(3)

They said it would never be agreed. Then they said it would never be launched. Then they said it would fail. When it was a success, the euro-haters still insisted that the single currency was a recipe for economic chaos and political instability. The phobes are proving to be wrong again. At a time when so much of Europe's political leadership is in flux, the single currency is the steadying point in an uncertain and worrying world.

That this has not happened is thanks to the euro. The single currency has taken all this political upheaval in its calm stride.

- From an anonymous editorial in the Observer headed "A tolerant euro".

From 2002, in case you were wondering.

(34)

He wastes no time in twisting the knife of truth in this thrillingly irreverent talk. No, he probably will not ever be invited back.

O'Leary's conference bio should have foreshadowed to organizers that they would not be getting the traditional, polite, boring PowerPoint presentation.

(9)

I enjoyed this thoughtful article in the Telegraph by Ronald Stewart-Brown on the ramifications of Britain's leaving the EU. He seems to think it wouldn't be too bad because an acceptable trade agreement would be fairly easy to come by. As he says:

We could negotiate at least as good access to other EU services markets as we have at present. We would no longer need to contribute towards the excessive levels of trade-distorting agricultural subsidy other EU member states dish out under the Common Agricultural Policy.

Personally, I wouldn't be too sure about that - I think we could be in for a fair amount of vindictiveness. But that's by the by. My real question is whether we need or, indeed, should want trade agreements at all. After all, if we can't sell to them, how will they be able to sell to us?

(8)

One of the main arguments made in favour of Britain's continued membership of the European Union is that such membership is the only way Britain can exert "influence" over European Union decision making. If we are on the outside "we" (whatever that might mean) will be ignored. So, goes the argument.

I suppose this presupposes that British influence is a "good thing", something I find rather surprising because for many euro-federalists it seems that one of the primary attractions of the EU is its un-Britishness. But I digress.

Assuming they are being honest the question has to be: is it true? Do you have more influence by being inside the tent or outside?

There are some pretty compelling counter-examples. I think we can agree that Britain had much more influence by being outside Nazi Europe than inside. Ditto Britain and the Soviet Empire. The American War of Independence seems to have been a spectacular example: improving life both in the United States and the British Empire - by warning the British of the likely costs of being unduly oppressive.

But there are examples from other walks of life. Does anyone seriously think that Steve Jobs or Bill Gates would have had anything like the impact they have had by being corporate insiders?

A lot of this assumes that Britain is in the right. What if she's not? What if Britain is wrong? Well, that's fine too. If we discover that the EU is right that's fine. All we have to do is to adopt EU policies. There's no need for membership.

All of which rather puts me in mind of something that Natalie Solent wrote a few years ago, picked up here by Brian. The world needs diversity.

There's another part to this that bugs me. To have influence pre-supposes disagreement. You can't have influence over a decision if you and every other party to it already agree. And if there is disagreement that implies that influence can only be bought at the price of others going against their perceived interests. Now, that's all very well if you're dealing with a bunch of tribesmen who don't have machine guns but in the case of Europe you're not. You are dealing with countries that are just as modern and as powerful as you are. If you succeed in exercising your "influence" and by doing so make them go against their perceived interests that is at very least going to cause resentment and probably lead to some continental "influence" against your perceived interests.

Oh, and Happy New Year, by the way.

(6)

Ten years ago today a Guardian headline read Euro lobby demands stronger lead.

Lord Heseltine effectively accused Mr Blair of a lack of nerve as he dismissed the government's five economic tests as a "protective barrier" behind which it could "cower in order to have apparently intellectually defensible reasons for putting things off".

On the next day, 1 January 2002, the same newspaper reported on the launch of the Euro.

The mood was uniformly upbeat at parties, pageants and ceremonies bidding farewell to once-treasured marks, francs, pesetas and lire.

"Our countdown is leading towards a new era," Wim Duisenberg, the Dutch president of the European Central Bank (ECB), declared in Frankfurt. "By using euros, we will give a clear signal of the confidence and hope we have in tomorrow's Europe."

On a day of highs, Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, hit the highest note. "We are witnessing the dawn of an age that the people of Europe have dreamed of for centuries: borderless travel and payment in a common currency," he said in a new year message.

Mr Prodi marked the change by buying flowers in euros, not schillings, on a visit to Vienna. And in remarks that will alarm a British government watching uncomfortably from the sidelines, the former Italian prime minister pledged that the arrival of the euro in people's pockets would lead "ineluctably" to more economic coordination - the great fear of sceptics.

How to stop worrying about “contagion”

Just remember that every country in the Western world already has the disease.

(26)

It's been pretty quiet here today, and all the things I'm am personally working on need more working on before they're ready. But, if it's true that a picture is worth a thousand words, well, here are a thousand words:

I found this at the top of a piece by Daniel Hannan about how Britain might just be being pushed out of EUrope and back into the Anglosphere.

I won't be holding my breath, but I have long thought this to be an attractive idea.

(5)

"Yes indeed, Britain is on the outside: left out of this idyll of anti-competitive regulation and tax harmonisation. I can remember when the greatest Eurosceptic nightmare was a “United States of Europe”. They should be so lucky. The United States of America has nothing like this ferociously imposed central control over the budgets of its member states. Nor does it require tax harmonisation among them. The states of the American union have independent tax systems: apart from federal income tax, the taxes that US citizens pay are determined by the states they are in. Some of those states have high property and death taxes – others (like Nevada, where the revenue from gambling pays for almost everything) have low ones. Some have sales taxes and specific duties which others do not. Hence the great American tradition of driving across state lines in order to buy cheaper alcohol."

- Janet Daley.

(13)

I cannot claim to grasp much of the detail of all the drama now surrounding the EUro. This photo, taken by me yesterday, captures the feeling of it all quite well:

Click to get that bigger and more legible.

Is all this drama being cranked up to enable Cameron to take the credit from us Brits for bollocking up the Euro, and simultaneously to enable everyone else in EUrope to blame us? Just, as Americans say, askin'.

One little titbit of news that does strike me as particularly interesting is this, in the Wall Street Journal, about how various governments are quietly pondering EUro-alternatives. At the very least, someone at the Wall Street Journal is asking about alternatives.

It all makes me think of those bridges that Julius Caesar burned, so that his army then knew that they would either fight and win, or perish. Except that this time, various parts of the army are nipping back to the various rivers that they just might be wanting soon to be retreating across, and are quietly building bridges. Just as burning bridges changes the game, so does building them. Even thinking about building them changes things.

(13)

There is something about this story about bank debt buybacks that I don't quite understand, although I have only had two cups of coffee as of the time of writing:

"European banks are turning to buying back their own debt in order to raise some of the billions in extra capital required by regulators. At least six major banks have launched debt buybacks in the last two weeks and investment bankers say more are likely."

Okay, so if a bank has debt - ie, others are lending it money - and the bank buys back, or in other words, pays off some of that debt, like paying off a credit card, say, how is this raising capital? The bank is presumably paying the debt off with, er, what? Fairy dust?

"In Lloyds’ case, it will exchange bonds previously issued for new instruments that are compatible with new regulations. The move allows lenders to book profits and reduce the stock of non Basel III capital on their books without issuing new equity or offloading assets."

This is not very clear. What is the defining characteristic of "Basel III capital" in this case?

Finally we get a glimmer of how this actually works:

"The capital raised in this way is likely to be in the hundreds of millions. It boosts earnings by realising “own credit” gains that are otherwise purely theoretical. The market price of banks’ debt has fallen dramatically in recent weeks, which enables banks to buy back their debt for an amount above the market price but below the cash they raised by selling the instruments, booking a profit."

Now I understand - I think.

As usual, the CityAM publication has a blisteringly good item on the Eurozone's latest absurdities today. It is become my daily morning read. The fact that several of its writers are friends and acquaintances is, of course, purely coincidental.

(16)

Paul Krugman:

"Although Europe’s leaders continue to insist that the problem is too much spending in debtor nations, the real problem is too little spending in Europe as a whole."

Let us fisk this:

"The story so far: In the years leading up to the 2008 crisis, Europe, like America, had a runaway banking system and a rapid buildup of debt. In Europe’s case, however, much of the lending was across borders, as funds from Germany flowed into southern Europe. This lending was perceived as low risk. Hey, the recipients were all on the euro, so what could go wrong?"

Nice piece of snark, which I do not demur from.

"For the most part, by the way, this lending went to the private sector, not to governments. Only Greece ran large budget deficits during the good years; Spain actually had a surplus on the eve of the crisis."

That may be true. I have not checked. However, the fact that Spain's public finances went down the toilet so fast does not quite suggest that the Spanish public sector was a model of mean-minded prudence.

"Then the bubble burst. Private spending in the debtor nations fell sharply. And the question European leaders should have been asking was how to keep those spending cuts from causing a Europe-wide downturn."

No, they should have been facing up to the fact that a vast number of mal-investments were caused by a decade of under-priced credit, and that there was no way that such a build-up of bad investments can be unwound painlessly. Seeking to hold off the pain by increasing public spending (and hence scaring the hell out of the global bond market) is hardly likely to achieve the desired effect.

"During the years of easy money, wages and prices in southern Europe rose substantially faster than in northern Europe. This divergence now needs to be reversed, either through falling prices in the south or through rising prices in the north. And it matters which: If southern Europe is forced to deflate its way to competitiveness, it will both pay a heavy price in employment and worsen its debt problems. The chances of success would be much greater if the gap were closed via rising prices in the north."

That may be true in crudely political terms; after having enjoyed the fat years, those who have done so are not likely to enjoy a lean period. However...

"But to close the gap through rising prices in the north, policy makers would have to accept temporarily higher inflation for the euro area as a whole. And they’ve made it clear that they won’t. Last April, in fact, the European Central Bank began raising interest rates, even though it was obvious to most observers that underlying inflation was, if anything, too low."

Well, it seems a bit glib to assume, as Keynesians like Professor Krugman do, that the inflation will prove to be temporary... Riiiight... One key problem for the eurozone, as he ought to know, is that labour markets in much of the region are so heavily regulated that getting a meaningful adjustment in wages and prices is hard, and yet this has to happen if countries such as Greece and Germany are to co-exist under the same currency area without strife. The same issue, of course, would apply if the whole region were to adopt, say, an inelastic system of real money instead of fiat money issued by a central bank or banks.

Another point for Professor Krugman to remember is that in some member nations, such as France, there has been double-digit percent unemployment for the young long before anyone had heard about sub-prime or credit crunches. And Europe's record for wealth and job creation, compared to that of the US prior to the crunch, has been and remains lamentable.

(18)

There seem to be lots of people out there who think the euro is about to collapse. They talk about Greece or Italy leaving or of Germany leaving or the creation of 'hard' and 'soft' euro zones. I beg to differ.

Let me explain. There is one thing that people in the Anglosphere often fail to understand: euro-federalists are euro-fanatics. They (the euro-fanatics) seriously believe that should the European Union fail or take a step backwards or even stutter, then Europe would more or less instantly be plunged into war.

Now, us sceptics might ask why it was that there was no war between 1945 and the founding of the European Community (1958, if I recall correctly) or why, if a European Community was all that was needed to preserve the peace up to 1992, it was necessary to create the European Union, but we would be wasting our breath. This is not something that has anything to do with logic or reason. Euro-fanaticism pretty much took over where religion left off.

When push comes to shove nothing else matters. So, when Germany's politicians are given a choice between the breakup of the euro and a Weimar-style hyperinflation fueled by the European Central Bank printing press, they'll choose the hyperinflation. Inflation at 20%, 200% or 2000%? It won't matter: they'll do it.

And that is the choice they will be given. The PIIGS: Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy are bust. They cannot pay their bills. In itself this would not be a problem. As far as the European project is concerned these countries are expendable. France, however, is not. France is absolutely central to the project. After all, without France there would be no one to go to war with. French banks have lent enormous sums to the PIIGS. If the PIIGS go bust (possibly only even one of them) France's banks go bust. Now you and I might think "serves 'em right" or "well, that's how capitalism creates wealth: by weeding out loss-making enterprises" but that's not how the euro-fanatics think. They are no less wedded to the theory of 'too big to fail' than Hank Paulson - the US Treasury Secretary who bailed out US banks in 2008. So, France's banks will be bailed out. But France can't afford to do this. So, it will have to print money. But France can't print money. So, it will have to get the eurozone to do it instead. Enter the ECB. Enter hyperinflation.

The good news is that hyperinflations can't go on forever. At some point Europe's hyperinflation will end but it will end in different countries at different times. The different times will dictate that there will, in the end, be a euro breakup, but the hyperinflation will happen first. We just have to hope that the breakup of the euro and possibly even the EU doesn't trigger the very war it was designed to prevent.

(9)

"For what it's worth, I have yet to meet a British eurosceptic who is enjoying the economic turmoil on our doorstep. It is plainly in our interest that the eurozone-which takes 40 per cent of our exports, and comprises our allies and friends-should flourish. That's precisely why we are alarmed at the readiness of eurocrats to sacrifice their peoples' prosperity so as to keep their monetary union together. Not that Norman Davies is much interested in what eurosceptics actually think. One of the oddities of the whole debate is that euroenthusiastic commentators who are quick to spot prejudice in others when it comes to racism, sexism or xenophobia are quite unable to detect it in themselves when it comes to people who don't share their Weltanschauung. (By the way, Professor Davies, one uses nouvel before a masculine noun beginning with a vowel – le nouvel an, but le nouveau franc. When loftily dismissing people as anti-Europeans, it's a good idea to get your own French right.)"

- Daniel Hannan, MEP, having a go, among others, at the historian Norman Davies.

(12)

It is hard to keep up with the unfolding events of the eurozone debt crisis. Earlier this week, the auction by the German government of 10-year bonds, which is an event normally garnering only specialist coverage, made big news. It was, in the words of several news-sites, a disaster, with only some of the paper being bought.

With impeccable timing, therefore, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the UK-based free market think tank, held a panel debate last night around the question of whether the euro has a future. And an interesting collection of folk were on display: Prof Philip Booth, Editorial & Programme Director, IEA; William Cash, Conservative MP for Stone and a long-standing eurosceptic and loather of most things around the European Union; Ed Conway, Economics Editor, Sky News, Dominic Raab, Conservative MP for Esher and Walton, and finally, and in my view, most memorably, John Stevens, a former member of the European Parliament.

Stevens was memorable because, while he made some good arguments (such as that return to the drachma would cause severe problems for the Greeks in some ways), he also repeated a mistaken old argument that I occasionally hear from pro-EU/euro types.

The argument goes something like this: Small states (like the old city-states of Italy or wherever) cannot thrive on their own and need to be part of a bigger country. The European Union enables its members to punch with a heavier weight than alone. The old glories of Renaissance Italy only serve as a reminder of how small states lose their edge to bigger entities. And with China and India on the rampage, we need to stick together, despite the odd problem of making the project work.

Okay, that is a bit of a paraphrase, but in essentials that is what Stevens said last night. Like others in the audience, I smelled something a bit fishy about it. For a start, is it really the case that the prosperity of small states/principalities/whatever – like 15th Century Milan – could not be sustained alone and that these places had to merge or be taken over by a much bigger entity in order to survive? (It is not as if modern Italy, which was only unified 150 years ago, is an economic colossus as a result of said unification). Take Hong Kong, for instance. In geographic terms, it is tiny compared with the Chinese mainland and for reasons most Samizdata regulars will be familiar with, Hong Kong has been one of the great economic success stories since the Second World War. (For sure, it was a British colony until 1997 but plenty of other places were colonies and they did not thrive). The same goes for Singapore. Or to travel back in time a bit: the UK – hardly a big country – Switzerland (ditto) or the Netherlands. In the latter example, the Dutch were so lacking in room that rather than conquer a bunch of neighbours, they reclaimed land from the sea. The Swiss seem to be doing rather well, despite the pressures on their discreet banking sector. In fact, places such as Switzerland are a standing reproach to Transnational Progressivists generally.

And in any event, what all these examples of economically successful small states show is that they can survive and thrive so long as they can trade in a global marketplace, exploiting a wide division of labour. It is not necessary – pace Stevens and his allies – to create a centralised institution such as the EU or anything else in order for this trading to occur. So long as different jurisdictions recognise each other’s rules, trade can proceed. In that sense, any regulatory system that takes hold is a “bottom-up” phenomenon, not one imposed from above.

It should also be noted that if, by any chance, the eurozone does fracture, with some of the “northern” euro member countries operating a stronger currency than in the “south”, then this might ultimately work to the benefit of the people for whom the single currency was purportedly designed: the citizens of EU member states.

As an aside, I was pleased that Prof Booth last night pointed out that for economic liberals/libertarians, the issue that really counts is whether the arrangements we arrive at really do mean more, rather than less, movement of goods, services and people. Or, in other words, more freedom, period. No classical liberal can be happy at the prospect of a eurozone collapse being followed by a descent into autarky, protectionism and xenophobia.

Here, by the way, is an interesting book on the folly of empires.

(5)

The tight financial integration of the eurozone, together with the essentially political decision to cement all domestic claims into a foreign currency (the euro) was deliberate: thereafter no sovereign could expect to regain independence. A razor-wire fence was erected to prevent members from leaving the enclosure. Now that some inmates are proving excessively troublesome, that same razor wire is a formidable barrier to getting them out.

- G. R. Steele

(14)

The names on the list of his ministers – most of which were unknown to members of the Italian general public – showed that Monti had failed in his attempt to involve party representatives. His cabinet was made up exclusively of non-aligned specialists.

"The absence of political personalities in the government will help rather than hinder a solid base of support for the government in parliament and in the political parties because it will remove one ground for disagreement," he said.

A new row blew up between France and Germany yesterday over how to save the euro as Mario Monti, Italy’s new Prime Minister, appointed an all technocrat Cabinet that does not include a single elected politician.

