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JURIST lays out the planned outline of the latest attempt to revive the European Constitution. In tandem with the actions of Chirac to publicise EU actions that demonstrate a defence against socialisation, the leaders of France and Germany wish to revise the first two chapters and submit these revised parts of the Constitution to referenda in France and the Netherlands.The third chapter would be ratified by the respective Parliaments of the two countries.

Christian Democratic politicians from Berlin, Paris and the European Parliament were holding confidential talks to restart talks on the failed attempt to ratify a constitution for the European Union, according to reports in Der Spiegel magazine.

The group includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Jacques Chirac, and other conservative EU leaders, the magazine reported.

This plan will be taken up by the German Presidency of the European Union in 2007. Just imagine the pressure on a British Prime Minister when twenty four have ratified and we have not. No doubt the Liberal Democrats and Europhiles will construct some face-saving routine that allows the politicians to avoid holding a referendum here.

Separate referenda for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: vote for the Constitution to save the Union?

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The European Union is making soothing clucking sounds to try and calm the outraged Muslim masses with plans of a 'media code of conduct' designed to prevent a repeat of the Jyllands-Posten incident with the 'Satanic Cartoons'.

EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said the charter would encourage the media to show "prudence" when covering religion.

"The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression," he told the newspaper. "We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right."

Who is this "we"? Does Frattini think he is speaking for the British and European on-line community? If so then perhaps I can spell out the "consequences of exercising the right of free expression" that "we" are aware of... it makes us free, that is the consequence of free expression. Are "we" clear now? These non-enforcible guidelines are just a worthless sop to people who need to be confronted, not treated as though they have a legitimate argument.

And yet later he seems to take a strangely different stance...

The chairman of World Islamic Call Society, Mohamed Ahmed Sherif told a press conference in Brussels on Thursday (9 February) that the cartoons of Mohammed published first in Danish daily Jyllands-Posten, fuelled extremism.

"Nobody should blame the muslims if they are unhappy about the images of the prophet Mohammed," Sherif said coming out from a meeting with EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini in Brussels. "It's forbidden to create a hate programme to show that the prophet is a terrorist while he's not," he stated, "Don't ask us to try to make people understand that this is not a campaign of hate."

EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini repeatedly nodded and mumbled "yes" in front of cameras and microphones during Mr Sherif's statement.

Mr Frattini also denied wanting to create a code of conduct for journalists reporting on religious matters, as indicated by earlier media reports.

"There have never been, nor will there be any plans by the European Commission to have some sort of EU regulation, nor is there any legal basis for doing so," the commissioner stated.

So in the space of two days, Frattini seems to have done a U-turn and stated his commitment to freedom of expression whilst simultaneously looking like an appeaser. That takes some doing!

Let's hear it for 'nuanced' European diplomacy!

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The drive to revive the European Union's Constitution, after the period of reflection, is proving rather fruitless. Since full ratification will not be forthcoming, the only outcome currently in prospect is a fudged showdown. A combination of vindaloo and Armitage Shanks. Either the Nos will be finessed with opt-outs so that the structural changes will be implemented without too much distress, or the EU will fracture with a move by an avant-garde towards a more deeply integrated European state, a la Chirac.

To avoid their nightmare of fractured EU, the Euro-MPs, Andrew Duff and Johannes Voggenhuber are preparing to fill the breach, parliamentarians riding to the rescue of the forlorn constitution. The two pour scorn on the European Council, as a tool divided and unable to provide leadership. Please note that whilst their quotes may verge on satire, they are authentic and provide a sad testament to the delusional meta-context of Brussels.

"From Europe’s leaders we have had a display of a wide range of simplistic solutions to the crisis," Duff said on Friday.

"From President Chirac we have had a proposal for a piecemeal approach to the constitution and from Nicolas Sarkozy we have had a proposal for a restructured version."

From [the Dutch and UK foreign ministers] Bernard Bot and Jack Straw we have confirmation that the present treaty is finished; from Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel we have him disagreeing with all of these people and then we have the president of Finland disagreeing with Schuessel."

"All their proposals are constitutionally improper or politically quite unrealistic. Some of them are both."

This institutional paralysis amongst the Member States provides an opportunity. The European Parliament can provide leadership and attain its place in the sun:

Both MEPs want parliament to show a clear way forward on reviving the constitution debate in Strasbourg next Wednesday and Thursday.

"We have to decide as a parliament if we are to fill the political space or to be satisfied with being supine parrots of fashion; commentators of the paralysed and confused European council," said Duff.

Voggenhuber argued that there didn’t appear to be any serious EU leadership on the constitution.

"The crisis seems to be getting worse," he said adding, "The question now is who is going to be able to lead us out of this crisis."

"Someone has to take responsibility, someone has to take initiatives. If it's not the parliament, then who is going to take the lead and stand up for the constitutional process?"

It is kind of Duff and Voggenhuber to selflessly burden themselves with this responsibility. But why not leave it to the French and Dutch people? They stood up to the constitutional process, didn't they?

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Tony Blair showed just how courageous he is... he chose to face up to an internal battle based on one idea - the European Union - rather than just doing his job as just Britain's prime minister.

Pity Samizdata.net does not have a catagory for articles called "Treason & Betrayal".

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Seldom in the course of European negotiations has so much been surrendered for so little. It is amazing how the Government has moved miles while the French have barely yielded a centimetre.

- William Hague

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Charles Crawford, the British ambassador to Poland, is in hot water for an e-mail which says several entire true things:

He describes the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as "the most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism".

He also ridicules French leader Jacques Chirac for "nagging the British taxpayer to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa".

He also suggests Blair gives EU leaders one hour to make up their minds on the budget because "If anyone says no, we end the meeting. The EU will move on to a complete mess of annual budgets. Basically suits us - we'll pay less and the rebate stays 100 percent intact".

Oh, but he was only 'joking' of course. Riiiight.

Yes, this guy should indeed be fired from his job as an ambassador... he belongs in 10 Downing Street doing Tony Blair's job!

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Britain's government surrenders billions of our money to the EU in return for... nothing much... and that has left the UK government 'isolated' because more was not surrendered.

The gall of the Gauls at insisting Britain's taxpayers stump up even more when they are massively greater beneficiaries of the EU's largess than the UK is breathtaking but far from surprising.

Britain is not even nearly isolated enough from the EU for my taste.

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The US Constitution begins, famously, "We the People...". The European Constitution begins, "His Majesty the King of the Belgians...". That gives you a fair idea of the different spirit of each document.
- Charles Moore

(Hat tip to Taylor Dinerman for pointing out this gem)

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Unbelievable. Blair is actually going to fold on the EU rebate for the UK? Why? What possible advantage could it bring him politically to give away even more of our money to the parasites in Brussels?

What ever happened to:

If we cannot get a large deal, which alters fundamentally the way the budget is spent, then we will have to have a smaller EU budget
- Tony Blair

We were told that the British rebate would only be negotiable if the monstrous EU agricultural subsidies were also negotiable. Yet France et al have give up nothing whatsoever of any consequence, and yet the halfwit in Downing Street is going to give them want they want anyway? WTF?

I must be missing something here.

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Eurostat has concluded that sixteen percent of the population resides in poverty. At a first reading this appeared quite a high figure, perhaps mitigated by the enlargement process in 2004. On closer examination, this statistical sleight of hand concerned the level of social inequality in each Member State. Poverty was measured as that proportion of the population who had less than 60% of the country's median disposable income. Hence, these startling results:

Using a set of micro-data and cross-sectional indicators from national sources, Eurostat determined the percentage of people living in households that have less than 60% of the country's median disposable income to live on. Surprisingly, this indicator for social inclusion is best in some poorer countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia. The Czech Republic's leadership shows that recent policy plays a greater role in combating poverty than a country's historical background. Slovakia, which was part of the same country as the Czech part of the former Czech Republic for more than sixty years until 1993, has the worst indicators eleven years after Czechoslovakia split.

Being poor does not mean the same throughout the European Union. While a four-person family with an annual purchasing power of 30,000 euro in Luxembourg is already threatened by poverty, a family with 5,000 euro a year in Lithuania or Latvia is just above the poverty line.

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William Heath has another example that even when governments set out to do a Good Thing, it's not necessarily worth it.

Europe's governments, freaked out by how good and free Google is, have knee jerked and spent a pile of money launching an online Euro-library. "We're engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy”, said French President Jacques Chirac about this. "In France, in Europe, it's our power that's at stake”. Let's show them what an intergovernmental steering commitee can achieve, when backed up by a series of working goups.

Predictably enough this was no contest.

Well, Google print is unbelievable. I never asked for it, it cost me nothing, it works very fast and I'm delighted. Euro-lib didn't find anything for me, just crashed my browser (Mozilla).

Euro-lib sounds a bit sleezy, doesn't it? Anyway, William then picks on the Euro efforts to develop a search engine called Quaero widely seen as a potential competitor to Google. (!) Oh dear.

Nobody has ever heard of it (although Google turns up several Quaeros, of course). What next? EC-funded Euromaps? Euromail? Euro-Earth (perhaps just restricted to Europe, and called Euro-Euro)?

Would it be too Anglo-centric to ask: "Can I have my tax back now please?"

We hear you...

Note: William has started another Ideal Government project, this time about Europe, Ideal Government Europe. I meant to blog about it and others already beat me to it. In the sidebar blurb William asks:

Public sector computerisation will cost Europe €88bn in 2005. But did we ever say what we wanted? Are e-government projects designed for citizens? Do we use them? Will they make life easier and meet our needs? Should we trust them? Unless we ask, how can they give us what we want? Thinking and saying what we want is more fun than griping, and more constructive too.

The answer to his questions is a resounding NO from where I am standing and I am not holding my breath at William's or anyone's chance to affect anything to do with the EU, however, can't blame the man for trying to voice his objections when he gets the opportunity to make them to the EU audience and add the bloggers voices to his own.

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The EU Courts have just given themselves the power to impose European criminal laws, by which I mean to decide itself if an offence against an EU regulation is now a criminal matter, even against the wishes of an EU states own government and legal system. How anyone who is even a casual observer of the EU could not have predicted this was on the cards is a mystery to me.

So next time you hear someone tell you that the real power remains, and will always remain, at the national level, perhaps you might like to ask them if deciding if something is, or is not, a criminal matter is a core function of a state's legislative and judicial structures.

If people like Tony Blair and Ken Clarke want to dismantle Britain and make it a European province, well would it not be better if they just said as much and argued why that was the best course of action?

But Foreign Office sources said that, although the judgment raised the possibility of Britain having to create new criminal offences against the wishes of the Government, in practice EU member states would never agree to such a loss of sovereignty.

Any time you hear 'Foreign Office sources' say something will not happen 'in practice', of course that means the opposite is usually true. I expect within 18 months or so Britain will indeed be enacting criminal legislation imposed by European Courts on a regular basis.

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Anatole Kaletsky, the economics journalist who, despite a fondness for Keynsianism, is one of my favourite columnists, believes Italy's departure from the euro and possible re-creation of the lira is a real possibility, one that needs to be taken with deadly seriousness by financial markets. He says the financial fallout from an Italian divorce could be disastrous:

While detailed consideration of these arguments is probably premature, the practical implication is clear: If the possibility of an Italian withdrawal were ever taken seriously by the markets, foreign holders of Italy’s €1.5 trillion public debt would face enormous losses, big enough to endanger the solvency of many non-Italian banks. In other words, the Italian Government is now in a position to kill the euro and wreck the European banking system merely by threatening to withdraw.

I think he is correct. As I said in my last posting about Hayek's idea of competing currencies operating inside the same country, it is folly to imagine that the cult of the all-wise central banker will not come a cropper some time or later. Many Italian entrepreuneurs might be very glad indeed of an alternate store of value if that country does indeed pull the plug on the euro.

Some scare stories deserve to be ridiculed but I think Kaletsky is on to something. Between now and the Italian national polls next year, it would be smart to keep a very close eye on the euro zone financial markets indeed.

(Thanks to the Adam Smith Institute blog for the pointer. It reaches pretty similar conclusions).

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UK authorities may be faced with a bit of a struggle in extraditing a man, now in Rome, for his alleged involvement in the failed July 21 terrorist attacks on the London transport system, according to this report.

So could some nice person remind me what the EU-wide arrest warrant is suppose to achieve, exactly? Oh, er, wait a minute...

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More from the "You couldn't make it up" department. David Carr is fond of saying that the satyrist's trade is hard these days, because reality has a habit of being so very much more satirical.

This is presumably the kind of thing he means:

Slovakia and Hungary are being served notice that the Commission is about to take them to the European Court of Justice for not complying with certain parts of EU legislation.

Apparently, neither country has implemented a number of directives on maritime safety. Slovakia is being warned about having no legislation to do with passenger ships and prevention of pollution.

Hungary has no "availability of port facilities for ship-generated waste". Actually, Hungary has no ports or ships, being land-locked, as is Slovakia. That, apparently, is not the point.

The history of the USSR is repeating itself as farce. EUSSR. And the USSR was pretty farcical to begin with.

Speaking of David Carr and the EU being farcical, whatever happened to Bertrand Maginot. I miss him. The imposition of environment-friendly port facilities on landlocked countries sounds like something he would understand perfectly. It would be interesting to hear his view on this issue.

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It is good to know that in these troubled times, when we feel under attack from terrorist nutters, that those considerate folk in the European Commission have refused to take their eye off the ball.

Vitamin supplements will become more expensive and many health food stores will be closed as a result of an EU directive being upheld. I find it depressing, but not the least bit surprising, that Brussels regulators should feel that ordinary folk are too thick to figure out the risks and benefits of vitamins for themselves. It is a setback for people who want to take charge of their health, and must send a funny message to people who are also constantly urged by our regulators and politicians about the dangers of obesity, smoking, booze and driving too fast.

Even if you are a sceptic about the benefits of so-called alternative medicine, it seems a fairly basic point that the substances one chooses to ingest are none of the State's business. Period.

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I realize that is not the sort of headline Samizdata readers are used to, but the EU politicians voted the right way today.

The European Parliament in Strasbourg has thrown out, by 648 to 14 votes, a draft law for EU-wide software patents. The patent scheme was being pushed by Microsoft and a number of other dominant companies. But smaller software companies like Red Hat opposed the idea, knowing full well it was an attempt to stifle the ability of new companies to enter the software market.

Because the competitive process spurs companies to innovate, EU-wide software patents would have reduced innovation by reducing the ability of start-ups to compete. For Microsoft, the draft law had considerable merit: it would have undermined the ability of the open source software industry to develop products. Frankly, Microsoft is a strong enough competitor already.

In the software industry, programmers are protected by copyright - you cannot legally copy another programmer's work without permission. That protection enables the market to come up with innovative new software. Software patents are a protection too far. Strengthening them with an EU-wide law would have increased the power of incumbents. The European Parliament's decision today is the right one.

Crossposted from the Globalisation Institute Blog.

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Flying swans are the logo of the UK's presidency of the EU over the next six months. Apparently, the UK officials are proud to point out that it is the first time an EU presidency has had an animated logo. I mean, how amazing is that? Watch out Jacques!

The idea is a metaphor for leadership, teamwork and efficiency, which is particularly appropriate for the EU, given the system of rotating leadership. Migrating birds fly in a V formation. This is highly efficient, because all the birds in the formation, except for the leader, are in the slipstream of another bird. Periodically the leading bird drops back and another bird moves up to take its place.

What a load of bollocks! We are talking about a bunch of bureaucrats and appratchiks desparately (at least I can hope) trying to recover their footing which was temporarily disrupted by the recent referenda on the EU constitution. But not everyone thinks the logo is ridiculous, for example the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds likes it:

One of the concerns being tackled in the UK's EU and G8 presidencies, was climate change, which could potentially prevent Whooper and Bewick's swans wintering in this country.

I am having trouble keeping a straight face here. But seriously, how about streching the metaphor a bit and hope it might be the EU swan song...?

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Listening to Tony Blair addressing the EU parliament is a rather strange experience. He calls for reform of spending and recognising economic reality whilst at the same time declaring that he is a 'passionate European' and saying that he supports the idea of an intrusive welfare state.

That Blair's views on the need to 'liberalise' makes him a Thatcherite radical in the eyes of many Continental politicians shows how truly doomed to long term stagnation and irrelevance the EU really is. It also shows Blair's wish to be all things to all people and why in the long run NuLabour cannot help but choke on its own contradictions just as the Tories have.

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...on Waterloo Day, of course.

Addendum...

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This BBC report about the anxieties and arkwardnesses now being suffered by the EU's leaders in the wake of their repudiation by the voters of France and Holland makes fun reading for all those of us who fail to see the point of the EU. What is it for? What good and worthwhile thing can the EU do that could not be done just as easily by the separate nations and governments of Europe with a fraction of the fuss or expense or grief? Why must the nations of EUrope homogenise themselves into one nation? For what? Against whom? The EU's leaders have never explained in a manner that makes simultaneous sense to all of EUrope's people.

Instead, they have tended to fall back on the argument that the EU is inevitable. Yes but is it desirable? That does not matter, because desirable or not, it is happening. It is reality. It is the future. Arguing that it should not be reailty or the future is to indulge in fantasy.

