Never let it be said that it is only important tyrannical and totalitarian states that the EU wants to be friendly with. Fidel Castro of Cuba is really not that important but he is a totalitarian oppressor and he is not liked by the USA. So we ought to be friendly with him, say at least some of the EU’s politicians.
Having been friendly with him for decades and achieving nothing thereby, the EU governments imposed diplomatic sanctions last year after a crack-down on dissidents (described as US-backed mercenaries by the delightful Castro government, whose prize member Che Guevara has once again become the pin-up hero of every bien pensant in Britain and Europe) and the execution of three hi-jackers. The EU, let us recall, is very strongly against capital punishment.
At the same time the embassies in Havana started inviting those dissidents who happened to be out of gaol to their receptions. But that was in the bad old days of Prime Minister Aznar, described as the “little Führer with the moustche” by the delightful etc etc (see paragraph above).
The new Zapatera government, on the other hand, says that sanctions do not work, while friendly relations might. They never have in the past, but few politicians like to be bothered with details. The Spanish government proposes to put an end to those symbolic links with the Cuban dissidents and is calling on other EU states to do the same. It seems that EU diplomats are reasonably positive about the idea.
Of course, they say, they will require Castro to improve his civil and human rights record (well, I suppose you can always have more than none, as Alice was told at the March Hare’s tea party) and if he does not, well, they might impose diplomatic sanctions again. Or not.
To be fair, other European, even Spanish politicians find the idea of rewarding Castro for doing nothing for political freedom, one of the supposed cardinal beliefs of the EU, somewhat repugnant. Still, he is a tyrant, he is anti-American. We ought to support him.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Just to remind us all
The House of Lords, the part of the British constitutional structure that still believes in doing its job of scrutinizing carefully legislation and amending it, if needs be, as well as producing copious and carefully argued reports on various aspects of EU legislation, the constitution and many other matters, is looking into the matter of its members’ expenses.
Peers do not get paid but they do get daily expenses when they attend the chamber. They also get miniscule secretarial allowances. As part of the reviewing exercise the House of Lords produced comparative figures on how much the two Houses of the British Parliament and the European Parliament cost. I cannot, alas, put the charts but I can quote the figures. Here goes:
The 2003-04 total costs for the House of Lords were £61.1 million, for the House of Commons: £269.2 million and for the European Parliament £712.5 million of which the UK, with 87 members at the time, contributed £89.7 million.
Costs per member for the 2003-04 session were as follows:
House of Lords: £91,000, House of Commons: £409,000, European Parliament: £1,138,000.
I hope everyone feels happy now. And just to add to the general discussion of value for money, I may add that in the 2002-3 session, the European Parliament sat 161 days, the House of Commons 162 days and the House of Lords 174 days.
Here is the full set of figures as given in a written answer in July of this year.
Peers do not get paid but they do get daily expenses when they attend the chamber. They also get miniscule secretarial allowances. As part of the reviewing exercise the House of Lords produced comparative figures on how much the two Houses of the British Parliament and the European Parliament cost. I cannot, alas, put the charts but I can quote the figures. Here goes:
The 2003-04 total costs for the House of Lords were £61.1 million, for the House of Commons: £269.2 million and for the European Parliament £712.5 million of which the UK, with 87 members at the time, contributed £89.7 million.
Costs per member for the 2003-04 session were as follows:
House of Lords: £91,000, House of Commons: £409,000, European Parliament: £1,138,000.
I hope everyone feels happy now. And just to add to the general discussion of value for money, I may add that in the 2002-3 session, the European Parliament sat 161 days, the House of Commons 162 days and the House of Lords 174 days.
Here is the full set of figures as given in a written answer in July of this year.
Cheap booze or sovereignty
It looks like another confrontation between the UK government and the EU commission is on the cards – this one about the so-called "booze cruisers" and the UK’s reluctance to allow trippers to bring in unrestricted quantities of cheaper beer and baccy from abroad.
The commission is questioning the "disproportionate penalties", including goods and car seizures, that UK custom officials have applied to people returning home with large amounts of drink and tobacco. According to commission spokesman Jonathan Todd, the commission is going to decide today whether to refer the UK to the ECJ.
At the heart of the dispute is the "advice" from HM Customs that quantities brought in should be limited to a maximum of 90 litres of wine, 110 litres of beer and 800 cigarettes. The commission considers that these guidelines are indicative and should not be taken as a rigid rule by customs officials.
This is a tricky one for the Eurosceptic fraternity, as many benefit from being able to buy more cheaply abroad. But the issue is about sovereignty. The level of tax imposed on luxury goods like alcohol and tobacco is a sovereign decision of the nation state and the EU is effectively undermining the autonomy of the state by allowing citizens to circumvent the tax.
The loss to the Exchequer is variously estimated to be about £3 billion a year, which is no small sum, and what is lost in one sector must be recovered elsewhere. The EU is thus also influencing tax rates in other areas. Altogether, therefore, it is a choice between cheap booze or sovereignty – not a difficult choice: don’t you dare say "cheap booze".
The commission is questioning the "disproportionate penalties", including goods and car seizures, that UK custom officials have applied to people returning home with large amounts of drink and tobacco. According to commission spokesman Jonathan Todd, the commission is going to decide today whether to refer the UK to the ECJ.
At the heart of the dispute is the "advice" from HM Customs that quantities brought in should be limited to a maximum of 90 litres of wine, 110 litres of beer and 800 cigarettes. The commission considers that these guidelines are indicative and should not be taken as a rigid rule by customs officials.
This is a tricky one for the Eurosceptic fraternity, as many benefit from being able to buy more cheaply abroad. But the issue is about sovereignty. The level of tax imposed on luxury goods like alcohol and tobacco is a sovereign decision of the nation state and the EU is effectively undermining the autonomy of the state by allowing citizens to circumvent the tax.
The loss to the Exchequer is variously estimated to be about £3 billion a year, which is no small sum, and what is lost in one sector must be recovered elsewhere. The EU is thus also influencing tax rates in other areas. Altogether, therefore, it is a choice between cheap booze or sovereignty – not a difficult choice: don’t you dare say "cheap booze".
How Americans see it
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton takes both the American presidential candidates to task in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune.
According to her, the “European Union does not exist on the American political landscape” and searching through the two candidates’ campaign websites she came up with only seven mentions of the EU apiece. Of course, there may have been mentions of individual European countries but Dean Slaughter ignores that. She is merely astounded that so little attention should be paid to such an important player on the international scene in an election that is unusually centred on foreign affairs.
The trouble is, the international affairs it is centred on – if it is – are in the Middle East and the Gulf, where the EU has played an equivocal part to put it mildly. As far as Iraq is concerned what emerged is the complete lack of cohesion between all the member states.
Still, Dean Slaughter has a point: American politicians must start paying attention to this odd structure that is emerging as a political expression of all the international and transnational ideology that is determined to overcome liberal democracy. The problem is that she does not appear to understand much about it or be able to explain cogently why it is important.
These are the crucial arguments:
The problem is that any American - and contrary to some opinions, both the candidates have people in their entourage with real interest in European affairs – who looked at the reality of the EU, he or she would dismiss all the above as piffle.
Yes, the EU is big and has a large GDP. It is also economically stagnant. Is that a good thing for America or bad? Whatever it may be, Americans can do little about it. Yes, English is spoken widely in Europe. It is spoken widely everywhere. Those students that go to European (not EU) colleges, have no interest in the Union and at least one of the preferred destinations is in Switzerland. In any case, they have to go somewhere if they cannot go to the States.
The most bizarre part, as ever, is the comparison between American and EU ways of dealing with the world. Dean Slaughter is clearly not of the Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus school of thought, but I do wonder whether she has actually looked at the EU’s record in the last twenty years.
The EU has not built democracy anywhere, least of all within its own structures. It has taken in countries that were already either democratic or busy constructing democratic structures. As the EU tends to undermine existing democratic systems through its own managerial governance, the effect of its assistance and admonition, not to mention accession will be the exact opposite.
To be honest, the EU has not and cannot win any military victories, though it can undermine other people’s. It has not had to disarm anyone and its record in the Balkans during the nineties, when there were plenty of armed people around, is abysmal. Nor has it acutally been successful at substituting civilian for military power anywhere, preferring, instead, to be as chummy as possible with some of the worst dictators around.
This is the sort of thing that makes one despair. It is important to pay attention to the EU as its existence is undeniably important if only in a negative fashion. But what use is that kind of rather ignorant analysis?
According to her, the “European Union does not exist on the American political landscape” and searching through the two candidates’ campaign websites she came up with only seven mentions of the EU apiece. Of course, there may have been mentions of individual European countries but Dean Slaughter ignores that. She is merely astounded that so little attention should be paid to such an important player on the international scene in an election that is unusually centred on foreign affairs.
The trouble is, the international affairs it is centred on – if it is – are in the Middle East and the Gulf, where the EU has played an equivocal part to put it mildly. As far as Iraq is concerned what emerged is the complete lack of cohesion between all the member states.
Still, Dean Slaughter has a point: American politicians must start paying attention to this odd structure that is emerging as a political expression of all the international and transnational ideology that is determined to overcome liberal democracy. The problem is that she does not appear to understand much about it or be able to explain cogently why it is important.
These are the crucial arguments:
“Suppose the citizens of Ohio or Oregon or Alabama understood that the EU has a larger population and gross domestic product than the United States. That English is widely spoken as a second language. That most of the students who are either no longer applying to American schools or unable to enter the United States for a lack of a visa are choosing European universities instead. And that EU representatives are thick on the ground in many developing countries, both trolling for business and doling out aid and advice.What an extraordinary mish-mash. It does not get any better when Dean Slaughter tries to analyze how Europeans might feel about the EU, Europe, the democratic deficit, the constitution, whatever.
Suppose further that at a time when one of the most important issues in the U.S. election is which candidate is better placed to “win the peace” in Iraq and Afghanistan, American voters knew something about the EU model of building democracy – through assistance, admonition and accession negotiations. Americans would not likely believe that the prospect of EU membership, even if such a thing were possible, would have convinced the Taliban or Saddam Hussein to lay down their arms. But they might think that after the first flush of military victory the EU could teach America quite a lot about the exercise of civilian rather than military power.”