(6)

...the more likely possibility is that there will be asymmetric shocks hitting the different countries. That will mean that the only adjustment mechanism they have to meet that with is fiscal and unemployment: pressure on wages, pressure on prices. They have no way out. With a currency board, there is always the ultimate alternative that you can break the currency board. Hong Kong can dismantle its currency board tomorrow if it wants to. It doesn't want to and I don't think it will. But it could. But with the Euro, there is no escape mechanism.

Suppose things go badly and Italy is in trouble, how does Italy get out of the Euro system? It no longer has a lira after whatever it is - 2000 or 2001 - so it's a very big gamble. I wish the Euro area well; it will be in the self-interest of Australia and the United States that the Euro area be successful. But I'm very much concerned that there's a lot of uncertainty in prospect.

Professor Milton Friedman interviewed by Radio Australia, 17 July 1998

(10)

"Looking up at the huge modern edifice of the euro tottering, tilting and melting – a Corbusian nightmare as imagined by Dalí – it is easy to forget how prevalent was the view that Britain would condemn itself to a second-class status in Europe and a lesser role on the global stage if it stayed out of the shiny new currency. Even some of the staunchest Eurosceptics, who saw that the euro was economic folly and a constitutional affront, fretted privately that it would bulldoze all before it......It is astonishing to hear the very same people who said Britain would be consigned to irrelevance outside the euro now insisting that we have a neighbourly duty to prevent its implosion: we do have such a duty, but it is based on hard-nosed self-interest, not obligation to the continental sages who – betraying their ignorance of history and its magnificent unpredictability – once insisted that their grand projet would inevitably succeed."

- Matthew d'Ancona.

(31)

What will happen to the Euro? I am not asking "what should happen", but what will happen. Take this opportunity to put your predictions on the internet, and later be hailed as a true prophet or derided as a false one.

(6)

"What is certain is that the EU does not resemble a prosperity club that Britain should work more closely with."

Fraser Nelson, Spectator.

(3)

'Why Britain Should Join the Euro' - a pamphlet by Richard Layard, Willem Buiter, Christopher Huhne, Will Hutton, Peter Kenen and Adair Turner, with a foreword by Paul Volcker.

One of the authors, AdairTurner, now Lord Turner, is interviewed in today's Observer, which is where I saw the link. He has changed his mind a little since 2002, when the pamphlet was written, but not to an unseemly extent. Now Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, he is concerned about the current situation but remains confident that "sensible decisions are going to be made".

So there you are then. Cheer up!

(4)

Here is a good column slating the idea of a Tobin Tax. The key issue that people need to understand is the issue of tax incidence. To put it another way, taxes are a cost (indeed, for some things, such as taxes on tobacco, policymakers stress this point). Costs get passed on. If we tax financial transactions, it will be passed on in the form of lower profits, job cuts, lower savings rates, higher borrowing costs. The tax, of course, will weigh disproportionately on London, given the far smaller turnover of rival European centres such as Paris.

As the saying goes, can we leave yet?

(15)

My only surprise is that an article as justifiably angry as this has not been written sooner. Here are Peter Oborne and Frances Weaver, in the latest edition of the Spectator. They have also penned an item called Guilty Men, published by the Centre for Policy Studies.

There are several institutions that are targeted. And I almost wonder if the authors of the article have been channelling our own Paul Marks on the subject of the Financial Times. Paul has written about the Economist also with venom. An example of what annoyed Paul about the Economist, is linked to here.

Here are the paragraphs that stood out for me in the Spectator article:

“Meanwhile the pro-Europeans find themselves in the same situation as appeasers in 1940, or communists after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are utterly busted. Let’s examine the case of the Financial Times, which claims to be Britain’s premier economic publication. About 25 years ago something went very wrong with the FT. It ceased to be the dry, rigorous journal of economic record that was so respected under its great postwar editor Sir Gordon Newton.”

“Turning its back on its readers, it was captured by a clique of left-wing journalists. An early sign that something was going wrong came when the FT came out against the Falklands invasion. Naturally it supported Britain’s entry to the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990. In 1992, under the slow-witted editorship of Richard Lambert (in a later incarnation, as director general of the Confederation of British Industry, Sir Richard was to become one of the most sycophantic apologists for Gordon Brown’s premiership), it endorsed Neil Kinnock as prime minister. It has been wrong on every single major economic judgment over the past quarter century.”

“The central historical error of the modern Financial Times concerns the euro. The FT flung itself headlong into the pro-euro camp, embracing the cause with an almost religious passion. Doubts were dismissed. Here is the paper’s supposedly sceptical and contrarian Lex column on 8 January 2001, on the subject of Greek entry to the eurozone. ‘With Greece now trading in euros,’ reflected Lex, ‘few will mourn the death of the drachma. Membership of the eurozone offers the prospect of long-term economic stability.’ The FT offered a similar warm welcome to Ireland.”

“The paper waged a vendetta against those who warned that the euro would not work. Its chief political columnist Philip Stephens consistently mocked the Eurosceptics. ‘Immaturity is the kind explanation,’ sneered Stephens as Tory leader William Hague came out against the single currency. Even as late as May 2008, when the fatal booms in Ireland and elsewhere were very obviously beginning to falter, the paper retained its faith: ‘European monetary union is a bumble bee that has taken flight,’ asserted the newspaper’s leader column. ‘However improbable the celestial design, it has succeeded in real life.’ For a paper with the FT’s pretensions to authority in financial matters, its coverage of the single currency can be regarded as nothing short of a disaster.”

An interesting side point is that the authors seem to take it as read that individual countries should, as matters of sovereignty, have their own currencies. What the authors don’t state – and I don’t know their views on this – are their opinions on fiat money per se. It is, after all, not much consolation to supporters of free markets to replace one dud monopoly money system with a network of national monopoly fiat moneys instead. What we need is actual competition between and even more crucially, within countries. Remember the old idea of a hard money “parallel currency” that the likes of Nigel Lawson, former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, toyed with?

Transnational currencies such as the euro may indeed be disasters waiting to happen. But national currencies can often blow up too, or devalue slowly but insidiously. That point needs to be made loud and clear. The end of the euro may be cause for grim satisfaction in some corners but that is not the only kind of economic folly out there.

(10)

"It is not beyond Germany’s financial power to rescue the ailing eurozone countries. But the increase in political power for Germany which such a rescue implies is surely way beyond what most of the people of Europe would accept. The Germans do not want it either: in agreeing to create the ECB, they willed the means, but not the end. Now that the end is nigh, they are terrified. What Europe faces, then, is a disaster that was predictable – and predicted – and is now unavoidable. In the process, millions will lose their jobs, an entire generation will miss the opportunities which their parents enjoyed, and blood will probably be shed. The rulers of Europe have never been so wrong since the late 1930s."

Charles Moore. His remarks about such EUrophiles such as Chris Patten (remember that pompous arse?), FT journalist Lionel Barber, Hugo Young and of course, Jacques Delors (remember him also?) are gloriously scathing.

By the way, here are two books, one by John Laughland, and the other by Bernard Connolly, written some time ago on the architects of the modern EU. I don't agree with all of their ideas, but they were remarkably prescient in certain respects. Laughland, for example, picks up on Hayek's point about the dangers of politicised money, which is essentially what fiat money usually is.

In case anyone asks, I certainly don't endorse Laughland's nationalistic views on the treatment of people such as Slobodan Milosovic. . That is a subject for another day.

(27)

This is interesting:

"As the EU debt drama continues unspooling like a perversely watchable soap opera (the FT’s Neil Hume describes it as ‘eurozone crisis porn'), an intriguing sub-plot has emerged: Britain is suing the European Central Bank. The Treasury is unhappy with an ECB move to limit the kind of euro-denominated products that can pass through UK clearing houses, suspecting it’s a bid to shift financial activity from London to Paris/Berlin. So it’s taking legal action, the first of its kind by an EU member state.)"

Via the Spectator's "Coffee House" blog.

I enjoyed this paragraph:

"On a wider level, there’s some irony in the fact that the UK and the EU are squabbling over euro-denominated transactions. Who even knows which countries will still be using the euro by the time the year is out? Exactly what kind of euro will be cleared in clearing houses come Christmas?"

Someone explain to me why we are in the EU. I am sure there is a reason, but bugger me if I can remember now. Old age creeping in.

(28)

The headline says 'Europe declares war on rating agencies':

Wolfgang Schauble, German finance minister, said there was no justification for the four-notch downgrade or for warnings that Portugal might need a second bail-out. "We must break the oligopoly of the rating agencies," he said.

Heiner Flassbeck, director of the UN Office for World Trade and Development, said the agencies should be "dissolved" before they can do any more damage, or at least banned from rating countries.

Now ponder that for a moment... what is a 'rating agency'? It is a company that states an opinion regarding credit worthiness. And those opinions are only significant if people who make investment decisions think the opinions in question actually reflect reality, i.e. the opinion has some credibility.

So what these quoted members of the political class are calling for is banning credible opinions about the consequences of decisions by, er, people like themselves.

Astonishing. And in reality rating agencies have a history of excessive optimism, only downgrading ratings long after the dots were joined by anyone who has been paying attention.

(21)

As regulars will know, one of my pet dislikes is "Rod" Liddle, a man who likes to think of himself as a sturdy Leftie but who, in fact, increasingly sounds like the sort of BNP supporter that you might encounter in a bar and who insists on telling you about how so many of our problems are the fault of "the blacks", etc. Liddle has strayed, arguably, over the line before, but like a man emboldened by his own seeming ability to keep pushing his agenda without severe damage to his bank balance, he has finally gone over the top with all the mad brio of Prince Rupert of the Rhine charging at Cromwell’s infantry in the English Civil War.

In a particularly stupid article for the Spectator (behind a subscriber firewall), on page 17 of the print edition, Mr Liddle reflects on the problems of Greece, and its horrendous debt. He rightly regards Greece’s decision to join the euro as a disaster, as Greece has proven itself incapable of handling the sort of interest rate more suitable to Munich or Lyon. However, in his clumsy way, he reflects on the differences he sees between southern Europe and the more "puritan" North. His title for the article (possibly written by a sub-editor), is: "How did I get it right on the euro? Easy. I was racist".

"Insofar as I understood the economic permutations of what it would mean to be in or out of the single currency, I was vaguely opposed to joining. But my real reason for objecting to our membership of the euro was, and still is, I’m afraid, straightforwardly racist. I didn’t want to have the same currency (or government, effectively), as people in the south of Europe, who, I thought were, in the main, lazy, hot-tempered and uncivilized."

Here’s another gem:

"But it cannot be mere coincidence that the countries in trouble are those in the south, and that the further south you go the worse these problems become, until you reached the dislodged chunks of marble and the flaming fast-food shops of central Athens, where one protester said to the camera crews: “We don't owe any money, it’s the others who stole it!"

What is so cretinous about Liddle is his use of the word "racist" instead of what would be more accurate – "culture". It is, arguably, the culture of some countries – by no means all – that helps explain such things. But the idea that there is some sort of general rule that says the further south you travel, the worse the population behaves, is bunk. My wife's small country, Malta, which is even further to the south than Greece, has a conservatively-run banking system, strong public finances and a relatively strong respect for property rights and the rule of law. It is also a member of the euro-zone. Maybe all those years of Malta being under the British Empire might have helped, as our "leftie" Mr Liddle might argue, but Malta exhibited many fine qualities long before the Brits, in the form of Lord Nelson, showed up. It is bizarre to claim that the further towards the Equator you get, the sillier, more corrupt and naughty people become. As Liddle must surely recall, in chilly Scotland, once famous or infamous for its puritanical version of Christianity, for example, a large chunk of the populace now lives on benefits, and many of the traditional characteristics once associated with the land of Adam Smith, James Watt and David Hume seem to be notable for their absence. This is a cultural, economic and political development which cannot be explained by reference to some glib reference to geography, much less the race, of the people in question. Even more unfortunately for Liddle's notion is the example of Iceland, and its catastrophe of failed banks. Those blue-eyed folk with their blonde hair seriously screwed up.

Good ideas can be discredited by bigots purporting to advance them, if we allow these people to speak without rebutting their biases and showing them for the fools and knaves that they are. And Rod Liddle, however amusing he can sometimes be, or correct about something like the euro in one sense, is a bigot, and the kind of friend Eurosceptics can do without (I sometimes wonder whether he is working for the other side). Well, now he is on the record – he's a racist, and seems to be proud of it.

(27)

Another zinger of a piece by Detlev Schlichter. If you are not reading his stuff regularly, you need to deal with that oversight. He's indispensable:

One frequently gets the impression from reading the mainstream media that Greece has a monetary policy problem and not a fiscal problem. This is incorrect. Yet many commentators seem to argue along the following lines: This crisis is due to the straitjacket of the single currency with its one-size-fits-all monetary policy, or at least aggravated by the constraints of this system. Greece would have more “policy options” in dealing with its troubles if it had control of its own national currency.

Then there is, connected to this, an underlying – and not very flattering – notion that the Greeks are somewhat unfit to live and work in a ‘hard money system’, which presumably the euro is. The Greeks, this seems to be the allegation, like borrowing and spending too much. I am paraphrasing here but this is certainly the underlying tone of the narrative. The Germans and Dutch and French can live without the constant aid of conveniently cheap national money – but the Greeks can’t.

And he signs off with this:

I have no doubt that the most important economic event of the coming decade will be the demise of the global paper money system. We live in the twilight of the fiat money era. A return to apolitical, international, commodity-based media of exchange is inevitable. Why not start with Greece? The transition would be painful but there are no painless options available anyway.

I am convinced this would be a sensible strategy but I also think it is unlikely. The state and the banks benefitted from the paper money franchise, and they are now addicted to cheap credit and unwillingly to check into rehab. The establishment will continue to fight a return to sound money.

With some honourable exceptions, I find it hard to think of many even supposedly "private" banks in the world as proper, capitalist institutions in any sense. Their reliance on the crack cocaine of cheap credit has become too entrenched.

(19)

London mayor and newspaper pundit Boris Johnson has a good article in his usual Daily Telegraph redoubt and it is getting a lot of attention, as it should:

"The Greek debt crisis is deepening, in other words; and there are only two options. We could continue down the road we are on, in which the euro shambles becomes an invisible and surreptitious engine for the creation of an economic government of Europe. Indeed, there is a sense in which the slow-motion disaster of the PIGS - Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain - has been terrific for the federalist cause. Bit by bit we seem to be creating a fiscal as well as a monetary union, in which huge sums - including about £20 billion of UK bail-out cash - are being transferred from the richer to the poorer parts of the EU. The idea is that Germany, France and others should “socialise” the debts of the periphery - take them on, in other words - so as to keep the eurozone together and to stop the domino effect, with all the attendant damage it is feared that would do to the European banking system."

"These profligate and improvident countries would be obliged, in return, to submit to a kind of economic supervision that is now proposed for Greece. Taxes, spending, benefits - all the panoply of economic independence - would then be subject to agreement with Berlin and Brussels. I sometimes think Kohl, Mitterrand, Delors and co instinctively knew that this would happen."

Oh, they knew. They wanted this to happen - maybe not in the wrenching, embarrassing way that has manifested itself in the case of Greece, Ireland the rest, but they surely wanted economics to be melded to the service of politics.

"They probably calculated that if only they could achieve monetary union, the euro would create such strains that the de facto creation of a United States of Europe would be impossible to resist. The trouble is that there is just no democratic mandate for anything of the kind."

Democracy, schemocracy, as Mel Brooks might have put it.

(12)

In response to a recent response of the economic collapse of Portugal, commenter EndivioR had the following to say:

I lived in Spain during Gonzalez and Aznar. Foolishly, as I saw motorways roll out across the plains, buildings shoot up, high-speed trains whistle past, and cool graphics appear on TV news intros, I thought that some seriously good country management was going on. Now I realise that "economic miracle" means what it says. A miracle is something that defies the laws of nature. Spain is a mirage floating over the quicksand of unredeemable loans. I hope there are still people around there who know how to steer a donkey.

Oddly enough, Spain and Portugal remind me of something I have seen before. In the 1990s, we had a telco bubble. In mobile telephony, most places had two or three digital 2G mobile networks built. The spectrum was usually obtained cheaply by these companies, and the resultant networks were valuable, and useful, and there was a good return on the capital put up to build them. One or two companies made enormous amounts of money by figuring out something was happening early in the piece, building suddenly immensely valuable companies, and selling out, often to incumbent telcos who had read things less well than they had. Telecoms equipment manufacturers made huge amounts of money as their business was suddenly much bigger than it had been before. Other people got excited by this, and governments got excited by this, and there was an enormous piling in by new entrants to this industry. The equipment manufacturers (many government backed) wanted to follow up their first round of sales with subsequent rounds, and there was massive pressure to keep building. Many of the people and organisations who entered this business late were, shall we say, more dubious than some of the earlier ones. In many cases, they were the well connected rather than the prescient.

One thing that came from this, towards the end of the bubble, was a lot of what is known as "vendor finance". Someone probably well connected wants to make money by building a telco, and probably selling that company on to someone else once it was built and had a customer base. A telecoms equipment manufacturer would lend the new telco money which the telco would then use to pay the manufacturer to build the network. This was all great as long as the network could be build, credit remained cheap, the network could gain customers and profits could be gained from these customers. In short, it was great as long as the bubble continued. Lots of people were making money as long as the bubble continued, and didn't really care how it continued.

Of course, few of these things remained true. Credit became expensive, and what customers newer telcos could gain were very low value customers. For a time, mobile phone companies were valued simply on the number of customers, with little attention paid as to whether they were good customers. However, this eventually stopped, as it had to. Credit became expensive. Vendor financed networks defaulted on their debts and went bust. The companies that did the vendor financing went bust too. Bye bye Lucent. Bye bye Onetel. Amazingly, the banking system as a whole did not go bust for more than five years after this.

Which makes me think of Spain and Portugal. These countries joined the EC (as it was then) in the early 1980s after many decades of authoritarian government: poor, and woefully lacking in infrastructure. They lacked the capital markets, the expertise and the international connections to build modern infrastructure themselves, but there was the potential to catch up rapidly if they were exposed to international markets and international practice.

