MODULE NAME: Britain, Europe, and the European Community
MODULE CODE: POLI2065
STUDENT NO: 200447008
ESSAY TITLE: Did the dream of ‘political Europe’ die with the Maastricht Treaty?
FOCUS ON THE QUESTION
Frustrating. For much of the essay, flawless. But when you meander, you do so in style. We don’t need to discuss the intricacies of this year’s German election, however fascinating you or I may find them, in an essay about events two and a half decades ago and their direct consequences. Whether Mr Westerwelle has doomed the government with his pledge to explore unilateral abolition of the Deutschmark is something I am happy to discuss with you socially, but here phrases like ‘will he go on television and pledge that “the ecu in your pocket” is all the German people need?’ are a waste of words.
However, where you are good, you are great. The section about the British, French, Danish, Dutch, and Swedish referendums on Maastricht was the strongest and most nuanced analysis of the data of anyone in your tutor group. Your conclusion – that Maastricht failed because it was never meant to be put directly to the people, and its collapse became inevitable when politicians were bypassed – is cogent and powerfully put (and not simply because I agree with it!). Slightly wider reading would have been welcome (you rely on
Economist articles too much), but more on that below.
ARGUMENT & ANALYSIS
You are a witty young man, but unfortunately you are aware of this fact yourself. Phrases like 'moments where history rattled over the points are rarely exposed more literally than in the Strasbourg TGV crash of 1993' will raise a smile among gallows-minded readers of the
Spectator, but here they serve as a frustrating distraction from your strong academic points. You almost earned bonus points for managing to avoid the kind of sneering tone your peers slip into whenever Britain Out is discussed, but then you spoiled it by giving in to temptation in the final paragraph. There is nothing racist, much less ‘neanderthal’, about wanting no further integration of the European Community. Cheap jokes at the expense of patriotic Britons have no place in UK academia – we have French academia for that.
More encouraging is your progress when it comes to argument structure. I particularly liked the flair displayed when you use memoirs to source personal anecdotes. The ‘four breakfasts’ section was worthy of a Sandbrook or a Ferguson, and diminished the tedium of discussing the 1999, 2002, 2009 and 2015 attempts to extend the powers of the Commission. I don’t know that Mandelson’s choice of wholemeal toast necessarily betrayed his cold feet, but in almost all other observations, this section was extremely strong.
However, it is disappointing that I must once again caution you against counterfactual tangents. As interesting as it may be to ‘imagine how much greater Mr Blair’s majority in 1997 might have been had the Conservative Party been divided over Europe!’, such speculation has no place in a factual work of analysis. And, to show I am not a complete stick-in-the-mud, is this point not overly simplistic on its own terms? Leaving aside the differences of opinion on Europe within the Labour Party both in 1997 and today, surely the Liberal Democrats would be the more interesting subject in a ‘Maastricht succeeds’ world, given their bolstering from Pro-European Conservative defectors would surely not have occurred. But I digress. I am beginning to see why you do so too.
I don’t particularly
like the argument that the entry of Czechia, Slovakia and Slovenia next January gives hope to the modern heirs to Delors, but must grudgingly admit you make it well so must award good marks for your approach there. We’ll be debating it in person, rest assured.
PRESENTATION & LITERACY
Veers from high-minded academic discussion to journalistic tongue-in-cheek asides. ‘Like that stockbroker bloke and his German wife who were caught manipulating the ecu’ earned you a smile on my lips but knocked two marks off the essay.
Footnotes impeccable with one exception – you didn't italicise the title of Thompson's book on EC-NATO relations.
The government of Greece is led by PASOK, not ’PAKOS’.
Poland did not vote 'nyet' to applying for the EC last year, unless Stalin's efforts in the 1940s were far more successful than I had realised. Poland said 'nie'.
Consistently misspelled the name of the Portuguese foreign minister. It’s ‘Barroso’, with one ‘s’.
ACCURACY & RANGE OF READING
Only two factual errors that I could see: Britain temporarily withdrew from Schengen between 2004 and 2006, not 2005 and 2007. A tiny mistake but one that implies it was Blair, not Hutton, who took us back into it, so it has wider ramifications. In the same paragraph, you claim it was Fox who vetoed Czech entry into Schengen earlier this year, when it was in fact David Davis (Schengen isn't an FCO matter – it's a border issue so it's the Home Sec's purview). Otherwise a very high standard of accuracy.
A good selection of sources, if a little heavy on journalism and a tad light on academia. What you use, you use well – you’re right to deconstruct the hagiography of
Delors and unlike every single other person in your year, you acknowledge that the author of
The Heir of Parliaments has been an MEP for twenty years and has spent the last ten years haplessly agitating for something called a 'European Arrest Warrant'. To show I am not biased, I appreciated the manner in which you took apart the bafflingly popular
Rise of the Federasts. You're right that a European Army and a 'sole ecu' are prospects no more realistic than a working time directive – worse, they are a distraction from the real dangers posed by the few remaining Delorsist holdouts in Brussels.
Hannan’s work on uniform standards and their impact on British exports is a little bit too revisionist for its own good, but you put him in context and the essay is stronger for it. The comparison of
Never Closer Union with
Delaying The Inevitable: How Europe Will Look in 2030 was a bit on-the-nose but you managed to find more interesting points of contention than I expected, particularly regarding Hodges and Clegg’s radically different opinions of the collapse of the Eindhoven conference and its aborted Manchester successor. (Incidentally, I was one of nine people at the protest against the latter, so if you want to explore it further with a primary source, buy me a cup of tea.) You also earned brownie points for citing a member of this department's book
The Case For Ending Exit Checks.
I’ve never heard of Sea Lion Press. Google tells me they are not an academic publisher, and that
The Reformed Union is a work of fiction. Can we talk about this one?
FINAL MARK
65. Strong arguments and a clear awareness of the debate are let down by tangents and journalism. What I will say is that while your tone is inappropriate for academia, it is engaging. When you inevitably go into politics, I selfishly hope you do not side with the Brintegrationists.
– Alan Sked