The Mainland

I don't have much to say on the European elections. I'm unconvinced by the 'cataclysm in British politics' line - I'll wait until next year's general election before buying that. And there's clear irony not just in people voting for an anti-Europe party to represent them in Europe but also in a turnout of 30 odd percent when one of the common complaints is that European institutions are not representative of the people.

But the elections have made me consider my own relationship with Europe.

At heart I'm a fanatical pro-European. Looking to Europe takes us out of our little England mentality; it diverts our gaze from looking across the Atlantic for our lead; and I still believe in the core values of enlightenment thinking that were Europe's great gift to the world (we'll leave to one side their unpleasant bed-fellows of empire building, terror and genocide).

And yet I find my instinctive support for the EU eroding by the day. Unlike many this is not down to any objection to the bloated bureaucracy or the lack of democratic accountability. Both open the door to corruption and I don't doubt the EU is rife with it. But no more than most national governments - read the first couple of pages of Perry Anderson's recent LRB article on Italy for the full horror story - http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n10/perry-anderson/the-italian-disaster.

And democratic accountability is over-rated. It's all very well saying that the great strength of parliamentary democracy is our ability to vote our representatives out if they don't deliver but that's not much use when the only viable alternatives are exactly the same as the people we've just got shot of.

No, I'm quite relaxed about a group of unelected technocrats having an overarching remit to run the continent. Or I would be if they were working from those same enlightenment principles I mentioned earlier - what Slavoj Zizek calls freedom-in-equality. But this isn't what the EU is about now. It has abandoned those founding principles in favour of becoming nothing more than a giant free trade association, a supra-national cheerleader and facilitator for neo-liberal market-led economics.

So I find myself instinctively supporting the European project against those neanderthals who would turn their back on it while feeling deeply uncomfortable about the institutions I'm defending. Of course, there's further irony in the likes of Farage and the euro-sceptic wing of the Tory Party railing against an institution that by my analysis fulfills most of their economic wet dreams but I think I've had enough irony for one day.