The avenue through which they did this was the EC and later EU, of course. The benefits of rejoining the international economy were immense, and EU aid and expertise did help them and pay for infrastructure. The scale of this in the 1980s and early 1990s was surprisingly modest, actually, and the infrastructure that was built was fairly hardly argue with. Motorways from Madrid to Malaga, or Lisbon to Porto, eminently sensible, and the economic value created by the motorways obviously exceeded costs. Given that they were and are tolled, a fair bit of this value was even captured by the people who built and financed them. Looking back now, it seems fairly obvious that market mechanisms could have build the 1980s and 1990s developments. The sad thing is that market mechanisms did not build them, and Spain and Portugal instead got used to the EU way of doing this. Money flowed from France and (particularly) Germany and French and German banks via the EU institutions, and this money flowed back to France and Germany to the companies who did a lot of the work in building them. Vendor financing, shall we say. No particular harm was done, as long as the infrastructure being built was actually economically sensible.

However, the French and Germans and French and German banks, and the Spanish and the French and German engineering companies got used to this. The inevitable greasing of wheels and protection and paying off of the well connected created a while class of people whose interests were in this continuing, long after anything was economically sensible. So in the late 1990s and 2000s, Spain and Portugal got huge networks of motorways in absurd and pointless places. (One evening several years ago, I drove in the evening along the old road from Regua to Vila Real in Portugal. It was a scary, winding, narrow single carriageway. The next day I discovered that there was a new road, which was a beautiful dual carriageway, four lane motorway, apparently being used only by me). These later ones tend not to be tolled, as if you were to toll them it would become immediately obvious how few cars were using them and how economically pointless they are. Then, things got nuttier. Spain got an enormous network of high speed trains. These are particularly good from the EU aid point of view, as there are two different European technologies - one French and the other German - and the contracts can alternate between the two. Pointless, but great in terms of being financed by German banks and then bought from the Germans. Then Spain got the world's largest system of wind farms. The further we went along, the more pointless the things being built actually became. We started more or less with sense, but because the incentives were all wrong, this evolved into madness.

So here we are. The EU vendor finance bubble has ended. The French and (particularly) the Germans created this mess, because their banks and their industrial companies were benefiting in the short term. Blaming the Spanish is beyond the point. The Spanish let the Germans lend them money and then build them stuff with the lent money, and they were foolish to do this, but it appeared they were having a rapid miracle of modernity, and given the history, I can see why they wanted to believe this. The German banks are screwed, after doing the bidding of the German government. If the German government has to bail them out, well they created the mess.

Except, the political class made the mess. As that political class keep wining and dining one another as they discuss how to make things worse fix things, it is actually the German taxpayer doing the bailing out. The mess is certainly not the fault of the ordinary bloke making Volkswagens in the factory in Wolfsburg, but he has to pay for it. Hopefully the anger of such people is with the German political class and the European political class, rather than with "The Spanish" or "The Southern Europeans" amorphously, because it is the political class who are responsible.

In the case of the vendor financed telco bubble that I discussed earlier, the companies that did the lending and the borrowing generally both went bankrupt, their assets gobbled up by new and more sensible companies. In the case of governments that have done the same thing, cleaning up is messier. The German and Spanish political classes are not just going to go away, however much we wish they would.

Perhaps there is anger with the German political class. Support for the traditional Christian Democrats and Social Democrats appears to be in serious decline, which has led to support for the Green party approaching 30%. Which is not going to help. It is hard to see any scenarios in which we are not totally fucked.

(2)

That is one suspected reason for why the Icelandic government was so eager to roll over for the Dutch and the British - they were willing to bankrupt the nation to get their snouts trotter-deep into the EU troughs. If this means I can't join the EU I regard the referendum result as a double win.

- Commenter Bjarni

(8)

"So far, George Osborne has taken the comfortable line that the eurozone meltdown is nothing much to do with Britain. As a result, he has chosen not to question the shoddy compromises, the straight lies and the probable illegality that have characterised Europe’s response to its greatest financial and political crisis since the 1930s. But the disaster will hit us, too. Britain is a shareholder in the ECB, and Britain is a core part of the bail-out mechanism. It is time that we started to poke our nose in, to demand honesty and transparency, and to stop sending good money after bad. Above all, George Osborne has an urgent duty as Chancellor to construct a firewall that protects Britain as much as is possible from the catastrophe that now looms over Europe."

- Peter Oborne.

For many months and years, commentators - many of them at the Daily Telegraph - have predicted the eventual collapse of the single European currency. So far, it has failed to happen, if only due to the fanaticism of the European political class. But maybe, just maybe, the endgame is upon us. This is going to be nasty; some big banks could have to write off a huge amount in the way of bad loans.

And to think that a few years ago, it was claimed that the euro could rival, or even overtake, the dollar as a reserve currency. I am still a dollar bear, but who would want to bet on the euro?

I remember reading this book, The Rotten Heart of Europe, when it came out, and its author has that dubious pleasure of being able to say, "I told you so".

(27)

Did Steve Holliday, Chief Executive of the National Grid, let the cat out of the bag or deliberately set it amongst the pigeons when he said, on Radio 4 last week, that our National Grid is going to have start being "smarter" about who gets electricity and who doesn't? Delingpole reckons he's an imbecile, and maybe he is. I didn't hear the actual Radio 4 interview, so do not now know if he was blurting out an embarrassed admission or proud proclamation of inanity, or on the other hand offering a more careful and considered warning, thus to alert politicians to the consequences of their excessive policy greenness of recent years. Whatever the old school newspapers (that story, by the way, says that Delingpole is right) make of this story, it is already going walkabout in the new media.

Slowly, the counter-attack against global greenery is taking shape. First it was Climategate, which is now, finally, finding its way inside the heads of the kind of people who rule the world. The scientific excuses for greenery are collapsing, not just in the heads of skeptics, but in the heads of the kind of idiot politicians who originally accepted these excuses without bothering to scrutinise them. Now the consequences of greenery are becoming clearer. Blackouts. Nothing says "failed politicians" like power cuts.

For Britain, a big moment will arrive when it is finally, truly accepted, by enough British people to make this acceptance stick, that these blackouts are being imposed upon us by, and by means of, the European Union, and that our Prime Minister is not our Prime Minister, any more than the District Commissioner of your province in India was your District Commissioner. Today, the news is, yet again, that David Cameron is going native. I'll believe this when it starts having consequences, in the form of Britain doing things that the EU forbids, and when they threaten to chuck us out, and when Cameron says: go on then, I dare you. I wouldn't put this past him. He seems to be the kind of leader who follows his followers.

But, more generally, I am not angry about this tendency for the world more and more to be ruled as a single entity by the kind of people who now rule it. Telephones and atom bombs have seen to that. The former technology has long meant that they can talk to each other rationally, and the latter one has for more than half a century meant that they must. These people are now, more and more, all on the same side. I just wish they were ruling the world rather better than they actually actually are now ruling it.

In the matter of greenery, the world's rulers have perpetrated and continue to perpetrate a huge folly, and personally I am very grateful to the probably imbecilic Steve Holliday for having made this fact that little bit clearer.

(20)

What I've described is essentially a top-down process, yes, that has gone bottom-up, as I've described so far, across official levels at Departments very widely. Now we have to make sure that nothing has fallen between the cracks in the stakeholder engagement process, but I think this issue of top-level Government buy-in to it is very important. I see it as a feature of the way that the new Government goes about its business. The approach of Cabinet Committees, with Ministers taking them very seriously, officials being energised by the fact that Committees will come back, rather than the Committee process being in any sense a formality, is something that in a lot of processes, not just relevant to the NRP, is galvanising much better across Government co-ordination in a very productive way. I think this applies to the NRP, as to lots of other things.

- Lord Sassoon, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, makes everything clear. Helen Szamuely found it here.

(13)

... Kenneth Clarke invariably supports anything with "european" in front of it. If they re-named ebola virus "european virus", I expect he'd declare himself in favour of that, too.

- Owen Morgan commenting on James Kirkup's Daily Telegraph blog

(15)

"So 2011 is the year of the “beneficial crisis”, when the EU will try to exploit short-term economic hardship in order to eliminate the powers of national governments and to create a new pan-European political structure. If it succeeds, it may go on to become a great world power. If it fails, it will start to revert to a collection of nation states."

- Peter Oborne

He makes a persuasive argument that as far as the architects of the EU superstate were concerned, the sort of crises we are living through - such as the Irish/Greek debt problems - are not problems for the eurozone, they are actually very useful stepping stones towards creating their own new version of the Holy Roman Empire, except that unlike the HRE, the new state will be one run on corporatist, heavily regulated, lines.

(23)

Matthew Lynn, one of the better finance journalists out there, has a column up over at Bloomberg News about the fact that, as of October this year, there will need to be a new boss at the European Central Bank. The term of Jean-Claude Trichet, a Frenchman, is due to expire. Lynn runs through all the various choices currently deemed available, and says they are, for various reasons, bad. For instance, if an Italian gets the job, this will piss off the Germans, already seething at the cost of trying to protect Ireland and Greece. If the job goes to a German, that will annoy the "peripheral" countries worried - rightly - that membership of the currency bloc means, effectively, rule by the most powerful economy. And so on.

But then again, this sort of issue reminds me of why the eurozone was a doomed venture in the first place. Far from removing all this nationalism, the issue of who gets to run the single currency remains fraught with geo-political tension, for the very simple reason that no genuinely popular pan-European polity exists. As we have seen in various referenda, European voters have, time and again, voted No to things such as the European Constitution, only to see their legislators switch a few items and then ram such items through national parliaments. There is widespread public cynicism about much of the current European "project".

By contrast, while there is always a fair amount of speculation leading up to the choice of chairman of the Federal Reserve system in the US, I don't recall seeing debates about whether the job should go to a Texan, or Californian, or Floridan, etc. Debate normally is based around general fitness for the job. One thing that does come out of the Bernanke experience, it seems to me, is that it is wrong for a central banker to have a purely academic background, as Bernanke does, and not to have any hands-on experience in running an actual private sector bank.

Of course, one prime requirement of a central banker is to be able to perform the role of legalised counterfeiter without smirking too much on camera. The issue of whether we should have central banks at all, is another matter.

(16)

"What you need to know about Ireland's economic crisis is that it's not about Ireland: a small country of slightly more than 4 million people and an economy of roughly $200 billion. It's about Europe. For decades, Europe has pursued two great political projects. One is the democratic welfare state, designed to improve economic justice through various social safety nets. The other is European unity, symbolized by the creation in 1999 of a single currency -- the euro -- now used by 16 countries. The fact that both contributed to Ireland's troubles suggests that Europe could be on the brink of a broader crisis."

Robert Samuelson.
He's a steady-as-she-goes, moderate voice of, well, good moderate sense. And he's just said that the welfare state and the creation of the euro are going to tip Europe over a cliff. When Tory MPs said this a decade ago, they were called "swivel-eyed extremists", and in Mrs Thatcher''s case, deemed to be insane.

(12)

To anyone with a vaguely libertarian perspective observing the relentless creep of regulatory politics into ever more aspects of civil life, it has long been self evident that as a practical matter the statist right are largely interchangeable with the statist left. After all David "I see no liberty" Blunkett was simply standing on the shoulders of Michael "there is something of the night about him" Howard, no?

Hence the recent remark by the dependably dismal John Major that he likes being in coalition come as no surprise to me whatsoever. Indeed the only thing that ever so slightly raised one eyebrow on my part was his willingness to left the mask slip.

And with this in mind, I left a comment on Norman Tebbit's blog in response to this:

"I respect those who are working in UKIP, but I would hope that you would respect us Eurosceptics in the Tory Party too."

"Well I would respect you a lot more if you were not aiding and abetting the people who have turned the Conservative party into a party of Big Euro Statism... but the fact is they could not have done it without folks such as yourself helping to keep a critical mass of genuine conservatives voting for the party despite profound unease with the likes of Cameron, Major et al.

If you are hanging in there because you seek to take over the Tory party (re-take really) and drive out the twerps who now freely admit they are ideologically fungible with the left (something I have been pointing out for a decade, so Major's remarks are hardly a revelation to me)... ie you remain a Tory so you can do a UK version of the Tea Party... well great, that is certainly something I could get behind... but if you are just going to be enablers for people who frankly do not share your conservative views, then with all due respect Norman (and I do mean that) you are part of the problem rather than part of the solution, and that is a great pity."

(11)

Singleton's conclusion:

... it is not just fish where the EU is damaging us, but in financial services, manufacturing - indeed, its ever-increasing regulations impose unnecessary costs across the whole of our economy. Greenland, which retains free trade with the EU, shows that we can have the benefits of European exports, without the costs of its diktats. It’s surely time that we, too, said goodbye to Brussels.

Okay, cards on the table, Singleton is a sometime Samizdatista and a good friend of mine. But more pertinently, he is one of those free marketeers who is, unlike many of our breed, highly sensitive to mood, to atmospheres, to appearances, superficialities, surface trends, straws in the wind, stylistic nuances. He may not always be right about who is hot or who is cool (as opposed to merely who is right), but he is always thinking about such things. He is, after all, a paid journalist working for a major British broadsheet newspaper, who is trusted by that newspaper with editorial as well as writing responsibilities. When he writes stuff, he is typically wearing a suit. He is, in other words, the exact opposite of your typical old grump UKIPer. The significance of this piece of his about Greenland and the EU is not just in what it says, but in its timing. If Singleton reckons that now is a good time to be saying such things, that says something to me, as in something else besides what he is actually saying.

As still current Samizdatista Johnathan Pearce has often said here in recent months, especially in comments, something important just might be stirring in little old Blighty. It's as if "we", whoever exactly we are, have been sitting on our hands, waiting for Gordon Brown to depart, and then waiting to see how David Cameron would turn out (given that his mere words communicate so very little). Now we are beginning to learn, and now we are beginning to find our voices and to exert some actual pressure.

(26)

Who the hell do you think you people are?

- Nigel Farage MEP uses the TV cameras in the European Parliament in Strasbourg to berate the Euro-elite and to create another few minutes of video that is now starting to make some waves, particularly in the USA. Which means that it is that much more likely to get noticed over here also. That "people" should probably have come after the first "you" rather than the second, but it will do. As a major British Newspaper has now noticed, the Euro-project is starting to look not just seriously corrupt and seriously nasty but also seriously vulnerable.

(5)

I read this article by Peter Oborne and felt more or less in sympathy with it until I came to this clanger:

"But this shift, while of long-term significance, has been dwarfed by the most astonishing development of all: the apparent ending of the 20-year Tory civil war on Europe. Last weekend, David Cameron opened the way for a sharp increase in our budget contributions to Brussels, while giving the green light for a new treaty to save the eurozone. On Monday, he announced a new era of defence co-operation with France. The Prime Minister has developed an easy, relaxed and mature relationship with both President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel. Until very recently indeed, there would have been uproar had a Tory leader countenanced any of this. Last week, there was scarcely any reaction on Conservative benches. The spectre of Europe, which has engulfed the Tories since the assassination of Margaret Thatcher exactly 20 years ago, may have been laid to rest."

That paragraph is written in a tone of approval. Now, unless I have missed something, wasn't Mr Oborne the man who wrote a book a few years ago condemning the rise of a political class that tended to associate its own material interests with those of the country? I remember at the time pointing out that Oborne failed to give due weight to the significance of the European Union in all this. Well, now it appears he has become a sort of cheerleader for Britain giving ever greater sums of money to countries determined to pursue wrongheaded economic policies.

Well, it was nice knowing you, Peter.

I see that EU Referendum thinks as I do.

(5)

Is this how the EU got a Yes to Lisbon from the Irish? asks Mary Ellen Synon in the Irish Daily Mail, reprinted in the British one.

Ireland and the other eurozone countries might be suffering savage spending cuts, but the EU self-publicity budget thrives: in 2008 the Open Europe think-tank calculated that the EU was spending at least €2 billion a year on 'information'.

Much of it bent, which is to say, propaganda. The commission actually admits that its information is bent. One of its publications declares: 'Genuine communication by the European Union cannot be reduced to the mere provision of information'.

Hotel Manos Stephanie (‘the Louis XV furniture, marble lobby and plentiful antiques set a standard of elegance rarely encountered,’ the hotel brags, and so it should since the rate is listed at €295 a night for a single room).

(2)

"Ireland’s membership of the euro was thus the single most important reason for yesterday eye-wateringly large bailout of the Irish banks, which will take the budget deficit to 32 per cent of GDP and its gross government debt to 96 per cent of GDP. The tragedy is that nobody is pointing this out: the political establishment is too closely implicated and may yet need to draw on a European bailout fund. Imagine what would have happened had Britain also embraced the single currency: our interest rates – which were substantially higher than the Eurozone’s, albeit still too low – would have stoked our own bubble to an even greater extent than anything managed by the Bank of England. The UK property bubble would have been even larger and its implosion even more devastating. We don’t realise it – but Britain’s bust of 2008-09 could easily have been much, much nastier."

- Allister Heath.

It might be worth re-reading this to recall the ferocity of those pro-euro folk and their treatment of anyone who sought to stand in their way, including, it seems, ordinary voters.

(22)

"Traditionally, a bank is a means by which old people with capital lend to young people with ideas. But the advanced democracies with their mountains of sovereign debt are in effect old people who've blown through their capital and are all out of ideas looking for young people flush enough to bail them out. And the idea that it might be time for the spendthrift geezers to change their ways butts up against their indestructible moral vanity. Last year, President Sarkozy said that the G20 summit provided "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give capitalism a conscience." European capitalism may have a conscience. It's not clear it has a pulse. And, actually, when you're burning Greek bank clerks to death in defence of your benefits, your "conscience" isn't much in evidence, either."

- Mark Steyn, writing about Greece and the ongoing train-crash of the European welfare state model.

(23)

Vicki woods writes in the Telegraph that Greek justice makes a mockery of the law.

