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Tony Blair is heroic, Churchillian, principled and upstanding.
I’ve been reading a lot of that kind of thing of late and at every incidence I am caught between doubling up in ironic laughter and throwing open the window to shout obscenities into the street.
I have no way of knowing for sure if this report is accurate. Certainly it’s appearance in the Guardian/Observer means a source-warning is essential. However, if it turns out that they are telling the truth, then the ‘heroic, Churchillian’ Mr.Blair is about to usher in the last stages of the Great Betrayal:
Tony Blair is to give Cabinet Ministers the green light to campaign to join the euro even though the majority of the key ‘five tests’ will not be met.
In the clearest signal yet that he wants to pave the way for Britain to join the single currency, Whitehall sources said that he will allow Cabinet members a ‘freer reign’ to push the arguments on the issue. When the results of the tests are announced in the next three weeks, Blair wants to make it clear that Britain has taken an ‘enormous step’ towards joining, and will argue that the British economy is now closer to that of other European countries, essential to the euro working.
The man who helped liberate Iraq from tyrrany could be about to sell Britain down the river to Euro-serfdom.
Many years ago, not long after I had graduated from law school, I briefly succumbed to a rather silly conviction that I was a cultural barbarian and this state of affairs could be addressed by becoming an afficianado of European cinema. I should admit that this conviction was in no small measure driven by the belief that being au fait with the work of European film-makers was a surefire way to impress the girlies.
So I started to spend much of my free time ferreting out art-house independent cinemas (of the kind that sold organic brownies in the foyer instead of popcorn) and sat through endless hours of turgid, narcolepsy-inducing, state-funded, navel-gazing about the tortured psychological relationship between a middle-aged sub-postmaster and his trotskyite revolutionary girlfriend in the seedy hostel they share with a couple of Vietnamese refugees on the outskirts of Hamburg. Or something.
These films have all amalgamated in my mind and I cannot remember the name of even a single one. After about six months, I decided that no woman was worth this level of constipation so I threw the towel in and went back to watching simplistic sci-fi blockbusters and gangster movies.
But it is because of that brief self-inflicted nightmare that I understand exactly how these guys feel:
The survey by the Parliament’s cultural committee concluded that EU consumers prefer foreign cultural goods – such as films and music – to European products.
About 40 per cent of respondents said that, in general, European citizens do not prefer European cultural products. The situation in the European film industry is particularly bad.
By ‘foreign’ I rather think they mean Anglosphere, especially Hollywood.
Anyway, as per usual for the Belgian Empire, the answer to this problem lies in a top-down political solution. Understandably alarmed by this disturbing outbreak of free market value judgements, the EU has swung into action and established a ‘Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport’ (no, really!) that has produced a ‘working document’ that reads pretty much like a script for one of the above-mentioned movies.
However, there are a few things that caught my eye:
Another challenge is how to stimulate the industrial actors to respond in time to loud-and-clear customer demand, in particular of the not-so-well-off younger generation, thereby focusing on long-term viability instead of on fast returns.
How is any ‘industrial actor’ supposed to recognise ‘loud-and-clear customer demand’ except by reference to the returns? Note how institutional the old soclialist canards have become. These people actually believe that the way to ensure an industry has long-term viability is to render it unprofitable.
The time has come to shape an inspired, efficient and democratically defined long-term cultural policy in order for the Union to make better use of its underdeveloped growth potential, as President Prodi repeatedly advocated in our House.
Right there is that sentence is an encapsulation of just about everything that is so grossly wrong with European thinking. The idea that in order to have more culture it must be defined and prescribed by a committee of appointed poobahs, pretty much guarantees that European cultural output remains as crap and unwanted as it clearly is now.
That the Russians should be such buffoons by backing Ba’athist Iraq long after it became clear they were going to suffer the full weight of an Anglo-American attack is remarkable. That the Germans should have done so is nothing less than astonishing.
Just as in the Falklands War, when Britain’s ‘ally’ France did not withdraw military assistance from Argentina until it no longer actually mattered, we have seen the European Union’s two most influential nations, France and now Germany, actively collaborating with national socialist enemies of Britain overseas.