If the EU had a desirable and agreed purpose of the sort that the people of the EU might actually be able to get enthusiastic about – some purpose, I mean, other than that of giving the EU elite a superpower to be the bosses of – that would have made quite a difference in recent weeks. In crisis, all fundamentally effective institutions go to their core purpose. But the EU has no core purpose that its leaders are willing to allude to. All that the EU has is its precious momentum, its inevitability, and if it suddenly looks like it does not have momentum or inevitabitlity, then, in the word's of Germany's Vice President, a certain Guenter Verheugen, "the ground is shaking beneath our feet".

Shake baby shake, I say.

The EUro-momentum will no doubt soon be re-established, and this little democratically induced tremor may soon be forgotten. But while it lasts, I am enjoying it. I can even tell myself that it might be remembered for a while.

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As several people have predicted would be the case, many of the EU's 'great and good' are just continuing with the Great European Integration project as if the French and Dutch NO votes never happened. But it does seem that the shock to the system those votes administered to the torpid media has indeed woken up a few people. It seems that the insects have not noticed that someone has picked up the rock they were under.

With almost Marxist historiography, Eurocrats dismiss the French and Dutch results as the product of "false consciousness". The peoples of those two countries plainly misunderstood the issue. They were really voting against Turkey, or against Raffarin, or against Anglo-Saxon liberalism - against anything, in short, except the proposition actually on the ballot paper.

[...]

During the recent referendums Yes campaigners argued that a No vote would be a rejection, not simply of the constitution, but of the entire European project. Let them now stand by their own logic.

With luck the Euroclass will continue to seriously underestimate the problem and thereby create enough real hostility that the whole European edifice will just start lurching from one political crisis to another until various bits start falling off... preferably UK shaped bits.

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Jacques Chirac has announced that Britain must give up its rebate on its EU contributions as a £3 billion (5.5 bn US dollars) 'gesture of solidarity' with Europe, whilst at the same time adding the France would do nothing of the sort itself when it came to agricultural subsidies.

Tony, not surprisingly, sadly declined Jacques kind suggestion that he publicly commit political suicide in Britain. I guess they never saw that coming in Paris.

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European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso says:

Europe must avoid an ideological war between free-market capitalism and the welfare state after the rejection of the EU's constitution, [he] said on Saturday

Wrong. An ideological war is exactly what we need and it is long overdue. Pick up your spanners then go find some gears to throw them into.

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As soon as the 'unthinkable' becomes thinkable it also, and immediately, becomes sayable as well:

Italy's labor minister called for a referendum to see if Italians want to temporarily bring back the lira after widespread popular discontent over high prices that many blame on the introduction of the euro.

Temporarily?

Meanwhile, rumours that the German government is looking to distance itself from the Euro are being 'officially denied'.

Of course, none of this means that the Euro is going anywhere anytime soon or possibly at all but it would be fun to start a sweepstake on which Eurozone country will be the first to cut and run. For what it's worth, my guess is France.

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European Constitution. 2000 - 2005. R.I.P

The European Constitution died earlier this evening following a short but torrid illness.

The sad passing of the Constitution is unlikely to be a surprise to many people who doubted whether she would be able to recover from the savage beating she took in France last weekend. Indeed, it may prove to have been a merciful providence that she found herself in a terminal condition in the euthanasia-friendly Netherlands where she was emphatically put out of her misery.

For those who witnessed the last few undignified days of her life being dragged ignominiously around the squalid back-streets of Amsterdam, it will be easy to forget that the Constitution began her life as a daughter of the Europe’s elites; a cherished brainchild of the new aristocracy and the bearer of all their hopes and wishes for a secure and golden future.

Her all too brief life started out with glamour and hope and ended with controversy and acrimony. But, what she lacked in longevity she made up for in impact, holding an entire continent in her thrall. She was the ‘It’ girl of Europe and there could scarce have been a single Prime Minister, President, King or Bishop who did not want to walk into a room with her draped across his arm.

But it was her qualities of impeccable breeding that gave rise to resentments as well as plaudits. For everyone that she seduced with her charms, she vexed with her arrogance. For all those that were willing to flirt with her, there were others that feared her embrace. In the end she was brought low by the little people she was born to rule over.

As much as any analysis of the Constitution is possible at all, then the final one must be that she was a puzzle draped in an enigma. Even those closest to her admitted that she was difficult to read and even harder to interpret. Despite all earnest attempts to present her as something coherent and friendly, she remained stubbornly opaque and inpenetrable; a capricious, whimsical, moody, temperamental, volatile, eccentric, arbitrary, erratic, fickle, inconstant coquette whose last act of defiance is to take her unfathomable mysteries with her to the grave.

The Constitution will be greatly missed by her many friends and admirers, and especially those among them who believed her to be the lifetime meal ticket they were yearning for.

Details will be published shortly of all ecumenical, humanist, non-denominational memorial services to be held in Brussels and Strasbourg. No flowers please but send donations to charities concerned with the rehabilitation of clinically depressed Technocrats (of whom there are now many).

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Good on the Dutch.

Dutch voters overwhelmingly rejected the European constitution in a referendum Wednesday, exit polls projected, in what could be a knockout blow for the charter roundly defeated just days ago by France.

An exit poll projection broadcast by state-financed NOS television said the referendum failed by a vote of 63 percent to 37 percent. The turnout was 62 percent, exceeding all expectations, the broadcaster said.

Although the referendum was consultative, the high turnout and the decisive margin left no room for the Dutch parliament to turn its back on the people's verdict. The parliament meets Thursday to discuss the results.

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Dennis McShane, former Minister of Europe, does not appear to have fallen away from the limelight completely, given his recent appearance on Question Time and his subsequent interview for UPI. Cheerleading for Europe with Dimbleby will not tax anyone, but McShane provided some more interesting comments that may cast some light on the current thinking about Europe within the Blair administration, or what backbenchers have to say if they wish to be considered for the next reshuffle.

From the first, McShane makes a point of viewing the French referendum in the faint tones of a realist who accepts a verdict of imprisonment. It is a counsel of acceptance and stoicism, of truth-telling and endeavour; that infamous stranger to the truth, Blairite candour:

"Britain will hold a referendum if there is a treaty to hold a referendum on," MacShane said. "But a French Non means the new Treaty of Rome cannot be ratified. It was always a mistake to call a Treaty a constitution. But a constitution needs the confidence of the people and powerful, united leadership. Europe lacks confidence and effective leadership today so it was not a propitious time to hold plebiscites on the new Treaty. There may be some who hope this Treaty can be made to fly but it would be an insult to France and her citizens to say the Treaty they reject will continue on as a dead man walking. We will have to begin again."

The critique proffered is interesting, since it borrows and begs arguments from the Eurosceptics, in order to incorporate them into pro-EU swaddling. McShane recognises the hostility with which the smaller countries attacked the removal of their representation on the Commission and yet, defends the existing Constitution as a "coherent response" to the problems of the European Union. However, the Constitutional answer (to a question that none of Europe's electorates ever asked) was found wanting. The leaders of Europe could not inspire their voters and the European economy was ruined by:

"... wrong decisions by the European Commission with its obsession on over-regulation and by the failure of the European Central Bank to respond to the economic standstill," MacShane said. "Political-constitutional advances have to be based on economic and social confidence. "

The Eurosceptic critique of the project needs to respond to the flanking movement of pro-Europeans like McShane, who borrow their ideas in order to promote different conclusions. Like some grinning, drooling revenant, that refuses to die, unlike the rest of the reactionaries that pass for social democrats these days, the Third Way has been resurrected as an unlikely combination of welfarism, market economics and environmentalism to provide a new moral backbone for coercion in the name of the public good that is Europe.

"The answer will not be found by the gentlemen of Brussels but by the willingness of political actors in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Britain and the rest of Europe to rethink out-of-date 20th century economic and social ideology. We need a new 3-way historic compromise between economy, society and environment. Unfortunately we only hear the shrill protectionism and rejectionism of those who know how to say No to the future rather than work collaboratively to build a new Europe."

"I hope this shock will force pro-Europeans to unite and defeat the reactionary forces of the left and right who have unleashed a politics of fear in place of the hope all Europeans need," McShane added.

It is too early to tell if this forms an altered vision of Europe, one that may appeal to moderates and one nation Tories. By acknowledging its current failures, McShane's arguments may provide a pleasing lure for those who argue that the European Union can be reformed. It also gives pointers to Blair's approach in the forthcoming British Presidency of the European Union. As such, the Eurosceptic movement needs to counter conservatives and reformers within the EU, forcefully argueing that such approaches will prove inferior to the development of a free-trading area.

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We have already had people from the commission this morning talking about how they 'interpret' the French vote. What don't they understand? No is no.

If the government in this country or the commission try to breathe life into this corpse, then we in Britain we must have a say to deliver the final blow.

- Liam Fox, Tory Shadow Foreign Secretary

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With the decisive French 'Non' to the EU Constitution, clearly the whole project for European super-statist integration has taken a hit unlike any in its history thus far. In many ways the most significant feature of this is that it has made the intellectual and social disconnect between whole peoples in the EU's constituent nations impossible to paper over. In short, the nation called 'Europe' is seen to be a fiction and the 'inevitable march of progress' has been shown to be an illusion.

So what happens next? The obvious move by Tony Blair is to cancel the UK's promised referendum as being moot now that the process has been derailed. Yet there are already frantic attempts going on by the integrationists to prevent that from happening, on the basis that it would be an admission that the process really is over.

Now this attempt to get the UK to vote anyway is really splendid news and I hope that other people who share my views that the EU is an abomination will remember Napoleon's dictum "never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake" as any UK vote will almost certainly be a vote against the EU which will just widen the rift in political cultures between France and the UK.

As I have stated before, unlike David, I wish that France had voted 'Oui' so that Blair could not possibly wriggle out of his commitment to hold a referendum and thus allow Britain to vote 'No', thereby making the UK a virtual 'pariah state' to the French, Spanish and German political elites and as a result making them perverse allies in the effort to disengage the UK from the EU. Oh well, scratch one possible optimistic scenario but the situation is now alive with all sorts of other interesting possibilities.

But it is still hard to see the rejection of the EU Constitution by anyone as bad news. How it will play out remains to be seen but the attempt to sleepwalk Europe into an ever more dystopian regulatory super-state just got a bucket of cold water poured over it. The game is afoot and provided the Tory Party do not go and live up to their nickname name by choosing some member of the Quisling right to lead them, maybe even that collection of risk averse Grandees will realise that taking on the EU is something that can reap huge political benefits. Labour too must be looking at the spectacle of the French power elite being bitten in the arse by millions of common people who want the political system to impose economic and social stasis to a background rap of splendidly unintelligible gibberish from sundry French intellectuals and thinking "there but for the grace of God...". At least some of them must be wondering if the downside of Euro-integration is worth the political risks.

The dismay is palpable. It is hard not to laugh.

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To all French crypto-communists, syndicalists, marxists, trotskyites, leninists, stalinists, national socialists, socialist nationalists, primitivists, Trade Union dinosaurs, student activists, greenie nutters, neo-fascists, old fashioned fascists, quasi-crypto-troglodyte-Pol-Pottist-year zero-flat-earthers, looney tunes and enviro-goons... Merci Beaucoup!!!!

I could kiss every single one of you (but I don't know how to say that in French).

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For what it may or may not be worth, Channel 4 News has just said that a leaked exit poll gives the Non side victory with between 53 and 55 per cent of the vote.

Meanwhile, the EU Referendum blog reports that it has read a document which explains that Non will not actually mean No:

In short, the authors conclude that, in the event of one or both countries voting "no", the ratification process should be neither suspended nor abandoned. They assert that all member states have expressed a commitment to proceed with ratification by virtue of Declaration 30, appended to the Constitutional Treaty. Member states cannot unilaterally or collectively decide to change the ratification process.

Thus, member states which have not already ratified should continue with the process whence, once 20 members have done so, the matter should be referred to the European Council.

In the meantime, the authors caution that "the European Union must not remain paralysed". Rather, they say, "it must continue and intensify its efforts to relaunch its policies, even by implementing in advance, where possible, the provisions of the Treaty that do not meet with open opposition".

Thus, the considered response in the event of a rejection of the constitution should be "full steam ahead". Member states should implement it even faster than they are doing already.

Very helpful. I wish I could be equally helpful in return on this question:

So what, precisely, do we have to do to stop this thing?

I read the EU Referendum blog in the hope of getting answers to questions like that. If they have to ask that, what is the chance that anyone else will have an answer?

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Having been subjected to some robust criticism for my occasional cyncism about the whole modern democratic process, I am actually a little peeved to discover that I am but a mere dilettante:

If the French and the Dutch reject the EU Constitution on Sunday and Wednesday, they should re-run the referendums, the current president of the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said.

"If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again", Mr Juncker said in an interview with Belgian daily Le Soir.

'No' is not the right answer, you see.

The whole bloody continent is heading for another war. Britain out now.

Sidenote: This Mr. Juncker chappie is the president of the EU? Hands up anyone, anywhere who has ever heard of him!

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French voters go to the polls this weekend to vote on the European Union constitution, with polls so far suggesting that the "no's" will narrowly win and shaft the wretched project, although one should never, ever under-estimate the ability of the political establishment to scare voters into saying "oui". My hope, needless to say, is that the French vote against the constitution and throw a great big spanner in the works and prevent the creation of what will be, explicitly, a European superstate.

It is pointless at this vantage point to guess exactly what will be the impact on British political life if the French do nix the constitution. My rough guess is that Blair will secretly breath a deep sigh of relief, as will the Tories. I also think that the United States will also be glad about a no vote, although I am just guessing.

As Anatole Kaletsky writes in the Times today, the chronic underperformance of the euro zone economy is at the heart of much of that disenchantment (although other issues are important too).

Here's a key graf:

The relative economic decline of "old" Europe since the early 1990s - especially of Germany and Italy, but also of the Netherlands and France - has been a disaster almost unparalleled in modern history. While Britain and Japan certainly suffered some massive economic dislocations, in the early 1980s and the mid-1990s respectively, they never experienced the same sort of permanent transformation from thriving full-employment economies to stagnant societies where mass unemployment and falling living standards are accepted as permanent facts of life. In Britain, unemployment more than doubled from 1980 to 1984, but conditions then quickly improved. By the late 1980s it was enjoying a boom, the economy was growing by 4 per cent and unemployment had halved. In continental Europe, by contrast, unemployment has been stuck between 8 and 11 per cent since 1991 and growth has reached 3 per cent only once in those 14 years.

He has a point, although I am struck by the fact that in France, much of the hostility to the constitution is coming not from pro-free marketeers, as is the case in many respects in Britain, but from those who fear that the process will open up France's high regulated, high-tax economy to the icy winds of laissez faire. The ironies abound.

Of course, the fact of mere voters saying no to the EU juggernaut is unlikely to deflect the mixed assortment of deluded idealists, crooks, place-seekers and sundry camp-followers from trying to advance their aims. But a delicious irony would it be if the land of Bonaparte, de Gaulle and Asterix puts a major block in their path.

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Xavier Méra has a piece up at Institut économique Molinari about the continuing and seemingly never-ending EU vendetta against Microsoft.

Concluding paragraphs:

That is not all. EU spokesman Antonia Mochan observed that the Media Player affair went "beyond the question of its name," which has now been settled. Indeed, Microsoft's rivals complain that the reduced version of Windows is not totally compatible with their programs. The EU's competition department has stated that tests are under way, and an EU source wishing to remain anonymous confirmed the plaintiffs' complaints about compatibility. It is perhaps this aspect, the least widely reported in the Media Player affair, which reveals the most about the validity of the charges made against the IT giant. In fact, if the commission ends up denouncing this state of affairs, it will once again be contradicting grievances it has put forward about Microsoft.

The point of the penalty is that the integrated version of Media Player allegedly damages competitors. Withdrawing it should therefore benefit them. If this is not the case, as they say and as the commission spokesperson suggests, that means these rival software writers are in reality third-party beneficiaries of the Windows Media Player system. It cannot be argued in the same breath that Microsoft both hurts and helps its competitors with the same product. It follows then that we cannot criticize Microsoft both for putting forward a Windows "N" that is "flawed" because it doesn't contain specific Media Player files, and for being an "unfair" competitor with its complete version.

In a trial where logic has not been taken seriously, arbitrary judgement has played a more significant role than reason and experience. As the accusation continues down the same path, the Microsoft case is coming to look more and more like a witch-hunt.

Well, it sounds to me more like that Microsoft, having been ordered to do business differently from the utterly reasonable and beneficial-to-all-except-rivals way that it wants to, may have introduced a little minor self-inflicted sabotage, Atlas Shrugged style, in order to make the EU regulators feel like the prats that they are.

Either that, or they are maybe indulging in that alternative version of sabotage that consists of doing everything you are told and nothing else, which always causes havoc. Few things ruin complicated technological systems more quickly and more completely than pure obedience. Okay, if that is what you bastards say you want, that is what you will get . . .

And I say that they have a perfect right to do all of that. I have always thought that bitching about Microsoft including Media Player in Windows is about as sane as complaining about a car company including hub caps on its cars, on the grounds that this discriminates against disappointed hub cap suppliers. Which it sort of does, but so bloody what?

By the way, the first version of this posting that I stuck up was entitled, in error: "The EU versus the EU (again)". (I decided to change it from "Microsoft versus the EU" to "The EU versus Microsoft", but only got half way.) But maybe this was not such an error. Self destruction is what the EU often seems to be all about.

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For those of you not able to drag your attention from our fascinating British national poll (okay, I'll turn the snark button off now) there is always the European Union to keep us all amused. It emerges that the EU Commission has gotten a bit red-faced after it emerged that two saunas were installed in the new Brussels HQ out of consideration for its Scandanavian staff.