Now the trouble with cases like this is that just as one is firing up to get outraged... along comes the thought, yeah but he might be guilty.

So he might. Or he might not. But the Greek justice system does not seem to be in any hurry to find out in the case of Andrew Symeou. He has spent a year behind bars without trial. Oddly enough the Greek authorities did manage to energise themselves sufficiently to issue a European Arrest Warrant. That got snappy action all right! A stirring display of how the nations of Europe can act together to leapfrog pettifogging national legal procedures! After this strong start, however, the Greeks did not quite manage to maintain the spirit of pan-European efficiency when they twice denied Mr Symeou bail on the grounds that he was not a Greek national.

(6)

To all intents and purposes, the banking industry inside the EU has ceased to have any serious claim to be a part of the free market. The EU has voted to cap bonuses for bankers, introducing remuneration controls that look pretty draconian.

Of course, defenders of such controls might say that we are where we are: the modern banking industry, with all its privileges, "too big to fail" ability to claim taxpayer support, controls on capital ratios, and the rest, means that banking has not been a proper model of free market behaviour for decades. That is true. But capping bonuses is about the least relevant reform that policymakers could make, though no doubt this panders to the sort of anti-banker sentiment that also recently encouraged Germany's government to impose, without warning, controls on the investment techniques of hedge funds. The radical overhaul of our banking system advocated here, for example, is not really considered.

We are in the best of hands, as Glenn Reynolds likes to say.

(18)

I commend this fascinating article to those who have not yet come across it - A Hidden History of Evil:
Why Doesn’t Anyone Care About the Unread Soviet Archives?

The archives contain "unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War", yet their guardian "can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation." Amongst numerous other tidbits, there is some very interesting stuff about Soviet dealings with François Mitterrand, Neil Kinnock, and several past and present "European Project"/EU bigwigs.

(From the excellent Michael Totten, who's doing a fine job of holding the fort over at Instapundit)

(18)

History and ordinary prudence dictated that the union might be broad and shallow (a free-trade area, with embellishments, capable of taking in all-comers) or else narrow and deep (an evolving political union, confined to countries willing to be led there). Of the two, I always believed that the first was better. But the architects did not even have the brains to choose the second. They recognized no limits to their ambitions. They set about creating a union that was both broad and deep. A federal constitution, a parliament, a powerful central executive, one central bank, one currency - all with no binding sense of European identity. As for scale, well, the bigger the better. Today Greece, tomorrow Turkey. And why stop there? Madness.

- Clive Crook ponders the excessive ambitions behind the EUropean project.

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Can it be? Do my eyes deceive me? An MP... a Tory MP... who seems to have a grasp of economics!

How long before this guy gets a visit from the party whip advising him that insightful talk about real world economics might be harmful to his career, capice?

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A short item, which takes the breath way, on how the problems of countries like Greece has encouraged the German government to insist that unless these countries are as economically "fit" as Germany is or claims to be, they cannot participate in EU decisions.

Well, I guess such a comment makes it explicit that as far as Germany is concerned, the strong states rule, and the weaker ones should shut up and do as they are told. Sometimes, it really amazes me why anyone ever doubts that this is the consequence of the single currency project. The Greeks, and other such countries, have just had a lot of illusions broken up into atoms.

Update: well, I guess I should thank Glenn Reynolds for the "instalanche" of comments, some of which, I assume, are from the US. Let me consider a few of the points made. First of all, I am not - which seems to be the view of some - defending the Greek state, and by implication, some of their voters. To the Germans, or indeed other euro zone countries, it must indeed be an outrage that a country expects to be able to continue enjoying the luxuries of early retirement, generous welfare and short-work week. If the Germans are irritated about this, they are entitled to be. But you see, this is what happens in a currency union where one bit of it is subsidising another bit. In the US, where the poorer parts get subsidies from the richer or at least not bankrupt bits, the poorer bits are not then told, by their neighbours, to shut up. I am not aware, for example, of a rich state of the US demanding that poorer parts be banned from sending Congressmen or Senators to DC (if you have examples, please let me know). The Germans knew, when they choose to sacrifice a perfectly solid currency - the Deutschemark - in exchange for the euro, that there were risks. Some German politicians may have naively assumed that the less prosperous bits would raise their game, but given the cussedness of human nature, that was not a sure-fire bet. As Michael Jennings points out in the comment thread, Germany itself had the experience of reunification and the problems of integrating the post-communist East into the capitalist West. But at least it had a common sort of political identity. But it is a much more difficult thing for a German politician to demand that a member of a currency union should not be allowed to participate in discussions relating to that currency.

I don't feel a lot of sympathy for the Greek government, but I don't feel much sympathy for the Germans, either. They wanted this currency union, and arguably, imposed an unsustainable interest rate straitjacket onto the continent. Much of their political and media elite has invested a huge amount of emotional and political capital into this. They made their bed, now they must lie on it.

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I get the feeling that the next general election in Britain could be the first one to be seriously altered in its overall result by the internet. I definitely hope so. My ideal result would be for Gordon Brown and David Cameron and that LibDem guy all to emerge from the election feeling equally humiliated, and all sounding like they are on the same side, that of Big Politics, while all the conviction parties, the silly parties, including silly conviction parties whose silly convictions are the absolute opposite of my own convictions, do far better than they were supposed to and compared to the amount of and nature of the mainstream media coverage that they got.

In particular, I hope that UKIP does really well. I've heard the complaints about this party, most of which boil down to the claim that they are all just too weird. But scratch any active participant in any political party and pretty soon the weirdness spills out.

My feeling-stroke-wishful-thinking along these lines is based on seeing things like this:

I came across that here, a few days ago. It's basically a greatest hits compilation of UKIP snippets taken from the European Parliament, mostly about Climategate, with a few bits from some internet TV show in the USA spliced in. I particularly like the Liverpudlian guy.

That EU Parliament is an odd place. People make these little speeches in it, which almost none of the people present pay any great attention to, but which, on YouTube, can sometimes escape into the wild, to the point where mainstream media non-coverage becomes impossible to sustain.

More fundamentally, even if such non-coverage persists, as I expect it to persist at least until the forthcoming general election, so what? More and more people can now receive such messages as these anyway.

Enough to embarrass Brown, Cameron and Whatsisname? Maybe. As I say, I do hope so.

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I see that Peter Mandelson, now Lord Mandelson of Post-Industrial Northern Wasteland - or whatever, is frustrated, apparently, that he did not get the job of the European Union's foreign representative. Indeed. His friend, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, also failed to secure the plum of the EU Presidency. I can see the charms: no grubby electioneering, lots of nice trips and conferences and armies of lackeys serving your needs, driving you around in limos, etc.

To quote Mick Jagger, you can't always get what you want. I am sure Mr Mandelson will recover his sang froid eventually. These things are sent to test us.

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The extremely worthy TPA has a nifty new promo for their new book that dares to think the unthinkable...

The book, Ten Years On, is available to order free here.

(6)

The Wall Street Journal reports that the new President of the EU state - for that is what it now is - will not be our own former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, but a Belgian politician of glorious anonymity. And quite right too. While some of us might have hoped that the election of Mr Blair might have provided much entertainment as he swanked around the chancelleries of Europe and the world with his wife, and therby discredited the whole purpose of his office, it was not to be. Far too many European politicians, while they are enthusiastic members of the EU oligarchy and supporters of transnational progressivism like Mr Blair, did not approve of his full-hearted support for the recent removal from power of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and of Mr Blair's support for the evil Boooosh. So that was that.

Oh well, I am sure Mr Blair will find a way to pay for all his expensive houses.

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Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers' Alliance, writes, at Devil's Kitchen, thus:

Part of the problem for eurosceptics has been that we have too often only engaged in one half of the argument. To be fair, we've all made a pretty good case that the EU is a costly, harmful, antidemocratic monstrosity - so much so that the public are in great majority convinced of that.

It is the second half of the argument which has been somewhat lacking - what is the positive alternative? Convincing people there is a problem with the current situation is not enough; we need to lay out what life would be like without the EU, how things could be better and, crucially, how it is perfectly feasible to get there.

To that end, the TaxPayers' Alliance is publishing a new book, Ten Years On: Britain without the European Union which lays out a vision of what Britain could be like in 2020, governing ourselves and with the freedom to cooperate and trade with whomsoever we like.

Even better, it is available free to pre-order through this link!

I think this is spot on, not necessarily in the sense that Britain would be better off out of the EU, but in the sense that this is the bit of the argument that has been neglected. After all, the same lying politicians, stubborn bureaucrats, town hall little Hitlers and idiot voters that got us into this mess would still be around to screw up the alternative. So how would being out of the EU necessarily make their position weaker? Might the alternative actually be worse? I believe - partly because I want to believe (see paragraph one of the quote above) - that it would an improvement, but I would like to hear this argument made.

Also, would we, Norway style, still have to endure EUrocrats making our rules for us, for the privilege of trading with the EU? Seems unlikely, but again, I'd like to hear the argument.

So, as Instapundit would say, it's in the post. The ordering seemed to work very smoothly. Nothing like free of charge to simplify things.

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Blogger and debunker of various economic fallacies, Tim Worstall, points out something that tends to be forgotten in some of the angrier, gloomier commentary about the European Union and the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty. We - the UK that is - can leave if we wish to do so, and it will be a lot less complex than such a process can be made to appear. That surely is the 800 llb gorilla in the drawing room - we can get out pretty fast if the whole edifice becomes intolerable. And there is nothing that any EU bureaucrat or their political allies can do about it. How likely are they to ever use a military option? Hmmm.

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"David Cameron ditches referendum and backs away from EU bust-up" chuckles the Guardian... followed by "Eurosceptics welcome 'never again' rhetoric".

So in effect Cameron is saying "yes I know I said we get a vote before... "iron clad" was the words I used... but if those mean old Euros want to grab even more power than all that stuff you are not going to get a vote on after all, we will have a referendum next time. Really, you can trust me".

Of course the Eurosceptics are happy, because after all, if David Cameron promises something, you can be sure he will keep his "iron-clad" word, right? Amazing.

Never forget that the party of Winston Churchill was also the party of Neville Chamberlain.

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It may seem late in the day, but those fine people at the Taxpayers' Alliance are putting around a petition urging support for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, aka the European Constitution. The Czech Republic is, at present, the last country to stand in the way of what will be a dangerous acceleration in the move of the EU towards the status of being a complete state in its own right.

Here is the link for those who are interested.

As an aside, I see that the TPA has spawned a leftist website using almost exactly the same URL. The TPA, is, according to this outfit, an evil, right-wing (booo!) organisation that er, wants to do terrible things like curb the spending of the state. This lot appear to be almost as capable of tax-doublespeak as the absurdly misnamed Tax Justice Network .

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Tory politician and London Mayor Boris Johnson bets that Tony Blair will not get the post of European Union president, a role that will carry enhanced powers if or when the Lisbon Treaty (or Constitution) gets rammed through. He argues that countries such as France will not tolerate having this former big mate of George Boooosh take the role, representing not just France but 500 million souls across an entire continent.

Boris has a point: Blair is still heartily detested in France for arguably the one act that makes me think quite well of Blair - his determination to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, even if one would choose different justifications from him in that course (an argument that continues to divide libertarians, by the way). Nevertheless, Boris's underlying logic is strong: it is monstrous that a man who played a part in ensuring that Labour failed to honour its 2005 election manifesto pledge over a EU referendum on the EU constitution should be in the frame for the job that this Lisbon Treaty stitch-up has made possible. And as the Treaty is more or less the same as the Constitution, the position taken by Blair and by Gordon Brown represents their contempt for the democratic process.

But remember, however much one might loathe Mr Blair and the transnational progressivist, corrupt politics that he represents, it is the very idea that the EU needs some grand president at all, not simply the personality of this rather creepy individual, that should be kept front and centre. Even if the holder of the office is some drone from central Europe given to vacuous pronouncements on "good governance" or whatever, no such post should exist. It is hard, I know, to play the ball and not the man.

Of course, there is another theory: if Blair is elected to the job, his strutting, fake-charm might actually help discredit the idea of a EU presidency per se. Perhaps, though, that it is being too clever on my part.

(9)

Irish votes... the finest European money can buy.

It is entertaining to see how brave and resolute Dave is already setting up his wiggle room for refusing to give Britain the referendum it overwhelmingly demands.

(27)

"She's a communist. A real one."

Some thirty years ago I, then a bookish sixth former, attended a week long "Introduction to Philosophy" course at London University. One of the tutors was a commie. She was quite pleasant, introduced us to philosophy more than adequately, but truly, really was an actual no-kidding self-declared communist. First I had ever met.

I and some of the other kids from various different schools on this course found this even more interesting than Logical Positivism and we all tried to get into debate with her about it. Got nowhere, of course. A woman who had been defending the party line in all its various manifestations for decades was more than capable of disposing of the arguments of a bunch of seventeen year olds.

All of us but one - there was one boy who did, just about, make an impression. The tutor had some particular link with East Germany and this boy simply repeated, politely but insistently, several very basic statements about that state. "Nobody is allowed to leave." "They have a wall and and barbed wire to stop people escaping." "If you try to escape they shoot you." And when he said this he sounded honestly astonished that anyone could be - could allow themselves to have become - the sort of person who would sincerely defend East German communism. It was not just wrong but weird. I mean, what? The wall, the shooting people, and she says she likes that?

I am moved to write about a communist I met thirty years ago because the second referendum in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty will be held tomorrow. The European Union is not remotely as bad as Communism. But there are some very basic things wrong with it and this referendum has brought them out. The European Union will not accept a vote against it. It will not allow a vote at all, if it can get away with it. If people do vote against something the EU wants it makes them vote again and again, knowing that the donors and volunteers for the opposing side will be exhausted eventually, as will the voters, whereas its side has bottomless coffers and power to keep on pushing till it gets its way. The European Union lies to get what it wants. The Lisbon treaty is the rejected Constitution under another name. The Lisbon Treaty is deliberately written in confusing language so as to hide what it means. That is what con-men do. The Lisbon Treaty is a con.

I think that anyone who has allowed themselves to become the sort of person who would sincerely defend these lies and abuses of democracy should be regarded as a weirdo. Amazing, and not in a good way. Yeah, sure, people might be bribed or bullied or bored into doing what the EU wants - all these I can understand, if not admire. But the "neverendums", the Constitution written like the small print of a dodgy timeshare agreement - you say you like that? I mean, what?

Of course my view as to how such people should be regarded counts about as much as a "no" vote three referenda ago. What is more to the point is that I am almost sure that in Britain at least, my "should" has become, or is in the process of becoming, an "is". At some point during the Lisbon treaty saga normal people in Britain became embarrassed to actively like the EU. This does not mean that they cannot be bullied or bribed or bored into going along with it, as the Irish will be tomorrow, if the polls are to be believed. But when did you last meet a person who passionately and proudly supported the EU? And what were they, some sort of weirdo?

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I guess this is a good reason as any not to fly on Ryanair.

(10)

Imagine a future where you could find yourself arrested for crimes for which you were acquitted nearly twenty years ago... where you can be found guilty and sentenced in your absence and without your knowledge... a future where when you go on holiday abroad you find yourself being arrested for you know not what - and those arresting you do not know either; they just know you are wanted in another foreign country.

This is not the future.

I have added emphasis to this BBC story about Deborah Dark in order to highlight aspects that particularly shocked me but otherwise left it unchanged.

A British grandmother is being pursued by France for a crime she was convicted of in her absence 20 years ago. Deborah Dark, 45, from London, was acquitted of a drugs offence in 1989 - but found guilty and sentenced to six years on appeal without being told.

France issued a European Arrest Warrant in 2005 but recent extradition attempts have failed in both the UK and Spain.

UK charity Fair Trials International said the warrant system was creating a "blatant injustice" against her.

Ms Dark, from Richmond in south-west London, was arrested in France in 1989 in a car containing several kilos of cannabis.

A French court believed her defence that she been set up by an abusive boyfriend and was acquitted.

But she was unaware the prosecution appealed without telling her after she returned to the UK and she was found guilty and sentenced in 1990.

A European Arrest Warrant was issued by the French authorities for Ms Dark to be returned to France to serve her jail term.

Ms Dark told the BBC of the effect that still being officially wanted in France had had on her.

She said: "It's destroyed me, and to see my daughter to go through all that pain again. I just will never forget it.

"I can't leave the country. If I leave the country I will be arrested because I'm still on the European Arrest Warrant."

In 2007 she was arrested on a package holiday at a Turkish airport but the authorities were unable to give her a reason.

On her return to the UK the British police could not find any warrants against her.

When Ms Dark travelled to visit her retired father in Spain in 2008 she was arrested and spent one month in custody.

But a Spanish court refused to extradite her on the grounds of unreasonable delay and the significant passage of time.

When she returned to the UK she was arrested by British police at Gatwick airport and released on bail pending an extradition hearing. Magistrates refused extradition in April this year.

Fair Trials International said Ms Dark was effectively being "imprisoned in the UK".

Chief executive Jago Russell said: "Deborah's case is a shocking example of the way a system intended to deliver justice has created a blatant injustice.

"The European Arrest Warrant should have been designed with a time-limit built in but it wasn't.

"The result - a person's life can be turned upside down for an event alleged to have happened 20 years ago."

(3)

In a comment thread on this posting, the question came up, from the commenter "Laird", as to why Samizdata has not written about the local UK/European Union elections. Part of the answer, for my part, is that a little bit of me dies whenever words such as "EU elections" come up, but also there has been a lot of commentary and head-scratching analysis, in the press and other blogs, on this issue for the past week or so. What could I say that has not been already said?