Tony Blair has just lead Britain into a spectacularly successful war, but at a cost in British blood and treasure. Will even this revelation get Tony Blair to finally see the €uro-fedarists for what they are? Are these really the people he wants to bind the future of Britain to?
Wake up!!!
In what purports to be a big, back-slapping, wound-healing, Euro-unity love-in the heads of the current EU states and the ‘Vilnius 10’ are meeting in Athens.
The ostensible purpose of the conference is the execution of an Accession Treaty that will enlarge the Union from 15 states to 25. Unofficially it is also the first opportunity for pro and anti-war states to settle their differences and seek a common voice.
Fat chance!!
French President Jacques Chirac, who outraged east Europeans in February by slamming their support for the U.S.-led war on Iraq, warned the new EU members on Wednesday to do more to find common European stands.
By ‘common European stands’ what he actually means is that they must agree to having their foreign policy (and much else) decided for them in Paris. In effect, the other European states must become petit France.
“The European Union is about more than just a large market, common policies, a single currency and free movement,” he said pointedly. “It is more importantly about a collective ambition, shared disciplines, firm solidarity and naturally looking to the European family.”
The French cannot hide their ambition to mold the EU in their image and turn it into a power-bloc that will challenge the USA. They’ve got their work cut out for them.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, which reacted strongly to Chirac’s tirade in February, obliquely referred to the spat in his speech by saying in passing: “We want Europe to be based on wise transatlantic ties.”
I hope that the paladins in Washington realise just what an opportunity they have here to screw the French royally. There are festering divisions here that are just begging to be exploited.
Nor has this gone unnoticed by the British press. Speaking on television last night I heard the Sky News correspondent describe the entire conference as ‘rubbish’. In a welcome departure from strict anodyne reportage, he decided to tell it like it is and admit that this alleged show on ‘unity’ was nothing more than a potemkin effort designed to kid everyone that a country called ‘Europe’ lies just over the horizon.
Whatever else it may or may not have achieved, the Iraq war has driven a coach and horses through the fond ambitions of the enarques. The only real question is how long they will be able to maintain the pretense that tomorrow belongs to them.
Another two bite the dust.
This week gone past has seen both Hungary and Malta vote to become vassals of the Belgian Empire.
Not without significance, though, is the embarrassing lack of popular mandate apparent in both of these soon-to-be-smothered-in-regulations countries. A high turnout in Malta produced only a wafer-thin majority in favour. In Hungary, a very large majority in favour has to be read in the context of a pitifully low turnout. One can only imagine the extent of the bribes offered, favours invoked and threats implied in order to get the ‘right’ results. From North to South to East to West, the Empire continues its joyless advance with the all prosaic, depressing predictability of a tumour.
Where is it heading? Well, some of us have already guessed as much but British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan provides a sobering confirmation:
A false and dangerous idea is taking hold in Britain, especially among Euro-sceptics. It goes something like this. The Iraq war has wrecked plans for closer European integration. It has set Old Europeans against New ones, driven Britain back on the Anglo-Saxon world, reminded everyone of how much they rely on the Americans, and made the idea of a European Army seem laughable….
The trouble is that Euro-fanatics are prone to the same impulse. For them, the war is the strongest demonstration to date of why Brussels needs a unified foreign policy. Never again, they say, should the EU be enfeebled by internal divisions. Never again should Europeans be forced to watch in frustration as the Americans give some tinpot dictator a good kicking. Never again should London be allowed to behave in so non-communautaire a fashion…
“But it won’t happen,” say British commentators. Really? Two weeks ago, almost unreported, the EU army was deployed for the first time in Macedonia. “But it can’t work,” object the critics. This, of course, is what we all said about the Soviet Union and, in the long term, we were right. But it wouldn’t have been much fun to have been born in Russia in, say, 1910, and lived through the process of it not working.
It may well be that the European Army, like European taxation, European criminal jurisdiction and European monetary union, “can’t work”. But that won’t stop it happening. Just watch.
Not really any great surprises here. Just further confirmation that the 21st Century will see a new Cold War. The phrenology may be a little different but the lines are already being drawn. I have no doubt whatsoever as to which side will emerge triumphant but what worries me deeply is that Britain is already more than half-way signed up to the wrong side.
