Euroscepticism is not just for the Tories

It's not often that the Morning Star will find itself allied with the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express. It is even less likely to see Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary and John Foster, International Secretary of the Communist Party share a platform with Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP and most of the membership of UKIP.

On Monday the House of Commons will debate on whether to hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. Much of the media coverage has focussed on the likely splits within the Conservative Party. This is hardly surprising as Euroscepticism has often been seen as the preserve of the right, while the left have been characterised as willing to “give up our nationality” to the EU.

It is time to correct that fallacy. Brian Denny of the RMT and NO2EU campaign sets out the case of the left at the launch of the People's Pledge campaign in the following video:

John Foster, in a recent letter published in the Morning Star sets out the left's case for withdrawal from the EU:

The primacy of market competition and the free movement of capital lie at the heart of the EU's founding treaties.

These principles are not likely to be removed.

Nor, therefore, are the legal judgements that place them before the collective rights of labour.

They also take precedence over the economic powers of national parliaments.

The left in Britain calls for Parliament to nationalise endangered industrial plants, renationalise utilities such as transport and energy and impose controls over the movement of capital.

It isn't likely that EU treaties will be amended to permit such intervention.

On the contrary - the big business interests at the heart of the EU are seeking to end any remaining freedom for national parliaments to allocate funding to welfare, pensions, education and health, probably as early as this autumn's EU summit.

The current EU crisis is systemic.

It derives from its combination of the legal fiction of free markets with the real existence of monopoly power.

The EU unites the developing economies of eastern and southern Europe with the advanced monopolies of Germany, France and Britain.

British and British-based US banks have seized control of finance, German monopolies of industrial production and the French giants have mopped up utilities.

This is the real origin of the financial imbalances which now threaten the EU.

The right often talk about wanting a trading union, but not a political union. The naivety of this argument should be plain for all to see during the current economic crisis.

Simply put, the EU is a playground for big business. It is not the European Parliament that takes away the national sovereignty of member states, it is the free trade element that allows monopoly capital to run rough-shod over the rights of working people within those member states.