Anyway, for our non-UK readers who have not been following it, the ruling UK Labour Party did very badly in both the local UK elections and the European one. In the latter case, Labour came in third place (15 per cent of votes cast), behind the Tories and United Kingdom Independence Party respectively. UKIP is a party that wants the UK to leave the EU. I voted for it - partly because I did not want the Tories to get a larger share of the vote and hence get complacent, partly because I broadly agree with UKIP on things like cutting state spending and the EU. UKIP is not a hardline libertarian party but it is the best of a bad lot, generally. And I happen to know one of its MEP candidates, Tim Worstall - who is a member of the London bloggerati - and I always say it is a good idea to vote for someone you know, trust and like (I also know Syed Kamall, a Tory MEP, but just could not bring myself to vote Tory. Sorry Syed).

As for the aftermath, well, UK PM Gordon Brown has managed, by a mixture of party membership cowardice, shellshock, bullying and flimflam to persuade his colleagues in Parliament to give him another chance in the job. Labour has suffered the lowest share of the vote since the First World War, albeit on a very low turnout of voters. The national socialist British National Party, a party which, let it not be forgotten, holds to fairly hard-left views on economics, has picked up two seats in the European Parliament, and did so by playing fairly hard on the grievances of traditional Labour voters in run-down parts of the UK. There has often been a streak of "sod the foreigner" in the makeup of the UK left, although it has been tempered by a sort of transnational progressivism, at least from the Fabian middle classes who have provided Labour with some of its intellectuals (if that is not too grand a word to describe such people).

So there you have it - Britain is on course, if poll data are accurate, to have a Conservative government by the middle of next year, when a general election must be held. Europe has moved, politically, to the right, with concerns about immigration and economics driving some of that. But the UK Conservatives, while they have benefited from a mortally weakened government, have not convinced me that they have a serious intent to shrink the state. It may be that when or if David Cameron gets the keys to 10 Downing Street and has a chance to read the financial books, that the full horror of what he sees will necessitate spending cuts. We shall see.

And in the meantime, the US has, at least for a moment, moved to the left under Mr Obama, although for how much longer, it is premature to say (bring on the mid-term elections!). Ideologically, the Atlantic may be widening. We live, as they say, in interesting times.

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"The readiness of politicians to relinquish power amazes me.....Take the European constitution, now rebranded as the Lisbon treaty. I read all the drafts of that document, spoke to lawyers and became convinced that its calculated opacity was a charter for the creeping takeover of national policy by bureaucrats and judges. There were brilliant MPs who could debate every inch of the detail - David Miliband, Gisela Stuart, David Heathcoat-Amory, Chris Huhne. But I met others who hadn't even read the document and looked incredulous that I had. When the annual EU membership fee is £6.5 billion, when EU directives have driven almost half of the regulations passed here since 1998, and when implementing those regulations has cost £106 billion (according to a recent study by Open Europe), it is not surprising that people ask what MPs are doing."

Camilla Cavendish.

As she points out in an excellent Times column, the contempt many of us feel for MPs is not just driven by their corruption. It is far more serious than that. It is that a group of people, either through apathy, venality, EU fanaticism or blind cowardice, have decided that they need to transfer powers away from the traditional cockpit of British politics. MPs are admitting they have little point other than to vote on minor, parish-pump matters. In which case, there is little case for paying them more than a local town councillor, or paying them anything at all.

The Times has a pretty good editorial on reforms that are needed. I have my quibbles, but it is generally on the right track. My main point of disagreement, however, is that none of the changes will significantly alter the balance between the state and the individual until the former is drastically reduced in size.

(25)

Norman - now Lord - Tebbit, famously the scourge of trade union militants and who also survived a murder attempt by the IRA in the mid-1980s (an ex-RAF fighter pilot by the way), is urging voters not to vote for the main political parties in the European elections. Instead, the implication is that folk should vote for UKIP. Well, that is Guido's take on the matter.

Suddenly, the Tory Party does not look in quite such bouncy shape this morning. I guess when you have MPs trousering taxpayers' money on a fairly impressive scale, it dents the brand somewhat. Like I said yesterday, though, the central problem of UK political life is not fiddling expenses. No, the problem is a continuing failure to push for a major rollback of the state, including removal of this nation from the clutches of an European federal state. Compared with how much money is wasted on quangos, or ID cards, or the rest of it, an MP's claim for swimming pool maintenance is small beer.

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Meanwhile, in the Strasbourg Village, it is being called a "huge scandal", but Der Spiegel describes this huge scandal somewhat strangely:

The economic crisis has hit countless retirement funds, including that of members of the European parliament. They may take the controversial step this week to use taxpayers' money to top up the pension fund.

I am sure that Der Spiegel did not mean to suggest that this will be the first splurge of taxpayers' money ever to arrive in this pension fund. But, they rather do, don't they? My guess is that the original pension fund is a pretty big scandal to start with.

And indeed it is:

The scheme was already in disrepute because MEPs' contributions are taken automatically from their office expense allowance of €4,202 (£3,700) a month rather than their salary. MEPs are supposed to reimburse this account but there are no checks and it is accepted widely that many do not repay the money, potentially making the pension an entirely taxpayer-funded perk.

That was from the Times, last Friday. The same piece goes on:

Senior MEPs are proposing several changes to the second pension to reduce the deficit, such as increasing the retirement age from 60 to 63 and stopping early retirement at 50. But these are likely to be blocked after the fund chairman, the Conservative former MEP Richard Balfe - who now acts as David Cameron’s envoy to the trade unions - warned that such moves were "not permissible under European law", in effect leaving the taxpayer with the entire bill.

So, who is this Richard Balfe? There's been no mention of him here until now. It seems that in 2002 he stopped being a Labour MEP, in disgust, after having a fight with some other Labour people, and became a Conservative MEP instead.

Further googling got me to this Balfe-ism:

"You have got a situation now where the Conservative and Labour parties have overlapped so significantly that the ideological collapse of both parties must be mirrored in a new relationship with the unions, just as it is mirrored in a new relationship with business."

Well, that is one way of looking at things. Balfe didn't change. There is just so much ideological overlap between the big parties these days that Balfe could switch parties without himself moving his position. Another way of looking at it is to say that Balfe was a member of the politicians party, and that his allegiances are unchanged.

(8)

...wonderful.

(25)

Does anybody know where the words of this can be copied and pasted? I would hate to have to type it all out - or maybe that should be 'in' - myself, but somebody definitely should, and if I or any commenter does find it, I will maybe add it to the bottom of this posting. As Peter Hoskin of the Spectator's Coffee House blog says, Dan Hannan "absolutely skewers" the PM. (Can you kick someone with a skewer? Never mind.) Guido also piles in.

As my fellow scribes here say from time to time: I love the internet. In fact I love it even more than I hate Gordon Brown, and that's saying something.

ADDENDUM Monday morning: Here it is. Thank you commenter Simon Collis, and blogger Stuart Sharpe.

Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of this Parliament – that being to say one thing in this chamber, and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that; who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British Jobs for British Workers’, and that you have subsidised - where you have not nationalised outright - swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks.

Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words. Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country.

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.

Now once again today you tried to spread the blame around, you spoke about an international recession; an international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squall – but not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear up their rigging – in other words, to pay off debt – but you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line, under the accumulated weight of your debt. We are now running a deficit that touches almost 10% of GDP – an unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary – countries where the IMF has already been called in.

Now, it’s not that you’re not apologising - like everyone else, I’ve long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things these things - it’s that you’re carrying on, wilfully worsening the situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. Last year, in the last twelve months, 125,000 private sector jobs have been lost – and yet you’ve created 30,000 public sector jobs. Prime Minister you cannot go on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorging of the unproductive bit.

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re well place to weather the storm, I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev-era Apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense. Everyone knows that Britain is the worst placed to go into these hard times. The IMF has said so. The European Commission has said so. The markets have said so, which is why our currency has devalued by 30% – and soon the voters, too, will get their chance to say so.

They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are a devalued Prime Minister, of a devalued Government.

It will be interesting to see what Britain's mainstream media make of this. My guess is that the blogosphere will be all over this speech not just today but for a longish time, with constant links back, and that many newspapers will also refer to it during the next day or two. But how will the BBC respond? They are in a lose-lose situation, I think. Mention it, eventually, they lose. Ignore it, they look like Soviet-era buffoons, just as Hannan said Brown is. A bit like the US MSM and those tea parties.

Presumably, by the time the BBC do mention it, the story will be that the Conservatives are divided. Divided, that is to say, in that some of them think the Prime Minister is mad and evil and believe in saying so, while others merely think it.

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The wonderful world of web provides us with a way to check what happens to the CAP aptly described by a European leader:

... a programme which uses inefficient transfers of taxpayers money to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa, which we then fail to solve through inefficient but expensive aid programmes. The most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism.

via Charles Crawford

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IKEA customers across the world are led to believe, naively, that the world is composed of simple elements that we can understand, interlink, and repair if necessary. Populist politicians throughout the world exploit similar social engineering... I respond critically to this European hypocrisy with an IKEA flat pack in the shape of the Swedish kingdom, which conceals an inconvenient truth.

- 'Sonja Aaberg', the Swedish sculptress, quoted by Mark Steyn in Euro-artists Speak

(9)

First financial, then economic, finally political. The smaller countries will be followed by the larger. In one of his op-eds, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes an overview of Europe in which he opines that the outer rim: the post-communist states and Club Med are entering a 30s style depression due to the unwillingness of the European Commission or Central Bank to alleviate their woes.

Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic States are now facing a 'spring of discontent' as austerity measures result in rioting and instability. Evans-Pritchard has noted that the European institutions are compunding the problem:

Leaked documents reveal – despite a blizzard of lies by EU and Latvian officials – that the International Monetary Fund called for devaluation as part of a €7.5bn joint rescue for Latvia. Such adjustments are crucial in IMF deals. They allow countries to claw their way back to health without suffering perma-slump.

This was blocked by Brussels – purportedly because mortgage debt in euros and Swiss francs precluded that option. IMF documents dispute this. A society is being sacrificed on the altar of the EMU project.

The political consequences of the credit crunch are coming to the fore in the fragile periphery of the European Union: how long before we begin to see the political expression of this discontent respond to the monopoly of the European class, a challenge that will arise outside the mainstream from the extremes.

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One of the reasons why people get so cross about the cost of petrol is the knowledge that a high proportion of the price paid at the pumps is accounted for by tax, rather than the cost of extracting, refining and distributing the stuff. The same goes for a pack of cigarettes, pint of beer or a bottle of wine, to name a few. With a lot of grocery produce, such as your humble carrot, most people may not appreciate - yet - how much of the cost of getting those vital vitamins is accounted for by government-created production costs. Well, there have been a flurry of stories on the wires about a recent EU Parliamentary vote to ban dozens of pesticides that are deemed harmful. As a result, farming groups claim, output of crops will fall and presumably, if other things remain equal, prices will go up at a time when household budgets are under strain. It does not seem to have occured to policymakers that a simple option would be to put what chemicals are used to treat crops on a packet so that consumers can figure this out for themselves and take an informed decision.

The trouble with stories like this is that the votes to ban X or Y at the EU level rarely gain a lot of coverage for more than a day or so, and then the issue tends to fizzle out, of interest only to obsessives and geeks like yours truly. A busy populace, worried more about their jobs, mortgage or children, will hardly dwell on the issue. But when Mr and Mrs Briton wonder why on earth it costs so much to buy basic groceries, the temptation will be to imagine that it is the fault of big, evil supermarket chains, for example. Rarely will the cause of the cost be seen as stemming from bureaucrats and European MPs.

Of course, it may well be that the chemicals being banned are as harmful as is claimed, although given the way these things work, I doubt it. We are told that for a healthy diet, your average person requires several servings of fruit and veg a day; such things are considered good for warding off cancer. Even if there is a health risk from chemicals, the health risk of not eating enough vegetables because of high costs is even higher. These things involve a trade-off between one set of risks and another, rather than some imperfect and perfect state. If such chemicals are banned, resorting to grow-your-own is hardly a viable alternative, since modern farming can, through economies of scale, achieve better yields and lower costs-per-output than someone tending their vegetable patch. And importing fruit and veg from countries such as Spain via air transport, for example, is also becoming less attractive an option due to increased fuel prices and governments' taxes on air travel.

Once again, the Forgotten Man gets the shaft. This chemicals ban, like measures such as "employment rights", paternity leave or 35-hour weeks, impose costs on the populace without a government having to take the potentially visible and unpopular step of raising taxes. Joining the economic dots is hard. I just hope that some in the MSM try and do so occasionally so that the message gets through. We bloggers cannot do it all on our own.

Update: in the comments, one person argues that I have contradicted myself by pointing to public apathy or lack of time to scrutinise EU actions, on the one hand, and my stress on the ability of consumers to read packaging labels, on the other. There is no contradiction, though. People shop daily, weekly, monthly, etc. They constantly come up against labels, look at packaging, see advertisements, surf the Net looking at products, and so on. One of the great things about markets is that it is a constant provider of information. Not always accurate, of course. By contrast, once an EU directive has been imposed, that is usually the last that any ordinary member of the public will hear about it. As soon as a law is passed, the media and political wagon rolls on.

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A half-remembered phrase from a short story by C S Forester is lodged in my mind. The story is set in World War II. Some sort of British warship has to approach very near an enemy-occupied coast, do something or other heroic, and then get away before the German artillery can do its work. The ship, under the guidance of its iron-nerved captain, does so, and then - futzed if I can remember the details - stops or delays to do something else, to serve some side order of military misery to go with the main dish, the captain having calculated that it will take a certain amount of time for the defenders to wake up, realise this is for real, get orders and crank up the guns or whatever. Everyone else on the bridge makes their estimate of how long all this will take erring on the side that one does generally err on when the penalty for error on the other side is to be shot at by artillery, but the captain makes his estimate the way he would from his armchair at home. His bold guess is right, and the ship gets away. And then comes the phrase that shows clear among the fog of my other memories of this story: those watching on the bridge were awed by his sheer will to do the enemy harm.

I dare say in WWII there were many people, ordinary people, who really did spend a substantial fraction of their time thinking up ways to hurt the Axis. No doubt most of them ended up bombarding the War Office with absurd plans and inventions that came to nothing, but some of them found ways that worked. It must be rather interesting to live in a time and a place where it is good to let the will to harm the enemy run free.

We in Greater Europe do live in such a time and place. Don't get excited. I am not advocating violence. In fact I get a little disturbed when Tim Worstall, the blogger whom I am about to quote, makes his customary appeal for a hempen rope and a strong beam. But when I read on his blog about this latest measure from the EU, all I could think was harm them. Bring them down. Please, I would be grateful.

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How can we bring down the European Union?

(4)

As of today, the Czech President Václav Klaus takes control of the largely symbolic but quite high profile office of President of the EU. Given his stridently pro-free market and highly Euro-sceptic utterances in the past, the sense of dread in Brussels is palpable. He is a brusquely outspoken man and I cannot wait to see how he uses the bully pulpit that the EU Presidency provides.

(10)

In an electronics market in China last month, I found these intriguing items for sale.

Okay, "MP3" I understand. The MPEG-1 standard for digital media storage and transmission contained three audio formats. These were MPEG-1 audio layers 1, 2 and 3. Of these, layer 3 provided the highest audio quality, became the standard for compressed digital audio, and "MPEG-1 layer 3" became abbreviated to "MP3".

"MP4" is slightly more problematic. The successor standard to MPEG-1 was MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is very important, but mainly because it contains much more advanced video formats than MPEG-1. DVDs and most digital television applications use MPEG-2 video. In terms of audio, MPEG-2 contains the three existing formats from MPEG-1 (including MP3) and a more advanced format called Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). Perhaps confusingly, AAC is very seldom used with MPEG-2 video, which is much more frequently paired with the MPEG-1 audio formats, or with Dolby AC-3 (which is not part of any of the MPEG standards).

However, AAC is also part of the MPEG-4 family of standards. (There is no MPEG-3). Due partly to AAC being the favourite audio standard of Apple, AAC is commonly paired with the video standards of MPEG-4, the two most common of which are the Advanced Simple Profile (MPEG-4 part 2) and the now favoured Advanced Video Coding (MPEG-4 part 10, known also as ITU-T H.264). This partnering between AAC and the MPEG-4 family of standards can mean that AAC audio is sometimes referred to as "MP4 audio", with "MP4" as an abbreviation of "MPEG-4", even though AAC as a format technically preceded MPEG-4. In addition, media of this form is often encoded using the MPEG-4 part 14 container format, which usually has the file suffix ".mp4". Thus it makes a certain amount of sense for an AAC or MPEG-4 capable media player to be referred to as an "MP4 player". In this case the "4" in MP4 means something different to the "3" in MP3, but there is some logic to it.

As to what an MP5 player might be, that is on a par with the European commission announcing that we must take steps to "put Europe into the lead of the transition to Web 3.0", I fear. Sadly, I think it is unlikely that they are selling these.

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Poor naive George W. Bush! For all his shambolic presidency, his dreadful mistakes, and the horrors of aggressive imperialism, his last couple of months in office could end up being the most disastrous for the world.

Bloomberg reports:

The leaders of the U.S., France and the European Commission will ask other world leaders to join in a series of summits on the global financial crisis beginning in the U.S. soon after the Nov. 4 presidential election.

President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Barroso said in a joint statement after meeting yesterday that they will continue pressing for coordination to address "the challenges facing the global economy.''

The initial summit will seek "agreement on principles of reform needed to avoid a repetition and assure global prosperity in the future,'' and later meetings "would be designed to implement agreement on specific steps to be taken to meet those principles,'' the statement said.

Just how bad this could be is already showing. The report continues:

Sarkozy and Barraso are pressing Bush for a G8 agenda that includes stiffer regulation and supervision for cross-border banks, a global "early warning'' system and an overhaul of the International Monetary Fund. Talks may also encompass tougher regulations on hedge funds, new rules for credit-rating companies, limits on executive pay and changing the treatment of tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Monaco.