Now that dust is beginning to settle on Baghdad, the enarques of Europe and their toadying federast stooges in the UK are going to be putting volcanic pressure on Tony Blair to sign away the last remaining vestiges of British independence and offer up this nation in tribute to the secular Cardinals of Brussels. I am not at all sure that he will be able to resist this pressure. Worse, I am not at all sure he even wants to.
[My thanks to Philip Chaston for the link to the Daniel Hannan article]
Determined to prove that there is a bureaucratic solution to every problem, the European Commission has announced plans to set up a European Centre for disease control:
The European Commission is set, by the end of May, to propose that a European centre for disease prevention and control be set up.
The news comes as several parts of the world succumb to new cases of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) the flu-like virus which attacks the young, old, healthy and unhealthy alike – and has caused several deaths.
Cunning and astute as ever, the Commissioners already have a plan to prevent the spread of SARS in Europe. According to Dutch Health Commissioner Willy Van Der Pimp:
“No further cases of SARS will be allowed into the European Union as this disease does not conform to European safety standards”.
However French Commissioner Bertrand Maginot was even more forthcoming:
“We must abandon the idea that disease can be beaten by medical science. This is simplistic and dangerous and will only be the cause of more disease. Epidemics can only be prevented by negotiating with the various diseases as part of the political process.”
The Commissioners are in the process of forming a sub-committee to look into the ‘root causes’ of disease.
A follow up on the yesterday’s article about the EU constitution. In today’s Telegraph’s opinion section, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is concerned that “while we liberate Iraq, Europe is busy planning to enslave us”:
The EU will no longer be a treaty organisation in which member states agree to lend power to Brussels for certain purposes, on the understanding that they can take it back again. The EU itself will become the fount of power, with its own legal personality, delegating functions back to Britain. Draft Article 9 puts Brussels at the top of the pyramid. “The Constitution will have primacy over the law of Member States,” it says.
The new order may also be irreversible. Article 46 stipulates that the terms of secession from the EU must be agreed by two thirds of the member states. In other words, one third can impose intolerable conditions.
We can already see the impact of the EU fiasco in handling the Iraq crisis:
The EU will have the power to “co-ordinate the economic policies of the member states” and – showing some chutzpah given what happened over Iraq – “define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy”.
And there is a bit about, Tony Blair, our hero:
Tony Blair was slow to see the threat. Downing Street at first dismissed the convention as a talking shop, but woke up when the French, Spanish, German and Italian governments gave it irresistible authority by appointing to it their foreign or deputy prime ministers.
The Government then fell back to a second self-deception, imagining that France and Spain would join Britain in blocking any major assault on national prerogatives.
[…]
None of this has happened. France has abandoned Britain, and her own historical attachment to a Europe where national capitals always have the whip hand over Brussels. They seem to be accepting federalism as the price of relaunching the broken Franco-German axis. As for the Spanish, they are silent.
Scary stuff, please go and read the whole article.
A tough secession clause in the new European constitution would make it illegal for Britain to leave the European Union without permission.
Article 46 of the secret draft text, obtained by The Telegraph, says the terms of departure for any country wanting to leave must be approved by two thirds of member states.
The draft is to be presented this week to the 105-strong Convention on the Future of Europe by the praesidium, headed by the former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing. It is releasing the Europe’s first constitution piece by piece over the next few months.
The text, still subject to last-minute changes today, would allow a minority bloc of states to impose conditions, offering no guarantee that a departing country could keep its trading rights or reclaim currency reserves held by the European Central Bank.
David Heathcoat-Amory, a Tory MP on the convention, called the text outrageous.
It’s a prison clause, not a secession clause. We thought we could repeal the 1972 European Communities Act if the worst came to the worst, but this shows we’re no longer talking about a voluntary union you can leave whenever you want. It is the final extinction of parliamentary sovereignty.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory said the two European commissioners on the praesidium, France’s Michel Barnier and Portugal’s Antonio Vitorino, had pushed through a highly integrationist text.
Addendum:
for Matt Owen
During my search for breaking news for fast & furious warblogging on the Command Post, I came across this precious announcement:
The fledgling Euro-army launched its first military operation yesterday, picking the Balkan state of Macedonia as a trial run for future missions in Bosnia, Africa and the Caucasus.