The problem is that any American - and contrary to some opinions, both the candidates have people in their entourage with real interest in European affairs – who looked at the reality of the EU, he or she would dismiss all the above as piffle.
Yes, the EU is big and has a large GDP. It is also economically stagnant. Is that a good thing for America or bad? Whatever it may be, Americans can do little about it. Yes, English is spoken widely in Europe. It is spoken widely everywhere. Those students that go to European (not EU) colleges, have no interest in the Union and at least one of the preferred destinations is in Switzerland. In any case, they have to go somewhere if they cannot go to the States.
The most bizarre part, as ever, is the comparison between American and EU ways of dealing with the world. Dean Slaughter is clearly not of the Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus school of thought, but I do wonder whether she has actually looked at the EU’s record in the last twenty years.
The EU has not built democracy anywhere, least of all within its own structures. It has taken in countries that were already either democratic or busy constructing democratic structures. As the EU tends to undermine existing democratic systems through its own managerial governance, the effect of its assistance and admonition, not to mention accession will be the exact opposite.
To be honest, the EU has not and cannot win any military victories, though it can undermine other people’s. It has not had to disarm anyone and its record in the Balkans during the nineties, when there were plenty of armed people around, is abysmal. Nor has it acutally been successful at substituting civilian for military power anywhere, preferring, instead, to be as chummy as possible with some of the worst dictators around.
This is the sort of thing that makes one despair. It is important to pay attention to the EU as its existence is undeniably important if only in a negative fashion. But what use is that kind of rather ignorant analysis?
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Decision time on the Special Relationship
Tomorrow, I will be giving a presentation in London with the above title, subtitled: "How military technology is forcing Britain to choose between the EU and the US." Much of the text is based on material already published on this Blog, but this is my first attempt to put it all together. It will need refining, so comments would be appreciated from those willing to read what is rather a long piece.
At a time when, according to the headlines, Britain and the USA have never seemed so close – with the Black Watch on stand-by to go to Baghdad in support of US forces – it seems rather odd to argue that the special relationship between the UK and America is under enormous stress. But that is my thesis. In this presentation, I will argue that the relationship is, in fact, at the point of fracture.
The core of that thesis rests on several points but central to it is my definition of the "special relationship". This, in my view, is one forged during the Second World War and tempered throughout the Cold War, to the extent that it rests on our military alliance with the US and is underpinned by close military co-operation between the two countries.
That co-operation is most evident to the expert eye. The separate forces, for instance, share so much of the same tactical doctrines that they are virtually inseparable – the similarities being evident in the very equipment both armies use.The different main battle tanks of the British and US armies – the Challenger and the Abrams – are essentially the same in performance and capability. The British FV432 APC is but a copy of the US M113; the Bradley and Warrior MICVs are virtually identical, and the current tactical thinking, embodied in the FRES and FCS concepts, about which I will have more to say shortly, stem from the same minds. The equipment is defined by the purpose, the purpose is defined by the thinking and the thinking is the same.
The Royal Marines train alongside the US Marines, the SBS train alongside the Seals, the SAS alongside the US Special Forces, RAF pilots alongside USAF pilots. Ditto Navy personnel, where cross-postings on nuclear submarines are an essential part of the manning rostas.
Both forces have an active programme of exchange postings, so that a US-badged aircraft could just as easily have a British as an American pilot. We share equipment, intelligence and, at a strategic level, work as one. The early warning system in Fylingdales is part of the US network of global early warning radars, the AWACs system is an integral part of the US system – and uses US equipment. US fighters based in Britain form an integral part of the British air defence system.
In fact, when the Tornado MRCA project was delayed – the fruits of a European co-operative venture – and the RAF ended up flying combat aircraft with concrete ballast in their noses instead of working radar sets, apart from a few squadrons of Vietnam era F-4 Phantoms, the only effective air defence in the UK was the USAF F-15 fighter wing flying out of Lakenheath.
Thus far, then, the thesis stands, that the "special relationship" is underpinned by military co-operation, and this has translated into firm, joint commitments, most recently in Bosnia, in Afghanistan and in both Iraqi wars.
Now, there is an essential element here, which permits and indeed fosters this co-operation and makes a military alliance work. that boils down to one word: "interoperability". The forces must be able to operate together at a technical level.
At a pedestrian, but nonetheless important level, tanker nozzles must be able to fit the apertures of all the vehicles and aircraft they are going to refuel, irrespective of which force operates them. Fuel specifications must be the same, ammunition must be standardised so that it can be used in the weapons of the different armies, and so on.
Much of this technical harmonisation has been achieved through the aegis of NATO, the "NATO standard" having dominated military logistic planning for over four decades. By and large, the programme has been successful.
However, things are about to change. In fact, we are on the threshold of a military revolution which, in its own way, is as profound as the move from the musket to the rifle, or the horse to the tank, where technology is about to dominate the battlefield. The problem is which technology, built by whom, and whether different technologies are sufficiently compatible to allow functional interoperability.
This brings me to the heart of my argument, but I must first explain something of the military background which has brought us to the current situation.
That story essentially starts with the Second World War and the development of Blitzkrieg, the deployment of massed formations of tanks operating independently as armoured divisions, backed by air support which acted as forward artillery.
The Blitzkreig concept survived the war and became the dominant mode of conducting warfare, but with an increasing level of integration with infantry formations and self-propelled artillery. Integral infantry formations were, in fact, again pioneered by the Germans, with their Panzergrenadiers, riding Hanomag (SdKfz-251) armoured half-tracks, alongside the tanks, as early as 1939 in the Polish campaign.
The Allies came late to using armoured personnel carriers, the first significant deployment being in "Totalize" during the battle for Caen in August 1944, when "defrocked priests" – M7s (105mm howitzers mounted on M4 Sherman chassis, with the guns removed to enable troop transport) - were used to great effect.
But it was not until after the war that the concept of APCs really arrived, in both Soviet forces and in what then became NATO forces. The USSR first used what amounted to an armoured lorry, in the BTR 152, replaced by the eight-wheeled BTR 60, while the US forces adopted the tracked M113 and the British the very similar FV432.
However, although these armoured vehicles operated alongside main battle tanks, their essential role was of the "battlefield taxi", conveying troops to the battlefield where they fought dismounted. Not until the late 1960s did the Soviets introduce the BMP 1, first seen by the West in 1967, which embodied a turret mounted anti-tank weapon and rifle ports, which turned the humble APC into a fighting vehicle in its own right. Thus, the Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicle (or MICV) concept was born. This was copied by the West Germans, in the Marder and then by the US with its M2 Bradley and by the British with the Warrior, allowing the infantry to fight mounted, alongside the tanks.
However, heavy armoured divisions, now in their final form, were already obsolescent, challenged by the development of increasingly efficient, hand-held anti-tank weapons, such as the RPG-7, and the light-weight anti-tank missiles such as the Sagger, which caused great slaughter of Israeli armour during the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Nevertheless, the dinosaur of the heavy armoured division survives to this day, and these formations provided the backbone of the armed forces, even in the second Iraqi War. But things were already changing and this is what is creating the problem.
Basically, the strategic emphasis has now shifted from envisaging conventional battles with massed armour, operating from fixed bases, to expeditionary warfare, fought anywhere in the world, often at short notice, independently of established bases. Crucially, the emphasis is on "rapid reaction", which requires speed of deployment feasible only with air mobility. The heavy tank and the MICV are not suited for this type of warfare.
In their place comes the light, wheeled armoured vehicle, the general weight limit being under 20 tons, allowing transport by the military transport workhorse, the C130. However, threats are as great as ever, if not greater, so the challenge was to provide the degree of protection needed, without the weight. The answer is technology or, to be more specific, technology-generated intelligence, which would allow early detection and recognition of threats, with a stand-off weapons capability which could neutralise those threats before they came close enough to do any damage.
That is the Future Combat System (or FCS) concept, a $110 billion project, currently underway for the US Army, mirrored by a similar but less ambitious project for the British Army, called the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES).
Simple though the concept might be, execution is extraordinarily complex, requiring cutting-edge technology to be brought to the battlefield. The idea plays out at several levels.
Firstly, the combat area should be dominated by multiple sensors, providing real-time intelligence on all significant threats. Secondly, that information should be distributed not just to command level but to all combat formations, right down to squad level, giving what is called in the trade, "exceptional situational awareness". Thirdly, that system should be meshed into the command and control apparatus, allowing decisions to be made on accurate, fresh data. Fourthly, this should be linked to long-range "smart" weapons systems, to provide targeting and guidance information, and post-strike data. Finally, all of this is linked to an advanced logistics system which ensures that the right supplies are in the right place, at the right time.
Without going into too much detail about the hardware, the surveillance system alone ranges from satellites, to airborne surveillance platforms – both manned and unmanned – themselves equipped with sophisticated radars, infra-red sensors, high definition video cameras and other devices – to ground-based mobile radars, infra-red sensors, remote, and air delivered vibration detectors, as well as the "mark 1 eyeball".
The key to making all this work, over and above the technology behind the equipment, is "networking". The whole combat formation is linked by a vast computer system - the US system alone requiring 32 million lines of computer code to ensure functionality – analogous to the internet, so much so that the shorthand for the system is the "tactical internet".
Therein lies the seeds of destruction of the special relationship. Even between different US manufacturers producing components of the same system, technical interoperability is such a major problem that industry competitors are forming joint committees to iron out the difficulties. Between different nations, producing their own versions of the system, interoperability problems multiply. Only with the utmost co-operation, backed by political will to make that happen, can ensure that such sophisticated networks, produced by different nations, are able to talk to each other.
Crucially, that political will is not there and co-operation between the US and the UK is breaking down. What started the rot was the realisation by the US that technology released to its trusted ally, the UK, was being passed on to its EU industrial partners, and thence ending up in the hands of potential enemies, such as China – a problem known as "leakage". The concern has intensified with the adoption by the EU of China as a partner in the Galileo satellite positioning system (an essential component of any network), rivalling the US "Navstar" GPS system.
Gradually, for entirely sound reasons, the US has been withholding sensitive technology from the UK to the extent that even though we are development partners in the Joint Strike Fighter project, it is currently refusing to release the source codes for the avionics systems. More recently, Congress refused to authorise a "waiver" from the International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) which would have facilitated the flow of technology to the UK. Then, within the last day or so, a senior US general warned that if the EU lifted its arms embargo on China, technology transfers would all but dry up.
