1/ Answering a question about the transparency of new relationship between UK and EU, Gove recommended Perry Anderson’s three recent essays on London Review of Books. So I thought it’d be useful to show how these essays are related to Gove’s point.

2/ Gove said these essays “brought attention, from a progressive point of view, to what many will have seen as a deficit of transparency in EU institutions”. He said they were three essays published “in the last month or so”, so I start with “The European Coup” (LRB 42/24):

4/ Here, Anderson discusses the alchemy and functioning of the EU around philosopher-historian Luuk van Middelaar’s “The Passage to Europe”. This piece is related to transparency, as Gove’s alluded to, since it discusses the projectors of EU sought to attach Europeans to Union.

5/ The argument is that leaders failed to attract public support to EU project as critical junctions, ‘coups’ in van Middelaar’s words, were accompanied by secret negotiations, alliances and fait accompli.

6/ Anderson agrees with van Middelaar that European Parliament turned out as “a court musician to the powers of the Union” rather than “a tribune of the people”. “To become engaged”, the essay continues, “it needs conflict and drama, but the Union proceeds by consensus”.

7/ The second essay, “Ever Closer Union?” (LRB 43/1) also argues that EU’s proceedings are based on secrecy, where “an unelected executive holds a monopoly of legislative initiative”, and a judiciary, without constitutional audit or control, issues unalterable decisions.

8/ Related to Brexit, essay’s question of whether democracy, sovereignty and globalisation can be combined. Anderson’s answer is no, because “an EU-wide democracy does not exist”, and post-2008 reforms made EU more technocratic, less accountable and more distant from citizens.

9/ For Anderson, leaders of EU must make a choice between political union and national sovereignty and “intermediate solutions – a little democracy at national level, a little more at EU level – won’t work”.

10/ In the third essay, “The Breakaway” (LRB 43/2), Anderson asks what explains the UK’s exit from the EU, and “what light [this casts] on the future of Europe itself”. Here Anderson names Gove when discussing the Brexit process.

11/ Re transparency, this essay states that the quarrel b/w UK & EU was essentially based on their implementation of democracy: Unlike UK, in EU executives are appointed not elected, and, similar to the previous essays, decisions are “shrouded in secrecy” and are “immutable”.

12/ For Anderson, leavers were striking a blow to neoliberalism. After all, barring cases like Liechtenstein, Monaco or Luxembourg, the two richest European countries (Switzerland and Norway) rejected integration with EU and have “flourished” since then.

13/ The essay argues that though EU often speaks of democracy “it negates them”, pretty much due to above reasons: “a unification of the Continent from above, by stealth where possible, by diktat where necessary”.

14/ So the three essays essentially argue that in EU, power passes from supranational bodies through secrecy and stealth and without meaningful consultation to citizens. To me, this is why Gove recommended them when answering whether new UK-EU relationship will be transparent.

15/ The message I take is: “As the EU is not a fully transparent institution, expectations about transparency of our proceedings with them need to be managed.”

16/ Apart from Gove’s metaphor of UK and EU only ascending on board a flight rather than enjoying gin&tonic&peanuts at cruise altitude, this is such a message. Might be of interest to, inter alia, @jonworth