We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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A mindboggling article on the TF1 (French TV) website.
Apparently, Jacqeues Chirac is dedicating today’s presidential press conference to the subject of EU enlargement. The analysis is that this will dillute French influence in the EU, shift the balance of power in a more “Atlanticist” direction, and help bring about back-door free-market reforms.
The French Socialist Party has decided to make the threat of a libertarian Europe (Europe libérale) the main plank of its European election campaign, citing the EU constitution as part of the potential problem. They think it is going to be amended into something terrifying (i.e. good). Especially horrible for the European left is the prospect of cross-border private welfare arrangements: buying private pensions and health insurance without the ‘protection’ of nationalized welfare monopolies. Get your life insurance in France, health insurance in Germany and your pension in the UK for example.
Jacques Chirac as the agent of Anglo-Saxon capitalists! Priceless.
Personally I do not know what to make of the referendum we are now promised about the EU constitution. Will the forces of darkness triumph, or will it be: NO!?
Patrick Crozier has no such doubts. In 1975, the verdict was Yes, but this time, he says, it will be different:
- We know what the EU is like.
- Then all the main political parties were in favour. Now they are not.
- Then most of the papers were in favour. Now most of them are not.
- Then, our economy was a laughing stock. Now it is the rest of Europe that has the problem
- Then, most businessmen were in favour. Now things are much closer.
- Although I don’t know what it was like then, now there are plenty of celebs prepared to endorse a “No” campaign.
Setting aside the matter of why he thinks Blair has decided to hold this referendum (and here is another explanation), is Patrick right? I want to believe him, but do I?
I have the feeling that the people writing this blog are not quite so confident, or why would they bother?
Is there simply no end to all the bad news?
Diplomats and leading experts are warning that the “chaotic” European Union is ill-equipped to cope with the biggest expansion in its history.
Shame, shame. A pox on humanity and all its works.
Finnish ambassador to the UK Pertti Salolainen, who said he was speaking in a personal capacity, said: “The EU is chaotic, it has no vision, no leadership and it seems it will have no constitution.”
Is there no justice in this wicked world? I do not know how I will sleep at night (speaking in a personal capacity).
So we are going to given a referendum on whether or not to sign up to the EU Constitution. Or not. Or maybe. Possibly. Not yet, but soon. In principle. In theory. For certain, provided conditions are right.
Lord knows! Like everything else concerning Britain’s relationship with Brussels this whole referendum issue is buried deep within a fog of obfuscation, misinformation, confusion and misdirection.
What is certain is that the government/media lie-factory is being cranked up to over-production mode forging weapon-grade children for deployment in the propoganda war ahead [“I think we should be a part of Europe so that we can all live together in peace”, said Heidi, aged 10. Yes, it really will be that fatuous and buttock-clenchingly embarrassing.]
So now is to the time for the forces of truth and light to step up to the crease, ready to hit the opposition for six. Among the fearless volunteers are the team behind a new blog called, simply, EU Referendum.
These guys have got the real skinny on the fetid labrynth of EU politics and they tell it exactly like it is. Pay them lots of visits to read, learn, grow and become a better human being.
According to super-rich, property magnate Will Hutton, we are all Europeans now:
There are strong reasons for Britain to want more than a common market like the rest of Europe, and to try, in the process, to create the European public realm we currently lack. We share, despite a multiplicity of languages and histories, the same core values – a belief in the social contract, an adherence to the idea of the importance of the public realm and shared views that capitalism must be fairly run.
Hutton’s Europe: a land of permanent paternalism.
I wonder if Mr. Hutton’s tenants have to tug their forelocks and call him ‘sir’?
A team from the EU Commission is hotfooting it off to North Korea in the wake of that ‘minor-train-incident-which-never-happened-and-anyway-even-if-it-did-it-was-caused-by-reactionaries‘:
Development spokesperson Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe said on Friday that a representative from the EU’s humanitarian assistance team in North Korea will visit the site late tonight (early morning local time) to assess the situation.
They may have to fly in some emergency directives. But, on to the truly pant-wettingly, hilarious, quote-of-the-week bit:
Asked whether the EU representative would be allowed to get a clear picture of the situation on the ground given the secrecy of the Pyongyang regime and the time elapsed since the accident occurred, Mr Ellermann-Kingombe pointed out that they had been invited by the authorities to visit the site.
“We have no reason to question their intentions”, he said.
And probably no motive either.