On the other side, within the last week, the UK government has decided to award the contract for its fleet of support vehicles to a German manufacturer, in preference to a choice of two US-led consortiums. The significance of this is that the trucks come equipped with an electronic logistics network, which will subsequently have to mesh with the combat network that will drive FRES. Already, therefore, the UK is making decisions which drive it towards further European co-operation. With the US progressively withholding access to its technology, the technological divide is growing between European and US interests, as each develop their own rival systems.
The situation is thus rapidly coming to a head. If the UK continues down the line of closer co-operation closer with its EU partners, it will also risk complete exclusion from US technology. And with the growing complexity of systems, and the complete strategic and tactical reliance on them, the day will come when forces equipped with European-manufactured equipment will be unable to communicate, much less "network" with US equipment. Forces from the different nations will, therefore, be unable to operate alongside each other in a high threat environment, which means that the Iraqi situation, where British and US forces are fighting together, could no longer be repeated.
Thus, we are in a strange situation. Technology is now driving the politics, conditioning and constraining political choices, and dictating whether or not we can form military alliances. As we move further towards technological co-operation with our EU partners, and if the US continues to withhold its technology, the divide will grow to the point where the special relationship will end. At the moment, the situation is possibly recoverable - but not for much longer. Choices must be made and Britain can no longer fulfil its traditional – or assumed – role of providing a bridge between Europe and America. It is going to have to choose between the two.
At a time when, according to the headlines, Britain and the USA have never seemed so close – with the Black Watch on stand-by to go to Baghdad in support of US forces – it seems rather odd to argue that the special relationship between the UK and America is under enormous stress. But that is my thesis. In this presentation, I will argue that the relationship is, in fact, at the point of fracture.
The core of that thesis rests on several points but central to it is my definition of the "special relationship". This, in my view, is one forged during the Second World War and tempered throughout the Cold War, to the extent that it rests on our military alliance with the US and is underpinned by close military co-operation between the two countries.
That co-operation is most evident to the expert eye. The separate forces, for instance, share so much of the same tactical doctrines that they are virtually inseparable – the similarities being evident in the very equipment both armies use.The different main battle tanks of the British and US armies – the Challenger and the Abrams – are essentially the same in performance and capability. The British FV432 APC is but a copy of the US M113; the Bradley and Warrior MICVs are virtually identical, and the current tactical thinking, embodied in the FRES and FCS concepts, about which I will have more to say shortly, stem from the same minds. The equipment is defined by the purpose, the purpose is defined by the thinking and the thinking is the same.
The Royal Marines train alongside the US Marines, the SBS train alongside the Seals, the SAS alongside the US Special Forces, RAF pilots alongside USAF pilots. Ditto Navy personnel, where cross-postings on nuclear submarines are an essential part of the manning rostas.
Both forces have an active programme of exchange postings, so that a US-badged aircraft could just as easily have a British as an American pilot. We share equipment, intelligence and, at a strategic level, work as one. The early warning system in Fylingdales is part of the US network of global early warning radars, the AWACs system is an integral part of the US system – and uses US equipment. US fighters based in Britain form an integral part of the British air defence system.
In fact, when the Tornado MRCA project was delayed – the fruits of a European co-operative venture – and the RAF ended up flying combat aircraft with concrete ballast in their noses instead of working radar sets, apart from a few squadrons of Vietnam era F-4 Phantoms, the only effective air defence in the UK was the USAF F-15 fighter wing flying out of Lakenheath.
Thus far, then, the thesis stands, that the "special relationship" is underpinned by military co-operation, and this has translated into firm, joint commitments, most recently in Bosnia, in Afghanistan and in both Iraqi wars.
Now, there is an essential element here, which permits and indeed fosters this co-operation and makes a military alliance work. that boils down to one word: "interoperability". The forces must be able to operate together at a technical level.
At a pedestrian, but nonetheless important level, tanker nozzles must be able to fit the apertures of all the vehicles and aircraft they are going to refuel, irrespective of which force operates them. Fuel specifications must be the same, ammunition must be standardised so that it can be used in the weapons of the different armies, and so on.
Much of this technical harmonisation has been achieved through the aegis of NATO, the "NATO standard" having dominated military logistic planning for over four decades. By and large, the programme has been successful.
However, things are about to change. In fact, we are on the threshold of a military revolution which, in its own way, is as profound as the move from the musket to the rifle, or the horse to the tank, where technology is about to dominate the battlefield. The problem is which technology, built by whom, and whether different technologies are sufficiently compatible to allow functional interoperability.
This brings me to the heart of my argument, but I must first explain something of the military background which has brought us to the current situation.
That story essentially starts with the Second World War and the development of Blitzkrieg, the deployment of massed formations of tanks operating independently as armoured divisions, backed by air support which acted as forward artillery.
The Blitzkreig concept survived the war and became the dominant mode of conducting warfare, but with an increasing level of integration with infantry formations and self-propelled artillery. Integral infantry formations were, in fact, again pioneered by the Germans, with their Panzergrenadiers, riding Hanomag (SdKfz-251) armoured half-tracks, alongside the tanks, as early as 1939 in the Polish campaign.
The Allies came late to using armoured personnel carriers, the first significant deployment being in "Totalize" during the battle for Caen in August 1944, when "defrocked priests" – M7s (105mm howitzers mounted on M4 Sherman chassis, with the guns removed to enable troop transport) - were used to great effect.
But it was not until after the war that the concept of APCs really arrived, in both Soviet forces and in what then became NATO forces. The USSR first used what amounted to an armoured lorry, in the BTR 152, replaced by the eight-wheeled BTR 60, while the US forces adopted the tracked M113 and the British the very similar FV432.
However, although these armoured vehicles operated alongside main battle tanks, their essential role was of the "battlefield taxi", conveying troops to the battlefield where they fought dismounted. Not until the late 1960s did the Soviets introduce the BMP 1, first seen by the West in 1967, which embodied a turret mounted anti-tank weapon and rifle ports, which turned the humble APC into a fighting vehicle in its own right. Thus, the Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicle (or MICV) concept was born. This was copied by the West Germans, in the Marder and then by the US with its M2 Bradley and by the British with the Warrior, allowing the infantry to fight mounted, alongside the tanks.
However, heavy armoured divisions, now in their final form, were already obsolescent, challenged by the development of increasingly efficient, hand-held anti-tank weapons, such as the RPG-7, and the light-weight anti-tank missiles such as the Sagger, which caused great slaughter of Israeli armour during the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Nevertheless, the dinosaur of the heavy armoured division survives to this day, and these formations provided the backbone of the armed forces, even in the second Iraqi War. But things were already changing and this is what is creating the problem.
Basically, the strategic emphasis has now shifted from envisaging conventional battles with massed armour, operating from fixed bases, to expeditionary warfare, fought anywhere in the world, often at short notice, independently of established bases. Crucially, the emphasis is on "rapid reaction", which requires speed of deployment feasible only with air mobility. The heavy tank and the MICV are not suited for this type of warfare.
In their place comes the light, wheeled armoured vehicle, the general weight limit being under 20 tons, allowing transport by the military transport workhorse, the C130. However, threats are as great as ever, if not greater, so the challenge was to provide the degree of protection needed, without the weight. The answer is technology or, to be more specific, technology-generated intelligence, which would allow early detection and recognition of threats, with a stand-off weapons capability which could neutralise those threats before they came close enough to do any damage.
That is the Future Combat System (or FCS) concept, a $110 billion project, currently underway for the US Army, mirrored by a similar but less ambitious project for the British Army, called the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES).
Simple though the concept might be, execution is extraordinarily complex, requiring cutting-edge technology to be brought to the battlefield. The idea plays out at several levels.
Firstly, the combat area should be dominated by multiple sensors, providing real-time intelligence on all significant threats. Secondly, that information should be distributed not just to command level but to all combat formations, right down to squad level, giving what is called in the trade, "exceptional situational awareness". Thirdly, that system should be meshed into the command and control apparatus, allowing decisions to be made on accurate, fresh data. Fourthly, this should be linked to long-range "smart" weapons systems, to provide targeting and guidance information, and post-strike data. Finally, all of this is linked to an advanced logistics system which ensures that the right supplies are in the right place, at the right time.
Without going into too much detail about the hardware, the surveillance system alone ranges from satellites, to airborne surveillance platforms – both manned and unmanned – themselves equipped with sophisticated radars, infra-red sensors, high definition video cameras and other devices – to ground-based mobile radars, infra-red sensors, remote, and air delivered vibration detectors, as well as the "mark 1 eyeball".
The key to making all this work, over and above the technology behind the equipment, is "networking". The whole combat formation is linked by a vast computer system - the US system alone requiring 32 million lines of computer code to ensure functionality – analogous to the internet, so much so that the shorthand for the system is the "tactical internet".
Therein lies the seeds of destruction of the special relationship. Even between different US manufacturers producing components of the same system, technical interoperability is such a major problem that industry competitors are forming joint committees to iron out the difficulties. Between different nations, producing their own versions of the system, interoperability problems multiply. Only with the utmost co-operation, backed by political will to make that happen, can ensure that such sophisticated networks, produced by different nations, are able to talk to each other.
Crucially, that political will is not there and co-operation between the US and the UK is breaking down. What started the rot was the realisation by the US that technology released to its trusted ally, the UK, was being passed on to its EU industrial partners, and thence ending up in the hands of potential enemies, such as China – a problem known as "leakage". The concern has intensified with the adoption by the EU of China as a partner in the Galileo satellite positioning system (an essential component of any network), rivalling the US "Navstar" GPS system.
Gradually, for entirely sound reasons, the US has been withholding sensitive technology from the UK to the extent that even though we are development partners in the Joint Strike Fighter project, it is currently refusing to release the source codes for the avionics systems. More recently, Congress refused to authorise a "waiver" from the International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR) which would have facilitated the flow of technology to the UK. Then, within the last day or so, a senior US general warned that if the EU lifted its arms embargo on China, technology transfers would all but dry up.