This seems a bit mean. It must be nice to unwind and loosen those muscle pains after a hard day churning out interminable directives and figuring out new ways to shaft Chinese textile exporters. In fact, I would like to make a modest proposal: perhaps all such officials could spend a lot more time in saunas, not to mention theatres, cinemas, restaurants, nightclubs, race courses and football grounds. In fact, anywhere but their own offices.

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This Friday, Michael Jennings will be doing my last-Friday-of-the-month talk, about China. Emergence of, economic miracle, impact on rest of world, and so on.

And, as if determined to assist me in my efforts to publicise this event, the European Union, in the person of Euro-Panjandrum Peter Mandelson, has been uttering anti-Chinese fatuities:

The European Union has called on China to reduce its clothing exports to Europe or else face enforced limits.

That was the warning given by EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, as he launched an EU probe into nine categories of Chinese textile exports.

Exports of certain Chinese clothing items to Europe have surged by more than 500% since an international quota system came to an end on 1 January.

Heaven forbid that the people of Europe should be allowed to buy really cheap clothes, as much as they want. Clearly this is a retrograde step, and must be resisted.

"Europe" still lectures places like China as if places like China are the Third World, and Europe, obviously, is the first. But this has a very eighteenth century Asia feel to it, to me. Europe can no more prevent itself being swamped by, flooded with, etc. (although "sold" would be a better word) cheap clothes now than Asia could then prevent the incoming tide of pots and pans, cups and plates, and shirts, made in what was then the English workshop of the world.

This nonsense seems all to be based on some Agreement that was signed a few years ago. And it perfectly illustrates the folly of such agreements, which serve only to allow the supposedly protected industries to remain somnolent for a few more precious years, thereby to lose all touch with economic reality beyond the protections behind which they briefly shelter, to the point where the pressure of economic reality becomes so immense that it is impossible to resist, at which point the protection collapses and economic melt-down duly happens.

It also illustrates Public Choice Theory rather nicely. You can be sure that hundreds of desperate European shirt and trouser makers are even now busily conspiring to explain that Mandelson is talking sense rather than nonsense. Meanwhile the people whom Mandelson is trying to harm (everyone else in Europe plus many thousands of poor workers in China) will be too busy with other things to object very loudly. After all, each of us will only suffer a bit, and anyway, what can any of us do if the EU/Peter Mandelson has decided to harm us all, a bit. That is not news. That is Euro-business as usual.

In due course, the benefits to all of us of free trade with China will be concentrated into the hands of a few illegal clothes importers. But the clothes will not be quite so good or quite so cheap.

Reuters reports on the Chinese response here. My thanks to Alex Singleton of the Globalization Institute for the links, via this, which continues to happen at the ungodly hour that was originally promised. Tim Worstall comments on the same story at the Globalization Institute blog, making similar points to mine about the concentration of the (temporary) benefits associated with protection, but the dispersed nature of the costs, and about how previous restrictions have only stored up trouble.

Meanwhile, how else is "Europe" responding to the menace of people working too hard? By having a law against it.

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It is a distinct possibility that the French Left will mobilize enough folks to vote down the EU constitution because, get this, it favours the free market too much. Well whatever, just so long as they vote Non, does it really matter that their reasons are completely antithetical to the reasons most Brits oppose the EU Constitution?

Or does it?

For people such as myself who do not believe that the EU can be reformed, it seems to me that far more damage will result to the EU by a British 'no' than from a French 'non'. Why? Because France is inseparable from the whole neo-Carolingian Franco-German 'Greater Europe' project and thus accommodating French political realities are inevitably what will happen in the aftermath of French rejection of the Constitution. Britain on the other hand is seen rightly or wrongly as peripheral in the long run and thus a British rejection could well lead to the increasingly held view amongst the Europhiles that only with the UK out of the EU, either completely or in effect, can their grand aspirations be achieved... and that sounds pretty damn sweet to me as I want the UK out of the EU altogether.

That said, a French rejection which leads to so extreme a second attempt to draught a Euro-constitution that even the Europhiles in Britain blanche from trying to sell it to the Eurosceptic Brits works for me as well. Only time will tell.

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I attended a one-day conference on the EU Constitution today, drawing together an eclectic mixture of people from all parts of the political spectrum, both British and foreign, and all united on the need to get a decisive No vote in the event that Mr Blair decides to hold a referendum on one (let's pray it is not done by postal vote, god help us). I attended the morning session and drifted home for lunch with my head still ringing with one of the best speeches by a politician I have heard for years.

The politician's name is Steve Radford and he is a Liberal Party councillor in England. His party is the bit that refused to merge with the old Social Democrats and decided to keep the flame of Gladstone, Richard Cobden and Joe Grimmond burning bright. Well, if Mr Radford's performance was a guide, the Liberal Party is a very interesting outfit indeed. He denounced the European Union's economic tariffs most effectively by holding up a bag of sugar and pointed out that the price of the bag is inflated fourfold by tariffs. He denounced the rampant corruption, cronyism and lack of democratic accountability of the EU, a situation which will get only worse if the EU Constitution becomes a fact. He was passionate in making the free market case - all too rare these days, and frequently very funny.

It is refreshing to hear an actual big-L Liberal refer to the anti-Corn Law League and the great campaign to promote free trade by the likes of Richard Cobden. I don't know about all his views on other subjects, but if every member of the Liberal Party were like this man, I'd very seriously consider voting for it.

I hope we haven't heard the last of this gentleman.

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Here are a few items concerning the various ghastlinesses of the EU.

First, a briefing paper from the Instituto Bruno Leoni, by Alberto Mingardi and Paolo Zanetto, about the Microsoft versus EU case. Pdf only, alas, but worth a look.

Microsoft stands accused by the EU of daring to supply an operating system that is too good and does too much and has been ordered by the EU to cripple it and to tell all its rivals how it does everything. Microsoft wants to call its crippled version of Windows "Crippled Windows" and the EU says it can't so there and has fined Microsoft Z zillion euros. To add lunacy to lunacy, the EU is now saying that when a multinational corporation wants to innovate, it must convince the EU that its innovation is a good idea. Never mind about convincing mere people. First, Mario bloody Monti and all his rapacious and power-mad cronies and successors have to be persuaded. So now, guess what, the EU is taking a swipe at the iPod. Microsoft said "the iPod is innovative – go investigate that". So the EU duly started an investigation into the iPod! No need for it. No reason. Not necessary. What's wrong with 78s? Hire a gypsy violinist.

I embroidered somewhat there, but only somewhat. The picture that Mingardi and Zanetto draw of the EU is not pretty. Expressions like "shake down" and "sting" are hard to avoid when pondering the behaviour of the EU towards Microsoft.

I would not normally have made myself read right through this piece, because it is too depressing. But I have been told to review it for here, where Mingardi adds some further comment on the case. Apparently Crippled Windows does not work as well as uncrippled Windows. Extraordinary.

And here are a couple of EU-related pieces in today's Telegraph.

Patrick Minford writes about the costs of EU anti-dumping rules. His title says it all: The EU's manufacturing policies are costing us a fortune. He is finishing a book. Thanks to Tim Worstall for that link.

And here is a news report about the EU's efforts to protect the government of Cuba from its dissidents. Do not provoke Fidel, says Louis Michel, the EU "development commissioner".

The EU would do better to concentrate on developing itself. I live in hope that the influence of the recent Eastern European additions to the EU, of countries where they take economic development seriously and seem to have quite a solid grip on what does and does not promote it, will improve the EU. But reports like those above make such optimism hard to cling to.

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Though the pictures seem pretty, as a Christian, I probably would not care for the new book by Gerhard Haderer, an Austrian cartoonist. He depicts Christ as a "binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis." What daring iconoclasm! In 1905, maybe. In 2005, apart from six nonagerian nuns living in enclosed orders and a few hobby-protesters, nobody gives a monkeys.

Yesterday if anyone had made the slightest suggestion that the furore that results from writing such a book qualified a man to be regarded as some sort of martyr for free speech, I'd have retorted that the "furore" had probably been budgeted for to the last euro by the publishers. "Regrettably, Herr Haderer, the market for Christian outrage is not what it was, and we cannot agree to your suggested advance." Or I'd have suggested that if he wants to play martyr he could try it with the Muslims, who are more likely to enter into the spirit of the game.

But by the holy bowels of Jimi Hendrix, the poor little poseur really is in danger of arrest. And do you know why? Because of the European arrest warrant, that's why. An Austrian cartoonist and writer faces extradition to Greece (Greece: why does that not surprise me?) for something he wrote in Austria. I assume that Austria has no law, or dead-letter law, against blasphemy. So he wrote something that was legal in Austria but not in Greece, and now he faces extradition to Greece. He did not even know his wretched book had been published in Greece.

I found this via Public Interest. Peter Briffa points out that when this law was introduced much was said by its sponsors about extraditing foreign criminals to Britain ... and very little about the extradition of British people to foreign countries for "crimes" that might well not be crimes at all in Britain.

Perhaps some legally knowledgeable reader can tell me if there is anything at all to stop this happening to, for instance, a British Samizdata contributor, if the authorities in some foreign capital should take a dislike to something he or she had written.

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The Kyoto Protocol comes into effect today. It is a hollow victory for environmentalists. Over 150 of the world's countries are not participating in Kyoto cuts of greenhouse emissions. Only 35 countries have pledged to make greenhouse cuts. Only two of the EU15 countries are on track to meet their Kyoto commitments. Italy, a signatory to the treaty, says it won't seek further greenhouse gas emissions reductions after 2012.

The European Union is now calling for taxes to be increased on motorists to help Kyoto have a chance. But, as protests in France and Britain have shown, the European public is unlikely to find this acceptable. As a result of the British protest, the Fuel Duty Escalator - where the tax on petrol is increased yearly - was ended by Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown for fear of electoral disaster. So the EU is unlikely to meet Kyoto's requirements - despite the sanctimonious speeches of European leaders.

But the worst part of Kyoto is that it is, quite literally, a waste of money. It will have almost no effect, environmentally-speaking. The result of Kyoto's cuts will be that Europe will be poorer in the future. That will harm Europe's ability to invest in new technologies that will help improve quality of life and the environment. Kyoto gets religious-style worship, but it is bad news for the planet.

Crossposted from the Globalisation Institute Blog.

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British citizens living abroad in Spain, as many now do, may be barred from voting in the forthcoming European Referendum, according to this article in the Daily Telegraph filed a few days ago. I hope the article turns out to be wrong, if only because the margins deciding this vital poll may be quite thin, as I fear during my gloomier moments. There are hundreds of thousands of Brits, many retirees, who have forsaken these shores for sunnier climes to the south. It would be unconscionable but entirely in keeping with how the EU operates, if they were to be denied the chance to have their say.

I have a sick feeling in my stomach that in the year we mark the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar, in which Admiral Nelson vanquished an early form of European transnationalism, the fate of British independence could be sealed due in part to a shoddily run referendum. I fervently hope I am dead wrong and there is high turnout for this poll when held.

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This is an interesting titbit, in today's Guardian:

Peter Mandelson has attacked the BBC's coverage of Europe and accused Today presenter John Humphrys of "virulently anti-European views".

In a letter to BBC chairman Michael Grade, Mr Mandelson, the European trade commissioner, says the corporation has a "specific problem with the anti-European bias of some presenters" and said it was failing in its charter obligation to promote understanding of European affairs.

I seldom listen to the Today show, but it is clear from further remarks of Mandelson's that the Guardian goes on to quote that what Mandelson means by "anti-European views" is "anti-EU" views, which is a typically sneaky piece of EUrophilia. Has Humphrys been denouncing French cuisine, or Italian opera, or German engineering? Has he been saying that the French are all rude, the Italians rotten at driving, and the Germans all crypto-Nazis under a veneer of politeness. Has he been saying bad things about Estonians? No, of course not.

What Mandelson has accused Humphrys of is making EUroscepticism sound convincing, in the following rather interesting way:

The former trade secretary, who was appointed to the European commission last year, says the BBC gives too much coverage to moderate Eurosceptics and not enough airtime to extreme Eurosceptics such as UKIP.

So Mandelson has now become a UKIP supporter. How is that going to look? No doubt it is all part of some cunning plan designed to split the anti-EU camp and present it as all bonkers, xenophobic, etc., but it sounds to me like a somewhat high risk strategy. What if UKIP gets more airtime, in accordance with Mandelson's demands, and uses it to be rather persuasive?

I wonder if Mandelson also thinks that this man should have more airtime?

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... is also sauce for the gander, so the old saying goes.

The preposterous EU proposal to extend the ban the symbols of the German Worker's National Socialist Party that is already law in France, Germany and elsewhere, has prompted a move to also ban communist and socialist symbols.

So now let us also ban Imperial Roman symbols (they were a slave owning political system), Christian symbols (Inquisitions, religious wars and sundry other nastiness), Confederate Flags... oh hell, let's just ban all symbols except the 'peace symbol' and the EU symbol.

Via Rex Curry.

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There is a fine article by Tory MEP Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph called The EU's four-stage strategy to reduce Britons to servitude. It is an entirely accurate and reasonable article about the process of stripping British (and other European national) institutions of power and replacing them with Euro-level institutions.

He finished up with the notion that Michael Howard and the Tories will finally turn things around:

Mr Howard understands this very well. Not only is he a lawyer himself but, as home secretary, he clashed almost weekly with our judges - not least on immigration cases. He must have known that the EU would react as it did to his proposals: indeed, I suspect he was banking on it. He has said before that he wants to take powers back from Brussels but, until now, the issue on which he was planning to go into battle - the recovery of our fishing grounds - seemed rather marginal to most inland voters. Now he has found a casus belli where the country will be behind him.

It has been a besetting British vice that we ignore what is happening on the Continent until almost too late. But, when we finally rouse ourselves, our resolve can be an awesome thing. I sense that this may be such a moment.

But there is just one problem with that. The slide into the Euro-maw did not start under Tony Blair's government. In fact it would be no exaggeration to say that the UKIP would not exist today if significant numbers of Euro-sceptic voters were not sick of being lied to again and again and again by Tory politicians. As I said to a table full of captive Tory grandees when I spoke at an event commemorating the end of Exchange Controls, a great many Tory voters simply no longer believe that the Conservative Party actually wish to conserve the things they care about and I very much doubt that any amount of rhetoric by any Tory will win back the trust of days gone by. Many of those former Tories who joined UKIP did so not just to oppose the destruction of Britain as a separate political entity but also because they truly hate their former party and see UKIP as a way to destroy it by making it permanently unelectable.

So what Mr. Hannan says is all good stuff, but what makes him think people should trust the party of Michael Heseltine, Ken Clark and Chris Patten to actually turn things around?

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I like airplanes, but am rather suspicious of this huge new Airbus that they have just rolled out, handsome though it does look and useful though it will surely be in many circumstances. In particular, I suspect that the A380 is costing Europe a whole lot more than is being officially suggested, and that Boeing decided not to build a similar aircraft for good, loss-avoiding reasons.

Well, I still do not know very much about Airbus finances, but this story certainly backs up the costing-more-than-they-are-admitting aspect:

TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.

I realise that it is carrying the search for a silver lining to absurd lengths to say such a thing, but one good thing about this whole Tsunami horror is that it has brought this EU vileness rather more out into the open than would have happened otherwise. As it is, the combination of nastiness and lack of political sensitivity being shown by the EU is extraordinary even by their low standards. Do they not see that the Tsunami has somewhat changed things?

The Thai trade negotiators, not unreasonably, seem to betting that things are indeed now rather different. They seem to be calculating that, if they simply expose the nature of the deal they are now being faced with by the EU, the EU will back down in the face of worldwide disgust, not least within Europe itself. The Thais will get their aid. They will be allowed to sell their keenly priced fish products without punitive tariffs being slapped on them. And they will not have to buy six of these damned great airplanes unless they decide that they want to. All of which is a lot to hope for, but at least they may get more of what they want than they would have done if the Tsunami had no struck.

The EU Referendum Blog has more on this whole sordid episode:

The aircraft will cost Thailand some £1.3 billion – nearly the amount that all 25 EU members states have pledged in tsunami aid to the whole affected region.

Richard North also points out that Thailand was being shafted before the Tsunami in a similar manner. This is not about the EU getting nasty; it is about it remaining nasty.

But that is the EU, naked in tooth and claw. While workers from across world are on the ground, helping to rebuild the Thai economy, EU officials are also right in there – undermining the basis of any recovery.

And according to North, Thailand is not the only country that is being "encouraged" to buy Airbuses with EU trade policy concessions.

The irony is that by swapping a bit of freer trade for aircraft orders, the EU is agreeing, reluctantly, to do itself a favour. It is agreeing to impose the terrible burden of cheaper goods upon itself. But even when it does good things, it cannot seem to help stirring in bad things, like flogging unwanted airplanes.

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We have said it before, but it bears repetition, that the coming EU referendum campaign will be the first internet campaign in our history and I remain convinced that the material on the net will have a decisive impact on the course of the campaign.

- Richard North, already quoted and linked to by Patrick Crozier as a response to my gloomier posting here

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I find this all too persuasive. George Trefgarne sketches out how Tony Blair could win not only the next election by a mile, but then the Euro-referendum by enough to settle the matter for ever.

