal” (@politic_animal) has even tried to rally support for those countries playing more resistant to austerity economics. I can do no better than leave you with their running commentary on the England-Sweden game:

• Comment: England’s attempt to distance itself from Cameronism by not starting player who sounds like a Bullingdon member fails. [Ed – That’s Alexander Oxlade-Chamberlain].
• Comment: the Swedish team’s confidence clearly reflects the peace-of-mind that comes with generous paid paternity leave.
• BBC commentary team show how to spoil an England goal – use the words ‘all in it together’.
• Comment: Sweden clearly demoralised by playing in coalition colours.
• Crumbling social democratic consensus 1 – 1 Needless austerity.
• Comment: Sweden would be 2-1 up if their coach’s name didn’t sound a lot like ‘David Cameron’ when said by BBC commentators. [Ed - Erik Hamren].
• Comment: Swedish players should discomfort England by telling stories of the failure of Sweden’s for-profit free schools.
• Spies in Swedish dressing room say Sweden rallied by remembering that it was just 2yrs 3months y’day until next general election.
• Cameron-lite quasi-social democracy 2 – 2 Full-on Cameronism.
• Michael Gove’s spiritual home 2 – 3 Michael Gove’s actual home.

And, one more, for luck:
• Colour-wise Ukraine v. France was how I imagine it goes during Cabinet negotiations #allezlesbleus #taxipourClegg

(All tweets available by following @Politic_Animal. And why not follow some members of staff, for instance: @DrJackHolland @Usherwood

Dr Holland is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Surrey. 

Twitter: @DrJackHolland and @SurreyPolitics