A liberal case for staying in the European Union...

The debate about Britain's future in the European Union got under way in earnest this week, with Mr Nick Clegg setting out the Liberal Democrat position. The core of Mr Clegg's argument revolves around economics, which will also likely be the heart of the ultimate debate on Europe.

However, there are important reasons to believe in a European Union beyond the financial benefits. A federation of the European Union's sort also offers protections of liberties that are beyond a singular nation's ability to offer.

As Mr Clegg is trying to build a pro-Europe coalition, he has kept his focus on the most politically relevant and visible reasons for the UK staying in Europe. That has meant putting front and centre the matters that will most affect jobs, growth and general economic well-being, issues on which he has the apparent support of British businesses (Macrory, 2013). Amongst these matters are certain factors that will have an impact on the country's financial health, namely, time consuming nation by nation trade negotiations and a diminished standing in international relations should Britain break with the EU (BBC, 2013).

Opponents, rather than challenging these points, instead tend to focus their efforts on different issues - sovereignty, the cost of EU institutions, and the 'repatriation' of labour laws to allow domestic businesses greater leeway with regards to how they treat their employees, from the minimum wage to dismissals.

But beyond the important benefits that Mr Clegg stressed - like the international diplomatic value of being part of something bigger than just one country - there are reasons to be positive about being part of a supra-national federation of nations:

• General protections and freedoms to prevent the exploitation that is allowed by competing national systems of labour law;
• General protections of political and civil freedoms, including courts of appeal against arbitrary or unjust treatment;
• Broad legal protections against big businesses dodging tax through federation-wide regulations;
• Freedom of movement, both in leisure and work, so as to give individuals the liberty to escape civil, political and corporate tyrannies;
  

 ...and these are but a small cross-section of the benefits offered by such a federation.

And where the promised benefits of this system are unable to find realisation, the solution is not to be found in dissolution but rather in reform and improvement. Dissolution would only be a backward step, likely only to lead to the re-emergence of old evils chained by a federal system.

We must give heed to calls from pro-Europeans such as Mr Clegg to trust in engaging positively with reform and improvement. As we do, we must also remain wary of attempts to unmake our protections and safety nets, efforts that only drag us backwards. Our hopes lie in engagement and co-operation, in breaking down borders, building up friendships and uniting our efforts across and between nations.

==========
References:
==========
+ BBC's 'EU exit would be economic suicide, warns Nick Clegg'; 8 October 2013.

+ Sam Macrory's 'Nick Clegg playing with fire on Europe'; from totalpolitics.com; 7 October 2013.

Agents of SHIELD: Do our protagonists need to be good people?

Joss Whedon and Marvel have made a brave move in making SHIELD the protagonists of their new series. So far in Marvel's new movie and tv franchises they have been involved in, and okay with, stealing research from independent scientists (from Jane Foster and Erik Selvig in Thor), and lying about secretly developing massively destructive weapons (in the Avengers).

In the first episode of the new SHIELD series, we have now seen black-bag-over-the-head kidnappings and secret motives, and in the second episode we have seen an idealistic new recruit immediately asked to do things against her ideals. It is a brave move to make these dangerous, deceptive, and complicated people the protagonists.

Flawed protagonists are nothing new though. Shakespeare liked to offer his viewers complex characters, tragic heroes mired by fatal flaws. We have seen violent anti-heroes like Wolverine, serial killers like Dexter, the unstable drug kingpin Walter White, and the vain, delusional, psychopath Patrick Bateman.

Agents of SHIELD presents you with the eponymous agency in the role of heroes - heroes prepared to do whatever is necessary - and openly asks you to cheer for them. When it comes to such problematic characters, that is not an easy thing to ask. But, it is important that somebody does.

Trying to understand complicated people, even those with ideas antithetical to our own, is at the core of how we learn empathy. By expecting us, the audience, to make the leap, imperfect protagonists challenge us to imagine other perspectives from which we might perceive the world.

But there are dangers here that should not be ignored. By presenting characters in contexts and roles normally reserved for the heroic, or at least generally good, their methods and their values can be normalised to an audience watching uncritically.

As has been said before, that is not a responsibility of the artist. It is however something to always be kept in mind when considering the context in which people are presented. Narrative, story, context - these things matter. When facts are set within narratives, the details of those stories can subtly alter how facts are interpreted by observers. We, the audience, need to be vigilant; we need to be alert to the possibility that those people presented to us as heroes, who we think of as heroes, may very well not be.

Who really benefits from the spat between Miliband and the Mail?

In the last week the Daily Mail's appalling ad hominem attacks upon Mr Ed Miliband and the reputation of his father Ralph Miliband caused something of a storm. It has now come to light that the Daily Mail had also sent a reporter to gatecrash the funeral service of a member of Mr Miliband's family for reaction interviews to the controversy.

In response, Mr Miliband has written a letter of complaint to the proprietor of the Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, demanding action be taken over the newspaper's practices. Despite an apology from the Editor of the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail thus far appears to have no intention of changing tack - today making an odd, and you would think unhelpful, comparison between the response of 'the left' to Mrs Margaret Thatcher's death and it's own attacks on Ralph Miliband (Glover, 2013).

The question that has to asked is who will ultimately benefit from this confrontation?

Well it certainly won't benefit the Daily Mail, although it will also be unlikely to hurt them. Without the serious threat of punitive legal action or a stern regulator, they have little motivation to change their business model. And the views of those already reading the Daily Mail and voting Conservative are unlikely to be changed by a debate that is taking place far from the Daily Mail's pages.

The same goes for those reading other newspapers and voting otherwise. The real effects of this incident will be upon floating, undecided, voters. The real winner on that front - not likely planned on the Daily Mail's part - will be Mr Ed Miliband himself and the Labour Party. The Daily Mail's image is so tied in the minds of many to the nastier side of Toryism, that this whole mess will only drive floating voters away from the Conservatives and reinforce Labour's position at the polls.

Hopefully such an outcome will prove to be a stern warning as to the dangers of bringing ad hominem type tactics to the political arena. Not only is there a dangerous chance that, speaking to a purely practical level, these tactics will backfire, but they also muddy the pool and lower the standard of debate.

==========
References:
==========
+ Stephen Glover's 'How typically hypocritical of the Left, who danced on the grave of Mrs Thatcher, to be upset about debate over Red Ed's Marxist father'; in The Daily Mail; 3 October 2013.