Key towards-the-end paragraph:

As the polls start to switch, other arguments are deployed by the pro-constitution lobby, of which the most potent is that the real choice is between ratifying the constitution, with all its disadvantages, or being reduced to a colonial outpost of George W Bush's America. Scare stories are spread that withdrawing would also mean the end to cheap flights to France and Spain. Then, in March 2006, a referendum results in a Yes vote, by 52 per cent to 48 per cent - and Teflon Tony will have done it again.

At the heart of Trefgarne's view of Britain now is the utter and continuing hopelessness of the Conservatives.

I confess that once upon a time I expected that America would be an issue to unite the Conservatives while still dividing Labour. But for many months now the Conservatives have been as split about America as they are about everything else. This means that they will remain a shambles for the foreseeable future, and that they will be in no state to argue persuasively against all that "colonial outpost of Bush's America" stuff, as and when it comes on stream. Even more than now, I mean.

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TF1, a French TV station carries this [link disabled] video report of a debate within France's Socialist Party, concerning the ratification of the EU Constitution. Two campaigning websites each for and against are listed.

The 'No' camp is split with supporters of Henri Emmanuelli on the one hand, a corrupt politician who's main claim to fame was his position as Treasurer of the Socialist Party when many of its leading figures were being caught stealing public funds to finance the Party. On the other side are supporters of Laurent Fabius, part of what was once the reformist wing of the Socialist Party (in the mid 1980s). Fabius himself of course is one of the blood contamination killers, four Socialist politicians who allowed HIV infected blood to be used in blood transfusions, leading to the contamination of as many as 2,000 French haemophilliacs or half the total French haemophilliac population. I seem to recall that there was a screening method that was delayed, on the grounds of cost. Naturally, the politicians escaped punishment, other than a token criminal conviction for "involuntary homicide".

Details of the campaigning sites can be found here.

Sadly, with champions like this, the credibility of a "Non!" campaign would be somewhat stretched. Even in France.

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Tony Blair has given himself until 2006 to win round a sceptical British public to a new European constitution after having signed the ghastly document yesterday in Rome. Whilst nothing is certain in this life and two years is a long time in politics, I think a third term in the White House for Ronald Reagan is slightly more likely than him succeeding on that count.

There will come a day when the obfuscation and doublespeak will finally come to an end and it appears that day will be in 2006. British people have it within their grasp to smash the brittle foundations of the European Union and I hope that there will be many people working to ensure that is exactly what happens regardless of what the apparatchiks of all three main parties want.

I see some interesting times ahead.

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I take my good news where I can find it. The chaos in the EU corridors of power over the refusal by the EU parliament to ratify the proposed new line-up of EU Commissioners may only last a few weeks but hey, a few weeks in which the EU leviathan is unable to act is surely a net gain for humankind.

The fracas has been caused by opposition from PC types to the views of Commissioner-designate Rocco Buttiglione, who said that as a Roman Catholic, he regarded homosexuality as sinful. Well, he also said that he would not allow his moral views to support any laws against homosexuals, on the grounds that what is immoral should not necessarily be illegal. Such issues, he said, should be outside politics. I agree. If this man had supported bans on gay couples or use of State action against them, it would be an entirely different issue, but he said nothing of the sort.

By making that remark, the gentleman actually expressed a central feature of a liberal civil order. Many aspects of human dispute cannot, and should not, be dealt with by the law of the land. It is vital that there should be a space in which humans can disagree on moral matters without having recourse to law to make their views victorious. I support the wishes of gay men and women to get married, largely on the grounds that the State has no business telling us with whom we form binding relationships in the first place (so long as it involves consenting adults). But gay men and women should beware since the campaign to oust Mr Buttliglione as an example of how so-called liberals in positions of power in Europe are not really concerned about liberty, but power.

Where the EU is concerned, t'was ever thus.

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Samizdata readers may have noticed a distinct absence of postings from me in the last couple of weeks. To those who miss my regular outbursts I offer my hearty apologies and the excuse of an unusually heavy workload. To those who rejoice in my absence I say, enjoy it while it lasts for I expect normal service to be resumed quite shortly.

In the meantime, however, I have noticed that the UK Times is carrying a banner headline that is so tempting that I am forced to drive a crowbar into the midst of my packed schedule and prize open enough space to briefly comment:

Barroso calls for help to avert crisis at the heart of Europe.

Don't all rush now.

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The European Court has dispelled any residual doubt that it is little more than a politically motivated tool of the European Commission and continues its slow but steady construction of the means to make investigative journalism impossible in Brussels by ruling that Belgian police could seize Hans-Martin Tillack's computers and records to identify his sources regarding reports on EU corruption.

The Euro-court has made little attempt to hide that is has colluded with EU political interests in a judgement that cuts to the heart of journalists ability to report on wrong doing and corruption by politicians.

Euro-judges accepted commission claims that it played no role in the arrest of Mr Tillack, even though leaked anti-fraud office documents show it orchestrated the raid from the beginning.

Whistleblowing will not be tolerated. The superstate is not your friend.

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If your political antennae have been sensitive to the undercurrents shimmering across the blogosphere, then you will have picked up the few postings alerting readers to the implications of the Civil Contingencies Bill. The dangers of this giant step towards authoritarianism have been publicised far more effectively both by David Carr and on Iain Murray's personal weblog, The Edge of Englands Sword:

Lord Lucas has described the Civil Contingencies Bill as comparable to Hitler's Enabling Act of 1933 which enabled him to transform Germany's Weimar Republic into his own personal tyranny. I have now read it, and I have to say that he is not exaggerating.

Readers could argue that this is an invocation of Godwin's Law and that, by quoting this passage, I have lost the argument. However, this opinion is that of Torquil Dirk-Erikson, "a noted Eurosceptic writer and learned silk". However, in considering the passage of this Act, it should also be noted that the European Constitution has a section on 'civil protection' as one of the coordinating powers for the European authorities.

The Government wishes to push through an updated Civil Contingencies Bill in 2004. It does not mention the EU, but the draft EU Constitution includes 'civil protection' as an area for 'coordinating action' and the current Treaty mentions the topic vaguely. The Bill also enables the creation of arbitrary imprisonable criminal offences. It enables regulations that can delegate powers to anyone or confer jurisdiction on any court or tribunal. This could be an EU body, unaccountable to government or the people.

Although the draft Constitution gives us a veto on a European Public Prosecutor (the Government says it 'currently' sees no reason for one) Blair has said that he opposes permanent 'opt-outs' or being isolated in Europe. Although the amended Bill states that it will not change criminal procedure, the Government is happy for the EU to have over-riding powers to do this via the EU Constitution.

These developments happen at a time when the Government is trying to introduce universal ID cards and a 'population register', and has just announced a national database to carry information on all children, not merely those 'at risk' (Sunday Times, 25.7.04). Again there are worrying parallels with European developments. Amazingly, MI5's website, which is listed in Preparing For Emergencies assures us that "the subversive threat to parliamentary democracy is now negligible".

One giant step along 'Chavez' Blair's road to a 'managed democracy'.

Cross-posted to White Rose.

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As the British Conservative Party starts its annual conference today, I am sure a lot of party activists and Members of Parliament will wonder how they can deal with the threat posed by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

The UKIP pushed the Tories into a miserable fourth place in last week's parliamentary by-election in Hartlepool, a seat vacated after disgraced former Cabinet Minister, Peter Mandelson, went off to Brussels for a cushy job in the EU (no doubt a place well suited to his talents).

UKIP has reversed its policy of not standing in election contests against euro-sceptic Tories. This looks like quite a calculated gamble to me. It means they have gone from being a bunch of slightly eccentric nuisances, as far as the chattering classes are concerned, to something a bit more serious.

The Tories to my mind have lost their bearings in the last six months. The decision by leader Michael Howard to flirt with Bush-bashing anti-Americanism, even to the point of letting colleagues work for the wretched John Kerry, looks like an act of supreme folly. But closer to home, the European issue remains the one the Tories have to get right if they want to survive as a serious political force.

It is going to be an interesting week for the Tories. And I am also looking forward to how the conference is covered by the blogs.

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The hardening of the Frankenreich arteries is now so obvious that it cannot be ignored by even the likes of Will Hutton:

With all eyes fixed on the American presidential elections, the scale of the looming crisis in France and Germany has gone largely unremarked. But it may so change the political geography of Europe that British arguments for and against the EU will be made redundant. A pervasive sense of decline in both countries, only partially justified but none the less virulent, is destabilising not just the structures of the EU - but the political systems of France and Germany.

Only in the Guardian could someone express these views and still be welcomed in polite society. Having a column in that journal is like possessing a magic amulet. Say them anywhere else and you are 'xenophobic, racist and right-wiiiiiinnnng'.

It could all turn ugly; an unratified European Constitution, stagnating economies, new dark nationalist politics and a fragmenting European Union.

It all sounds most ominous. Britain should leave now while it still can, yes?

To imagine that Britain will be immune from this is absurd; what happens in mainland Europe will directly impact upon us as it has throughout our history. What is needed is an understanding that if European states don't hang together they will hang separately - and that because the European Union is the best we have, we'd better make it work.

The citadel is crumbling and the best way to save ourselves is to stand beneath the battlements and wait resolutely for the boiling oil to be poured over our heads.

Mr Hutton may have a magic amulet but that does mean that he is of any use in a crisis situation.

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The European Union was the only diplomatic actor to sound a dissonant note after the atrocities in Russia. Whilst the chaotic information shed some light on the indifference of the Russian bureaucracy, Bernard Bot, the Dutch Foreign Minister, requested information on how the siege was handled by the authorities. Blasted as "odious", "insolent" and "blasphemous" by Russia, the EU has attempted to clarify this request as a mere fishing expedition for information, though it sounded critical, given its release in the aftermath of the atrocity. The BBC provide more information, including the telling note that the EU has adopted their methods by deleting the request from their official statement. Of course, the BBC provide a voice for the "insolent" Europeans.

But Andreas Gross, the Council of Europe's rapporteur on Chechnya, told the BBC he thought Mr Bot actually had a point.

"The Dutch minister was totally right because what we just heard on the news, that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants to enforce more security troops, he wants to have a new crisis management, that's not the point," he said.

"They have to understand what the people are who do not share their own point of view. And this is a political task they have to learn.

"And in this sense the Dutch minister made a very, very soft attempt to make them think about this, too," he added.

This is part of a telling pattern in the European Union's response to terror and genocide. There are no sanctions targeted on the regime of North Korea. The EU webpage on external relations with the DPRK shows that no action has taken place since 2002 and that Brussels has proved unable to condemn a regime that shoots, starves and gasses its own citizens in a slow-motion Terror. The entire relationship is a transfer of funds from the European taxpayer to the Korean communists for varied "humanitarian" projects. One detects the shade of Palestine wagging a finger, as another regime with the blood of innocents, is partially propped up with Euros.

The Russians may have shown a traditional indifference to human life. In Europe, it is clothed with the sweet stench of hypocrisy.

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Clearly not satisfied with mere temporal power, some of Europe's ruling elite are now seeking divinity:

A campaign to sanctify the European Union through the beatification of its founding father, Robert Schuman, has run into stiff resistance from the Vatican and now appears likely to fail.

For 14 years investigators under the diocese of Metz have combed through the life of the French statesman to determine whether he merits the title "Blessed Robert", the first step to sainthood.

The drive for his beatification and eventual canonisation was launched by a private group in Metz, the St Benoit Institute, but has acquired powerful backers, including President Jacques Chirac.

I can find no information about the St Benoit Institute but the reference to 'powerful backers' leads me to suspect that they are merely the low-profile conduits for a project which has been germinated at a far higher and more official level.

I seldom comment of matters of religious doctrine or practice because, as someone without any faith to speak of, I do not consider them to be any of my business. However, this is not really about the practices of the Roman Catholic Church or even about the status of the late Mr. Schuman but more about Europe's elite seeking divine provenance for their transnational machine.

Is this how they now see themselves? As apostles of a blessed prophet working to establish a Church of Brussels? Would they prefer to be seen as the 'Annointed' rather than merely a political nomenklatura?

The presses of the European Fourth Estate may ring out furious daily denunciations of 'American arrogance' but I submit that it is next to impossible to find anything more wildly hubristic than a post hoc claim to the benediction of Holy Writ. Close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine the chorus of snorting, braying contempt that would be served up in response to George Bush seeking canonisation of, say, Thomas Jefferson.

I believe it was our friend David Farrer who first coined the term 'Holy Belgian Empire' to describe the European Union. He was joking, of course, and my how we laughed!

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"Gold Plating" is the practice of getting an order (a 'directive') from our masters in the European Union and adding lot of additional regulations to it. Sort of...

"If this arbitrary order has not destroyed your business we will add regulations to it, and we will keep doing so until you are destroyed"...

..."Why are we trying to destroy you?"...

..."Well what else do we have to do, it would be lazy and unethical to just sit in our offices and not do anything".

The British Civil Service is supposed to love gold plating more than any other civil service in the EU. The British Civil Service having long prided itself on being more hardworking an ethical than Civil Servants in other nations (do not even think about bribing a British Civil Servant to save your business - he would rather starve than let you survive).

Examples are tossed about, supposedly a Directive on slaughter houses that started off as about 8 pages in Brussels (EU HQ) was turned in to about 7 pages in France - and about 97 pages in Britain.

No surprise that almost all of the little local slaughter houses closed down.

The BBC (and other such) still has the occasional item about how sad it is the all the local family owned places have gone, and how animals are now taken to great corporate factories (which actually have worse records for the quality and safety of meat). The little places may not have understood the paper work or been able to afford all the special people the regulations insisted they have (such vets - mostly from Spain) - but they did the job better. "Oh the wicked supermarkets" (they get the blame for destroying the "local food" from "local farmers" system that the media claim to love) "and now on to our next story about the need for more regulations concerning such and such".

Well the British Conservative party has promised to end gold plating and if a business thinks that a EU directive has been interpreted more strictly in Britain than in other parts of the EU (or just used as an excuse for another regulation orgy) they will be able to take the matter to court.

Well this is good as far as it goes. The promise to end gold plating is nice to hear (although I doubt the Civil Service would take any notice) and taking things to court might work sometimes - although the British courts (like the courts of most nations) are a mess (and getting worse - as they slowly reject what is left of the old 'out of date' principles of law).

However, it is also a wonderful way for the British Conservative party to look as if they are "doing something" about regulations and "standing up for Britain". After all by concentrating on 'gold plating' the Conservatives duck the issue of whether to defy ANY of the endless thousands of Directives that come out of the EU.

Too cynical? I hope so.

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The Social Affairs Units has a great new digital publication called How to Maximise Your Expenses: Advice to new Members of the European Parliament.

Funny? For sure, but read it and weep.

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The Royal Society has published its government sponsored report on nanotechnology. Professor Ann Dowling, the chair of the working group that wrote the report, produced a positive response in the press release:

The report does not find any justification for imposing a ban on the production of nanoparticles.

However, since these new technologies are uncertain and dangerous, the Royal Society called for the death of a thousand regulations. The Report concluded that all products including nanoparticles should be regulated by EU chemical regulation and the Health and Safety Executive:

Because of their novel chemical properties, the report recommends that nanoparticles and nanotubes should be treated as new chemicals under UK and European legislation, in order to trigger appropriate safety tests and clear labelling. Furthermore they should be approved – separately from chemicals in a larger form – by an independent scientific safety committee before they are permitted for use in consumer products such as cosmetics.

As the EU wishes to implement a new EU Directive (the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals legislation - REACH) that introduces the precautionary principle to all chemicals produced within its borders, this sounds the death knell for nascent nanotechnology within Europe. The government has obtained the authority of the scientific profession (most of which works within the public sector) to justify conforming with EU regulation.

Will Europeans lynch their leaders when they realise they have been cheated out of an Age of Miracles?

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One of the less trumpeted reforms of the European Union, brought about by the increase in the number of member states in May this year, is the reduction of British European Commissioners from two to one.

The news that arch-urophile Peter Mandelson is to replace both Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten gives me mixed feelings.

On the one hand there will be even less chance of dissent from the urophile orthodoxy. On the other hand one can hardly be too sad at the removal of Messrs Kinnock and Patten and their replacement by only one bureaucrat.

So what else is in the small print that somehow failed to get reported?

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There is a stirring of campaign groups to oppose the EU constitution ratification in France. My latest posting on Combat links to the 'acceptable' opposition groups. To these we could add the far-right, who will no doubt be excluded from the 'official No campaign'.

Our biggest problem at the moment is the total lack of a mainstream anti-EU press. This is not that different from the Maastricht campaign of 1992, and at least the Internet is reducing the organisational advantage to the political establishment. We may also have funding problems, though this is not the concern right now.

At the moment, the main job is trying to establish who can vote and where. The big questions concern foreigners. Can they vote? Can they donate funds to the campaigns? I shall keep posting.

The good news today is a rumour of dissent in the French Socialist Party. The leadership has committed the Party to voting 'Yes', wheras many members would have liked to wait until the text was actually available in September before deciding.

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I swear I was not going to bash the Tories this week!

I was actually trawling the French news and looked forward to writing about some appalling corruption scandal. Well this [link in French] is close enough.

It seems that the European People's Party (to which the British Conservatives belong) has done a deal with the European Socialist Party (to which the British Labour Party belongs) to ensure the election of a Socialist leader of the European Parliament: Josep Borrell Fontelles. In doing so they voted against the Polish former dissident Bronislav Geremek, who if this Communist denunciation is anything to go by, was obviously the right candidate to back.

So all the protestations that the Conservatives would defend British interests are a load of cobblers. These people are an insult to invertebrates.