Just what has the continuation of the OECD nations' campaign to plunder smaller states and institute globally uniform (high) taxation got to do with the market crash? Nothing. Executive pay? Irrelevant, too, save in the politics of envy. Mainstream banks, not hedgies, were the ones that crashed after playing iffy games with CDOs, and governments helped pump-up house prices - with enthusiasm. Where this agenda comes in is as an opportunity to kick the resented "Anglo-Saxon" model of capitalism while it is down - even, and especially, in those places where it is not down yet. (Are we missing Commissioner Mandelson yet?)

Mr Bush has lost the thread entirely if he really thinks a transnational "reform" of the financial system can do other than damage "free markets, free enterprise and free trade". He may have a patchy record on liberty, and a bad record on limited government. His guests in November will have no interest in either. They will tempt him (have tempted him) with the mantle of world saviour, and will try to get him to bind his successors. We shall have to hope that his successor, either one of whom would be well to the economic right of the self-selected 'international community', depressingly enough, is more wily and far-sighted.

Meanwhile, where is there left to run?

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Peter Mandelson's re-appointment to Gordon Brown's cabinet is a potential disaster, and not just for Britain.

I have always liked Mandelson more than any other Labour politician. I ought to hate him, because his strategic genius gave us the New Labour revolution of the last decade. But his lucent unwillingness to pretend he is an imbecile, to conceal the fact of his cunning, or to act out his party's customary hatred of private enterprise, even while his pupils execute their vile populist capers, is to me endearing.

Maybe that is why I'm worried more than stunned by his return to British politics. While most commentators are mesmerised by the story of Brown's feud with The Prince of Darkness, and the daring of playing with Labour Party's own resentment of him by bringing him back from Brussels, I am more interested in strategy. Do not just look at the flashy sacrifice; see how it changes the board.

There is now a gap in the European Commission. Brown will appoint one of his favourites to it, and have far reaching influence on Europe, and therefore Britain, even after he steps down. This can be seen as a subtle purge by bribery, and as a retirement strategy. A preparation for the Brown legacy.

There is now a gap in the European Commission. Whoever fills Mandelson's Trade portfolio will be replacing one of the most free-trade-friendly commissioners that the EU has ever had, in a financial crisis, with protectionist populism surging on both sides of the Atlantic. Brown's legacy could easily be a trade war and a real depression.

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Glad to know that at a time when people are concerned about the economic outlook, crime and so forth, that those chaps at the European Union have not taken their eye off the ball:

The acre, one of Britain's historic imperial measurements, is to be banned from use under a new European directive. The measurement, which will officially be replaced by the hectare, will no longer be allowed when land is being registered. After being agreed last week, the new ruling will come into force in January 2010.

I do not know why this story riles me so much, but it does. It is not that I cannot understand the logic of using a metric system so that it is possible to make instant comparisons between say, the price of a hectare of land in France and Britain, which is quite useful to be able to do when looking at the state of our respective economies. But it is the illegality of registering land by using certain measurements that is so barmy. If there is a market in land - well, partially free anyway - surely the persons buying or selling can measure it any way they please, so long as the amounts are agreed and are accurately registered. It is the accuracy of the register, not the units per se, that counts. Apart from anything else, cannot the EU and its minions do some basic maths? An acre is equal to 0.404 hectares. Every time one has to convert the old English Imperial measurements to metric and vice versa, it has the salutary effect of encouraging people to do a bit of maths, which is a good mental exercise anyway.

Many units of measurement used in the Anglo-Saxon world have been ingrained in our mental lives. I can - just about - visualise what an acre is. I cannot do that for a hectare. Far from being fogeyish or illogical, there is nothing essentially better or worse than one or the other. Roger Scruton has a nice discussion of the benefits of traditional weights and measures here. Every time there is an assault on such traditional measures, it is an assault on differences because they are differences, on the eccentric, the quaint, the odd, the unusual, the untidy.

Compared to many of the other creeping forms of "harmonisation" beloved of the Eurocrats, this may seem like a paltry measure, and I am sure that is right. But it has really annoyed me. Leave our acres alone, you tidy-minded bastards.

(1)

Daniel Hannan has a short but pointed article about how the European Parliament does not hesitate to ignore its own rules if it means they can crush euro-sceptic dissent.

The European Parliament operates a corporatist system: in order to move amendments, propose debates or qualify for campaign finance, MEPs are required to join trans-national Groups. To incorporate such a Group, you need at least 20 Euro-MPs from five states. This means that, alongside the big Groups - the Christian Democrats, Liberals, Socialists, Communists and Greens - there is also a little bloc of Euro-sceptics called Independence and Democracy. There was also, briefly, a Euro-fascist alliance (erroneously termed "far Right"), which fell apart because its block-headed members couldn't stand one another.

The new rules, drawn up by the Labour MEP (and touchy blogger) Richard Corbett, would raise the thresholds to 25 MEPs and seven states, making it harder for dissidents to register. What are they so scared of, these Euro-fanatics? After all, we sceptics represent no more than 50 or 60 MEPs out of 785. Why not treat us as an Official Opposition, thereby demonstrating their fair-mindedness and bestowing a measure of legitimacy on their institution? Because they can't bring themselves to do it. They hate us too much.

Disgraceful but hardly surprising.

(24)

Pretty gruesome stuff happening. This is old news:

The ongoing Google/YouTube-Viacom litigation has now officially spilled over to users with a court order requiring Google to turn over massive amounts of user data to Viacom. If the data is actually released, the consequences could be far more serious than the 2006 AOL Search debacle.

But this not so. And happening via backdoor of telecoms regulation.

The Telecoms Package (Paquet Telecom) is a review of European telecoms law. [...] buried within it, deep in the detail, are important legal changes that relate to enforcement of copyright. These changes are a threat to civil liberties and risk undermining the entire structure of Internet, jeopardising businesses and cultural diversity.

The bottom line is that changes to telecoms regulations are needed before EU member states can bring in the so-called "3 strikes" measures - also known as "graduated response" - of which France is leading the way, but other governments, notably the UK, are considering whether to follow. A swathe of amendments have been incorporated at the instigation of entertainment industry lobbying. These amendments are aimed at bringing an end to free downloading. They also bring with them the risk of an unchecked corporate censorship of the Internet, with a host of unanswered questions relating to the legal oversight and administration.

The Telecoms Package is currently in the committee stages of the European Parliament, with a plenary vote due on 1st or 2nd September. This does not leave much time for public debate, and it reminds me of the rushed passage of the data retention directive (see Data Retention on this site). It is, if you like, regulation by stealth.

These two items have in common the attempt to undermine the infrastructure of the net/web by controlling those who provide or maintain it. Not good.

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Over at EU Referendum under the heading "Caught red-handed" there is an instructive YouTube video. It shows a bunch of MEPs showing up at their place of work at quarter to seven in the morning. Exemplary devotion to duty? Well, no. What they are actually doing, suitcases in hand, is signing the attendance register on a Friday morning before heading home for the weekend. Then they will be paid, most lavishly, for working that day.

The cat really lands among the pigeons around 2 minutes 30 seconds in. Watch the MEPs dodge back behind doors as they register the camera's unwelcome presence. Listen to the cries and squeals. "It is not your business!" "Such impertinence!" I did not catch the name of the genial chap who claimed to be about to start work in his constituency before running for the door, but Irish MEP Kathy Sinnott (of, I am sorry to say, the EU-sceptic Independence and Democracy Group) said she had already been at work for seven hours, and Hiltrud Breyer of the German Green Party really ought to look at people when she talks to them.

We bloggers often criticise the mainstream media but I take my hat off to Thomas Meier, the intrepid journalist here. He represents a tradition of - literally - foot-in-the-door reporting that the "colleagues" would like to put an end to if they could. In this case, as soon as they could, they did. The fun ends with Herr Meier being escorted out by seven heavies.

If EU Referendum's video is down, this link might work, or search YouTube for "Expense allowance abuses by MEPs".

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I came across this from the online version of the German magazine, Der Spiegel (hat tip, Tim Worstall):

The scoundrels in Brussels have sold the European people a lot of things: a single market, the euro, the lifting of many border controls and, most recently, a binding global climate policy. These have all been good things, and they have helped make Europe an eminently livable continent. Despite the many dull moments and emotions that have been negative at best, the end result has been laudable.

"All good things" - oh really? The euro has not been a great success. Sure, it is a strong currency relative to the dollar at the moment, largely because of the Fed's policy of printing money like it had forgotten all that sage advice from a certain late Professor M. Friedman, but the one-size-fits-all interest rate of the euro zone has proven a burden on the likes of enfeebled Italy, has boosted the Irish economy to boiling point, and now of course Ireland is in trouble, suffering a sharply contracting property and stock market. I am not sure how that impresses the Spiegel editors. For them, the whole project is going splendidly. As for the "binding" climate policy, I guess it does all rather depend on whether one accepts the thesis that Man-Made global warming is either happening; is happening at the speed some people claim, or justifies imposing heavy costs on industrial nations to correct it in ways that might affect other, more urgent human needs.

But this paragraph is the beaut, the one to savour:

Most of these improvements would have been held up, if not outright prevented, by referendums. Democracy doesn't mean having unlimited confidence in citizens. Sometimes the big picture is in better hands when politicians are running it, and a big picture takes time.

Jeez.

(9)

The Irish "no" vote on the EU's Lisbon Treaty has already had some positive effects, such as the lessening chances of the European major states attempting to create a tax cartel. Well, we can all hope, anyway:

France has dropped plans to push forward with tax harmonisation under its European Union presidency, following Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty.

Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, told the Financial Times that while the proposal for a common consolidated corporate tax base had not been abandoned altogether, Paris would no longer press other governments to back it over the next six months.

Yes, perhaps the French, rather than attempting to prevent some horrific "race to the bottom" on tax rates, should instead admit that tax competition, including that which comes from those dreadful offshore centres, is a good thing.

The comments ought to underscore just how serious are the consequences of creating an EU state and the benefits that exist from resisting that ambition.

Well, maybe I write these words in a spirit of optimism as the light pours through my window. Indulge me for a while.

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The Irish have voted "No" to the EU Constitution, sorry, Treaty, in their national referendum.

It is turning out to be quite a week in politics.

(8)

Robert Man from the European Commission speaking on this morning's Farming Today:

There is a case for allowing supermarkets to sell mis-shapen fruit and veg, provided it has a label such as "suitable for cooking" on it.

He was talking about proposals for simplifying EU produce classification regulations.

In the interests of the poor chap keeping his job, I feel I should emphasise it was a very relaxed, friendly interview, and that this latitudinarian idea was clearly being examined hypothetically as a way of reducing waste, and no impression was given that it formed part of current Commission plans. Nor did Mr Man imply that the 'simplification' proposals are completely settled. The Commission proposes, but member states dispose; and Mr Man was careful to point out that not all member states are yet convinced by the bold libertarianism inherent in simplification.

So for the moment you should be reassured that the full EC Marketing standards continue to apply to: Apples, Apricots, Avocados, Cherries, Grapes, Kiwifruit, Lemons, Mandarins (and similar hybrids), Melons, Oranges, Peaches and Nectarines, Pears, Plums, Strawberries, Water Melons, Artichokes, Asparagus, Beans (other than shelling beans), Brussels sprouts [of course!], Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflowers, Celery, Courgettes, Cultivated mushrooms, Garlic, Leeks, Onions, Peas, Spinach, Salads, Aubergines, Chicory, Cucumber, Lettuce endives and batavia, Sweet peppers, Tomatoes, Hazelnuts in shell, Walnuts in shell, Flowering bulbs, corms and tubers, Cut flowers and foliage.

Though I know us Samizdatatistas are apt to be rude about regulators, I think it is important to recognise the merits of these noble public servants occasionally. Younger and foreign readers will not appreciate how much suffering the EC Marketing standards have saved. British television viewers no longer face peak-time magazine shows featuring vegetables with an amusing resemblance to genitalia.

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There are many aspects of the European Union that I dislike but I have never quite shared the view that the euro is due to collapse at some point, even if one or two member nations revert to domestic currencies, which at this stage looks highly unlikely barring an Asian-style collapse. Of course, I certainly think that imposing a single, monopoly currency on widely diverging economies at different points of the economic cycle is fraught with danger but that, remember, applies to single political jurisdictions like Britain or the US as well as blocks of different countries, which is why I am interested in the idea of free banking and multiple currency systems within a single polity. People who scoff at this idea have to argue why, if this is so weird, you can operate in a world with different forms of computer software, etc. Here is another interesting article on the idea.

Of course, I know that the prime reason for objecting to the euro for many people is not the economics anyway, but its place in the political agenda of those who wish to forge a European single state, relegating the separate nations to the status of provinces. But if people imagine that the economics of the euro-zone are going to blow the whole thing apart, they may have to wait a long time. A couple or more years ago, remember, it was argued - with a lot of convincing detail - that the euro would fall apart and countries like Italy would be forced to quit. That has not happened. The Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, with columnists like Evans Ambrose Pritchard and Liam Halligan, have argued several times about the euro's demise. Halligan is arguing this again. Well, try as I might, it is quite hard to imagine at the moment that the euro is about to fall to pieces. Try telling that to anyone who has bought euros with sterling or dollars lately. We might soon be reaching the point where, to borrow from Mark Twain, the comment is that rumours of the euro's death have been much exaggerated.

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As several commenters like to point out here, the UK parliament, having shed so many powers and transferred them to Brussels, is now more like a branch office of a large company, in which the great majority of the powers are exercised from the centre. The branch office staff may try to kid themselves that they are important, and voters in national elections may take the view that they are wielding meaningful power by voting, but the truth is that they are not.

Also, the workload of politicians as serious legislators has seriously declined. They are essentially implementing laws that have been, to a great extent, decided by someone else. So it makes sense, perhaps, to cull the number of MPs and cut their pay to reflect their diminished status.

I should have linked to this before, but Tory MP Peter Lilley has argued for precisely this: cutting MP's salaries to reflect their weaker powers. Mr Lilley is a reminder that at least some MPs really get what has happened. As I occasionally point out, as MPs become more pointless, their behaviour, perks and corruption become less tolerable. Lilley's proposal may not come to anything, but it is a meme worth spreading: these people are unimportant, and should be remunerated accordingly.

In an ideal universe, MPs would not be paid by the taxpayer at all, of course. We can always dream.

(1)

It has been revealed that the Europhiles in the Tory party, led by John Maples MP, rigged the Tories' recent primary for Members of the European Parliament in order to prevent the deselection of Europhile incumbents and to promote women that had received too few votes. ConservativeHome has the full, sordid account.

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Down in the West Country, fires are being lit:

Imagine, if you can, a party rally, put on by one of its regional branches, and attended by several hundred decent, ordinary people. Imagine, then, being able to watch a dozen or so people called to the podium to speak fluently and with passion about what they truly think. Imagine also being able to mingle throughout with the leaders and elected representatives of that party. Imagine all this, and you have UKIP.

The excellent speeches from that rally can be viewed here.

I spoke to Sean Gabb the following day. He told me that he perceived a 'great suppressed anger' among the people he met.

Good.

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That the EU Referendum blog is unhappy at the latest turn of events in the UK parliament is an understatement:

In other words, in a very real sense – not at all an arcane, academic point – as Lisbon bites, it will no longer makes any difference at all who we elect. For sure, any new government will have some residual powers which it can call its own, but these will gradually be stripped from it as the EU starts to exert its newly-acquired powers.

It occurs, therefore, that the one thing we need to do is boycott the electoral process. If there is no point in having MPs, we should no longer partake in the charade that we have meaningful elections. There can be no better message to send to MPs than an ever-declining turnout. This robs them of even the pretence of legitimacy.

Quite so. It seems to me that we have the bizarre spectacle of MPs choosing to make themselves irrelevant. Perhaps they have reached the deep realisation that they are unworthy of being legislators, that their real role in life is to fiddle expenses, disport themselves on TV and go to foreign junkets. There is, quite frankly, no further use for them.

In moments like this, when so many powers are being transferred to a supranational entity like the EU with remarkably little democratic accountability, and on a scale that has no clear modern parallel, it makes me wonder what, if any point, there is in things like intellectual activism. Getting the message across in a national context is hard enough; trying to persuade Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Dutchmen, Spaniards, Greeks, Portugese, Belgians and Finns of the case for less government is next to impossible. One of the reasons why I, as a libertarian, am broadly in favour of self-governing nation states is not out of some starry-eyed belief that they are always better than some broader alternative, but because experience teaches us that it is increasingly hard to make changes on a large, supranational level where there is not a shared culture or shared language.

The EU has had its merits, but I think the sad truth is, and has been for some time, that lovers of liberty cannot expect it to be reformed from within or turned into some sort of benign free trade zone. We have to get out.

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The EU has determined that passenger flights by DC-3's flown by Air Atlantique Classic Flight or any one else must cease when new regulations come into effect on July 16th of this year. These rules are imposed upon and override UK regulations, so even though the UK CAA is on the side of Air Atlantique, it will make little difference. Brussells, not London, is the capital of the United Kingdom.

The new rules require any aircraft with more than 19 passengers must have an armoured door to the crew cabin among numerous other modifications. They even demand an inflatable slide be added to the passenger door. There are no exceptions for classic aircraft and thus after July 16th the soulless gray men will make the European world that much more like themselves.

The EU Federal State is a special case of the general truth whose promulgation is a primary raison d'etre of Samizdata: The State is Not Your Friend.

Note: If you want to fly on a DC-3 before your betters prevent you for your own good, you had better hurry. You can reach AACF at 08703-304747 for reservations.

(16)

William Hague is on the money and bloody hilarious...

(11)

The European Union has its uses. While rootling around for stuff to link to from CNE Competition, I came across this:

Left-wing Labour MPs are girding themselves for a rebellion over a European Union plan which they say could spell the end of the National Health Service.

When left wing Labour MPs rebel, I at least hope for possible goodness.

The European Commission will publish its health directive next week and it is meant to make it easier for people to travel to get specific medical treatment in another EU country.

Ah, the age-old dilemma of the EUrosceptic. What do you think if the EU imposes something sensible?

British diplomats say that this is NOT the same as making sure that if you fall sick in Slovakia or have an accident in Austria you can get treatment straight away.