Many sound folks are already rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of the long sought UK referendum on adopting the terrifying EU constitution. The general received wisdom is that the anti-Constitution faction will win and that will be the end of Tony Blair’s political career… and certainly if it was held today it is hard to see any outcome other that a crushing victory for the anti-EU side and political ruin for Teflon Tony given that the latest YouGov poll (pdf file) shows only 16% would vote for the UK adopting the EU constitution, 28% were unsure and a whooping 53% would vote against it. Rule Britannia indeed!
But the promised referendum will not be today but rather at a tactical moment of Tony Blair’s choosing. People who see this ‘surrender’ to the idea of a referendum as a fortuitous laps of judgement of epic proportions would do well to ponder the effect that having notoriously Eurosceptic Britain go to the polls will have on the current negotiations with Britain more Federalist European ‘partners’ regarding the so called ‘red line’ issues of foreign policy, defence, social security and the British budget rebate.
Knowing that only if Blair can return home with ostensible triumph on those issues will he be able to credibly spin the EU constitution as a ‘British victory’, the Federalists will be faced with either the complete overthrow of their plans (Denmark or Ireland might be either ignored or finessed, but a British rejection is a rather different matter) or they can settle for a more gradualist victory for their cherished superstate.
Thus the prospects for Tony Blair arriving back and waving a piece of paper with Romano Prodi’s signature on it promising ‘Euro-peace in our time’ is by no means a fantastical scenario… and given the sheer ineptitude of the Tory party and the lemming-like Europhilia of the LibDems, it would be a brave man who predicts with confidence that this would not pull the Euro-sceptic’s political teeth.
Yes, with a little luck it could, and hopefully will, all go horribly wrong for the UK government and we could see the dismal Conservative party back in the saddle in Westminster in the aftermath of a Euro-Political meltdown of not insignificant proportions. However the prospects of Blair indeed getting Britain to sign up to a first iteration of the EU constitution if the Federalists play ball is by no means beyond possibilities. And if that happens, it means it is only a matter of time before the other issues are gradually chipped away in the years to follow. At that point there will be nothing left to fight for and I for in will be in the market for some property in New Hampshire. Do not underestimate Tony Blair.
This Guardian headline is terrifying, coming, as it most definitely does, under the “never believe it until it is officially denied” heading:
UK ‘will not bail out EU pensions crisis’.
This denial, on the other hand, might be quite good news:
Mr Brown insisted: “There is no intention of having a European health care system that replaces national health care systems.
My understanding is that, healthwise, they do things rather better on the Continent than we do here, so the fact that we absolutely, definitely, I deny that completely, no truth in that notion whatsoever, are not repeat not going to have a European health system here in Britain, i.e. we very possibly are going to have such a system, is quite cheering. (See the comment 4 on this posting if you doubt the ghastliness of Britain’s current arrangements.)
And then there is this:
He reiterated the government’s determination to resist any moves towards EU tax harmonisation. “Tax competition makes for a more efficient single market,” he stressed.
Things like this are never said until the contrary claim is presented in the form of a question. And that contrary claim is at least as likely to be true as any denial of it.
The EUro-ratchet effect means that it only needs one British politician to relax on any particular issue, usually as part of an attempt to hold back the inevitable on some other front, for the deal to be done.
Yes, I know, picking on the Guardian is just so easy that it is verging on bad form. It is rather like challenging a small child to a boxing match.
And speaking of small children, I hear the sound of the petulant stamping of little feet:
In our country, in our culture, at this time, any referendum on Europe is a pre-emptive cringe towards the Murdoch press and the tabloids. Forget any idea that the referendum debate will be Plato’s Republic in action. It will inescapably be a contest fought on terms dictated by the unelected media rather than by the elected politicians.
This is where the European Union referendum really will be a defining moment. It will mark the extraordinary watershed at which this country’s debased, biased and unaccountable media formally take control of the political process. The British media has often claimed that it has greater popular legitimacy than politicians – “It’s the Sun Wot Won it”, for example. Blair’s concession of the referendum marks the moment when politics formally bowed the knee and accepted that claim.
I can visualise Martin Kettle’s bottom lip trembling as bashes out every embittered word. For Mr. Kettle and his colleagues, the mere existance of anti-EU opinion is such a towering and monstrous inequity that advance tantrums are required to highlight the plight of the beleaguered federast to the caring world. He will probably start hijacking aeroplanes shortly and demand to be flown to Brussels.
And what is all this guff about ‘debased, biased and unaccountable media’, as if the Guardian is something other than a national newspaper and, ergo, part of the media? But then thwarted and sulky children often do retreat into consoling fantasy by claiming that their families are not really their families because their real families would not treat them so despicably.