It gets better, the French report says that the new President of the European Parliament (elected with the support of the European People's Party) is a man who comes from the left-wing of the Spanish Socialist Party and who had to quit Spanish politics because of a series of unfortunate misunderstandings over large sums of stolen taxpayers' money. I seem to recall that this was when the Governor of the Bank of Spain was filmed carrying suitcases of freshly printed bank notes to the Spanish Socialist Party Headquarters. The story was extensively covered at the time in El Mundo, the Spanish conservative daily newspaper. I forget if our new European Parliament President was personally involved (though the discreet shuffling of news reports suggests he may have been), but he certainly had to quit over that affair.

So the British Conservatives are fighting our corner within the European People's Party? Nice one Michael Howard, I know exactly where we stand on the Conservative Party's policy on Europe.

Support hard-core Socialists! Give fraudsters a second chance! Support even more European regulations and taxes! Vote Conservative!

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Unless he was lying on national television again, or changes his mind like he did several times over the Maastricht Treaty, Saddam Hussein's best chum has announced that the French (and colonies) will be given a chance to vote on the proposed European Union constitution.

Lucky, we know all the dirty tricks that can be used in such a referendum campaign, they were all used last time by the Florentine François Mitterand, to get the Maastricht Treaty through. So we shall be campaigning in Guadeloupe, and Martinique, and the Isle de la Réunion, and French Polynesia, St Pierre et Miquelon and New Caledonia, and Wallis et Futuna if necessary to avoid losing by 40,000 votes. Get the Atlas out!

I am starting a voter registration guide among the French refugees living in London. I am also checking whether foreign EU citizens living in France can vote and how to arrange this. My new blog Combat (named after the WWII Resistance magazine against the Nazi occupation) launched today will be tracking the campaign in French.

Instead of the national anthem's "aux armes citoyens!", let us "aux urnes citoyens!"

*"To the ballot boxes citizens!"

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Lord Clarkeltine of EUphoromania, in a minor speech to Moonshine News 24 this afternoon, said that the case for the EEUUGGHH! needed to be made more vigorously, decisively, forcefully and adverbially.

People say that the EEUUGGH! is an undemocratic and bureaucratic monstrosity, said Lord Clarkeltine, which is robbing the people of Europe and enmeshing them in a web of regulatory guff, and threatening to drive them back to a new dark age of economic slump and third class status, just so that a corrupt elite of EEUUGGHH!rocrats can eat free lunches for ever and live in big houses in the countryside. They say that the EEUUGGHH! will end a thousand years of Britain's history as a sovereign nation. They say that the EEUUGGHH! is a pathetic attempt to replace the USA as the top world power which threatens to bankrupt everybody. They say that the EEUUGGHH! should be learning from the recent free market inspired progress of India and China, but is instead making a new EUSSRGGHH! in the Heart of Europe.

I will answer these claims firmly and decisively, vigorously and forcefully answering myth with fact, fantasy with reality, vicious xenophobic mudslinging with cool, clean, clear Vichy Water. No it isn't. No it won't. No it shouldn't. It's jolly nice. And we must say this again and again, time after time, repeatedly and repeatedly. The case for the EEUUGGHH! needs to be made eloquently and forcefully, decisively and realistically, realistically and persuasively, persuasively, and forcefully, and thisly, thatly and theotherly.

Asked why nobody was explaining why the EEUUGGHH! is nice and not nasty, Lord Clarkeltine was adamantly adamant:

I blame the Prime Minister. He promised us that he would con everyone about the EEUUGGHH! but he hasn't done it. Lying bastard. The Prime Minister can explain anything. Why hasn't he explained that the EEUUGGHH! is good? Obviously I could, but I'm too grand. The Prime Minister is ordinary. He should do it.

But what about when the EEUUGGHH! does stupid things?

Yes, Lord Clarkeltine continued continuously, warming warmly to his subjects, people complain about how the EEUUGGHH! is shutting down this or that stupid little industry, like fishing and bread-baking and, you know, mucky things of that sort. The answer, he insisted insistently, is that in order not to get too involved in the EEUUGGHH! Britain has to get more involved in the EEUUGGHH!

All you have to do to get the EEUUGGHH! to change the rules for you, give you money and lunches and a free town house in Brussels etcetera, is swear an oath of undying loyalty to it, vote YES to whatever the EEUUGGHH! says and sing the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony every morning and every night. What is the problem with that? We need to be at the Heart of EEUUGGHH!rope, to help it do bad things to all the other countries – and, yes, to Britain too, because one has to be realistic – and then ask the EEUUGGHH! nicely to be a bit less nasty to us and nastier to somebody else. It's inevitable. It's the future. You can't argue against it, so stop it at once.

Lord Clarkeltine also said that the BBC was letting the side down with its relentlessly relentless diet of anti-EEUUGGHH! propaganda. They keep asking questions, he complained complaintively, about just how wonderful the EEUUGGHH! is, and about why the EEUUGGHH! doesn't present itself better and why more and more of the little people still don't like it. The BBC shouldn't be asking questions, Lord Clarkeltine said, sayingfully. It should be supplying answers.

Lord Clarkeltine is an Honorary President for Ever of the Institute For Why We Are Right About Everything, an Assume Tank with offices in London, Brussels and the Sea of Tranquility.

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It takes a lot to make me doubt the benefits of the free movement of people, money, ideas, goods and services. But a new report published by the Centre for the New Europe raises some questions about parallel trade in the European Union.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Stephen Pollard explains the harm that can be caused by the re-exporting of pharmaceuticals from a country such as Spain, where regulated prices are low, sometimes under different labels and with inaccurate expiry dates, to countries where prices are regulated higher, such as Germany and the UK.

Until now my own view has been so what?

If a company sells products in two countries at different prices then an entrepreneurial opportunity may exist for traders to exploit. Demand in the cheaper country goes up, pushing up prices there, and supply increases in the more expensive country, pushing prices down. We may not see equal prices everywhere because there may be other factors affecting costs: land prices, distance, demographic differences, even the cultural acceptability of using medication. But with price controls in the various countries, the market process is subverted: increased demand in Spain does not lead to higher prices and increased supply does not produce lower prices in Germany (except possibly in the 'informal sector').

The EU appears to be promoting the compulsion to sell the same product everywhere in the EU, which is a violation of a person's right to choose to sell or not. So what I would at first glance dismiss as special pleading by a corporate lobby turns out to be an anomaly. The CNE estimates that more than 3 people could be dying every two hours as a result of these regulations.

If the EU really wants freer trade, it should start by challenging the price control systems of its own member states.

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Imagine the European People's Democratic Front.
Imagine their first press release...

We, the people of Europe, hold the following truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Unfortunately, we don't consent to a junket-ocracy, which is what the proposed EU will be.

As such, we undertake to occupy and subvert any referendum in Luxembourg, a country with a conveniently tiny voting population of less than 350,000. One residential mailing address (with 50,000 registered residents) later, and the constitution will be consigned, where it belongs, to the dustbin of history.

SlowJoe

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Our Glorious Leader is seeking the Holy Grail of truth:

The political debate over the new EU constitution will be a "battle between reality and myth", Tony Blair has said.

For sure, but from which side of the battlefield is Mr Blair going to lead his charge? The massed ranks of reality or the dark legions of myth? Successive British governments have spent the last four decades lying like tinkers over the European Union, so I think it rather optimistic to expect any defections to the forces of light at this late stage.

For genuine reality-seekers, there is the EU Referendum Blog:

Mr Blair would be very pleased to know that we started the battle between myth and reality some time ago. We have been collecting, analyzing and disproving EU Myths and we intend to go on with that task. As soon as there is a round dozen, we shall send Mr Blair a copy of the collection in either electronic of printed format. We think he might find it useful.

I think he may consign it to the shredder. However, I expect the stout yeomen at the EU Referendum Blog will make their findings available to the rest of us in early course.

I cannot recommend the EU Referendum Blog highly enough. They dissect and analyse the absurdities and the cant of the European Union in meticulous and compelling detail. Right now, it is the most important blog in Britain (after Samizdata, of course!).

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David Smith, the economics editor for the Sunday Times, has a splendid article on his personal blog, Economics UK, about why the Eurosceptic approach is the economically rational one.

Britain’s unemployment rate, on a comparable basis, is 4.8%, against 9.4% in France and 9.8% in Germany. Unemployment stands at under half the EU average. Per capita gross domestic product in Britain, according to a new report from Capital Economics, is higher at $30,200 (£16,440), than Germany’s $29,200 or France’s $28,500.

The economic momentum is with us. Britain has been growing continuously for 12 years, during which time other EU countries have suffered at least one recession and in some cases two. The sick man of Europe has made a remarkable recovery.

Of course the economic argument for Britain being in the EU (as opposed to some EFTA-like agreement) was always tosh. Switzerland anyone? It is now highly visible tosh.

Here on Samizdata.net we may decry the regulatory idiocy of the Labour government but clearly things are even worse in Euroland, and at least if more sovereignty is maintained at the UK level, more of the damage can be undone at the UK level rather than locked in by remote stasis oriented Europe wide institutions. All the EU has to offer is corruption, stagnation and regulation. No thanks.

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I am glad to see I am not the only one who thinks the frequently reported 'sharp exchanges' between Blair and Chirac (or Shröder) are a phoney as a three pound note. Some of the commenters here on Samizdata.net seems to have taken a similar view as has the Daily Telegraph opinion leader article.

At EU summits, there is always a row and always a deal – and the European constitution negotiations did not disappoint. Tony Blair's spin doctors did not quite say, "Gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here," but he was, apparently, battling like Henry V against the French and also the Germans. But he signed the constitution anyway, even though last week's election results clearly show he had no mandate to do so. There was something distinctly phoney about the row.

Indeed. The fact having 'rows' with the French and Germans is good for the standing of a British leader hardly needs explaining. Yet the fact is that regardless of the acrimony, the deals still seem to get signed. 'Red line' after red line gets laid down, acclaimed by both supporters and people who should know better: "Thus far and no further!" cries our plucky Leader of the Day. Which of course really means "only thus far this time". Just wait a year or two and the process can be repeated yet again and a little more agreed, once the 'red lines' of yesteryear have vanished down the memory hole.

Forget the rhetoric, if you want to know the truth, just look for the signatures on the treaties. The rest is just so much verbal fart gas.

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Yesterday afternoon, I visited my mother, and elder brother Toby also dropped by. He was a UKIP local council candidate in the recent elections, and did quite well, that is to say about as well as UKIP candidates did in the rest of the non-London southern part of England.

He said a number of interesting things, interesting to me anyway. He said that the EU's accounts have not been audited for a decade (i.e. it is a criminal gang, financially speaking). He said that when canvassing, you do not waste time by arguing. You just say you are from UKIP and say please vote for us, and leave it at that. (Talk about their flowers.) He said that Kilroy had helped UKIP a lot. He said that UKIP had done well in a great doughnut, so to speak, of places which are not London itself, but which are all around London – the South East, the South West, the Midlands, East Anglia. He said that UKIP people and Conservative people get along really well with each other, and that the Conservatives often now talk and behave as if they and UKIP are on the same side, which for all practical purposes most Conservative activists are. (UKIP gives them a stick to beat their leaders with, and an exit if their beating up of their leaders gets nowhere.)

I found all this pretty interesting, although maybe this was because he is my brother, and we have always got on well, and also because I do not now read the newspapers as avidly as I might, every day.

But the most interesting thing Toby said concerned UKIP's money. UKIP has, he said, a lot of money.

Electoral politics is like warfare. You need lots of soldiers, and you deploy them where they will make the most difference. You do not ask these soldiers to convince anyone of anything. You do that with posters and advertisements, which bombard the public with your message, and, just as important, influence your media coverage, which results in the media also spreading your message reasonably accurately and sympathetically. (Nothing like a few full page adverts in a newspaper to get them to cut out the worst of their lies and sneers about you.) UKIP did a lot of advertising before the last lot of elections – plus there was Kilroy of course – and this meant that whereas, when he canvassed a year ago, Toby had to explain what UKIP was, this time all he had to say was: vote UKIP. UKIP, he said, got massive and excellent media coverage this time around – "more than we deserved" was, I think, the phrase he used. Unlike before, when UKIP got a lot less than it deserved. Whatever deserving means, in this context.

Like warfare, electoral politics takes money. The more you have of it (assuming you spend it properly), the better you will do.

Now here is the interesting bit. In Toby Micklethwait's opinion (this is all it is so make of this what you will) UKIP has now and is going to have in the next few years a lot of money – more, he said, that the other parties. More than the Conservatives? More than Labour? Yes, he said. More than any of the others.

How come? Well, simply, most of the business people of Britain support UKIP. They hate the EU and they want out. Maybe not the big business people. But in terms of the sheer number of businesses, the majority of them support UKIP. The majority of the people whose job description is "Managing Director" want Britain out of the EU.

And these people, says Toby, between them, when you add them all up, have more politics money than anyone else. People in general do not have much spare cash. Labour supporters make a positive virtue out of not having much spare cash. Ditto the Lib Dems, and the Greens. Even (although we did not talk about this – this is an addition to the point by me) the executives of big businesses do not have much in the way of money which they control and which they can dispose of as they please. Big business people used to have a ton of discretionary money, but not any more. No, it is the "small" business folk, the individual capitalists, the people who can afford weekend boats and fancy houses with garages for three cars, and three cars, who have the money. A few thousand from this guy, and another few thousand from this guy – that is how political money is now raised, and UKIP is, at the moment, better at this than anyone else, because these people, of all people, now hate Britain being in the EU – hate it, hate it – and are willing to spend big money – boat money, car money – to damn well buy whatever it will take to get Britain out of the EU.

Toby's UKIP-optimism cannot be rational unless UKIP also knows how to spend its money, and in this connection Toby attaches great importance to the fact that one of the things UKIP has spent its money on is a guy called Dick Morris. Yeah, him. Bill Clinton's electoral strategist. The very same. And Max Clifford, the guy the British celebs or media wannabes/victims all go to when their lives go pear-shaped and they need to handle their media profile with maximum canniness. He has been working with UKIP as well.

Morris and Clifford and UKIP has been (read the final sentence there) noted by the big media, he said. But the simple money thing has not, he said. I said: Can I quote you on all this? Pause. Then: Yes.

I hope he is right. What he is basically saying, to quote Ronald Reagan (and to indulge in a form of grammar that Samizdata's editors now strongly discourage but which I hope they will forgive this once), is: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.

I do not know if Toby is right, but I hope he is (thank you Eamonn Butler – see first comment).

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My recent posting on Slovakia contained a scoop and I missed it. The leader of the Slovak governing party's campaign for the European elections tomorrow is former ice hockey player Peter Stastny.

I knew the name (one of the few names in ice hockey I ever knew of), but failed to connect it to the poster boy of the Slovak Democratic Coalition.

From the comments to my last posting, my description of SKDU as conservative-libertarian is controversial. Considering that the new Libertarian Party candidate in the USA was selected because he campaigns on sticking to the Founding Fathers' intentions (nationalized Post Office and all), I stand by my description for now.

What is amusing is the contrast between the Slovak and the Austrian election: the posters in Austria oppose reform, the Slovaks put a celebrity on the poster and bring in massive tax reforms in the right direction. American show-biz versus Austrian corporatism. I know which I prefer.

[Thanks to Tim Evans at CNE for providing the tip-off about Peter Stasny.]

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This article in the Independent by Pamela Schlatterer, described as "UK correspondent for German TV" (what - all of it?), is an amazing combination of illogical muddle and patronising sneering at all those British people who do not want to put up with illogical muddle such as hers. Above all there is her sheer refusal to concede that there might be any rational basis for British loathing, not of Europe itself, but of being ruled by EUrope.

For example, she says this:

Having said that, the last time I met my German and Dutch colleagues for an election meeting – we regularly team up to exchange ideas about the UK and its weird and wonderful ways – there was bafflement at the amount of anti-Europeanism in all parties' election pamphlets. The attitude seems to be that it will not hurt to include a few sentences against Brussels in propaganda, no matter which party you are from.

Yes, and ask yourself why that might be.

We shook our heads at a country that seems intent on denying it is already governed by Brussels in lots of areas. The deep-seated sentiment against being "not independent" has crystallised into Euro-hatred, and even though the Prime Minister prides himself on being pro-Europe, under his leadership, things have got worse.

These mysterious British with their absurd desire to be independent! You silly woman, we British are not denying that we are "already governed by Brussels in lots of areas". We are now well aware of this fact. It is merely that a lot of us do not like it and would like the process reversed. We have had it up to here with that it-will-never-happen-it's-not-happening-it's-happened EUro-rigmarole.

One of the things I personally most hate about the EUropean Union is that, by dumping itself down on top of Britain (with the enthusiastic support of lots of British people) it has caused other British people, understandably disinclined to make subtle distinctions between Europe and EUrope, to hate Europe. But such hatred is caused by EUrope. It is an article of faith among EUro-enthusiasts that EUrope makes for peace and fellow feeling. But a central government – any central government – is just as likely to stir up hostilities between different provinces (each blaming the others for the combined mess) as it is to make everyone like one another.

This paragraph I find especially annoying, because you hear this kind of tosh so often, and because it has been exposed as tosh a thousand times, yet still it comes back. It almost makes me hate Europe myself, if it contains International TV correspondents as stupid as this woman. Have a read of this:

I was raving the other day about a new central London café, which I see as a triumph of European food culture over sad English cafés. I got a bit carried away and exclaimed: "This island could be paradise: with better public services and more European influence on the food."

