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Climate Change
Blog Archive
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2011
(1596)
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December
(147)
- The invisible revolution
- Hannan loses it
- Find your inner ape
- Spot the difference
- The great and the good?
- What if
- Slow on the uptake
- Why we must leave - 5
- A perfect storm
- Standing up for Britain?
- Slaves to the media
- Home for the stupid
- Why we must leave - 4
- Catching up?
- Burn the boxes
- One-dimensional thinking
- A pre-New Year resolution
- This England?
- Babies at work
- The "bounce" fades
- Christmas greetings from Bradford
- Christmas shenanigans
- Why we must leave - 3
- A retreat into dogma
- Semi-hidden Europe
- Fantasy business
- "Trappists monks" do the Hallelujah Chorus
- Words have meanings
- Have yourself a very merry Christmas
- Why we must leave - 2
- Fantasy politics
- Why we must leave - 1
- A Bill goes to the Commons
- A War of Choice
- No disaster before Christmas
- You can see why
- Soap opera time
- Virgin hypocrisy
- That fantasy veto
- A little more optimistic
- Don't ask an economist for history lessons
- The propaganda continues
- Boring
- Vote for apathy?
- A policy vacuum
- Making a meal of a meal
- Jong-il is dead
- Randall at large
- Running it to the wire
- To the shame of us all
- A lack of rigour
- The truth will out II
- The facts of (political) life
- The truth will out
- Xenophobia
- The forum
- Playing it as a farce
- Nothing more to add
- Superbly put
- The Monnet play
- We need to win
- The fog of Europe
- The collapse of politics
- The yellow in peril
- All rather downbeat
- Ve haff vays
- Hidden Europe
- Now it's official
- Wrong questions
- A force for evil
- Gone missing
- A rum do
- Tribal loyalty
- Not all it seems
- Wow!
- Not even close
- These we kill
- Reality begins to intrude
- A media contrast
- A rare event
- The looting continues
- Courage is not enough
- The story so far
- A statement from the Great Leader
- A phantom veto?
- The agenda all along?
- Electoral deception
- Telling porkies
- From the horse's behind
- Now you see it, now you don't
- A waste of space
- When fantasy becomes reality
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- Settling down?
- The arrogance of the Anglo-centric élites
- Which is the master race?
- No one listens
- Just leave
- Not a referendum - a veto
- Does he read his own clog?
- The Grand Old Duke of York
- Spot the difference
- A history of failure
- A-level fail
- They are getting there
- For the record
- The tales of tosh
- Civil disobedience
- A lack of political momentum
- A tale of two fantasies
- The Cameron paradox
- Taking candy from a baby
- The arrogance of office
- A disgrace
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- Buying inflation?
- Another milestone
- Quick off the mark
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- Never mind the evidence
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- Tory Fail!
- Please let it fail
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▼
December
(147)
One senior Lib-lim, the disgraced former chief secretary to the treasury David Laws, is blaming The Boy's "veto" on a lack of British pre-summit preparatory work "to get some of the big nations on side and understand the concerns the UK had".
But doesn't the silly man recall the Welt online piece on the Thursday of the European Council, telling us that Cameron was "likely to find his European partners in no mood for British intransigence"?
At the time, it was very obvious what Merkel and Sarkozy were aiming for – they put it in a letter, and it was pretty obvious that they were not going to take anything less, having already seen off Van Rompuy and his proposal of 6 December.
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Then there was also the meeting between Sarkozy and Cameron, the week before the European Council. If there was going to be a meeting of minds, it would have been apparent then. But if he wasn't listening to Van Rompuy, it was pretty obvious Sarkozy wasn't going to be taking a lot of notice of The Boy.
At the time, there was a small but important detail. Sarkozy bid adieu to The Boy from the steps of the palace, leaving Cameron to walk the 100 yards or so to his car on his own. When it came to Merkel though, Sarkozy was with her right to the door of the car, right down to the lingering touch as the German chancellor slipped into her seat.
These small signs tell one a great deal. It was very obvious that the Franco-German motor of integration was lining up against perfidious Albion, and there was nothing Cameron could have done to stop it.
Laws, thus, is blowing wind. But it does beg the question as to what Cameron could have done. And here, if he had insisted on Van Rompuy convening an IGC, it is hard to see how he could have been refused. The "colleagues" would have been trapped into doing something they did not want to do – negotiating amendments to the Lisbon treaty – which The Boy could then have vetoed.
To that extent, Laws does have a point. At a European level, Cameron's tactics were flawed. But then, more likely Cameron was playing to his domestic audience. Flying out as the poodle of Brussels and returning the eurosceptics' darling, he has succeeded perhaps beyond his wildest dreams.
It is only the Lib-dems that seem to care what actually happens in "Europe", even if they can't actually be bothered to inform themselves properly about what is going on.
While some may rejoice in this presaging a break-up of the coalition, and an early general election (next Spring?), the thought of a resurgent Tory party sweeping into office, with their europhile leader at its head, does not exactly fill one with joy. And, if that has been the agenda all along, both the Lib-dims and the British public are falling for it.
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