Stuart Holland: Europe in Question –  and what to do about it

In the 1960s, Stuart Holland was an adviser on Europe to Harold Wilson, but resigned when Wilson would not follow trough openings on Europe and domestic economic policy. He then drafted proposals on the latter, which were adopted by the Labour Party in the 1970s and, from 1979 to 1989, was a Labour Member of Parliament. In 1989, he accepted an invitation from Jacques Delors to devise  policies for economic and social cohesion to offset the deflationary implications of the Maastricht debt and deficit criteria. These included the case for a US style New Deal for Europe founded by Eurobonds, which have hit the headlines from the onset of the Eurozone crisis, although opposed by Angela Merkel, yet now have been prioritised by Jean-Claude Juncker in his agenda as new President of the European Comission.

But Europe in Question also delves deeper, drawing on a multi-disciplinary background in history, political theory and economics. Such as that post-war German concern with price stability neglects that it was not the hyper-inflation of the mid-1920s that enabled Hitler to seize power, but the deflation and austerity in the early 1930s insisted on by Heinrich Brüning and his resort to government by Diktat, which has recently been replicated by the Troikas of the European Central Bank, European Comission and the International Monetary Fund in Europe. The book vehemently criticises the Monnet supranational design for Europe, recounts the neglect of confederal alternatives since the 1960s, and submits that a Social Europe in which markets serve people rather than people serve markets is feasible within existing institutions and has potential also for a confederal framework for global governance.

‘Stuart Holland on Europe is akin to Thomas Paine on the French Revolution combined with John Maynard Keynes on the Economic Consequences of the Peace. At a preciously young age, he influenced Charles De Gaulle to agree to Britain’s second application to join the European Economic Community. As an advisor to Jacques Delors he designed solutions to Europe’s current problems decades before they even surfaced. Now, with this book, he offers a new generation of readers unique insights into how Europe can be fixed – as well as warning that it may not be.’
/Yanis Varoufakis/

Published by Spokesman
2015
301 pages
987-0-85124-840-0

This book is available here.