On the other side, within the last week, the UK government has decided to award the contract for its fleet of support vehicles to a German manufacturer, in preference to a choice of two US-led consortiums. The significance of this is that the trucks come equipped with an electronic logistics network, which will subsequently have to mesh with the combat network that will drive FRES. Already, therefore, the UK is making decisions which drive it towards further European co-operation. With the US progressively withholding access to its technology, the technological divide is growing between European and US interests, as each develop their own rival systems.
The situation is thus rapidly coming to a head. If the UK continues down the line of closer co-operation closer with its EU partners, it will also risk complete exclusion from US technology. And with the growing complexity of systems, and the complete strategic and tactical reliance on them, the day will come when forces equipped with European-manufactured equipment will be unable to communicate, much less "network" with US equipment. Forces from the different nations will, therefore, be unable to operate alongside each other in a high threat environment, which means that the Iraqi situation, where British and US forces are fighting together, could no longer be repeated.
Thus, we are in a strange situation. Technology is now driving the politics, conditioning and constraining political choices, and dictating whether or not we can form military alliances. As we move further towards technological co-operation with our EU partners, and if the US continues to withhold its technology, the divide will grow to the point where the special relationship will end. At the moment, the situation is possibly recoverable - but not for much longer. Choices must be made and Britain can no longer fulfil its traditional – or assumed – role of providing a bridge between Europe and America. It is going to have to choose between the two.
Saving the planet or protecting one's industry?
German Green politicians, bottle makers and drinks producers (both soft and not so soft, like the ubiquitous German beer) are trying to minimize waste, which is good for the environment, which is good for the planet. Right?
Wrong, says the European Commission. They are simply trying to undermine the single market and protect their producers. On the recommendation of the outgoing Internal Market Commissioner, Frits Bolkestein, the Commission is taking Germany to the ECJ. Incidentally, the incoming Commission will be continuing the case, whether it likes it or not. So much (yet again) for that new broom we keep hearing about.
The problem is that the law, introduced in January 2003, and reaffirmed on Friday by the Upper House of the German Parliament, requires a mandatory deposit of 25 eurocents for every non-refillable bottle and can of beer, mineral water and carbonated drink. Until then, although 75 per cent of beverages sold in Germany had to be in reusable containers there was no mandatory deposit. It is the latest addition to the extraordinarily expensive packaging regulation that has propelled the Commission into action.
Foreign companies are complaining that these recycling laws are losing them sales, particularly as in France, a country less interested in saving the planet, it is illegal to bottle water in reusable containers. Most companies would find it prohibitively expensive to do anything but market all drinks across the EU in disposable packaging.
Far it be from us to cast doubt on the good intentions of the environment-conscious German politicians but it is worth pointing out that an astonishing proportion of legislation and regulation, introduced supposedly to save the planet and improve the quality of life, as defined by the regulators, seem to result in protection for certain favoured industry.
Wrong, says the European Commission. They are simply trying to undermine the single market and protect their producers. On the recommendation of the outgoing Internal Market Commissioner, Frits Bolkestein, the Commission is taking Germany to the ECJ. Incidentally, the incoming Commission will be continuing the case, whether it likes it or not. So much (yet again) for that new broom we keep hearing about.
The problem is that the law, introduced in January 2003, and reaffirmed on Friday by the Upper House of the German Parliament, requires a mandatory deposit of 25 eurocents for every non-refillable bottle and can of beer, mineral water and carbonated drink. Until then, although 75 per cent of beverages sold in Germany had to be in reusable containers there was no mandatory deposit. It is the latest addition to the extraordinarily expensive packaging regulation that has propelled the Commission into action.
Foreign companies are complaining that these recycling laws are losing them sales, particularly as in France, a country less interested in saving the planet, it is illegal to bottle water in reusable containers. Most companies would find it prohibitively expensive to do anything but market all drinks across the EU in disposable packaging.
Far it be from us to cast doubt on the good intentions of the environment-conscious German politicians but it is worth pointing out that an astonishing proportion of legislation and regulation, introduced supposedly to save the planet and improve the quality of life, as defined by the regulators, seem to result in protection for certain favoured industry.
Not what it seems
According to the Telegraph today, North Sea cod stocks are now so low that they "may never recover". That is the view of Dr Euan Dunn, a fisheries expert working for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who has told The Daily Telegraph that: "I'm not sure that cod will recover, even with no fishing."
His view is based on the annual, official assessment of stocks produced by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), in Copenhagen. This is to be presented to the EU on Friday, and claims there has been no recovery of stocks, the fault being the politicians who "chose to ignore scientists' calls for a ban for the past two years."
The report also claims that a "substantial" amount of cod is caught illegally, even at a time when the stocks are in danger of collapse. European Union "experts" are now calling for a total ban on cod fishing in the North Sea, Irish Sea and west of Scotland.
But, as always, with these issues, nothing is ever quite what is seems. David Griffith, the general secretary of ICES, says: "There is still no clear sign that cod stocks in the North Sea, Irish Sea and west of Scotland are making a recovery", but he adds that, "A further problem that scientists face is substantial under-reporting of catches of cod, which makes it difficult to get a true picture of the state of these stocks."
Therein lies the central problem. Because of this "under-reporting" and the fact that over-quota cod are discarded, without any record being kept, no reliable data of fish stock can actually be obtained. Thus, increasingly, the Commission is relying on results from survey vessels which are totally unreliable.
In the North Sea cod fishery, the information comes from test trawls are made by DEFRA commissioned survey vessels, as part of the International Bottom Trawl Survey (IBTS) series. These are conducted in the spring and autumn, when standardised gear is shot in specific locations, at the same time each year, and trawling is carried out at a standard speed for one half hour. The catch is then measured, and compared year-on-year to determine changes in stocks.
The process has been compared with flying in a hot-air balloon, high over a land completely hidden by a thick layer of cloud, with the occupants seeking to determine what lives on the land, how many of each species there are, how they reproduce, and how the populations might change in the future – all with a basket and a long rope. The surveyors are asked to scrape the basket along the ground for half-an-hour or so, haul it up, and have a look at the contents, from which they are asked to "guesstimate" the population, a process which they then repeat at the same time the following year.
In fact, the problems are even greater than this analogy would indicate. Technically, the result is known as the "catch per unit effort" (CPUE), but it is well known that CPUE can vary over time and can be skewed by uncontrollable variables, giving different yields even when fish stocks are constant.
It may even indicate a decline in fish stocks that are actually increasing, or an increase where they are declining. Some US authorities, therefore, do not consider this to be the most appropriate index, but it is nevertheless being increasingly relied upon by the Commission, on which to base important policy decisions.
Not least of the problems is the choice of gear. In the interests of standardisation, the trawl net used is that designed specifically by the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) for carrying out fish surveys. It is called a Grande Overture Verticale trawl (GOV trawl), which replaced the Scottish-designed "Granton" trawl previously used.
Described by fishermen as a "semi-pelagic" trawl, this gear does not always make firm bottom contact, espeically when rigged by DEFRA surveyors. However, North Sea cod are bottom feeders and are known to adopt the escape strategy of diving for the bottom, under such nets. Therefore, they are not always caught by this type of gear, and test trawls using it will consistently underestimate the number of cod in this fishery.
Elsewhere, with different food sources, cod may become mid-water feeders and the gear will be more suitable. In other waters, it appears, cod adopt different escape strategies. Thus, as gear designers and fabricators will readily attest, there can be no such thing as a standard gear. Different nets – and techniques – must be adopted in different fisheries, even to catch the same species. Yet the scientists insist on using their standardised gear.
If this was not bad enough, since the survey technique demands that the same area is trawled each year, it can in no way represents either the actual practice of commercial fishing, or the nature of fish distribution. Extending the ‘balloon’ analogy, it is as if the surveyors are trawling a fixed area of a vast prairie in an attempt to estimate the population of a roaming herd of bison.
Fishermen readily report that fish constantly move around – to the extent that one area which has produced fish will not necessarily produce fish again. The whole nature of commercial fishing is that the fishermen still have to hunt for the fish and even trawlers working side-by-side have been known to produce very different catch levels.
Even then, it gets worse. The survey areas were determined many decades ago and are still used, but since they were established, oil production in the North Sea has become a major industry. Many fishermen point out that the industry has transformed the fishery, not least because of the 6,000 k of undersea oil pipelines which criss-cross the area. Their warmth promotes a highly localised increase in food supply, to which the fish gravitate, often deserting less fertile areas. Fishermen have thus taken to trawling along pipeline routes, but the very existence of the pipelines is ignored by the surveyors, who trawl away from these areas.
Other variables include the weather, with higher catches being reported in the turbid water after a storm. Wind direction in certain fisheries will have a considerable impact on the ease with which fish are caught, as will the tide state. Yet another variable is towing speed. Paired trawlers, able to maintain higher towing speeds, catch considerably higher proportions of larger, faster swimming fish than some of the slower, single trawlers. None of these factors are taken into account by DEFRA surveyors.
The situation thus exists where neither the fisheries-dependent data nor the fisheries independent data can give accurate information as to the fish stocks. Nor indeed can the combination of data help. One inadequate measure applied to a general model of fish stocks can result in poor performance of the whole model.
In other words, not only has the commission has no reliable data on which to base determinations of stocks, such data can wildly underestimate fish stocks in the fisheries monitored, or just as equally overstate the numbers of fish available for exploitation.
Nevertheless, the fiction is being maintained that the fisheries in the waters of EU member states are being properly managed on the basis of "scientific" information. Thus, according to The Telegraph, a spokesman for DEFRA said: "The EU will consider this advice in its scientific, technological and economic committee over the next two weeks and then prepare proposals for next year's total allowable catches."
The one thing that can be guaranteed from this is that they will get it wrong. For an analysis of what should be done, click here.
His view is based on the annual, official assessment of stocks produced by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), in Copenhagen. This is to be presented to the EU on Friday, and claims there has been no recovery of stocks, the fault being the politicians who "chose to ignore scientists' calls for a ban for the past two years."
The report also claims that a "substantial" amount of cod is caught illegally, even at a time when the stocks are in danger of collapse. European Union "experts" are now calling for a total ban on cod fishing in the North Sea, Irish Sea and west of Scotland.