Here we go again, the relentless confusion between doing something the way some other people do it, and having to be ruled by the same political apparatus as those other people. We do not have to be ruled by EUrope in order to have European style cafés in London, any more than we have to be ruled by China to have Chinese Restaurants. If we want European-style public services, we can install them whenever we want, insofar as we are capable of running them. And if we are not capable of running them, us being a province of EUrope will not change that. Raving is right.

With luck people like Pamela Schlatterer may eventually decide that we British are all so disgustingly anti-European and irrationally hostile to foreigners that we are all of us without exception complete scum who must be completely ejected from EUrope. At which point those of us who want to can get back to liking Europe without having to make those subtle distinctions can do so.

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Britain goes to the polls tomorrow to elect a round of representatives for the European Parliament, for UK Local Authorities and the office of Mayor of London.

Or, more accurately, about one-third of Britain goes to the polls. The other two-thirds cannot be bothered and, while I entirely sympathise with their attitude of non-engagement, it is my intention to buck the trend and cast my vote. I will explain.

I have never even attempted to conceal my contempt for the 'democratic process' as presently configured. In modern parlance, 'democracy' has become a euphamism for the perpetuance of a permanent political class, devoted to conducting their mischief without hindrance, objection or opposition. When all political candidates are required to sign up to a rigidly conformist and hegemonic agenda, the process of voting becomes a waste of time. At best, it is endorsement of the status quo, a rubber-stamped approval for 'business as usual'.

However, I am not averse to using existing mechanisms to achieve ends of which I approve and I would be churlish to deny that there are times when a convergence of circumstances gives rise to interesting opportunities to give that boring, monochromatic old status quo a damned good kicking.

Tomorrow is just such a time for there appears to be something of a headwind building up behind the UK Independence Party. If various well-publicised opinion polls are to be believed, then it is entirely possible that UKIP could shove the execrable Liberal Democrats into third place and possibly even nip the buttocks of the milquetoast Conservative opposition. That makes them a cause worth voting for.

A number of people have been quick to point out that some of UKIP's policies may be regarded as highly illiberal (e.g. they favour immigration controls) and quite inconsistent with a free society. That may well all be true but, that fact is that I simply do not care because their flagship, numero uno policy, nay their raisons d'etre is British withdrawal from the shoddy, cankerous mess of the European Union. The rest does not matter (and, besides, UKIP are probably no more hostile to immigration than is our current Labour Home Secretary).

With all the other political candidates offering a choice between spending squinty-million-billion on the public sector or spending squinty-million-billion-zillion on the public sector, the heretical bad-boys of UKIP shine with the enticing lustre of a semi-buried precious gem. Having endured the slings, arrows, barbs and whale-harpoons of sustained media hostility, they are the ones who are truly up for a scrap. Phooey to all this dull 'consensus', UKIP are riding into town looking for trouble. Even their list of '5 Essential Freedoms' includes 'Freedom from Political Correctness'. I have no idea what they mean by this and, possibly, neither do they but it's fighting-talk and refreshing as a shower of lemon zest.

I doubt very much whether they will ever form a government but this bunch of quarellsome bruisers is squaring up to the effete political establishment and I love them for it. A good result for them tomorrow will have the scions of the media/political nomenklatura running around sqauwking like a load of indignant hens ("abolish UKIP", "abolish voting", "abolish Britain"..."waaaahhhhhh") and for that spectacle alone it would be worth voting for them.

But it is worth voting for them for other reasons too. A solid UKIP vote tomorrow will not herald any revolutions. Nor will it prove the catalyst for any material change either in the short term or possibly at all. It will not even reverse or slow down the disastrous process of political integration in Europe. But what it will do is to puncture the smug confidence of the ruling guard and remind them that they may not always have things quite so under control. It will send a ripple of fear through the corridors of comfortably assumed power and make their cherished orthodoxies look just a little vulnerable. In the words of Jack Nicholson in 'Batman': "This town needs an enema".

Tomorrow we have an opportunity to light a candle instead of just cursing the darkness. I have impotently cursed the darkness for far too long. Now is the time to light candles. Many, many candles.

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Tory leader Michael Howard is now loudly stressing his Eurosceptic credentials' as the Euro elections come closer and it looks like the UKIP will be seriously cutting into the Tory vote.

Of course talk is cheap and the only way the Tory Party is ever going to actually become a genuine (rather than a tactical) Eurosceptic party is if the party's very survival and the jobs and pay checks of its professional politicos is actually put in real, rather than potential, jeopardy... and there is only one way to do that.

Do not reward a decade of duplicity with a mindlessly tribal vote for the Conservatives. If you are going to vote at all, vote UKIP tomorrow.

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That poor man in the straightjacket is having nightmares again. He is crying out in his sleep and banging his head off the walls: [note: link to article in UK Times may not be available to readers outside of UK]

EUROPEAN governments are to scrap dozens of "unnecessary" and "patronising" EU laws and directives under a plan to make the Union less bureaucratic and more in touch with the lives of its citizens.

The "bonfire of the diktats" will put an end to Europe-wide rules on the length of ladders that window cleaners can use, and laws on the materials that have to be used for children’s playgrounds.

The ambitious plan to roll back the rules made by the European Commission, which is being championed by the Dutch Government and supported by Britain, is a response to the growing concern that Brussels interferes too much in daily life, and that more decisions should be left to national governments.

About half of all laws in Britain are drawn up in Brussels and then adopted by Westminster. For environmental legislation, nearly 90 per cent of laws are made in Brussels, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs threatened with fines if it does not put them into effect. There are 2,500 EU directives in force, with hundreds added every year.

A bit of 'nice-guy' PR for the run-up to the European Parliament elections to get us in a positive frame of mind. It is just a tease really. Seldom have I seen a proposal that is going nowhere on so many levels.

For every regulation they manage to scrap, two more will pop up to replace it. And even if they somehow manage to stop Brussels producing more laws, they will simply be minted at national level instead. That is what governments do. They have no other skills to offer the marketplace.

Persuading government not to enact new laws is like trying to persuade birds not to fly. You cannot change the nature of the beast. You have to clip its wings.

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This is the question exercising the chancelleries of the European Union, as well as the larger horizons of the Beltway. However, one position concerns the elected leader of the free world; the other is the appointed non-entity of the slow-motion car crash vacuuming the vestiges of freedom in Europe.

Who should be the next president of the European Commission? You could argue that the whole enterprise is irredeemably corrupt, and should instill an appropriate reflex: fight or flee. Nevertheless, in the real world, what would be the preferred qualities of any candidate?

Dennis MacShane, Britain's Minister for Europe, has outlined a few:

MacShane said the successor to Commission President Romano Prodi, who EU leaders hope to name at a summit in Brussels later this month, need not be a former EU leader. "He has to be able to communicate a vision of Europe, he has to see himself not as Europe's king but as its servant, and he does not necessarily have to be a prime minister," MacShane said.

"A strong commissioner or a strong minister would probably be the best choice," MacShane said. "A Commission President must also not be seen as anti-American," he added.

The candidate should have strong political experience and international influence; the ability to communicate well; and the desire to draw the United States of America and Europe closer together. As a libertarian, I would prefer to see a political and economic liberal who shows an understanding of and a willingness to argue for free trade and welfare reform, two areas where the EU has failed to progress, with deadly consequences for Africa and Asia.

Do the current candidates fit the Bill? If any reader has ever heard of and thinks that Guy Verhofstadt, Jean-Claude Junckers, Wolfgang Schuessel or Chris Patten are promising candidates, stop reading now and go seek professional help.

The European Union has an opportunity to demonstrate that it will choose the next President of the Commission on merit. That is why these obscure clones from the European parasitical classes should be ignored. They should appoint an American, one person who is more liberal and more right than the current crop: Step forward:

William Jefferson Clinton

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I recently gave a presentation in Bratislava, Slovakia, on the evils of 'competition policy' and the 'entry and exit costs' economic model, which is little more than an excuse for more business-killing government intervention.

My first trip there in 1991 had been as economic and political adviser to that country's Prime Minister when Slovakia was part of the Czech & Slovak Federal Republic (1989-1992). In those days, talking about a single tax band, a competitive advantage of Slovakia compared with Germany, why an independent Slovakia would actally reform better than under Prague tutelage and so forth was often like trying to explain Switzerland to a Pol Pot survivor.

The first photo that I took in 1991 was of the Iron Curtain seen from the Austrian side, a forest of trees leading up to the jagged line of a forest of rotting concrete.

This time on the way back I took a coach from Bratislava to Vienna airport. The following photos show the turnaround.

Slovakia’s ruling coalition: conservatives and libertarians
(photo taken at Bratislava bus station)



This Slovak election poster for the EU parliament
seems to get the message. (Sorry about the
quality but I snapped it out of a coach window
on a bend, outskirts of Bratislava)



Austrian Social Democrats know what they stand for:
No privatisation!
(dotted all over the Austrian countryside North of Vienna)

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Not everyone who reads this blog will be particularly keen to know what the new EUropean Parliament building in Brussels looks like. But if you would like to know about this, I have a posting up at my Culture Blog which starts with a huge aerial photo of the place taken by someone else, and then has twenty four thumbnail photos you can click on to get to bigger photos that I took myself of this vast building when I was myself in Brussels not long ago.

It has taken me more than two months to get around to exhibiting these photos, for which apologies, but I presumably things have not changed that much since I took them. Partly this was because until recently I had much to learn about how to do this – "thumbnails" etc. (merci Monsieur) – and partly it was that, even if you do know how to stick up a mass of these thumbnails, it is still (for me anyway) a very unwieldy process to actually do, and to actually arrange them in a semi-coherent order, especially since this was the first blog posting effort along these lines that I have attempted.

The building is a scarily impressive edifice, or rather, agglomeration of edifices. I really missed not having a wide angle lens. As it was, it was like trying to photograph an elephant in a crowd. All I could do was assemble lots of details (hence the need for lots of pictures), with only occasional views that got the bigger picture, and none of the whole thing.

Which is only appropriate, considering that this is the EU, and that this entire building is itself only a relatively minor part of the big EU picture, which is itself utterly impossible to get in one snap.

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Speaking as someone who is really far too cynical for his own good, I shall believe this when I see it:

Voters in next month's European elections could shock the political establishment by giving the United Kingdom Independence Party more seats than the Liberal Democrats, a poll suggests today.

A YouGov survey for The Telegraph indicates that UKIP, which is committed to British withdrawal from the European Union, is ahead of the Lib Dems among those who are "very likely" to vote.

But I really and truly hope that I do see it.

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This on the midday BBC Radio 4 news:

The Government is resisting pressure from the European Union to introduce random breath tests.

Yes, my ears did not deceive me. Here is the story in writing:

Police should carry out random breath tests as a matter of course, according to the European Commission.

Under existing laws, UK police can only carry out a breath test if they believe the driver has been drinking.

But the European Commission wants all member states to allow its police to carry out random tests.

The Home Office said introducing random testing was "inefficient in catching drink-drive offenders."

Whenever the British Government describes itself as resisting pressure from the European Union, it is a good bet that this pressure will in due course be succumbed to.

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I'm watching Robert Kilroy-Silk on Question Time, and I think he's doing rather well.

Kilroy started out as a Labour MP, believe it or not. But he was never really convincing in the role. The others did not like him, and he sensed that he was not one of them, was my impression. Too keen on personal advancement, and not nearly keen enough on concealing it under a veneer of class solidarity. So he stopped doing that and switched to Kilroy, one of those early to mid-morning mini-amphitheatre televised bore-ins with Kilroy himself as the roving interlocutor.

Kilroy's basic problem with Kilroy was that he seemed to regard everyone present except himself an idiot, a feeling which must have been hard to fight, given that everyone present except himself was at the very least behaving idiotically. (I speak as one who used to appear on this show myself from time to time, until I saw the pointlessness of my ways.) Kilroy tried to conceal his contempt for everyone under a layer of somewhat overdone good humour and what I presume he thought was charm, but what everyone else called smarm.

As his show moved away from semi-intelligent debate into the territory already occupied more entertainingly by Jerry Springer - my mother is a cross-dresser, I want to have a fight with my step-dad, my twin sister is a prostitute and I am a nun and I want to have a fight with her, etc. - Kilroy's manner became ever more off-putting and false and desperate.

But Kilroy-Silk's manner on Question Time was downright … appropriate. Gone was the layer of smarm. And out from under it came this really quite attractive and intelligent man. He used to be hated because he was appalling. Now he will be hated because he is not nearly as appalling as his enemies would like him to be.

Most of us are familiar with the Peter Principle, the one that says that people are promoted until they arrive with a thud at their level of incompetence, at which they then remain for ever. But in politics as in life generally, I think we sometimes observe the opposite process. Sometimes, people arrive at their level of competence, having just buggered about pointlessly for the previous two decades until they reached it. Kilroy-Silk strikes me as a fine example of a man who is now, as a Eurosceptic politician with the right, the duty, and the inclination to speak his mind, at last arriving at his level of competence.

It could turn out that by switching off Kilroy the talkshow host, and unleashing Kilroy-Silk the reborn politician, the BBC has made one of its most important contributions to the EUro-debate, in favour of the NO side.

Please understand that I am talking here about competence, rather than about the rights and wrongs of it all. I generally hate what politicians do, but my point is: some of them do it very well, while others mysteriously run out of steam, seem woefully miscast, and should have carried on with what they had previously been doing.

For the opposite tendency, a perfect example of the original Peter Principle rather than of the reverse version of it which I am here offering: Glenda Jackson. What a fine actress. And what a sad, drab failure as a politician.

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We never saw this coming, did we?

The Government signalled yesterday that it was willing to breach the first of its "red line" safeguards on the European constitution by agreeing to cede Britain's veto over sensitive areas of criminal justice.

The shift in policy raises fears that Brussels could acquire the power to interfere with the common law tradition of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and rules of evidence.

Whereas, until today, nobody had ever thought that possible.

I remember once defining "compromise" as you doing something I want, and in exchange me doing something else I want. Which makes me a bit like the EU. What a horrible thought. Eeeeuuuu!!!

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In France on Sunday, Nicolas Sarkhozy has manouvered the UMP government party into supporting a referendum for the proposed EU constitution [link in French].

The decision to hold a referendum will be taken by President Jacques Chirac (anyone's guess what that will be), but the call by the newly appointed Minister of Finance represents a shift away from automatic rubber-stamping by the French parliament.

Privately Chirac will be fuming. He hates Sarkhozy and fears his possible election in 2007 as President. Unlike the recently convicted fraudster Alain Juppé, Mr Sarkhozy might not feel inclined to whitewash the current President's dubious financial history. Meanwhile, Alain Juppé the UMP party chairman, has endorsed Mr Sarkhozy's call with the qualification: "within the constitutional prerogatives of the President". Mr Juppé no doubt feels it is a good time to roll with his colleague's punches.

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He is back and this time he is pissed off!!

Former Labour MP and TV presenter Roberty Kilroy-Silk has emerged from his brief period of public exile to announce that he intends to stand as a candidate for the UK Independence Party in the forthcoming European Parliament elections.

The UKIP leadership will almost certainly regard this as something of coup and not without justification. They have had a dreadfully hard time getting any public traction for their campaign to get Britain out of the EU altogether and celebrity commitments of this nature can (if not turn the tide) at least help to raise profile.

But what will the Europhile side make of this? Hay, is the answer. Indeed, the harvesting is already underway:

Robert Kilroy-Silk, the politician turned TV presenter who lost his daytime show for insulting the Arab nations, has now joined a group of people who think that continental Europe is ruled by "barbarians".

The former Labour MP, whose opinions have become more right-wing as he has grown older, wants Britain to withdraw from the EU altogether, and to impose heavy restrictions on immigration.

The entire case of the Europhile lobby consists of the wicked calumny that anti-EU campaginers are merely a motley bunch of rabid, red-necked bigots and foaming-at-the-mouth nazi-types who just do not like 'foreigners'. It is the only weapon in their armoury and they wield it with alacrity.

Given Mr. Kilroy-Silk's recent, well-publicised and rather uncharitable outbursts (the nature of which were sufficient, in the current ethical climate, to brand him as an incorrigable racist) his candidacy is going to provide the Europhiles with a big dose of 'see-we-told-you-so' corroboration for their libels. I expect that they will milk this unfortunate and inaccurate conflation for all it is worth.

I hope that good fortune smiles on UKIP and Mr Kilroy-Silk's campaign for electoral success but I do fear that his candidacy will prove to be a propoganda victory for the other side.

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Let us hope that this story, told by Daniel Hannan in the latest Spectator, gets around:

Contemplate, then, the case of Hans-Martin Tillack. Mr Tillack is a respected German reporter who has written extensively about the Eurostat scandal. This convoluted affair really deserves a column to itself but, briefly, it involves allegations that millions of euros have been diverted from the budget by Commission officials. More recently, Mr Tillack had started to investigate the broader failure of EU authorities to act on tip-offs. It was this that triggered the reaction. Last month police swooped on his flat. He was questioned for ten hours without a lawyer, while his laptop, files and address book were confiscated. Even his private bank statements were ransacked.

The raid was ordered by Olaf, the EU's anti-corruption unit. Needless to say, no such treatment has been meted out to the alleged fraudsters. In the looking-glass world of Brussels, it is those exposing sleaze, rather than those engaging in it, who find themselves in police custody. Mr Tillack was implausibly accused of having procured some of his papers by bribery. No formal charges have been brought, and he is now planning to sue. In the meantime, though, the notes he had built up over five years of meticulous work have been seized and his sources put at risk.