A force of 320 soldiers wearing “Eufor” badges with the European Union’s blue and gold stars on their right shoulders took over peacekeeping duties at a ceremony in Skopje, replacing Nato troops who have already done the hard work of pacifying Macedonia over the past two years.
EU officials cite the mission as proof that joint defence plans agreed by France and Britain in 1998, and further honed by the EU a year later, remain on track despite the bitter differences over Iraq. While volleys of insults go back and forth across the Channel, British and French officials are meeting twice a week to lay the groundwork for a joint aircraft carrier battle group designed to project EU power around the world.
“You might not believe it, but Franco-British defence is going great guns”, said a senior diplomat. The general assumption in Brussels is that Tony Blair will commit Britain deeper to EU defence once the Iraq conflict is over.
Somebody please tell me that this is a joke…
Also posted on the Command Post
Malcolm Hutty spots someone taking a frequent ‘Samizdata.net’ position…
An article in the Telegraph argues that Britain should seek maximum political capital through institutionalising a re-invigorated permanent alliance with America. France and Germany should be left to take care of the neccessary fence-mending; since when has it been in Britains interests to increase French political influence?
So far, so very Samizdata. And not at all suprising for a Telegraph op-ed. However, down at the bottom of the web page is this significant byline:
David Frum was President Bush’s speech writer and author of his ‘axis of evil’ speech.
You do not have to believe in ‘argument from authority’ to realise that sometimes who is making an argument is as important as anything they say.
Malcolm Hutty
Polly Toynbee, doyenne of the transnational progressive movement and all-round-leftist prig, is shocked, shocked! that Tony Blair’s forthright denunciation of France’s perfidy over Iraq is damaging our prospects of getting deeper into bed with the Eurofederalists…
Once again <drums roll!> – excellent! Let’s hope that a woman who is so consistently wrong is actually correct on this one!
So it appears that we are now a few days, or possibly even a few hours, away from being engaged in an honest-to-goodness, actual, balls-out, fighting war. Despite the misgivings of Antoine Clarke, I believe HM forces will acquit themselves admirably although there is no doubt that the bulk of the war effort will fall upon the much larger US contingent.
We are here now because Tony Blair has prevailed over the anti-war sentiments of much of his own party. Without wishing to sing his praises per se, he has confounded the sizeable number of British commentators who believed that he did not possess the spine to see through his pro-war commitment. He clearly does and he clearly has. Last night’s vote in the House of Commons, on a motion to delay hostilities with Iraq, was defeated despite a record number of Labour rebels voting for it and, ironically, with most of the opposition Conservatives voting against.
Of the Conservatives who voted for the motion, some are undoubtedly what Mark Steyn has called ‘defeatist patricians’. In all but name they are Social Democrats and are driven by sentiments that are not so much anti-American as they are pro-EU. For them, the top-down, corporatist paternalism of Europe is much more resonant of the natural order of things than the racey vulgarity they see as intrinsic to the American way of doing thigs.
But there are others on the British right who are vigourously opposed to Britain taking any part in the attack on Iraq not because they harbour anti-American sentiments (indeed, they heartily reject such nonsense) but because they believe that it is not in British national interests to do so. They are far from confident that any US administration would go to bat for Britain in the way that Britain has gone to bat for America and whilst this may or may not prove to be the case, they (and I) do have genuine cause for complaint about the kid gloves that successive US administrations have put on when dealing with the IRA.
However, it would appear that at least some of isolationist argument in this regard is based on the erroneous (and largely left-inspired) view that Tony Blair is merely acting as George Bush’s ‘poodle’; that he will get his ‘orders’ direct from Washington and that he will send British troops off to yomp around the planet in whatever direction the Whitehouse commands.
It is this kind of thing that makes for good copy, but it is not actually true. For good or for bad, Blair has very much acted as his own man throughout this whole affair. Had it not been for Tony Blair, the Americans would almost certainly have not agreed to take (the ultimately fruitless) UN route to disarming Saddam. Had George Bush had his way, the war in Iraq would, by now, have been over and done with. Try telling anyone in Washington that Tony Blair is their ‘poodle’. I think you will be sharply disabused of any such view. → Continue reading: The widening channel
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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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