When British diplomats say that something is NOT something else, it means that they have been told to say that by their political masters and that the small print of their argument will be about a very small difference. The feathers on the other something will definitely NOT be the exact same colour, but the other something will otherwise waddle and quack in an identical fashion to the original something, and will in fact be just another duck. For "NOT", read " ", in other words.

It is what some people call "health tourism" and both critics and fans say it will allow people to shop around for health care.

Sounds great. So what if it is just a plan to sell Eurostar tickets; I still like it.

In the end, there is nothing like people preferring something else to whatever bogus nirvana is being peddled by the bogus nirvana peddlers. The one argument against the much vaunted Soviet Communist nirvana that the vaunters could never wriggle free from was the fact - for fact it was - that this was a nirvana that millions wanted to escape from, through minefields if need be, and with only the clothes they were wearing at the time of their escape if that was all they could take with them. A similar process is now under way with Britain's similarly vaunted NHS, the best healthcare system in the world except for all the others.

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Yes, it is true. I am going to go and sign the treaty for the European Constitution on behalf of Belgium.

Now you might well ask yourself, why would Perry de Havilland have the right to sign the EU Treaty (do not worry, I intend to 'accidently' tip the ink pot over the foetid thing)? Simple... because clearly anyone can. There are many articles about what El Gordo is going to do and the long running weird protocol spat between Portugal and Belgium over where the treaty must be signed... but that should be academic to Belgium because Belgium still does not have a government, ergo there is no one who can sign on Belgium's behalf... yet strangely that does not seem to be stopping the former government from doing just that.

If the people who were voted out of office in Belgium months ago can sign the treaty, then why not me too? They have no more right than I do to sign anything on behalf of Belgium. The fact that the Belgian establishment can and have simply banned popular political parties that do not play by the required consensus should indicate that to all intents, Belgium is not a democracy in any meaningful sense. This latest action indicates Belgium is in fact some sort of divine right oligarchy where being a member of the power elite is all the legitimisation you need.

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Orwell imagined a political order that would try to change people by expunging certain terms from the vocabulary in order to make the very concepts those words represent un-knowable.

Of course Orwell had not heard of the European Union. To quote EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini:

I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism

And of course this will also block anyone researching the history of Nazi German and all manner of other governmental action throughout history . It might be interesting to speculate on what the motivation of someone like the EU's "Justice and Security" Commissioner really are.

(via Ben Laurie)

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Now it might seem odd that someone on record as being as hostile to the EU as me might hope that Gordon Brown gets his way and just bounces Britain into adopting the resurrected EU treaty against what is quite obviously the wishes of the majority of politically active people in Britain.

But that is what I want. I want the EU to get its way and for there to be a dramatic shift in power from London to Brussels, with commensurate huge diminution in democratic control of the political process in this country. I regard the fact Gordan Brown can look the nation in the eye and utter such a naked lie that the current offering is not, to quote the Chancellor of Germany, "the new constitutional document is the same as the old constitutional document: the only difference is that it doesn't have European Constitution as its title", with pure delight.

In short I want Gordon Brown to strip away the myth of the democratic accountability. I want the system that has been so seriously damaged over the last ten years to be broken in such a visible way that even the most purblind self-deluding fool can see just what sort of country they really live in. Let all sixty million people on this island hear the stream of pork pies issuing from the gob of the man in 10 Downing Street, with the entire apparatus of power standing behind him nodding.

Although very worthy folks like the UKIP will argue passionately for a referendum, knowing that their position will almost certain win (which is of course why it will not be allowed to happen), in truth the long term position of a fringe party like UKIP will be vastly improved if the 'nightmare scenario' does indeed come to pass. To actually break the current political monoculture will require far more really pissed off people than currently exist in Big Bruvvah anaesthetised Britain.

The system needs to break and millions of people need to be confronted with their political irrelevance before anything really... interesting... can happen.

So good luck Gordan, I wish you great success in screwing over your subject people and locking in the centrist regulatory Big State at the more remote European level. More and faster in fact.

(10)

Well, that is probably inevitable anyway. Political honeymoons that last a long time tend to be followed by savage changes in fortune (Nicolas Sarkozy, please note). Gordon Brown enjoyed a bounce in the polls after he killed off, er, sorry, I meant took over from Tony Blair; he was able, however spuriously, to appear all statesmanlike amid the various natural disasters, almost-successful terror plots. But the shooting of the young boy in Liverpool, adding to a spate of gun crimes, has put crime higher up the political agenda, which may hurt Brown; the recognition that Brown has, after all, been finance minister since 1997 and therefore bears a fair share of the current difficulties, is starting to break into the public awareness. And the latest issue which could really wipe the smirk off his face is Europe. His attempt to slyly sign up to a EU Constitution in drag is unacceptable, and thank goodness if it is true that many Labour MPs and some ministers feel the same way.

Seeing is believing, of course. But somehow, I think life is going to get a lot rougher for the government. The question as always is whether the opposition will fully exploit it.

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As people involved in this blog know I am not exactly shy about attacking Conservative party policy either nationally or locally. So it is only fair that I present good news when there is some.

The other night the MP for Kettering, Mr Philip Hollobone, was formally readopted as the Prospective Conservative Party candidate for election as member of the House of Commons for Kettering.

Why is this "good news" or a "reason to proud"?

Because of what he said.

Mr Hollobone informed the score or so people who had come for the meeting of the Executive Council, of the local Conservative Association, that he believed that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should leave the European Union - and that he had said this publicly and would continue to do so (which is why I can mention it here) whatever Mr Cameron thought about this matter (although, in the interests of fairness, I must make clear that Mr Cameron has not said that a person may not hold this opinion).

Mr Hollobone then left the room and a secret ballot was held. It is a rule that numbers can not be given. However, in this case they are not needed - as there were no spoilt ballot papers and no opposing votes (work it out).

Both good news and a reason to be proud.

By the way, in case anyone thinks I had something to do with any of the above, I did not say a word in the entire Executive Council meeting. As the meeting was not public I will not mention what other people said. However, there were no comments opposing Mr Hollobone's position.

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At the end of the 1970s the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation were founded in the United States. Both of them have had a huge effect in promoting libertarian ideas, pushing better ideas in front of the Federal Government. The Adam Smith Institute was founded at the same time, successfully pushing liberalisation in the UK. But while London and Washington have enjoyed a plethora of good think tank activity, the rise of Brussels has been largely ignored. There are only a handful of really good think tanks (like the Centre for the New Europe). This is remarkable given that Brussels passes legislation over a population of 494m people (compared with only 302m the US). Brussels should have more libertarians trying to influence it.

So what I am doing with the Globalisation Institute is expanding it from covering a small range of topics in London into a much-broader, Brussels-based think tank covering the full range. In essence, the GI team is creating a European version of the Reason Foundation or the Cato Institute; a Brussels version of the Adam Smith Institute. Just as Cato in the early 80s moved its HQ from California to Washington, we are moving our HQ from London to Brussels (though we will still be doing things in London).

Our objective, in a nutshell, is influence. That is, to influence the thinking of policy-makers at the European Commission and in the Brussels community generally. (We’ve got an excellent record of influencing policymakers in London.) Like Reason founder Bob Poole and ASI co-founder Madsen Pirie, I see our role as a think tank as developing implementable small steps, looking two or three years ahead. Of course, we simultaneously have a broader educational role looking further ahead, especially with students, but I do not think it is realistic to get European Commissioners to sign up to a "liberal utopia".

The think tank world in Brussels - all around the political spectrum - is thirty years behind the United States. It seems to me that it is time for some catching up.

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The EU Referendum blog, a euro-sceptic site that I read regularly, has few doubts about a key part of Tone's legacy:

There has already been a Cabinet reshuffle, in Europe. A new member has just joined the European Council. The shiny car in which he is driven to Downing Street should be bearing not a Union Jack but a ring of stars, to remind us of his coming servitude.

That also would be an acknowledgement of Tony Blair's true legacy to this nation. Ten years ago, he entered Downing Street to a flurry of Union Jacks, waved by enthusiastic supporters. Today, he leaves - to an unprecedented standing ovation of the House - bequeathing his successor a blue flag with twelve yellow stars.

I would also add that a badge depicting Blair - and Brown's - utter contempt for the traditional liberties of this nation, and our Common Law, might be appropriate. The trouble is, who among the broad British population would know what such a badge stands for?

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Yesterday I happened to see the Sunday Telegraph and Niall Fergusson's contribution was 'interesting' (in the sense of the old Chinese curse).

Niall Fergusson is a Scottish conservative who sold out and got a high paid job at Harvard (perhaps he just went along with the leftist stereotype of the conservative as someone who puts his personal financial interest above everything else). He sometimes still writes decent stuff, but normally his writings are designed to not offend his new 'liberal' friends (and employers) and today was no exception.

Professor Fergusson was not writing in support of Islamic terrorists in Somalia (which he has done in the past), or declaring that the West should submit to (sorry engage in 'diplomacy' only with) the Iranian regime (regardless of how many British and American people this regime kills in Afghanistan, Iraq and the streets of Western cities). No today he had a different subject - the European Union (remember in establishment circles in the United States wanting to take powers away from the EU is considered as wicked as it is in establishment circles here).

The great historian has decided to put his support behind the superstate and denounce its evil 'nationalist' foes.

Supposedly 30% of the population of the United Kingdom think membership of the EU has been harmful. I think it is rather more that 30%, but perhaps Professor Fergusson is correct.

What were Professor Fergusson's arguments against those people who think that the tidal wave of EU regulations has been harmful?

He presented no arguments at all. It was just taken as obvious that anyone who opposed this layer of government was both stupid and evil.

Professor Fergusson is clearly a true establishment man and no doubt will continue to be welcome at all the social events in Harvard.

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Simon Jenkins, the columnist and former editor of The Times (of London), is capable of making a strong argument at times and he tries to do so with his thesis that the Blair government continued much the same policy mix as Margaret Thatcher. Yes, really. Jenkins argues that in some ways, the Blair government was more enthusiastic in privatising certain industries than the Thatcher one (he says Mrs T. was opposed to selling off the railways, but I am not sure that is true). Even without the odd quibble, it is a quite persuasive piece of writing. However, in the light of this week's events as related by Perry de Havilland below, Jenkins spoils his piece by this piece of utter nonsense:

Although Blair made a spirited bid after the 2001 election to make Europe, as he put it, ‘the cornerstone of the new parliament’, he found it merely a source of dissension with Brown. He signed the Maastricht treaty as promised in his manifesto but did not implement it and eventually ceded to Brown a de facto veto not just over the euro but over further European integration. Blair’s 2005 presidency of the council of ministers was a fiasco. Under him Britain remained semi-detached from Europe and beyond Thatcherite reproach. His glee at being let off the hook by the French and Dutch referendum votes against the 2005 constitution was ill-concealed.

I think even Jenkins probably feels a bit of a twit about those words. Because it appears Blair was pretty keen to transfer more sovereignty to the EU all along. The idea that he was pleased at the outcomes of the referendums in previous years is not borne out by his sly actions.

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Although the Blair government has needed little encouragement from the European Union to destroy our civil liberties and impose ever more layers of political control over our lives, it seems he has decided to try and lock a few more controls at the more remote European level.

And will a future Cameron government undo what Blair has wrought? Do not make me laugh. As Dave Cameron even attempted to back out of his pre-leadership promise to take the token action of removing the 'Conservatives' from the integrationist EPP grouping in the European 'parliament' (and the Conservatives MEPs are still in a de facto coalition with the EPP), clearly he lacks the inclination to do anything of actual substance.

Clearly the only way to undo what Blair has wrought in Brussels is to just start ripping up treaties or better yet get out of the EU altogether... and that is not going to happen under any foreseeable UK government. Nothing short of a social earthquake that radically shifts the political landscape is going to make much difference and that ain't going to happen under any likely government I can foresee.

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There's a very important article in The Economist this week on the subject of Brussels-based think tanks. Under the headline The think tanks that miss the target, it says that Brussels' think tank world is failing to challenge the standard consensus. "Nobody seems able to change the default formula for Brussels policy seminars: good coffee and croissants, dull speeches and a brief exchange of conventional wisdom," it says. The article mentions free-market guru Johan Norberg who says that too many think-tanks spend their time offering straight commentary on the Brussels machine, whereas in Washington DC they tend to lead the debate.

The way I see it is that Brussels is a fledgling market. Just as there were think tanks in the US and UK before the 1970s, it was not until launches like the Cato Institute and Adam Smith Institute, both in 1977, and the takeover of the Heritage Foundation by Ed Feulner, that the modern think tank was created. By modern think tank, I mean the politically-savvy institute that does not just put out ideologically pure work, but engages in "policy engineering" (the development of practical policies) and the marketing of those policies in the political world. There were important institutes before then, such as the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in New York. But FEE is not the same sort of institute as Cato; it performs the essential task in educating students about free markets, but does not do the policy engineering work. People might label it a think tank, but really it is a different creature from Cato and Heritage. Indeed, it describes itself simply as an "educational foundation". In Brussels, the think tank world is going through the learning process that think tanks in the US and UK went through in the 1970s. There are not many Brits working for Brussels' think tanks, bringing expertise from the London think tank world, which may be part of the problem.

The Economist is right that the Brussels think tank world needs something of a shake-up. That said, not everyone is spouting consensus. I like the Centre for the New Europe, for example. It might serve good coffee at its events (none of the Traidcraft Fairtrade stuff), but I suspect that any exchange of conventional wisdom is brief indeed! Its blogs, on the topics of intellectual property, health and competition policy, are challenging and interesting. Additionally, the European Enterprise Institute has been particularly influential with the European People's Party and more generally in keeping the pro-enterprise agenda from dropping off the table. But it is certainly odd how few think tanks there are in Brussels compared with London. Brussels needs more. Well, free-market ones anyway.

The article is particularly interesting for me with my Globalisation Institute hat on. Many policymakers in Brussels have commented that while they value following the Institute's output on trade and globalisation from a distance, they would like access to the Institute's thinking and events in Brussels itself. Believing that responding to market signals is important, the GI is expanding into Brussels on 1 September. The aim is to inject some good free-market thinking into the city's European quarter. I think I'm going to have my work cut out.

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I wish I understood Turkish politics better than I do. There was a large pro-secularism rally in Ankara, which is surely a good thing. The fact these people are backed by the army is an even more encouraging sign.

On Friday evening military chiefs said in a statement they could intervene if the election process threatened to undermine Turkish secularism.

EU politics however, I understand just fine. The usual halfwits have moaned that the Turkish army is interfering with democracy because they made it clear they will not tolerate Turkey becoming an Islamic state. Yet strangely all manner of constitutional limitations on the democratic will of the majority exist in many countries (the USA and Switzerland, for example) and yet that does not seem to attract the displeasure of the fools who live off our tax money in Brussels.

In Turkey, the army is probably the best bulwark against Islamism and the fact the same €uro-spokesmen allegedly responsible for working towards integrating Turkey with the EU want to weaken the role of the main opponent of Islamist political aspirations in the country is... astonishing.

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What are the causes of the rise of far right political parties across Europe?

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There is a strong interaction between British ideas on security and those adopted by Europe, where New Labour dreams of authoritarian and democratic socialism can be writ large. The justification of a new database to hold fingerprints for every EU citizen is a larger white elephant than any yet conceived. Knowing the opposition that would arise if this project was publicised:

The proposal, which was buried in a lengthy European Commission document setting out policy goals for next year, managed the rare feat of uniting all sides in opposition. Euro-sceptics criticised them as the trappings of a super-state, while some of Europe’s most ardent supporters complained of a threat to civil liberties.

This is part of the extension of EU powers into the sphere of justice and security. The Commission has gained the power to prosecute certain crimes and wishes to extend these at a European level. The powers are descibed as "indispensable". The project was initially based on a voluntary scheme between certain Continental countries and is now being extended through harmonisation and Member States' agreement.

We will be less secure, crime will rise, and the databases portend further declines in civil liberties.

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The British Council announced that ten offices in Europe would shut so that funds could be diverted to the Middle East and Asia. Part of this diversion is admirable: an attempt to undermine the attraction of the Salafist ideology for impressionable youths. Scepticism rises over the small sums allocated in comparison to the rich charities that fund madressehs in all Muslim countries.

Martin Davidson, director general designate of the British Council, said it was "time to tackle the new challenges the world faces."

These included "building trust with the Islamic states and China," Davidson told the Press Association.

The council would scrap "traditional arts activities" in Europe, such as orchestral tours and artistic commissions, in favour of projects "designed to prevent Muslim youths from being indoctrinated by extremists sympathetic to al-Qaeda," the Times said.

This project is coordinated by a new leader of the British Council, who also stated that they would be working with their European partners to promote common values. The British Council belongs to EUNIC, the European Union National Institutes for Culture, and this new organisation was launched on the 21st February 2007 (pdf file). Is it any coincidence that, as soon as the British Council is submerged within a pan-European body, its focus is aimed at the Middle East and China? Even the small details begin to back up Mark Steyn.

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One of the grey areas in European Union law is the primacy of community law in relationship to the constitutions of the Member States. As the treaties have encroached more and more upon the national sovereignty of Member States, this has become a fraught issue. It has resulted in a staunch defence of sovereignty or a surrender of the national prerogative. The country having the strongest debate upon this issue is France.

In a recent case at the Conseil D'Etat, Arcelor had requested a ruling on whether EU law violated the principle of equality in the French Constituion as steel companies had to comply with climate change laws whereas the competing industrial sector of plastics was exempt. The Conseil D'Etat declined to make a ruling and referred the case to th European Court of Justice. This has caused a debate in France as to whether the French constitution is now subordinate to the European Court of Justice.

The French court's decision not to conduct a constitutional test on EU legislation is seen as significant as it arguably places France's constitution below the ECJ in the legal hierarchy.

Although the supremacy of EU law over national law has been well-established, the status of national constitutions has been less clear not only in France but also elsewhere, including Germany.

