I READ George Kerevan’s latest article with a certain disappointment, because I expected more from someone normally so savvy (Catalonia still has faith in the EU – but can that faith really be justified?, The National, December 11). But he has surely got more than one thing heelster-gowdie.

Firstly, as with so many on the left, he carelessly elides the “EU” with the “eurozone”, conveniently forgetting the many EU member countries who have stayed resolutely out of the latter, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

His claim about the EU being a political means of advancing a particular economic agenda is also the mirror image of reality; the undoubted weaknesses of the eurozone are due to precisely the reverse, namely, the euro was an attempt to achieve a political goal – greater integration – by inappropriate and inadequate economic means. The EU leadership has been straining to fix matters ever since (not helped by global recession) because more prosperous countries like Germany have little inclination to provide the significant transfers of wealth necessary to properly sustain a common currency, whereas deep self-induced pre-existing problems (eg, large-scale tax avoidance, political patronage) of some poorer countries like Greece offer no incentive for greater understanding without serious governance reform in return. This is not a welcome situation, but the desired economic convergence cannot come about by mere wishful thinking on either side.

Try as he might to be a wet blanket over Catalan aspirations, George cannot get over the plain fact that, in the light of the total UK guddle that is Brexit, membership of the EU now has probably more popular support across the continent than for some time, despite the evident problems. Just ask the Irish about the manifest advantages of membership! Opposition is largely confined to the extreme rightist and leftist fringes.

It is curious that these fringes arrive at the same isolationist position, albeit for different reasons. The demon conjured by the far right is the perceived threat to cultural identity (hence a fear of immigration) whereas for the far left it is the threat to economic identity (a wish to create their own economic Nirvana – not an especially inviting prospect for the rest of us, judging by all previous experience). The current British Labour Party somehow manages the feat of suffering from both evils simultaneously!

In his article, George makes a very interesting and salient observation that there is no justification for a constitution to outlaw any internal subdivision (into genuinely autonomous functional parts by majority democratic consent, one presumes), and quotes the USA by way of example. In that he is absolutely correct, although he then fails to carry the camparison through to its logical conclusion. The USA is a genuine “federal superstate” with a well-established constitution. The EU, on the other hand, is a relatively recent construct, is not a superstate but a co-operative of individual sovereign nation states, and has no constitution, only a small handful of mutual international treaties. So while some individual personalities have entirely failed to rise to the occasion over Catalonia, to put it mildly, “the EU” has nothing formally to say about any democratically supported partition of one of its members. It is not envisaged in any of these treaties, alas. Furthermore, it is nation-state-firsters and other visceral opponents of the EU that have kept it that way, not EU supporters.

Official reluctance is undoubtedly based on an acute awareness that the re-drawing of national borders has been a tinderbox issue in Europe through the ages. “Let sleeping dogs lie” appears to be the unsaid motto. Nevertheless, it is an issue that just won’t go away, and if the EU is to prosper rather than fossilise, it will have to find a way to cope with this within its own borders. A case of “adapt or die”.

I still hope and believe Scotland will be the trailblazer for progress here. But we can hardly hope to achieve any such reform of the EU, as George still seems to wish, by waving at it from the outside, whether from the European Free Trade Association or anywhere else. And certainly not from any “cake and eat it” Leaver delusion.

Robert J Sutherland
Glasgow