But, as always, with these issues, nothing is ever quite what is seems. David Griffith, the general secretary of ICES, says: "There is still no clear sign that cod stocks in the North Sea, Irish Sea and west of Scotland are making a recovery", but he adds that, "A further problem that scientists face is substantial under-reporting of catches of cod, which makes it difficult to get a true picture of the state of these stocks."
Therein lies the central problem. Because of this "under-reporting" and the fact that over-quota cod are discarded, without any record being kept, no reliable data of fish stock can actually be obtained. Thus, increasingly, the Commission is relying on results from survey vessels which are totally unreliable.
In the North Sea cod fishery, the information comes from test trawls are made by DEFRA commissioned survey vessels, as part of the International Bottom Trawl Survey (IBTS) series. These are conducted in the spring and autumn, when standardised gear is shot in specific locations, at the same time each year, and trawling is carried out at a standard speed for one half hour. The catch is then measured, and compared year-on-year to determine changes in stocks.
The process has been compared with flying in a hot-air balloon, high over a land completely hidden by a thick layer of cloud, with the occupants seeking to determine what lives on the land, how many of each species there are, how they reproduce, and how the populations might change in the future – all with a basket and a long rope. The surveyors are asked to scrape the basket along the ground for half-an-hour or so, haul it up, and have a look at the contents, from which they are asked to "guesstimate" the population, a process which they then repeat at the same time the following year.
In fact, the problems are even greater than this analogy would indicate. Technically, the result is known as the "catch per unit effort" (CPUE), but it is well known that CPUE can vary over time and can be skewed by uncontrollable variables, giving different yields even when fish stocks are constant.
It may even indicate a decline in fish stocks that are actually increasing, or an increase where they are declining. Some US authorities, therefore, do not consider this to be the most appropriate index, but it is nevertheless being increasingly relied upon by the Commission, on which to base important policy decisions.
Not least of the problems is the choice of gear. In the interests of standardisation, the trawl net used is that designed specifically by the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) for carrying out fish surveys. It is called a Grande Overture Verticale trawl (GOV trawl), which replaced the Scottish-designed "Granton" trawl previously used.
Described by fishermen as a "semi-pelagic" trawl, this gear does not always make firm bottom contact, espeically when rigged by DEFRA surveyors. However, North Sea cod are bottom feeders and are known to adopt the escape strategy of diving for the bottom, under such nets. Therefore, they are not always caught by this type of gear, and test trawls using it will consistently underestimate the number of cod in this fishery.
Elsewhere, with different food sources, cod may become mid-water feeders and the gear will be more suitable. In other waters, it appears, cod adopt different escape strategies. Thus, as gear designers and fabricators will readily attest, there can be no such thing as a standard gear. Different nets – and techniques – must be adopted in different fisheries, even to catch the same species. Yet the scientists insist on using their standardised gear.
If this was not bad enough, since the survey technique demands that the same area is trawled each year, it can in no way represents either the actual practice of commercial fishing, or the nature of fish distribution. Extending the ‘balloon’ analogy, it is as if the surveyors are trawling a fixed area of a vast prairie in an attempt to estimate the population of a roaming herd of bison.
Fishermen readily report that fish constantly move around – to the extent that one area which has produced fish will not necessarily produce fish again. The whole nature of commercial fishing is that the fishermen still have to hunt for the fish and even trawlers working side-by-side have been known to produce very different catch levels.
Even then, it gets worse. The survey areas were determined many decades ago and are still used, but since they were established, oil production in the North Sea has become a major industry. Many fishermen point out that the industry has transformed the fishery, not least because of the 6,000 k of undersea oil pipelines which criss-cross the area. Their warmth promotes a highly localised increase in food supply, to which the fish gravitate, often deserting less fertile areas. Fishermen have thus taken to trawling along pipeline routes, but the very existence of the pipelines is ignored by the surveyors, who trawl away from these areas.
Other variables include the weather, with higher catches being reported in the turbid water after a storm. Wind direction in certain fisheries will have a considerable impact on the ease with which fish are caught, as will the tide state. Yet another variable is towing speed. Paired trawlers, able to maintain higher towing speeds, catch considerably higher proportions of larger, faster swimming fish than some of the slower, single trawlers. None of these factors are taken into account by DEFRA surveyors.
The situation thus exists where neither the fisheries-dependent data nor the fisheries independent data can give accurate information as to the fish stocks. Nor indeed can the combination of data help. One inadequate measure applied to a general model of fish stocks can result in poor performance of the whole model.
In other words, not only has the commission has no reliable data on which to base determinations of stocks, such data can wildly underestimate fish stocks in the fisheries monitored, or just as equally overstate the numbers of fish available for exploitation.
Nevertheless, the fiction is being maintained that the fisheries in the waters of EU member states are being properly managed on the basis of "scientific" information. Thus, according to The Telegraph, a spokesman for DEFRA said: "The EU will consider this advice in its scientific, technological and economic committee over the next two weeks and then prepare proposals for next year's total allowable catches."
The one thing that can be guaranteed from this is that they will get it wrong. For an analysis of what should be done, click here.
We’ve been there before
Identify the source of the following:
Two years later, we got the ground-breaking Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974, the thirty-year anniversary of which was celebrated by The Telegraph yesterday with an article headed: "Health and safety: Red tape threatens to undo the good work"
It notes the Health and Safety Act introduced "the first unified structure for dealing with this centrally important issue for employers and employees," which has transformed the attitude to safety in Britain's workplaces and dramatically cut the number of deaths and injuries connected with work.
Central to the spirit of the Act was that it was non-prescriptive. Rather than telling employers exactly what they could and could not do, it was based on goal-setting. Being non-prescriptive, the Act allowed the government to introduce regulations, supported by codes of practice, which give employers practical guidance on how to comply.
But, ever since it was introduced, the EU has undermined it, adding layer upon layer of complex, prescriptive regulation, of the very nature that Robens railed against. As a result, the Act has grown from a single statute into a mass of regulations that many in industry believe presents a serious challenge to the competitiveness of British business.
Cited by The Telegraph, Gary Booton, health, safety and environment director at the Engineering Employers' Federation, said that European directives were going way beyond realistic barriers and turning health and safety legislation into a burden likely to drive employers out of Britain.
Regulation had gone too far. "The main problem here is misdirection. There are real health and safety issues in our industries, about electrical safety, welding fumes, manual handling, moving about big structures - things that can really hurt and even kill people. But the Health & Safety Executive, when it enforces these directives as it has to, is going to be telling employers they should be spending their time and resources protecting workers from something that does them no harm.
"In terms of world performance, we are at the top of the health and safety league, but if you're an employer and you come under these ridiculous pressures, you're going to think about relocation."
Thus, Lord Robens’ work has gone to waste, undermined by the mindless bureaucrats of Brussels, but never fear, Mr Tony Blair is going to tackle EU "red-tape". That, at least, is what he told the CBI in Birmingham yesterday, also promising that he would require civil servants to take a more flexible approach to regulation.
"For decades, civil servants and politicians have prided themselves in dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" when legislating administrative rules," he said. "We need to change that approach to end gold-plating of European regulations, and rather than assuming everyone is a criminal who needs to be inspected to see if they are breaking the law, adopt a flexible approach to ensure we achieve our targets."
And thus did he pledge that he would make "better regulation" a centrepiece of the British presidency of the EU next year. But hang on a minute. Isn’t that exactly what the Dutch presidency offered in its own presidency statement?
It too identified "better regulation" as one of its priorities, noting that "European companies are overburdened by national and European legislation."
And guess what – the problem was to be tackled in Brussels "by means of the Action Plan for Simplifying and Improving the Regulatory Environment", which is meant to have been implemented by the end of 2004. If that is the case, what is the point of Blair making it one of his priorities and, if as we suspect, this latest "Action Plan" has absolutely no effect, what makes him think he can do any better?
In fact, against the regulatory ethos of the EU commission, Blair is but a babe in arms. He will have no more effect than the Dutch presidency, and the serried ranks of politicians before him, all of which have pledged to deal with red tape. What they should do, of course, is re-read Lord Robens’ report, but then his dictum was "less law", better law – something that the commission would never tolerate.
Forgive me, therefore, if I am entirely unimpressed by Mr Blair and his pledge. We’ve been there before.
"The first and perhaps most fundamental defect of the statutory system is simply that there is too much law… the sheer mass of law, far from advancing the cause of safety and health, may have reached the point where it becomes counter-productive"Believe it or not, these extracts are not from a contemporary report, but from one written in 1972, by a committee chaired by Lord Robens on Safety and Health at Work.
The second main defect is that there is not only too much law, but too much of the existing law in intrinsically unsatisfactory. The legislation is badly structured, and the attempt to cover contingency after contingency has resulted in a degree of elaboration, detail and complexity that deters even the most determined reader. It is written in a language and style that renders it largely unintelligible to those whose actions it is intended to influence".
Two years later, we got the ground-breaking Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974, the thirty-year anniversary of which was celebrated by The Telegraph yesterday with an article headed: "Health and safety: Red tape threatens to undo the good work"
It notes the Health and Safety Act introduced "the first unified structure for dealing with this centrally important issue for employers and employees," which has transformed the attitude to safety in Britain's workplaces and dramatically cut the number of deaths and injuries connected with work.
Central to the spirit of the Act was that it was non-prescriptive. Rather than telling employers exactly what they could and could not do, it was based on goal-setting. Being non-prescriptive, the Act allowed the government to introduce regulations, supported by codes of practice, which give employers practical guidance on how to comply.
But, ever since it was introduced, the EU has undermined it, adding layer upon layer of complex, prescriptive regulation, of the very nature that Robens railed against. As a result, the Act has grown from a single statute into a mass of regulations that many in industry believe presents a serious challenge to the competitiveness of British business.
Cited by The Telegraph, Gary Booton, health, safety and environment director at the Engineering Employers' Federation, said that European directives were going way beyond realistic barriers and turning health and safety legislation into a burden likely to drive employers out of Britain.
Regulation had gone too far. "The main problem here is misdirection. There are real health and safety issues in our industries, about electrical safety, welding fumes, manual handling, moving about big structures - things that can really hurt and even kill people. But the Health & Safety Executive, when it enforces these directives as it has to, is going to be telling employers they should be spending their time and resources protecting workers from something that does them no harm.