Leading newspaper Le Monde was quick to predict on the day of the ruling that sovereignists and eurosceptics would probably interpret the judgement as a "Waterloo" of French sovereignty - something which became a self-fulfilling prophecy as sovereignists were eager to stress that even Le Monde called the ruling a "Waterloo."

There is some debate as to whether this was the groundbreaking referral that some commentators have stated. As the ruling concerned EU law, it has been argued that the Conseil D'Etat was only deferring to the European Court of Justice on this matter as equality was a governing principle with European law. Therefore the European Union and the French Constitution are complementary.

Despite the radical arguments of some who view the entry into the EEC as a watershed that fundamentally abrogated British sovereignty, the right of Parliament to bind the powers of its successor is not a recognised convention yet. Given the political will and a majority in Parliament, the United Kingdom could democratically withdraw from the European Union and assert the primacy of British law. The illiberal EU may not recognise self-determination except as an entry principle, but the constitutional recognition of European law is a parliamentary derogation, nothing more.

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Here is the latest Papal Bull from the European Union:

A series of "green crimes", enforceable across the EU and punishable by prison sentences and hefty fines, are to be proposed under a contentious push by the European Commission into the sensitive area of criminal lawmaking.

The drive by Brussels to apply penalties for ecological crime reflects concerns that some countries treat offences such as pollution and illegal dumping of waste more seriously than others, allowing criminals to exploit loopholes.

It used to be the dream of socialists and utopians of varying degrees of malevolence or stupidity to want a world state. In a world state, pesky local regulatory differences would be obliterated and replaced by a rational grid of laws from which no escape was possible. In true 'watermelon' fashion - green on the outside, red in the core - the Greens are embracing the instruments of a pan-national state to enforce their ideas.

There is a superficial plausibility to this. Pollution knows no barriers. If a German coal-fired power station emits carbon dioxide and other things, that will not just affect the Germans living near to the station but other nations. If a Swiss chemicals firm accidentally spills toxic material in to the Rhine - this has happened - then people in Holland get affected, and so on.

But what these sort of cases do is not to suggest that we need to give a centralised, international body coercive powers over people living across a whole continent. Rather, we should keep reminding people that rigorous enforcement of existing property rights, and creation of such rights in hitherto unowned resources, allied to the incentive structures of markets, provide the best route for tackling real environmental problems such as pollution. In any case, with certain emissions, it pays to remember that a pollutant for one person might be a positive benefit - or "externality" - for someone else.

The global warming/pollution/generally-we-are-all-doomed agenda is a significant threat to our liberties at the moment, so I make no apologies for going on about it.

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I have just made the mistake of reading the Sunday Telegraph. As is too often the case the only really good thing in the newspaper was Mr Booker's half page - and it is not worth getting a whole newspaper for half a page.

Looking through the rest of the Sunday Telegraph I came upon an article by Mr David Cameron (the leader of the British 'Conservative' party) the main business of the article was not important. It was just another absurd claim that we can "reform" the European Union in order to make it a 'force for good' - an excuse for Mr Cameron had his friends to not even promise to get the United Kingdom out of 'the Union' which is now the source of about 75% of all new regulations.

However, it was the rewriting of history that caught my eye. Mr Cameron correctly points out that we are coming up to the 50th anniversary of what was in 1957 called the European Economic Community. But Mr Cameron also states that this time (1957) was a time when the European Economic Community (EEC, now the EU) had to deal with a Europe that had been devastated by war, that was under the threat of Soviet attack, and was on the point of economic collapse.

In reality...

War damage had (in most of Western Europe) been to a great extent repaired by 1957, partly by the efforts of Europeans and partly by American aid. The EEC was not the thing that rebuilt the towns and cities of Europe. The Soviet threat was not kept at bay by the EEC - it was kept at bay by NATO (i.e. in reality the American military) and it is NATO, not the EEC/EU, that was responsible for the peace of post war Western Europe, which may well be why so many Europeans hate the United States - people often hate those they have long depended on.

As for on the point of economic collapse. In fact in 1957 Western Europe was in the middle of great period of advance.

Here American aid was not really the driving force. What was the driving force of economic progress was deregulation and the reduction of taxation. This movement is best remembered, if it is remembered at all, by the weekend bonfire of price controls (weekend because the allied occupiers would not be in their offices to block it) and other economic regulations by Ludwig Erhard in the soon to be West Germany in 1948 (the Federal Republic coming into being in 1949).

However, there were similar movements in other Western European nations. Even Britain had its 'Set the People Free' and its 'Bonfire of Controls' under Churchill and Eden.

Also (again even in Britain) there was a policy in the 1950's of the reduction of taxation.

Neither the deregulation or the tax reductions had anything to do with the EEC which (as Mr Cameron correctly states) was created in 1957. And I hope that no one will claim that such things as the Iron and Steel Community or 'Euro Atom' were behind the deregulation or the tax reductions (in various nations) either.

In short, Mr Cameron's view of history (which might be best described as "at first there was darkness and then the European Economic Community moved in the darkness...") has no connection to the truth.

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Another two countries are determined to support the constitution. This means that only six countries, including the Czech Republic, will remain. These countries will have to decide whether they want to continue cooperating with the core of Europe or whether they want to again retreat from the European integration process, Posselt says.

Bernd Posselt, leader of the Sedeten German Society and an MEP for Bavaria has praised the Chancellor, Angela Merkel for demanding the Czech Republic to sign up to the European Constitution. Posselt may be supporting the initiative, since it favours restitution for properties seized after the War by the restored Czech Republic, desirous to remove irredentist elements from its polity, and abetted by the barbaric Red Army.

Posselt is merely echoing the 'friends of the constitution' who met under the auspices of Luxembourg and Spain over the weekend. The noises coming out of this meeting are not good for Europhiles in New Labour. Despite some willingness to show flexibility on some of the phrases, the 'friends of the constitution' wish to use the text as a base and add more areas of competence for integration. The mini-treaty favoured by the British, avoiding the need for a referendum, looks like a long shot. If Segolene Royal wins the French Presidential election and upholds her manifesto promise of another referendum, the tabloids will be howling for blood.

Mr Hoon suggested that moves to streamline decision-making in an enlarged EU could be agreed by the government without being ratified directly by voters.

A decision on a vote would be taken once the outcome of negotiations was clearer "bearing in mind that no previous government has held a referendum on the detailed processes that have been involved in treaty change, he said

Europhiles such as Hoon wish to short circuit a referendum, since they would lose their prize. This may form the final frontispiece of Blair's legacy, since the meeting on this occurs during the dying days of his premiership. Any warmed up document, with the title Constitution dropped to hide the fundamental and radical nature of the text, needs to be opposed as quickly as possible. New Labour, in this as in all other enterprises, is not a friend of the Union or the English. As for Cameron he may have tried to avoid Europe, but it has returned to force the issue upon him.

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Are you a member of the Tory Party? Remember when Dave Cameron said he would pull the Tory Party out of the €uro-Federalist EPP once he was elected leader? Remember when he promised Tory MPs would be free to campaign for withdrawal from the EU provided they were not on the front bench?

Have you had enough of the endless porkie pies from Dave Cameron yet? Do you care if you are lied to just to get your vote? If you do care and you still like the idea of being a member of a political party, then I suggest go and join the only thing even approximating a conservative party in Britain... and to do that, you have to leave the Tory party because if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

The only thing worse than another term of Labour implementing its destructive policies would be a term of the same destructive policies being implemented by Dave Cameron's Tory Party and institutionalising radical regulatory centrist authoritarianism as the only permitted political option in Britain regardless of the party in 10 Downing Street.

Although the editorial writers are pulling out all the stops to minimise the threat of the UKIP, clearly the blood is in the water and ideology-free die-hard 'sensibles' like Matthew d'Ancona and other have abandoned their policy of trying to laugh off UKIP. There could be no clearer sign that the Cameron Tories are circling the drain.

Update: I left the following comment earlier today on the Telegraph's website for the Matthew d'Ancona article linked above. As they seem to have decided not to approve the comment for publication...

So let me see... Dave Cameron (who you may have noticed leads a party that claims to be conservative) promises more 'green' regulations, goes back on his pledge to leave the Euro-Federalist EPP, goes back on his pledge to allow non-front bench Tory MP's to campaign for EU withdrawal if they support that, has called for 'redistribution of wealth' a la Polly Toynbee, but no, he has not signed up for the European Social Model and is a pukka conservative. Is that really your position?

Sorry Matthew, but how credulous do you think people are? Not only is Dave Cameron a liar (please show me where the things I have mentioned are incorrect), he is clearly not in fact a conservative by any meaningful definition of the word.

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The attempt assassination in London of a critic of Vladimir Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, almost certainly carried out by the Russian intelligence services, highlights that it is long past time to stop treating Russia as 'just another European government'.

But there is another rather interesting twist to this story that I did not spot in the media yesterday, courtesy of the UKIP.

Update: sadly it is not longer an 'attempted' assassination.

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Who would you not allow to participate in a parliamentary delegation to Israel? An MEP linked to far right anti-Semitism and holocaust denial. That seems a fairly straightforward rule of thumb. Do not take such figures along as your hosts might get a trifle jumpy.

Welcome to the pomposity of the European Parliament, the post-democrats who represent us. They decided to include Marine Le Pen in their ranks, and the Israelis thereupon refused to meet any of the delegation. The visit was promptly cancelled for "technical reasons", or, as one official noted, rather pointless.

The cancellation was not met with universal acclaim. Some think that a foreign power should not dictate the membership of a parliamentary delegation:

On the other hand, according to the official, there was concern on the parliament's side that a national government should not be allowed to dictate the composition of the group.

Others were miffed that they did not go, as they thought had a contribution to make, and the Israelis should have been willing to put the Holocaust behind them:

Speaking before Thursday's decision was announced, Irish centre-right MEP Simon Coveney, on the delegation list, told EUobserver that he believed the trip should go ahead.

"I don't think we should be cancelling the event … personally I am going because I am interested [in the issue]."

He added that any members of a parliament delegation have to remember that they are representing the views of the EU assembly and not their own personal view points.

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Having given up trying to stay PM and handed over the kulturcampf to Mr Brown, St Anthony now wishes to save the world:

In his strongest warning yet on the environment, the prime minister will tell fellow EU leaders that the world faces "conflict and insecurity" unless it acts now. "We have a window of only 10-15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points," Mr Blair says, in a joint letter with his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende.

I am not interested for this purpose in whether he is right about 'catastrophic tipping points'. It is entirely possible he is. It is interesting that this is certainly not from his own knowledge. And since actually no one knows enough about climate to say under what conditions, never mind when, a catastrophe, bifurcation, flip, transition... whatever you would like to call it... might occur, then the fact the firm limit of years is reported as as little as 7 in some places, and up to 25 elsewhere, should not worry us.

What should, is the contradiction between the millenarian rhetoric and the irrelevance in its own terms of the hair-shirt policy that we are being exhorted to adopt. If the quantity of CO₂ in the atmosphere will cause catastrophe at some threshold level, then capping emissions from human activity merely postpones reaching the threshold. By not very much.

If things are that bad either: (1) We should find ways yet unknown to make global human greenhouse-gas emissions close to zero or net negative. (Sorry, no cooked food - except sun-baked and geyser-boiled - until we do.) Or (2) we should enjoy the party at the end of the world. But it seems those in charge do not know the difference between quantity and rate.

Now that is really scary. Reality I can cope with. I am aware I'm going to die, and probably suffer disease and loss first. That the course of my life will be determined not by biology, physics and economics, but by messianic imbeciles with no grasp of any of them, is harder to bear.

For me; the non-exclusive or: technofix plus fun.

For the Head Boy; "Repent, o ye sinners or burn in hell on earth! Go, and sin no more. (Than you did in 1990)."

(5)

Jose Manual Barroso, President of the European Commission, and grand panjamdrum of Brussels has kindly deigned to share a few words with those of us who do not understand the contribution of the European Union to world peace. Who would have thought that the peacekeeping exercise in Darfur, Sudan, was a success. Barroso has opened my eyes.

I was in Darfur last week, on my way to co-chair the first ever meeting of the European Commission outside Europe, in Addis Ababa – the home of the Commission of the Africa Union. I am amazed at what I have seen in these young people that travel so far to help the people of Africa. I am proud of this Europe, I feel proud to feel European.

Let us look at security. There is a rising demand for a European role in external crises. And the EU is responding. It has doubled the number of peace and security missions in recent years. It is playing a central role in conflict prevention and resolution from Darfur to Palestine, from the Congo to Lebanon.

It is an effective actor because of the range of instruments at its disposal. In Darfur, for example, it is the biggest contributor to humanitarian aid, the main supporter of the African peacekeepers there, and playing a political role in pushing the Sudanese government to avoid another humanitarian catastrophe.

The man who knows what institutional reform is needed to ensure further European 'success'.

The Constitution would have helped. But perhaps the grand finality of the word 'constitution' set it up as a hostage to fortune, both to intergovernmentalists who felt it went too far, and to federalists, who felt it did not go far enough. Let us be clear about the label which should be attached to further institutional reform. What Europe needs is a Capacity to Act.

Oh masters, if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong -- who, you all know, are honourable men. I will not do them wrong. I rather choose to wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, than I will wrong such honourable men.

(62)

The EU and the US have failed to reach an agreement on airline passenger data sharing. This is a euphemism. The US is demanding information on all travellers that the European Court of Justice says violates our privacy, and the EU countries have been trying to square the circle. They have failed so far.

Let us be clear. The member states want to do it. All 25 of them, despite Germany's constitutional data protections. They would love to give the FBI your travel plans, bank account details and dietary preferences. UKgov is particularly keen, and makes sure such information is always sent ahead from UK flights to such friendly, peaceful and enlightened regimes as the People's Republic of China (it bullied the other EU states into accepting the principle of requiring carriers to retain all communications data for state inspection). What is stopping this becoming an universal convention is not European states but the independent, supra-national institutions of the Union.

(21)

Whilst travelling down towards the station in Brussels with some friends, one could not help noticing one street full of coffee bars, frequented solely by the male of the species, replicating a corner of Algiers or Tunis. Whilst new to me, this is not an infrequent encounter for the traveller in the Low Countries or France.

As vast portions of the urban geography continue to be recast in the Maghreb mould, and the demographics of immigration and indigenous wind down play out, I asked myself: which European Union Member State is most likely to join the Arab League (perhaps the Maghreb subset) or Organisation of Islamic Conferences in the next few years? Albania, Uganda and Guyana are members of the latter. This would be the predictable 'next step' for democratic structures with a large minority Arab electorate.

(39)

Want to see Tony Blair getting a political kick in the cobblers?

Sweet. Agree or disagree, it is nice to see some political hardball. UKIP thrive on such confrontations. It is hard to imagine the pointless milksops of the 'Conservative' Party getting stuck in like that.

(14)

The utterly flaccid David Cameron has balked at even the token gesture of pulling his 'conservative' party out of the Euro-integrationist EPP in the European parliament. As withdrawal from the EPP would be little more than a minor token that did nothing beyond offer the tiniest of fig leaves to the now completely naked Euro-skeptic remnants within the Tory party, is anyone under any illusions now of his inclination to 'stand up for British interests' in dealing with the EU?

As having the Tories ditch the EPP (whose platform includes 'ever closer union') was one of the planks of his pitch to win the Tory Party leadership against David Davies, will conservatives who are not pure Blairite (or perhaps even Heathite) now admit they have been screwed (and not in a fun way) and finally decamp from Cameron's appalling social democratic party?

(17)

Alain Lamassoure, a prominent French (naturally) MEP is proposing the idea of a pan-European tax on e-mail and SMS text messages and is quoted as saying:

"Exchanges between countries have ballooned, so everyone would understand that the money to finance the EU should come from the benefits engendered by the EU."

Huh? I hate to break this to Mr. Lamassoure but countries neither communicate with each other nor 'exchange' with each other, companies and people do. Moreover I think the 'benefit engendered by the EU' is highly debatable. If I am understanding this klepto correctly (and as he is both French and a politician, that may be beyond me), he thinks that without the EU, people would not be able to exchange e-mails and SMS messages? And if that is not what he means, what the hell does he mean? I do not even grasp what he is talking about, let alone understand why even more money should be appropriated from people to pay for that sublimely corrupt institution.

(8)

Peter Mandelson has been an unmitigated disaster. Sign the petition to get him recalled.

(18)

The excellent Tim Blair notes a Telegraph article reporting that

European governments should shun the phrase “Islamic terrorism” in favour of “terrorists who abusively invoke Islam”, say guidelines from EU officials.

(55)

The latest wheeze of the EU is an online forum, probably designed to replace Wallstrom's blog, which decayed into a morass of anodyne tedium - another puffpiece for the Commission. When will politicians understand that blogs require authenticity?

The welcome message is inaccurate: the ideology of Europe, replacing the European Union. Balkans, Ukraine, Belarus, not part of the message:

Welcome to 'Debate Europe', our website for the wide debate on the future of the European Union. This website is our invitation to you to discuss with us your ideas, hopes and worries for Europe's future. With this site, we want to make contact with you and listen to what you think and propose.

There are the usual blog contributorns, haunting the official space that the EU provides for us. But the whole project is an unmitigated failure. Here are the results for the "popular" English language pages after approximately a week:

Europe's economic and social development: 64 comments.

Feelings towards Europe: 95 comments.

Europe's borders and its role in the world: 63 comments.

Not a roaring success!

(33)

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?

(60)

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!

(15)

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?

(76)

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".

(34)

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

(28)

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!

(31)

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.

(11)

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)

(42)

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.

(100)

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.

(20)

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.

(55)

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.

(9)

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).

(22)

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...

(18)

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.

(12)

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.

(16)

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.

(12)

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...?

(12)

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.

(15)

...on Waterloo Day, of course.

Addendum...

(36)

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.

(21)

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.

(29)

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.

(31)

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.

(11)

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.

(54)

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