The lack of interest in this incident is bewildering. Journalists, after all, are usually exercised by the mistreatment of other journalists. When similar things happen in Zimbabwe, they are the subject of stern editorials. Yet here is the EU intimidating its critics with all the crudeness of a tinpot dictatorship. A message is being semaphored to the Brussels press corps: stick to copying out the Commission's press releases and you'll be looked after; make a nuisance of yourself and you'll regret it. As the EU correspondent of a British newspaper told me mopily last week, 'If they can do this to a German Europhile and get away with it, people like me might as well pack up and go home.'

God help Britain and God help EUrope (and we atheists only say things like that when matters are very serious) if Britain is bullied by its current crop of idiot rulers into voting Yes to the continuing depredations of this pompous, pious, self-glorifying, self-deluding gang of parasites. We must hope that Mr Tillack has big enough balls and eloquent and powerful enough friends for him to end up ahead in the highly dangerous game that he is now playing on our behalf.

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It is almost enough to make me feel sorry for them:

European leaders will meet with intellectuals and business leaders to discuss Europe’s core values in a high-level conference later this year.

EU heads of state and government will be invited to attend a special conference on European values at the beginning of December- an event organised at the personal initiative of the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende.

It is hoped the conference - to be held in the Netherlands - will be the culmination of a half-year long EU-wide debate on the meaning and political relevance of the European idea, initiated by the upcoming Dutch presidency which takes office in July.

Writers, artists, policy-makers and business leaders from all over the world are set to be present at the public event, where up to 1000 people will be able to attend.

If they are harvesting "intallekchools" from all over the world to come to Europe to tell Europeans (a) who they are, (b) what they are supposed to be doing and (c) why they are supposed to be doing it, then said Europeans have, shall we say, some issues with self-esteem.

Mr Balkenende hopes the event will provide an ideological underpinning for Europe.

The only thing the event will produce is several hundred pages of repetative cant and nauseating PC pieties, liberally sprinkled with terms like 'respect' and 'solidarity'.

He recently remarked that embarking on a European discussion on values such as respect, freedom, integration and solidarity would give a "new dynamism" to the reunified Europe.

See, it's started already and if ever anyone tells you that that are seeking a "new dynamism" you can be cast-iron sure that their get-up-and-go has got-up-and-gone. Probably never to return.

What does it say about the great 'European Project' if its political leaders are prepared to prostrate themselves before a gathering of the global great-and-good and admit that they do not have single moral imperative on which to hang their hats?

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Today, May 1st, is a big day for the European Union because today is 'Accession Day' whereupon 10 new countries will be officially enjoined into the Union:

Leaders from the EU's 25 member states are taking part in celebrations, after a night of festivities heralded its historic expansion.

The 15 old members welcomed in Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia at midnight.

Yes, it is celebration time. The 'family' of 15 countries becomes the even bigger 'family' of 25 countries as hands are clasped in firm handshakes across once-inpenetrable borders in a new spirit of continent-wide brotherhood, sisterhood and transgenderhood. Ring out the bells, sound the trumpets and let the cliches flow like a swollen river.

Chief among the consequences that is causing excitement, even outside the usual Europhile circles, is the prospect of droves of fresh-faced and energetic young Slavs who will pour into the cities of Western Europe eager to programme computers, brew coffee and deliver hot pizza to Western Euopeans, most of whom will be quietly relieved that they are being served and waited upon by people who are unlikely to be donating any portion of their wage packets to Al-Qaeda.

I can sympathise with this enthusiasm for I, too, hope that this scenario will come about and, if it does, I expect that it will largely prove to be a very good thing for all concerned.

However, trade is (usually) a two-way street. East may have a lot to offer the West but what does the West have to offer the East. Jobs? Well, in theory, yes, but if the Western Europeans are unwilling to reform their stifling labour laws then a lot of those eager young Slavs are going to cross the continent only to end up burgling in Bremen or pimping in Paris.

But even that does not mean that Western Europe is without something to offer the East, though certainly not workers (unless they are prepared to export their own immigrants). No, what Western Europe has to export Eastwards is a plague of social-worker types (of which the West has vast reserves).

That is the thing about this globalisation phenomenon. It does not just mean the widespread distribution of DVD players and avocados, it also means the widespread distribution of people who make and consume both. So far, so orthodox, so what? This is the accepted view. What is often overlooked is that global trade also means the spread of ideas and (for reasons I simply cannot fathom) it is widely and blithely assumed in free market circles that this inevitably means the the speard of 'good' ideas only. Why?

For a start, there are no good ideas in Western Europe but there is a mountain of 'Very Bad Ideas' and no shortage of people who know how to disseminate them very effectively. Indeed, as I type, there is probably a warehouse full of Very Bad Ideas boxed up, shrink-wrapped and waiting on the dockside ready to be shipped off to Lublijana and Vilnius.

Those poor Slavs and Baltics may well imagine that today marks the end of their decades of totalitarian repression and a gigantic leap towards liberation, modernity and prosperity. HAH! Those poor saps have no idea what is waiting in store for them or what membership of the big, unhappy 'EU' family actually means in practice.

They will soon learn the folly of their ideals when they are invaded by an army of self-righteous busybodies, armed with bogus statistics, sham science and filofaxes full of pre-arranged media and government contacts. Right now, these health-fascists and control-freaks must be goggle-eyed with anticipation at the thought of a whole, new, virgin audience for their peculiar brand of histrionics.

Over the coming years, these once-complacent Eastern Europeans are going to be nagged, hectored, lectured, nannied, finger-wagged, sermonised and relentlessly bullied by a seemingly never-ending parade of dull, obnoxious, earnest, condescending do-gooders whose mission is to convince them all that they are too fat, too thin, too unfit, too rich, too poor, too happy, too sad, too tall, too thin, too bald, too hairy, too thoughtful, too reckless, too drunk, too sober and just too bloody ignorant and criminal for their own good.

By this time next year, the people of the Accession countries will have been told that they smoke too much, eat too much, drink too much, laugh too much, work too much, love too much, hate too much, walk too much, drive too much, breathe too much, talk too much and that they are destroying the planet, abusing their children and not paying anywhere near enough in tax. As well as that they will also learn that they are racist, sexist, fascist, cubist, buddhist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, agoraphobic, arachnaphobic, technophobic and institutionally obese and....SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!!!

I feel sorry for them I really do. We in the West have had time to get used to the psychosis of the ruling classes but for these unsuspecting Baltic greenhorns, the misery is all to come. In some respects it is actually worse for them because they are hoping for a bright, shiny new dawn of freedom without perhaps the slightest notion of what lies in store for them now that they are about to be firmly welded into the regulatory machine. From New Soviet Man to Neu-Rotic Man in one generation. How is that for bad luck?

If I was them I would alleviate the problem by simply shooting all these invading busibodies on sight but I verily believe that there is some utterly unreasonable law against doing that kind of thing. Instead, I predict that, within five years, there will be a serious political movement in Eastern Europe dedicated to bringing back the Iron Curtain. Not to keep their own people in, mind, but to keep the undesirable Westerners out.

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A mindboggling article on the TF1 (French TV) website.

Apparently, Jacqeues Chirac is dedicating today's presidential press conference to the subject of EU enlargement. The analysis is that this will dillute French influence in the EU, shift the balance of power in a more "Atlanticist" direction, and help bring about back-door free-market reforms.

The French Socialist Party has decided to make the threat of a libertarian Europe (Europe libérale) the main plank of its European election campaign, citing the EU constitution as part of the potential problem. They think it is going to be amended into something terrifying (i.e. good). Especially horrible for the European left is the prospect of cross-border private welfare arrangements: buying private pensions and health insurance without the 'protection' of nationalized welfare monopolies. Get your life insurance in France, health insurance in Germany and your pension in the UK for example.

Jacques Chirac as the agent of Anglo-Saxon capitalists! Priceless.

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Personally I do not know what to make of the referendum we are now promised about the EU constitution. Will the forces of darkness triumph, or will it be: NO!?

Patrick Crozier has no such doubts. In 1975, the verdict was Yes, but this time, he says, it will be different:

1. We know what the EU is like.
2. Then all the main political parties were in favour. Now they are not.
3. Then most of the papers were in favour. Now most of them are not.
4. Then, our economy was a laughing stock. Now it is the rest of Europe that has the problem
5. Then, most businessmen were in favour. Now things are much closer.
6. Although I don't know what it was like then, now there are plenty of celebs prepared to endorse a "No" campaign.

Setting aside the matter of why he thinks Blair has decided to hold this referendum (and here is another explanation), is Patrick right? I want to believe him, but do I?

I have the feeling that the people writing this blog are not quite so confident, or why would they bother?

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Is there simply no end to all the bad news?

Diplomats and leading experts are warning that the "chaotic" European Union is ill-equipped to cope with the biggest expansion in its history.

Shame, shame. A pox on humanity and all its works.

Finnish ambassador to the UK Pertti Salolainen, who said he was speaking in a personal capacity, said: "The EU is chaotic, it has no vision, no leadership and it seems it will have no constitution."

Is there no justice in this wicked world? I do not know how I will sleep at night (speaking in a personal capacity).

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So we are going to given a referendum on whether or not to sign up to the EU Constitution. Or not. Or maybe. Possibly. Not yet, but soon. In principle. In theory. For certain, provided conditions are right.

Lord knows! Like everything else concerning Britain's relationship with Brussels this whole referendum issue is buried deep within a fog of obfuscation, misinformation, confusion and misdirection.

What is certain is that the government/media lie-factory is being cranked up to over-production mode forging weapon-grade children for deployment in the propoganda war ahead ["I think we should be a part of Europe so that we can all live together in peace", said Heidi, aged 10. Yes, it really will be that fatuous and buttock-clenchingly embarrassing.]

So now is to the time for the forces of truth and light to step up to the crease, ready to hit the opposition for six. Among the fearless volunteers are the team behind a new blog called, simply, EU Referendum.

These guys have got the real skinny on the fetid labrynth of EU politics and they tell it exactly like it is. Pay them lots of visits to read, learn, grow and become a better human being.

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According to super-rich, property magnate Will Hutton, we are all Europeans now:

There are strong reasons for Britain to want more than a common market like the rest of Europe, and to try, in the process, to create the European public realm we currently lack. We share, despite a multiplicity of languages and histories, the same core values - a belief in the social contract, an adherence to the idea of the importance of the public realm and shared views that capitalism must be fairly run.

Hutton's Europe: a land of permanent paternalism.

I wonder if Mr. Hutton's tenants have to tug their forelocks and call him 'sir'?

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A team from the EU Commission is hotfooting it off to North Korea in the wake of that 'minor-train-incident-which-never-happened-and-anyway-even-if-it-did-it-was-caused-by-reactionaries':

Development spokesperson Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe said on Friday that a representative from the EU's humanitarian assistance team in North Korea will visit the site late tonight (early morning local time) to assess the situation.

They may have to fly in some emergency directives. But, on to the truly pant-wettingly, hilarious, quote-of-the-week bit:

Asked whether the EU representative would be allowed to get a clear picture of the situation on the ground given the secrecy of the Pyongyang regime and the time elapsed since the accident occurred, Mr Ellermann-Kingombe pointed out that they had been invited by the authorities to visit the site.

"We have no reason to question their intentions", he said.

And probably no motive either.

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Many sound folks are already rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of the long sought UK referendum on adopting the terrifying EU constitution. The general received wisdom is that the anti-Constitution faction will win and that will be the end of Tony Blair's political career... and certainly if it was held today it is hard to see any outcome other that a crushing victory for the anti-EU side and political ruin for Teflon Tony given that the latest YouGov poll (pdf file) shows only 16% would vote for the UK adopting the EU constitution, 28% were unsure and a whooping 53% would vote against it. Rule Britannia indeed!

But the promised referendum will not be today but rather at a tactical moment of Tony Blair's choosing. People who see this 'surrender' to the idea of a referendum as a fortuitous laps of judgement of epic proportions would do well to ponder the effect that having notoriously Eurosceptic Britain go to the polls will have on the current negotiations with Britain more Federalist European 'partners' regarding the so called 'red line' issues of foreign policy, defence, social security and the British budget rebate.

Knowing that only if Blair can return home with ostensible triumph on those issues will he be able to credibly spin the EU constitution as a 'British victory', the Federalists will be faced with either the complete overthrow of their plans (Denmark or Ireland might be either ignored or finessed, but a British rejection is a rather different matter) or they can settle for a more gradualist victory for their cherished superstate.

Thus the prospects for Tony Blair arriving back and waving a piece of paper with Romano Prodi's signature on it promising 'Euro-peace in our time' is by no means a fantastical scenario... and given the sheer ineptitude of the Tory party and the lemming-like Europhilia of the LibDems, it would be a brave man who predicts with confidence that this would not pull the Euro-sceptic's political teeth.

Yes, with a little luck it could, and hopefully will, all go horribly wrong for the UK government and we could see the dismal Conservative party back in the saddle in Westminster in the aftermath of a Euro-Political meltdown of not insignificant proportions. However the prospects of Blair indeed getting Britain to sign up to a first iteration of the EU constitution if the Federalists play ball is by no means beyond possibilities. And if that happens, it means it is only a matter of time before the other issues are gradually chipped away in the years to follow. At that point there will be nothing left to fight for and I for in will be in the market for some property in New Hampshire. Do not underestimate Tony Blair.

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This Guardian headline is terrifying, coming, as it most definitely does, under the "never believe it until it is officially denied" heading:

UK 'will not bail out EU pensions crisis'.

This denial, on the other hand, might be quite good news:

Mr Brown insisted: "There is no intention of having a European health care system that replaces national health care systems.

My understanding is that, healthwise, they do things rather better on the Continent than we do here, so the fact that we absolutely, definitely, I deny that completely, no truth in that notion whatsoever, are not repeat not going to have a European health system here in Britain, i.e. we very possibly are going to have such a system, is quite cheering. (See the comment 4 on this posting if you doubt the ghastliness of Britain's current arrangements.)

And then there is this:

He reiterated the government's determination to resist any moves towards EU tax harmonisation. "Tax competition makes for a more efficient single market," he stressed.

Things like this are never said until the contrary claim is presented in the form of a question. And that contrary claim is at least as likely to be true as any denial of it.

The EUro-ratchet effect means that it only needs one British politician to relax on any particular issue, usually as part of an attempt to hold back the inevitable on some other front, for the deal to be done.

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Yes, I know, picking on the Guardian is just so easy that it is verging on bad form. It is rather like challenging a small child to a boxing match.

And speaking of small children, I hear the sound of the petulant stamping of little feet:

In our country, in our culture, at this time, any referendum on Europe is a pre-emptive cringe towards the Murdoch press and the tabloids. Forget any idea that the referendum debate will be Plato's Republic in action. It will inescapably be a contest fought on terms dictated by the unelected media rather than by the elected politicians.

This is where the European Union referendum really will be a defining moment. It will mark the extraordinary watershed at which this country's debased, biased and unaccountable media formally take control of the political process. The British media has often claimed that it has greater popular legitimacy than politicians - "It's the Sun Wot Won it", for example. Blair's concession of the referendum marks the moment when politics formally bowed the knee and accepted that claim.

I can visualise Martin Kettle's bottom lip trembling as bashes out every embittered word. For Mr. Kettle and his colleagues, the mere existance of anti-EU opinion is such a towering and monstrous inequity that advance tantrums are required to highlight the plight of the beleaguered federast to the caring world. He will probably start hijacking aeroplanes shortly and demand to be flown to Brussels.

And what is all this guff about 'debased, biased and unaccountable media', as if the Guardian is something other than a national newspaper and, ergo, part of the media? But then thwarted and sulky children often do retreat into consoling fantasy by claiming that their families are not really their families because their real families would not treat them so despicably.

Still, given the perenially low circulation (and their reliance on public subsidy) maybe there is a kernel of truth in the analogy. Nobody likes them, everbody hates them. I think they should go and eat worms.

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This could all be a tease (there have been hundreds of similar reports about a referendum on scrapping the pound for the euro).

The EU constitution in itself may not be worse than what the British version is mutating into. If adopted our choices become a pan-European libertarian movement or a secession.

The latter may not be as easy as the Confederate attempt in 1861 from the USA (less public support in the UK, more heavily outnumbered by the rest of the EU etc). Hopefully such a secession could be more Slovenian than Croatian.

The advantage of a referendum is that it cannot be worse than letting the Prime Minister decide alone.

The disadvantage is that it will only happen once the result is known in advance to suit the government, so that when they win, it can slip through the single currency without a vote (that is what the French government did with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992).

Either way spread the word: by next weekend we could have a live campaign on our hands.

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Nigel Meek draws the attention of readers of the Libertarian Alliance Forum to this leader in yesterday's Guardian. He is right to do so. It is short enough and good enough to be worth reproducing in full, which he does for LAF, and which I do for Samizdata now:

It is difficult to find anything in the European Union more perverse than its continuing subsidy of sugar. It fails every test miserably. It is economic madness since the EU is shelling out hundreds of millions of taxpayers' money - that could be used to reduce its growing budget deficit - to grow crops at a loss that could be better grown elsewhere. It is immoral because subsidies prevent poor countries from growing sugar that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is also unhealthy because it is encouraging the subsidised output of a product that the World Health Organisation, courageously - in view of the vested interests attacking it - says we should be cutting back on.