"In terms of world performance, we are at the top of the health and safety league, but if you're an employer and you come under these ridiculous pressures, you're going to think about relocation."
Thus, Lord Robens’ work has gone to waste, undermined by the mindless bureaucrats of Brussels, but never fear, Mr Tony Blair is going to tackle EU "red-tape". That, at least, is what he told the CBI in Birmingham yesterday, also promising that he would require civil servants to take a more flexible approach to regulation.
"For decades, civil servants and politicians have prided themselves in dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" when legislating administrative rules," he said. "We need to change that approach to end gold-plating of European regulations, and rather than assuming everyone is a criminal who needs to be inspected to see if they are breaking the law, adopt a flexible approach to ensure we achieve our targets."
And thus did he pledge that he would make "better regulation" a centrepiece of the British presidency of the EU next year. But hang on a minute. Isn’t that exactly what the Dutch presidency offered in its own presidency statement?
It too identified "better regulation" as one of its priorities, noting that "European companies are overburdened by national and European legislation."
And guess what – the problem was to be tackled in Brussels "by means of the Action Plan for Simplifying and Improving the Regulatory Environment", which is meant to have been implemented by the end of 2004. If that is the case, what is the point of Blair making it one of his priorities and, if as we suspect, this latest "Action Plan" has absolutely no effect, what makes him think he can do any better?
In fact, against the regulatory ethos of the EU commission, Blair is but a babe in arms. He will have no more effect than the Dutch presidency, and the serried ranks of politicians before him, all of which have pledged to deal with red tape. What they should do, of course, is re-read Lord Robens’ report, but then his dictum was "less law", better law – something that the commission would never tolerate.
Forgive me, therefore, if I am entirely unimpressed by Mr Blair and his pledge. We’ve been there before.
G5 meeting becomes G3 + 2
It seems that there were several disagreements in Florence over matters to do with security, if you consider building refugee camps in Libya security. Astonishingly, France and Spain (the new Euro-duet) were the ones to oppose the construction of camps for would-be immigrants outside the EU. (As Ukraine made it clear that it wanted nothing of this plan and as Austria is not part of the G5, it was only the North African camps that were discussed.)
Germany and Italy, the movers of the plan, do not seem to be too happy about the fact that it has been sunk like some boat full of refugees off the coast of Italy. Britain, though taking the German-Italian side, seems to be a little less peeved.
Then there was the question of a new chief for Europol. That, too, has run into the sands but not because of some principled stand against something or other. As ever, the matter hinged on politics. Germany wanted to renew the founding director, Jürgen Storbeck’s mandate. The French, mindful of the constitutional rule that says every organization must have as its second chief a Frenchman, wanted to appoint a top flic, Jacques Franquet. So that ended in a stalemate as well.
However, there was one agreement and that is on digital fingerprints and photographs being introduced in 2006 to make EU passports more secure. The idea that digital photographs can make anything secure is slightly absurd, but they had to have an agreement about something.
What’s the betting the whole fiasco will be presented as a huge victory for Britain by the British minister reporting to Parliament, while it is clear from all accounts that the main falling out was between France and Germany? And isn’t it odd that while MEPs fulminate about the Italian Commissioner’s opinions on homosexuals and the position of women, they do not seem to care very much about his fervent support for refugee camps in Libya?
Germany and Italy, the movers of the plan, do not seem to be too happy about the fact that it has been sunk like some boat full of refugees off the coast of Italy. Britain, though taking the German-Italian side, seems to be a little less peeved.
Then there was the question of a new chief for Europol. That, too, has run into the sands but not because of some principled stand against something or other. As ever, the matter hinged on politics. Germany wanted to renew the founding director, Jürgen Storbeck’s mandate. The French, mindful of the constitutional rule that says every organization must have as its second chief a Frenchman, wanted to appoint a top flic, Jacques Franquet. So that ended in a stalemate as well.
However, there was one agreement and that is on digital fingerprints and photographs being introduced in 2006 to make EU passports more secure. The idea that digital photographs can make anything secure is slightly absurd, but they had to have an agreement about something.
What’s the betting the whole fiasco will be presented as a huge victory for Britain by the British minister reporting to Parliament, while it is clear from all accounts that the main falling out was between France and Germany? And isn’t it odd that while MEPs fulminate about the Italian Commissioner’s opinions on homosexuals and the position of women, they do not seem to care very much about his fervent support for refugee camps in Libya?
China: the ratchet tightens
As the EU continues to consider whether to lift the arms embargo on China, the US is warning that military technology transfers to Europe could grind to a halt if the arms sales from EU member states do go ahead.
The warning comes from Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, who said the U.S. government would increase scrutiny of requests to transfer to Europe technology with military applications if Brussels endorses military hardware sales to Beijing.
"This is a major concern within the U.S. government," Kohler said. "The Chinese are spending a huge amount of money on military development. Without a doubt, they have the largest, most capable military in the region. The thought of making a political gesture to China by the EU by lifting sanctions, in our view, just opens the door for trade [of] potential technology that would be extremely detrimental to our friends and allies in the region and particularly detrimental to the United States."
The lifting of the EU ban "would cause great hesitation within the government and particularly within Congress," Kohler added. "It would probably cause us to scrutinize more — rather than less — the technology transfers."
The warning comes from Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, who said the U.S. government would increase scrutiny of requests to transfer to Europe technology with military applications if Brussels endorses military hardware sales to Beijing.
"This is a major concern within the U.S. government," Kohler said. "The Chinese are spending a huge amount of money on military development. Without a doubt, they have the largest, most capable military in the region. The thought of making a political gesture to China by the EU by lifting sanctions, in our view, just opens the door for trade [of] potential technology that would be extremely detrimental to our friends and allies in the region and particularly detrimental to the United States."
The lifting of the EU ban "would cause great hesitation within the government and particularly within Congress," Kohler added. "It would probably cause us to scrutinize more — rather than less — the technology transfers."
Monday, October 18, 2004
Journalists protecting their sources? Not in the EU
We return to the Tillack case, which we have covered not once, but twice already. (Um, three times.) However, it is not about to go away. Hans Martin Tillack, a journalist with the Stern magazine, was not known for particularly sceptical views about the European Union. This may have changed as a result of the treatment he has received and continues to receive. Or it may not.
Whatever his political views, he is clearly a good journalist and he wrote a series of extremely hard hitting pieces about EU fraud and the shenanigans within its institutions. It was clear that much of his information came from inside sources, in particular, probably from OLAF, the Commission’s fraud-busting organization that has had a somewhat chequered reputation itself.
Tillack’s flat and office were raided by the Belgian police in March, his documents and computer confiscated and he himself kept incommunicado for ten hours. His crime, allegedly, was the bribing of an official inside OLAF. This charge was quickly dropped but his papers stayed confiscated and it became obvious that the police raid had been carried out at the behest of OLAF, which is keen to identify Mr Tillack’s sources.
Backed by his publisher and the International Federation of Journalists, Mr Tillack filed a lawsuit at the European Court, his intention being to block the Commission’s access to his documents, still with the Belgian police. If OLAF or the Commission managed to get hold of them, Mr Tillack argued, his sources would be compromised.
A journalist’s right not reveal his (or her, for that matter) sources has been acknowledged, however grudgingly, by all the governments in the free world and has been upheld by the European Court of Human Rights. This is not an EU court but of the Council of Europe. Nevertheless, it is supposed to provide guidance to civic and human rights throughout Europe.
Let us also remember that the EU prides itself on its supposed historical heritage of freedom, democracy and human rights. Despite that, the ECHR has had to rule in the past against the EU courts in defence of press freedom and the need to protect journalistit sources.
The EU Court of First Instances has ruled against Tillack, deciding that the case was strictly Belgian matter, despite clear evidence that the Commission had organized the raid, his arrest and the confiscation of papers. The Commission will, presumably, now allowed to sift through the documents and deal with the possible sources as it sees fit.
This is not quite the situation in, for instance, Russia, where Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe has complained about the constant harassment meted out to its journalists and the highly regarded Valentina Politkovskaya was poisoned on her way to cover the Beslan siege. Nevertheless, such a cavalier disregard of the essentials of press freedom ought to worry some people. Strangely, there has been hardly any coverage in the British media. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has been following the story and wrote about it today in the Daily Telegraph; over the week-end there was a piece on EUObserver; today the Sydney Morning Herald picked up the story. One assumes Stern will write about it in due course. What of the others?
Whatever his political views, he is clearly a good journalist and he wrote a series of extremely hard hitting pieces about EU fraud and the shenanigans within its institutions. It was clear that much of his information came from inside sources, in particular, probably from OLAF, the Commission’s fraud-busting organization that has had a somewhat chequered reputation itself.
Tillack’s flat and office were raided by the Belgian police in March, his documents and computer confiscated and he himself kept incommunicado for ten hours. His crime, allegedly, was the bribing of an official inside OLAF. This charge was quickly dropped but his papers stayed confiscated and it became obvious that the police raid had been carried out at the behest of OLAF, which is keen to identify Mr Tillack’s sources.
Backed by his publisher and the International Federation of Journalists, Mr Tillack filed a lawsuit at the European Court, his intention being to block the Commission’s access to his documents, still with the Belgian police. If OLAF or the Commission managed to get hold of them, Mr Tillack argued, his sources would be compromised.
A journalist’s right not reveal his (or her, for that matter) sources has been acknowledged, however grudgingly, by all the governments in the free world and has been upheld by the European Court of Human Rights. This is not an EU court but of the Council of Europe. Nevertheless, it is supposed to provide guidance to civic and human rights throughout Europe.
Let us also remember that the EU prides itself on its supposed historical heritage of freedom, democracy and human rights. Despite that, the ECHR has had to rule in the past against the EU courts in defence of press freedom and the need to protect journalistit sources.
The EU Court of First Instances has ruled against Tillack, deciding that the case was strictly Belgian matter, despite clear evidence that the Commission had organized the raid, his arrest and the confiscation of papers. The Commission will, presumably, now allowed to sift through the documents and deal with the possible sources as it sees fit.
