Europe has always had major political parties hostile to European integration since the first steps to supra-national cooperation and partnership were taken in 1950 (Eurosceptic parties thrive across EU, but public in no mood to quit the bloc, 3 March).
Labour opposed European partnership with vivid language from leaders like Hugh Gaitskell and Jim Callaghan, who used Ukip-type jargon. The Labour leadership since 2015 has not exactly been Europhile. The German Social Democrats in the 1950s denounced the European Economic Community as “Catholic, conservative and capitalist”. The French and other communist parties, which had much bigger voting shares than far-right parties today, regularly denounced Brussels. In 1978, Jacques Chirac said “voting by majority means France is paralysed” and “a federal Europe cannot fail to be dominated by the Americans”. The Guardian comment pages propagated Lexit – left support for EU withdrawal – in 2015. Poland’s PiS party has nothing positive to say about Europe except when it comes to EU agricultural and regional subsidies, when suddenly its Euroscepticism dissolves into embrace of Brussels handouts.
One of the fascinating consequences of Brexit is that nearly every party on the continent that before June 2016 called for a referendum on staying in the EU or using the euro has now dropped such demands as European voters see the mess Brexit has caused here.
Nationalist and anti-immigrant hostility to European construction is not new and will not go away, but voters in Europe have yet to go as far as British voters have and put in power a fully anti-European government.
Denis MacShane
Former Europe minister
• The points made by Matthijs Rooduijn are valid (One in six Europeans now vote for the far right. We’re not more anti-immigrant, so what’s new?, 3 March). Surely, however, the move to the far right (or far left) emanates from the lack of recognition by existing governments of the failure of the prevailing economic model to provide the electorate with the trickle-down benefits that have been promised over the past 30 years.
The consequence, of course, is the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. It’s not surprising that voters are looking for a change. People are not more anti-immigrant, they are more anti-establishment and against what are clearly failing policies. Observant governments would do well to take notice.
Joe Shackles
Rayleigh, Essex
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