As Britain Goes, So Goes the EU?

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A week from today, Brits will flock to the polls to vote on whether they want to remain part of the EU. Justin Hughes, the chief US negotiator for two recent international treaties, writes in the LA Times that British voters should ignore what Americans are saying about all this. That’s fair enough. We did just nominate Donald Trump to lead one of our two major parties, after all. We’re hardly in any position to be giving anyone else political advice at the moment.

Toward the end, though, Hughes offers up this:

Obama’s activism may reflect a larger concern: that a British exit from the EU would commence a full unraveling of the European Union. If that is what he’s thinking, it is a bit insulting to Europeans because it fails to appreciate the full scope and depth of continental Europe’s post-1945 integration. The immediate refugee crisis and the long-term Euro debt crises are greater hazards to a united Europe than whether Britain leaves the club.

I’d put this differently: The refugee crisis and the Euro crisis are bad enough already for EU solidarity. Add to that the growth of right-wing nationalist parties throughout Europe, and are we really sure that Brexit might not be enough to spur the “full unraveling” of the EU that Hughes scoffs at?

I’d put the odds of that pretty low. Maybe around 5-10 percent. But not zero. Why am I so relatively pessimistic? Because:

  • The EU and its predecessors have been around for only about 60 years. That’s a blink of the eye in historical terms. The EU is much newer and more fragile than people give it credit for.
  • Tight, EU-style integration of neighboring nation states is historically unprecedented.
  • World War II was the original catalyst for the EU, but it’s a chapter in the history books for the current generation of voters.
  • The threat of the Soviet Union is gone.
  • The euro really does pose a problem that’s going to have to be addressed sometime soon: either tighter or looser integration. Tighter integration would include a fiscal union and a much larger flow of money from rich to poor regions—just like the United States. If that’s off the table, then eventually looser integration will be the only option. Greece hasn’t forced this decision yet because Greece is small and everyone hates them. Someday, though, it won’t be Greece that’s in trouble.

Put all this together, and I’m not convinced that Brexit is as benign as Hughes suggests. But then again, a year ago I didn’t think Donald Trump had a chance of winning the Republican primary, either. So what do I know?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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