If the figures - published in a new Oxfam report, Dumping on the World, this week - were applied to any other industry, they would be laughed out of court. Oxfam claims the EU is spending €3.30 to export sugar worth €1, an almost unbelievable support of more than 300% - and that is only part of the elaborate welfare package bestowed on the industry. These hugely subsidised exports are dumped on developing countries, snuffing out potential economic growth that could enable them to work their way out of poverty. All they want is a level playing field. Is that too much to ask for? Oxfam - quoting World Bank figures - also claims that sugar costs 25 cents per pound weight to produce in the EU compared with 8 cents in India, 5.5 cents in Malawi and 4 cents in Brazil. The world price for raw sugar is 6 cents a pound. It is bizarre that European governments reconciled, albeit reluctantly, to call centres being subcontracted elsewhere will not let go of sugar output which, left to market forces, would long ago have migrated to the third world. Sugar producers, with twisted logic, use Brazil's low cost of output as a reason for retaining subsidies on the grounds that it will not be really poor countries benefiting, only the medium poor.

The simplest solution would be to abolish all agriculture subsidies, even though it would, in the short term, hurt a minority of poor countries that might lose out to the likes of Brazil. Once exceptions are granted, then everything is up for grabs, and trade and talks would be dragged down by interminable bargaining. If complete abolition is deemed impracticable in the short term, then at the very least Europe should commit itself at once to the complete abolition of all export subsidies, direct and indirect. Apart from the huge relief it would bring to poor countries, it would also restore Europe's long-lost moral leadership.

It would take more than one measure of this sort to "restore Europe's long-lost moral leadership", but if such an unattractive delusion is what it takes to get rid of these vile and murderous subsidies – yes murderous, because economic failure is a matter of life and death, especially when inflicted upon the very poor, then so be it. Apart from that, I see nothing here to disagree with.

I posted here last summer about this blog. It is still going strong, and the ideas embodied in it still seem to be having an impact.

A cynical attempt to reach out to the pro-free-trade blogosphere, which has to get a nod from the real operation, the Guardian itself, otherwise it just looks ridiculous? Maybe, but who cares? And I am sure that Mr kick-AAS means every word of it. Ancient proverb say: window dressing often take over shop. What matters is that this kind of thing is being said, right across the political spectrum.

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Europhile, n. (pronounced "yew-ro-file") Person or institution with an enthusiasm about the merging of the European States into a single State, usually regardless of any other considerations. A Europhile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.

Urophile, n. (pronounced "yew-ro-file") Person with an enthusiasm for being subjected to showers of urine. A Urophile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.

Now it would be easy and gratuitous of me to imply that both are one and the same, but this is obviously unfair.

One is a harmless pervert who engages in fantasies in private that involve no coercion against other people. The other is a dangerous pervert who conspires in private, and who needs to be exposed and subjected to public embarrassment.

The 'e' makes all the difference.

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Nothing any political body says can be taken at face value. On that point I doubt many would demur. In days gone by when the state had a large measure of control over information flows, this was only to be expected and was easier to do. In modern times, this is a bit harder to pull off and requires 'spin' and other psycho-media exercises in obfuscation to muddy waters, confuse issues, bamboozle and generally misdirect people from politically inconvenient facts. Nevertheless, in this information rich interconnected world in which we now live, one can but marvel that some political creatures seem to act as if they operate in a universe in which the official pronouncements carry the same weight they did in, say, the 1920's.

A remarkable and even bizarre example of this is the summary which has been attached to the factual European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia's report on anti-semitism in Europe. This EU publication comes out against the screamingly obvious backdrop of Islamic youths running rampant in some communities in many countries. And the summary of this report states what exactly?

The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans

Huh? I mean, did they expect that no one would actually read the actual main text? The report clearly says that by far the major source of 'anti-semitic' (meaning anti-Jewish) violence is other semites... Muslim ones.

Now back in the bad old days when I used to spend time whiling away the hours in the offices of a management consultancy, I recall during one large project the company's managing director urging us to use particular care crafting the six page executive summary of what was a consulting report that stood about three feet high when stacked on a table, because "in reality, no one who matters will ever read the report, they will just skim the summary" (the client, by the way, was the BBC).

Perhaps this baleful ethos has now become the received wisdom in the EU's administrative corridors as well, thus motivating the political masters who oversee such things before they are released to conclude that if they spin the report's summary to direct ire at the usual darlings of the collectivist left (which is to say the collectivist so-called right), no one will actually read the report and realise that a tiny marginalised group of politically invisible shaven headed moonbats with an Adolf Hitler fetish is not the main problem.

To anyone actually reading the whole report its should be clear that the problem is a far larger group of politically highly visible Muslims who are hypersensitive to criticism, even when it is just a statement of demonstrable truth. My suspicion is that the reason for this odd official behaviour is that once the true nature of the problem permeates the consciousness of the pan-European tabloid reading public, entire rickety networks of axioms lovingly constructed and nurtured by several generations of moral relativists could come crashing down like two falling skyscrapers colliding with ugly reality. The issue at hand is not just the small minority of violent Muslim youths, but a broader Euro-Muslim society from which they spring which always suffixes its own criticism of anti-Jewish acts with "but...".

However confronting that would imply that hard political choices lie in the not so distant future. Furthermore, it suggest accepting that whilst races may be equal, societies are certainly not. The two divergent strains of western social evolution are reaching the point at which the differences cannot be papered over. The old blood-and-soil volk is thankfully dead and either we are moving towards a series of legally enshrined cultural ghettos defined by collective rights (multiculturalism) or we are moving towards an melting pot culture of eclectic individual styles and preferences revolving around an emergent common social core (cosmopolitanism). This is not the sort of stark discussion many people want to have amongst either the Paleo-Conservative right or Transnational Progressive left.

Now at first flush, the 'Transnational Progressives' should not see cosmopolitanism as a bad thing, what with their 'let's all come together and sing Kumbayah' ethos. That is until you realise that the whole Tranzi value set is about coming together within the context of a series of mediated political collective 'cultures' and not an individual roll-your-own approach to culture. People who come together but insist on singing 'Rule Britannia' and then think nothing of watching a St. Patrick's Day Parade followed by a nice Vindaloo Curry not only do not compute, they are dangerous if they actually define themselves that way: they (we) are Marx's hated 'rootless cosmopolitans', free from the predictable and ostensibly stable sociological stasis that societies which make a fetish of custom have.

What is more, the cosmopolitans are the evolving expression of the post-tribal extended order about which Hayek wrote. Cosmopolitans, far from being an unintelligible social babble to each other in reality revolve around the same core social values, the same ones which have enabled capitalist trade and several property to flourish. It is the extended order's ability to foster trust and exchange amongst strangers from outwardly dissimilar people's which so threatens the mediated collectivist social model, the same mediated collectivist social model leads to such absurdities as an inability to harshly criticise the Muslim and Euro-Muslim culture which even according to the body of the EU's own report spawns violence against European Jews, not to mention other wider issues such as high unemployment due to an unwillingness to assimilate.

That admission that some cultures are simply less advanced and of less objective value, unable to provide either liberty or affluence, throws into question the whole concept of both relativism (clearly some cultures are not as successful at dealing with reality as others) and collective rights (if some collectives are based on monstrous assumptions, enshrining collective rights enshrines monstrous assumptions) upon which the Tranzi edifice is constructed. That is not a path for discussion which many of the people who preside over regulatory statist systems feel comfortable going down. The real but tiny fascist lunatic fringe has been designated the scapegoat of choice a la the fictional 'Emanuel Goldstein' in 1984: the target of officially sponsored hate. Moreover, any attempts to just use objective social reality to figure out what is going on has to be discouraged or where will it end? Perhaps people might stop believing what they are told by the establishment! I am open to alternative explanations of this strange institutional behaviour however.

The designated badguys



Just misunderstood gardeners!

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More Tsarism, this time of the Euro variety:

European Union leaders agreed yesterday to rush forward a clutch of EU-wide surveillance measures and created an anti-terror "Tsar" in response to the Madrid bombings.

The list of counter-terrorism measures pushed by Britain, France and Spain at a Union summit in Brussels include plans to retain mobile telephone records, e-mail and internet data indicating the time and address of all websites visited.

White Rose has further EUro-reportage and links about similar EUro-stuff, here and here.

This report also illustrates the point that EUrope is not just a machine to enable foreigners to muck the British around, it is also a machine to enable to British to muck the foreigners around: a sort of universal substitute empire for all the old European imperialists. Having been made to stop tyrannising over their previous imperial possessions, the tyrannising classes have switched instead to tyrannising over each other's nations. Bad luck on the rest of us, but there it is, these people have to have someone to tyrannise over.

Meanwhile, proof that when the Euro elite wants something, it just beavers away until it gets it:

A new summer deadline for agreement on the EU constitution has been agreed by European leaders, putting renewed pressure on Tony Blair and his non-negotiable "red lines".

Mr Blair had seemed content for the troubled constitution to slip off the agenda after December's summit ended in deadlock. But a new deadline for agreement on the document has been set.

Although, when the time comes that the people who want EUrope to fall to bits are finally in the ascendancy, they will have the perfect precedent for saying: "We are going to keep on destroying this thing until we succeed, and will ignore all counter-opinions, of, e.g. voters, because these opinions are anti-historical and do not matter. We are doing what we know to be best. Our opponents are deluded. That's what the founders of this thing did when they started it, and we are merely following their inspiring example."

Trouble is, by the time that happens, those people may be even nastier.

I will read this piece by David Carr to cheer myself up.

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Good news from today's Guardian, which just goes to show that big news can sometimes come in the form of something bad just very quietly not happening:

Tacit confirmation that joining the single currency is off the political radar until after the next election came today as the "No" campaign confirmed it was ceasing to campaign actively.

The group insists that a "steering committee" will monitor the government's plans on the euro, but that last week's budget now means that a referendum would not be before spring 2008 at "the absolute earliest".

In his budget statement last Wednesday, Gordon Brown announced a "rolling assessment" of the case for euro - but last June told MPs that only one of his "five tests" had been met.

The sixth test – can they get us damn voters to agree to it? – was always the test that mattered. I don't know anyone who believes that any of the other five matter as much as that one. (Come to think of it, I doubt if I know anyone who knows what all these tests are.) And because those New Labour people didn't take all the chips they won in 1997 and throw them straight back onto the table and bet them all on the abolition of the pound Sterling, right then, there is a very good chance that Britain will retain its national independence indefinitely, with its separation from the 'eurozone' eventually mutating into separation from 'Europe' itself. I can hope.

As a libertarian I wish we Brits could cherry pick. I wish we could welcome all these Eastern European immigrants who are about to flood in and who want to work, but not take all the idiotic and mean-minded regulations and 'harmonisations'. (And maybe history will cherry pick exactly that arrangement for me, eventually.) Which might explain why in other parts of Europe the libertarians are all gung-ho not only for 'Europe' but for the very Euro itself. In Brussels last week, I heard tell of a Swedish libertarian who voted 'No' in the Swedish referendum and who was damn near ostracised by the rest of her tribe. In Sweden, 'Europe' is what is going to dismantle their over-bloated welfare state. 'Europe' is Thatcherism.

However, the fact that 'Europe' may be a better bet than Sweden for Sweden doesn't make it a better bet than Britain for Britain, so I am still pleased about the indefinitely postponement of the Euro in these parts.

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This article by young Freddie Sayers in the latest Spectator can be simply summarised. The EU is boring, and it is especially boring to Youth.

The youthfulness of Freddie Sayers is not something I am pointing out gratuitously. He makes much of it himself, when he writes things like this:

Sooner or later, the EU institutions will realise that they cannot shape trends, but are in fact subject to them. I believe the European Union will gradually become less relevant: the lack of interest in my generation practically guarantees it. The passion that the romantic vision of a united Europe once provoked was the result of a world-view which we cannot understand. When Michael Howard spoke in Berlin in February, he recalled how in 1963 he had been ‘one of the half million people who thronged in front of the Rathaus Schoneberg to hear President Kennedy give his famous address’; Sìle de Valera also told me how influenced she had been by General de Gaulle’s vision of Europe.

But these memories mean nothing to us. The old view of Europe, formed by a memory of intra-European war and the prospect of a new power block to counterbalance the US and Soviet Russia, is simply no longer relevant. I can’t remember the Berlin Wall falling down; the second world war seems ancient history. Sìle de Valera pondered why it is that young people feel ‘active and engaged in global politics, but it is harder to engage them at a more local level’. Perhaps we feel more like citizens of the world than citizens of Europe? The European Union has had useful and constructive results — freer travel and trade, cultural exchange programmes — but there is no reason for young people to get excited about it. We see these as the quite normal modern activities of any friendly civilised states, whether America or Italy. The whole idea of a particularly European vision is out of date, passé.

The trouble with Sayers saying all this, but not saying any more than this, is that however much the EUropean Union becomes less "relevant" in the eyes of its younger victims, it is still in fact in business. The EU boring? Well, so is a steamroller. But if the steamroller is steamrolling all over you, merely calling it boring is hardly the response that will actually stop it, now is it?

What is needed is a generation who have become sufficiently excited about the EUropean Union, to the point where they choose to stop it, and perhaps even reverse it.

Of course the EUro-enthusiasts would rather that the youth of EUrope shared their EUro-enthusiasm. But in the absence of support, they can proceed with their project in the absence of enthusiastic opposition.

I am not accusing Freddie Sayers of having foolish feelings, still less of reporting on the feelings of others inaccurately. On the contrary, that he is interested enough in the EU to write this piece about it, even - as he most entertainingly reports - travelling to a fatuous EUro-junket in Ireland that nobody else gave the slightest attention to, suggests that he at least is not indifferent to the progress of the steamroller.

So on the contrary, I think we should keep our eyes open for what else this young man writes.

And I wonder, is he the same Freddie Sayers as the one in this?

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In what is a splendid testament to the sense and wisdom of Irish youth, when the EU held a conference for young people in Ireland (free registration required)... how many young Irish people turned up?

None.

Clearly they had better things to do. How very, very, very, splendid.

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Slowjoe has spotted something calculated to start teeth grinding here on Samizdata.net

The Register talks about an attempt by the EU to railroad through the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive.

It appears to give the 'rights holder' carte blanche... almost the right to set up a private police force.

The interesting thing is that the rapporteur did an end-run around any debate. She also happens to be the wife of the head of Vivendi Universal.

Slowjoe

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It will come as no surprise to anyone with a 100+ IQ and a modicum of knowledge about how the world works that Robert Mugabe and his murderous kleptocrats have appropriated more that £100 million (US $190 million) in aid sent to Zimbabwe by Britain and the EU.

As that was only to be expected, I cannot say it adds significantly to my loathing of the Mugabe regime. What does fill me with utter contempt is that the people responsible for this utterly predictable outcome still allowed the money to be sent in the first place.

As I have previously argued many times before about foreign aid, to send money for ostensibly humanitarian aims to a nation governed by a tyranny is to become the logistic support arm of that tyranny: insulating the regime from the economic (and hence political) consequences of its actions and thereby indirectly, but in a very real sense, making the regime more likely to survive than would otherwise be the case. That is true even if the humanitarian aid does indeed reach the people and projects it is targeted at.

This however is even worse than that. To send aid to Zimbabwe is to underwrite the tyrannical Mugabe regime directly as according to the latest report, 89% ends up in the pockets of Zimbabwe's rulers rather than being spent on the humanitarian objectives for which it is intended. Thus not only can the people who sent the money not bask in their delusions that they have at least done good for those who benefit from the worthy projects, they might as well be buying weapons for Mugabe's police and paramilitaries, not to mention making the bankers and shopkeepers in Zürich rather happy. They are directly supporting the tyrants with large cash injections.

As I disinclined to believe that the people in charge of the governments and agencies in question do not know full well where the money is going to end up, that makes them knowingly supporters of the regime. Which means they are supporting this:

Hilary Andersson, of the BBC's Panorama programme, reveals how thousands of youths are being taught to rape, maim, torture and kill in Zimbabwe's terror training camps - and now Robert Mugabe intends to make the camps compulsory for all the country's young men and women

[...]

A former official with the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation that oversees the camps, explained the government's thinking. "You are moulding somebody to listen to you, so if it means rapes have to take place in order for that person to take instructions from you, then it's OK," he said. He was so horrified that he left his job with the ministry in disgust. Rape is just one of the ways camp commanders are able to turn their charges into unquestioning automata. The training methods vary from camp to camp, but the pattern is consistent.

If all that was happening was that the Guardian reading classes were getting a warm fuzzy glow because they were supporting British tax money going to 'help stamp out poverty in the third world', then that would be bad enough, given the reality of what this distorting flow of cash really does. But as Zimbabwe slowly morphs into an inept 'North Korea Lite', the platitudes and wilful ignorance of some are now directly funding truly monstrous horrors and misery because they are too damn lazy to think the whole issue through.

Of course if our political masters did not know this was going to happen when they decided to send huge chunks cash to a place like Zimbabwe, then they are naive to the point of idiocy and have no business being in charge of vast amounts of other people's money to begin with.

So which is it?

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You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind (or read nothing but the Guardian) to have failed to notice that there is rather a large constituency in Britain whose feelings regarding the European Union lie somewhere between dislike and loathing.

As a consequence this would presumably lead the leader of the opposition Tory Party to firmly align his troops with the Euro-sceptics, correct? I mean, there is no way in hell that he would