Still, given the perenially low circulation (and their reliance on public subsidy) maybe there is a kernel of truth in the analogy. Nobody likes them, everbody hates them. I think they should go and eat worms.
This could all be a tease (there have been hundreds of similar reports about a referendum on scrapping the pound for the euro).
The EU constitution in itself may not be worse than what the British version is mutating into. If adopted our choices become a pan-European libertarian movement or a secession.
The latter may not be as easy as the Confederate attempt in 1861 from the USA (less public support in the UK, more heavily outnumbered by the rest of the EU etc). Hopefully such a secession could be more Slovenian than Croatian.
The advantage of a referendum is that it cannot be worse than letting the Prime Minister decide alone.
The disadvantage is that it will only happen once the result is known in advance to suit the government, so that when they win, it can slip through the single currency without a vote (that is what the French government did with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992).
Either way spread the word: by next weekend we could have a live campaign on our hands.
Nigel Meek draws the attention of readers of the Libertarian Alliance Forum to this leader in yesterday’s Guardian. He is right to do so. It is short enough and good enough to be worth reproducing in full, which he does for LAF, and which I do for Samizdata now:
It is difficult to find anything in the European Union more perverse than its continuing subsidy of sugar. It fails every test miserably. It is economic madness since the EU is shelling out hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money – that could be used to reduce its growing budget deficit – to grow crops at a loss that could be better grown elsewhere. It is immoral because subsidies prevent poor countries from growing sugar that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is also unhealthy because it is encouraging the subsidised output of a product that the World Health Organisation, courageously – in view of the vested interests attacking it – says we should be cutting back on.
If the figures – published in a new Oxfam report, Dumping on the World, this week – were applied to any other industry, they would be laughed out of court. Oxfam claims the EU is spending €3.30 to export sugar worth €1, an almost unbelievable support of more than 300% – and that is only part of the elaborate welfare package bestowed on the industry. These hugely subsidised exports are dumped on developing countries, snuffing out potential economic growth that could enable them to work their way out of poverty. All they want is a level playing field. Is that too much to ask for? Oxfam – quoting World Bank figures – also claims that sugar costs 25 cents per pound weight to produce in the EU compared with 8 cents in India, 5.5 cents in Malawi and 4 cents in Brazil. The world price for raw sugar is 6 cents a pound. It is bizarre that European governments reconciled, albeit reluctantly, to call centres being subcontracted elsewhere will not let go of sugar output which, left to market forces, would long ago have migrated to the third world. Sugar producers, with twisted logic, use Brazil’s low cost of output as a reason for retaining subsidies on the grounds that it will not be really poor countries benefiting, only the medium poor.
The simplest solution would be to abolish all agriculture subsidies, even though it would, in the short term, hurt a minority of poor countries that might lose out to the likes of Brazil. Once exceptions are granted, then everything is up for grabs, and trade and talks would be dragged down by interminable bargaining. If complete abolition is deemed impracticable in the short term, then at the very least Europe should commit itself at once to the complete abolition of all export subsidies, direct and indirect. Apart from the huge relief it would bring to poor countries, it would also restore Europe’s long-lost moral leadership.
It would take more than one measure of this sort to “restore Europe’s long-lost moral leadership”, but if such an unattractive delusion is what it takes to get rid of these vile and murderous subsidies – yes murderous, because economic failure is a matter of life and death, especially when inflicted upon the very poor, then so be it. Apart from that, I see nothing here to disagree with.
I posted here last summer about this blog. It is still going strong, and the ideas embodied in it still seem to be having an impact.
A cynical attempt to reach out to the pro-free-trade blogosphere, which has to get a nod from the real operation, the Guardian itself, otherwise it just looks ridiculous? Maybe, but who cares? And I am sure that Mr kick-AAS means every word of it. Ancient proverb say: window dressing often take over shop. What matters is that this kind of thing is being said, right across the political spectrum.
Europhile, n. (pronounced “yew-ro-file”) Person or institution with an enthusiasm about the merging of the European States into a single State, usually regardless of any other considerations. A Europhile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.
Urophile, n. (pronounced “yew-ro-file”) Person with an enthusiasm for being subjected to showers of urine. A Urophile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.
Now it would be easy and gratuitous of me to imply that both are one and the same, but this is obviously unfair.
One is a harmless pervert who engages in fantasies in private that involve no coercion against other people. The other is a dangerous pervert who conspires in private, and who needs to be exposed and subjected to public embarrassment.
The ‘e’ makes all the difference.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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