Finally, I may have got to the bottom of Brexit, thanks to an analysis by New Statesman International Editor Jeremy Cliffe – see quote below from the interesting analysis in his recent New Statesman World Review newsletter.
Under Jacques Delors, Commission president in the then European Economic Community, the European single market was founded with a clear social vocation. “What would become of us if we didn’t have a minimum harmonisation of social rules?” the French socialist argued in the European Parliament in 1985: "What do we already see? Some member states, some companies who try to steal an advantage over their competitors, at the cost of what we have to call a social retreat.” The Delors social agenda, crystallised in the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty concluded in 1992, was the wedge that would over time push the British Tories away from the European project. But it would also become one of the EU’s calling cards: the union as the credible guarantor of a social model that would not be possible were individual countries to pursue it on their own in a globalising world.
Jeremy Cliffe's related New Statesman article can be found here. Note reference to Soziale Marktwirtschaft, which I keep mentioning as a key difference between Germany and the more rampant capitalism in Britain.
On a related note, I had forgotten that Roy Jenkins was President of the European Commission (interesting / helpful Wikipedia page here). Andrew Adonis, in one of his recent New European pieces, ranked Roy Jenkins as the fourth most important political shaper of modern Britain – see PDF 'printout' here and online version here. I suppose one can safely assume that Mr Jenkins is spinning in his grave.
Meanwhile, as Chris Grey says in his Brexit Blog, "the swirl of rumours, counter-rumours, predictions, counter-predictions, and rune-reading that has characterised the last few months is intensifying and will continue to do so". And: "it serves little analytical purpose, as well as being psychologically debilitating, to try to follow each twist and turn at the moment".