This is not quite the situation in, for instance, Russia, where Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe has complained about the constant harassment meted out to its journalists and the highly regarded Valentina Politkovskaya was poisoned on her way to cover the Beslan siege. Nevertheless, such a cavalier disregard of the essentials of press freedom ought to worry some people. Strangely, there has been hardly any coverage in the British media. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has been following the story and wrote about it today in the Daily Telegraph; over the week-end there was a piece on EUObserver; today the Sydney Morning Herald picked up the story. One assumes Stern will write about it in due course. What of the others?
A wake-up call
In and amongst the flurry of press today, not least the superb piece by Ambrose Evans Pritchard on the Tillack affair (which my colleague will be reviewing, when day job permits), is an intriguing piece in the Financial Times headed "Brussels power grab ahead of EU treaty".
This admirably confirms our earlier observations, in stating that "The European Union's new constitution is not yet ratified, but moves are under way in Brussels to anticipate some of its key measures, regardless of whether it ever comes into force."
What has caught the FT’s attention is MEPs, who gain new powers under the constitutional treaty. Yet, despite the constitution still not having been ratified, they are pressing for some of that extra influence now. Political leaders in the European parliament are drawing up a list of reforms they would like to implement immediately, reflecting "the spirit" of the constitution.
They plan to ask European leaders to consult them fully in two areas where they currently have no formal role: reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy, and legislation in justice and home affairs. The treaty would give them a legislative say in both areas, but European parliament officials say MEPs should at least be consulted on them before ratification.
"The parliament will propose making progress in areas where we don't prejudge the ratification of the treaty, but where it seems sensible to take steps forward in the spirit of the constitution," said one parliamentary official, cited by the FT.
At least Andrew Duff, a Lib-Dim member of the parliament's constitutional affairs committee, had enough sense of shame to admit to the FT that: "I think it could look terribly bad if we tried to pick à la carte from the treaty those bits we especially like." Nevertheless, he said the parliament should press the Council of Ministers to pre-empt the treaty by implementing the section which says they should decide new laws in public.
The FT also notes that the European parliament is not alone in its impatience to carry out "reforms" now. Eurozone finance ministers have pre-empted the treaty by appointing Mr Juncker as their semi-permanent president - dubbed "Mr Euro" - a job foreseen in the treaty. An embryonic EU diplomatic service is also being prepared for the time when, or if, a new EU foreign minister is created by the treaty.
But, as this Blog has pointed out, there are many other areas where the commission is pre-empting the constitution. This makes a nonsense of Prodi’s claims in the Sunday Times yesterday that "further integration is off the agenda". In fact, it makes a liar of him. Integration is not off the agenda. It is proceeding apace, constitution or no, and the sooner people wake up to that fact the better.
This admirably confirms our earlier observations, in stating that "The European Union's new constitution is not yet ratified, but moves are under way in Brussels to anticipate some of its key measures, regardless of whether it ever comes into force."
What has caught the FT’s attention is MEPs, who gain new powers under the constitutional treaty. Yet, despite the constitution still not having been ratified, they are pressing for some of that extra influence now. Political leaders in the European parliament are drawing up a list of reforms they would like to implement immediately, reflecting "the spirit" of the constitution.
They plan to ask European leaders to consult them fully in two areas where they currently have no formal role: reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy, and legislation in justice and home affairs. The treaty would give them a legislative say in both areas, but European parliament officials say MEPs should at least be consulted on them before ratification.
"The parliament will propose making progress in areas where we don't prejudge the ratification of the treaty, but where it seems sensible to take steps forward in the spirit of the constitution," said one parliamentary official, cited by the FT.
At least Andrew Duff, a Lib-Dim member of the parliament's constitutional affairs committee, had enough sense of shame to admit to the FT that: "I think it could look terribly bad if we tried to pick à la carte from the treaty those bits we especially like." Nevertheless, he said the parliament should press the Council of Ministers to pre-empt the treaty by implementing the section which says they should decide new laws in public.
The FT also notes that the European parliament is not alone in its impatience to carry out "reforms" now. Eurozone finance ministers have pre-empted the treaty by appointing Mr Juncker as their semi-permanent president - dubbed "Mr Euro" - a job foreseen in the treaty. An embryonic EU diplomatic service is also being prepared for the time when, or if, a new EU foreign minister is created by the treaty.
But, as this Blog has pointed out, there are many other areas where the commission is pre-empting the constitution. This makes a nonsense of Prodi’s claims in the Sunday Times yesterday that "further integration is off the agenda". In fact, it makes a liar of him. Integration is not off the agenda. It is proceeding apace, constitution or no, and the sooner people wake up to that fact the better.
Slaughter of the innocents
This morning, The Daily Telegraph carries our story on the slaughter of juvenile plaice in the Irish Sea by Fleetwood fishermen. They have been forced by EU law to use 80mm net mesh instead of the preferred 110mm – which lets the juvenile fish escape – on pain of having their fishing days cut back to the point where they are driven out of business.
For a more detailed, first-hand account of the slaughter, click here.
For a more detailed, first-hand account of the slaughter, click here.
Solving the Turkey problem
According to Zaman online, the Turkish daily, the EU has already worked out how it is going to exclude Turkey from membership of the EU, without ever having to reject it outright – thus avoiding a potentially crippling crisis.
The "spiller of beans" is Gokhan Gunaydin, president of the Turkish Agriculture Engineers Society, who says that the secret weapon is agriculture.
In the way of accession negotiations, each of the separate EU policies is treated as a "file", dealt with sequentially, so that one file must be closed before another can be opened, thus allowing negotiations to progress.
Faced with a potential funding commitment of £18.4 billion a year to support Turkish farmers – more than half the current CAP cost - Gunaydin says the EU will simply never close the agricultural file.
The negotiators will show that Turkey simply cannot obey the complex rules of the acquis communautaire, using that as an excuse to hold up talks. Eventually, Turkey may then be offered "special status" instead of full membership."
From the scale of the problem, one can see why. The EU, as it stands, has 13 million farms, but Turkey has 3 million, and the Union wants the Turkish labour force cut from 25 to 10 percent of the population.
In order to do this, Turkey will have to find new work for at least five million people currently working in the agricultural industry, something which, in its current state of development, it would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
The "spiller of beans" is Gokhan Gunaydin, president of the Turkish Agriculture Engineers Society, who says that the secret weapon is agriculture.
In the way of accession negotiations, each of the separate EU policies is treated as a "file", dealt with sequentially, so that one file must be closed before another can be opened, thus allowing negotiations to progress.
Faced with a potential funding commitment of £18.4 billion a year to support Turkish farmers – more than half the current CAP cost - Gunaydin says the EU will simply never close the agricultural file.
The negotiators will show that Turkey simply cannot obey the complex rules of the acquis communautaire, using that as an excuse to hold up talks. Eventually, Turkey may then be offered "special status" instead of full membership."
From the scale of the problem, one can see why. The EU, as it stands, has 13 million farms, but Turkey has 3 million, and the Union wants the Turkish labour force cut from 25 to 10 percent of the population.
In order to do this, Turkey will have to find new work for at least five million people currently working in the agricultural industry, something which, in its current state of development, it would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
The gravy train gathers yet more speed
Pity those poor MEPs. They have acquired more work with the accession of the new countries. According to the French Green representative, Gérard Onesta, he now has to follow 20 committees instead of 17 and he has only three full-time staff to do so. Speaking as someone who has never managed to find any information whatsoever about committees from a single MEP, no matter of what political persuasion, I am delighted to hear that M Onesta takes his job so seriously.
The trouble is that he thinks, together with many others, notably the Parliament’s bureau, which consists of the President Josep Borrell, who won the election under somewhat dubious circumstances and his 14 vice-presidents, that MEPs should have higher allowances. The suggestion is that their secretarial allowance be increased by €200 a month from €12,500 to €14,500. This will be on top of all their other allowances for office staff, travel, attendance of conferences and so on.
Curiously enough, there is no proposal that, as allowances increase, there should be a greater transparency in the way these are spent. As the European Voice says:
The trouble is that he thinks, together with many others, notably the Parliament’s bureau, which consists of the President Josep Borrell, who won the election under somewhat dubious circumstances and his 14 vice-presidents, that MEPs should have higher allowances. The suggestion is that their secretarial allowance be increased by €200 a month from €12,500 to €14,500. This will be on top of all their other allowances for office staff, travel, attendance of conferences and so on.
Curiously enough, there is no proposal that, as allowances increase, there should be a greater transparency in the way these are spent. As the European Voice says:
“Following a partial reform aimed at stopping abuse, MEPs must now produce contracts of employment for their assistants and tax certificates proving they are paying them the agreed salary. But the standard contract provided by the Parliament does not stipulate how many hours a week staff are supposed to work.”This is all sadly reminiscent of other accounting practices in the European Union. And, as Conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris (who, incidentally, has not as yet expalined why he agreed meekly to march back into the EPP group) and the Danish eurosceptic Jens-Peter Bonde, have both pointed out, this sort of development is not likely to improve the MEPs’ image with the public. Extraordinarily, they do not seem to care.
More on those pesky trucks
Following the nomination of the German company MAN Nutzfahzeuge, of Munich, as the preferred bidder for the £1.8 billion contract to supply trucks to the British Army, more has emerged to suggest that politics are driving the selection.
Unusually, one of the unsuccessful bidders has come out into open and condemned the selection. This is the US giant, the Oshkosh Truck Company, based in Wisconsin, with a British subsidiary in Llantrisant, Wales, and other British industrial partners.
This company already supplies wheeled tankers and tank transporters to the British Army, and is premier supplier of heavy tactical trucks to the US Army and Marines, with unrivalled combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia. In these theatres, in the words of Oshkosh chairman, Robert G. Bohn, they "have proven to provide awesome off-road mobility, reliability and overall performance".
Where, traditionally, rival, losing bidders keep quiet for fear of losing further work, Bohn issued a robust statement, saying, "We submitted a superior proposal in terms of vehicle performance, value for money, whole-life support and more than 90 percent UK industrial participation." He is to hold a further press conference on 28 October, when further fireworks are expected.
It has also emerged that one of the consortium partners to Stewart & Stevenson of Houston, another of the losing bidders, is the firm Multidrive of Thirsk, specialist in off-road industrial vehicles. So highly regarded is this company for technical innovation that it has been awarded a contract to develop the Future Cargo Vehicle (FCV) for the US Army.
Rather than technical excellence or even value for money, therefore, it appears that the winning German company had an ace up its sleeve. Some of its the truck parts will be manufactured in a plant in Vienna and Austrian government has offered to allow a 100 percent offset value on a deal to buy to Eurofighter for the Austrian Air Force. This has attracted heavyweight friends with one industry source claiming that Schröder had intervened at one point to lobby Blair on behalf of MAN.
Altogether, therefore, it seems as if the British Army is to be provided with second-rate equipment chosen, in part to rescue the troubled Eurofighter project, at a cost that does no favours to the British taxpayer. And, as we have observed before, despite the political implications, not a squeak of protest from the mainstream media.
Unusually, one of the unsuccessful bidders has come out into open and condemned the selection. This is the US giant, the Oshkosh Truck Company, based in Wisconsin, with a British subsidiary in Llantrisant, Wales, and other British industrial partners.
This company already supplies wheeled tankers and tank transporters to the British Army, and is premier supplier of heavy tactical trucks to the US Army and Marines, with unrivalled combat experience in Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia. In these theatres, in the words of Oshkosh chairman, Robert G. Bohn, they "have proven to provide awesome off-road mobility, reliability and overall performance".
Where, traditionally, rival, losing bidders keep quiet for fear of losing further work, Bohn issued a robust statement, saying, "We submitted a superior proposal in terms of vehicle performance, value for money, whole-life support and more than 90 percent UK industrial participation." He is to hold a further press conference on 28 October, when further fireworks are expected.
It has also emerged that one of the consortium partners to Stewart & Stevenson of Houston, another of the losing bidders, is the firm Multidrive of Thirsk, specialist in off-road industrial vehicles. So highly regarded is this company for technical innovation that it has been awarded a contract to develop the Future Cargo Vehicle (FCV) for the US Army.
Rather than technical excellence or even value for money, therefore, it appears that the winning German company had an ace up its sleeve. Some of its the truck parts will be manufactured in a plant in Vienna and Austrian government has offered to allow a 100 percent offset value on a deal to buy to Eurofighter for the Austrian Air Force. This has attracted heavyweight friends with one industry source claiming that Schröder had intervened at one point to lobby Blair on behalf of MAN.
Altogether, therefore, it seems as if the British Army is to be provided with second-rate equipment chosen, in part to rescue the troubled Eurofighter project, at a cost that does no favours to the British taxpayer. And, as we have observed before, despite the political implications, not a squeak of protest from the mainstream media.
A common European danger
Don’t panic, the EU superstate is dead. That is the message journalist Jasper Gerard, offers, based on an interview of Mr Prodi, conveyed by the Sunday Times today.
But the grounds on which Gerard bases his soothing nostrum is somewhat slender: "Those who fear the new European empire is growing too powerful should visit the palace of its king", he writes. "…if rival monarchs quaked before the magnificence of Versailles, the emperor of the European Union’s drab Brussels office block is more likely to elicit sniggers. It would not look out of place on a Slough trading estate."
Prodi, it appears, "is not mimicking Oval Office grandeur: his study is piled with inevitable EU reports; only a daubing of a giant cherub, borrowed from a real palazzo, suggests the user of this work station is more than a small-town functionary." And, according to Gerard, his pronouncements "will be strangely comforting to even the most Europhobic."
"Iraq has set off a war of words in European chancelleries between Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac et al that is deeply ‘personal’, souring all EU business; further integration is off the agenda, with a common foreign or defence policy unlikely for half a century; while Europe’s much trumpeted ambition to become the world’s most dynamic economy within a decade is a pipe dream unless we liberalise and invest".
Yes folks, the EU superstate is dead, and there is no prospect of the Franco-German engine chugging us inexorably to "federal Europe": it has long since conked out. "With the EU growing larger, the weight of the two countries decreases. But even with a union of 15 (before its recent expansion to 25 states) it became hard to say there was a dominating Franco-German engine," Prodi says. "It heaved hardest for its ‘national interests rather than integration’".
Er… so that’s all right then. The "superstate" and "federal Europe" is dead. We were dreaming about the constitution, due to be signed at the end of this month; we were having nightmares when we read the green paper on defence procurement; we imagined the establishment of the agencies – not least the Fisheries Control Agency; the developments in the field of justice and home affairs, and the European police college, are all fantasy.
The insidious creep of tax harmonisation hasn’t happened; the European space programme, the Single European Sky and the European Research Area, to say nothing of the commission’s encroachments into road safety policy, dictating the traffic laws for the whole of the EU, are simply figments of our imagination.
But Prodi mentions nothing of these, and I detect a trend here. With the constitution looming over us, the rush is on for reassurance… nothing to fear, people – the EU might have had ambitions for a superstate once, but that’s all over now… that’s in the past. It’s all sweetness and light, economic liberalisation and all that.
Does Prodi foresee Europe becoming a superpower rivalling the US? "In 50 years you can dream of anything, but you need decades for a united foreign policy and even longer for military policy… Only fear of a common European danger will change that." Writes Gerard, "Osama is perhaps Europe’s best hope for union: yikes".
Yikes indeed. In 1957, after the Suez crisis had proved to be the catalyst that drove the parties together to agree the Treaty of Rome, a colleague of Monnet remarked to him, only half in jest, that a statue should be erected to Nasser, as "the federator of Europe". Osama is fulfilling exactly the same role, and Prodi knows it. He and his successors will continue to exploit and expand the "fear of a common European danger". If you have a common danger, that justifies a common policy.
That was the most interesting part of the article, and Gerard uses it as a throw-away line. What it does show though is that, while the headline says one thing, the reality is wholly different. The integration ethos is still as powerful as ever it was. The great deception continues - and that truly is the "common European danger".
But the grounds on which Gerard bases his soothing nostrum is somewhat slender: "Those who fear the new European empire is growing too powerful should visit the palace of its king", he writes. "…if rival monarchs quaked before the magnificence of Versailles, the emperor of the European Union’s drab Brussels office block is more likely to elicit sniggers. It would not look out of place on a Slough trading estate."
Prodi, it appears, "is not mimicking Oval Office grandeur: his study is piled with inevitable EU reports; only a daubing of a giant cherub, borrowed from a real palazzo, suggests the user of this work station is more than a small-town functionary." And, according to Gerard, his pronouncements "will be strangely comforting to even the most Europhobic."
"Iraq has set off a war of words in European chancelleries between Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac et al that is deeply ‘personal’, souring all EU business; further integration is off the agenda, with a common foreign or defence policy unlikely for half a century; while Europe’s much trumpeted ambition to become the world’s most dynamic economy within a decade is a pipe dream unless we liberalise and invest".
Yes folks, the EU superstate is dead, and there is no prospect of the Franco-German engine chugging us inexorably to "federal Europe": it has long since conked out. "With the EU growing larger, the weight of the two countries decreases. But even with a union of 15 (before its recent expansion to 25 states) it became hard to say there was a dominating Franco-German engine," Prodi says. "It heaved hardest for its ‘national interests rather than integration’".
Er… so that’s all right then. The "superstate" and "federal Europe" is dead. We were dreaming about the constitution, due to be signed at the end of this month; we were having nightmares when we read the green paper on defence procurement; we imagined the establishment of the agencies – not least the Fisheries Control Agency; the developments in the field of justice and home affairs, and the European police college, are all fantasy.
The insidious creep of tax harmonisation hasn’t happened; the European space programme, the Single European Sky and the European Research Area, to say nothing of the commission’s encroachments into road safety policy, dictating the traffic laws for the whole of the EU, are simply figments of our imagination.
But Prodi mentions nothing of these, and I detect a trend here. With the constitution looming over us, the rush is on for reassurance… nothing to fear, people – the EU might have had ambitions for a superstate once, but that’s all over now… that’s in the past. It’s all sweetness and light, economic liberalisation and all that.
Does Prodi foresee Europe becoming a superpower rivalling the US? "In 50 years you can dream of anything, but you need decades for a united foreign policy and even longer for military policy… Only fear of a common European danger will change that." Writes Gerard, "Osama is perhaps Europe’s best hope for union: yikes".
Yikes indeed. In 1957, after the Suez crisis had proved to be the catalyst that drove the parties together to agree the Treaty of Rome, a colleague of Monnet remarked to him, only half in jest, that a statue should be erected to Nasser, as "the federator of Europe". Osama is fulfilling exactly the same role, and Prodi knows it. He and his successors will continue to exploit and expand the "fear of a common European danger". If you have a common danger, that justifies a common policy.
That was the most interesting part of the article, and Gerard uses it as a throw-away line. What it does show though is that, while the headline says one thing, the reality is wholly different. The integration ethos is still as powerful as ever it was. The great deception continues - and that truly is the "common European danger".
Not a free-marketeer or Atlanticist, just a plain old Blairite
While various nominees for Barroso’s Commission have been experiencing problems with the European Parliament (not that it can do anything very much apart from expressing disapproval of such outrageous things as Christian morality) the one who was supposed to be the real free-marketeer and Atlanticist has sailed through with flying colours.
Peter Mandelson, an astute politician and a staunch Blairite, whatever that may mean at any given time, gave all the right answers and pressed all the right buttons. No, he would never go against any existing EU policy (not that he could, as these policies together with the budget are laid down for years ahead) and no, of course, he will not bring any new ideas to his position. Yes, of course, he believes in free trade but only as defined by the EU, which is usually somewhat Orwellian in the true sense of the word, that is meaning the exact opposite of what it says. (Remember Ministry of Truth, whose job it was to produce complete lies day after day?)
Mr Mandelson is, as we know, very smart when it comes to politics, though, perhaps less so in private financial matters. He has always managed to present different faces to different people. (And, let it be said in patenthesis, proved himself to be a very skilful Northern Ireland Secretary.) It would not have taken him long to work out that the European Parliament and its so-called tough grilling of candidates is of little significance. On the other hand, why antagonize them unnecessarily? None of this proves that he is a free-marketeer or a true Atlanticist, merely that he is a Blairite.
His comments on the Iraqi war during a jamboree of centre-left politicians in Budapest prove the same point. Mr Mandelson suggested that the UN should have supported the war in Iraq; had it and the various members of the Security Council done so, much of the present instability in that country would have been avoided.
The second part of that statement is the sort of feel-good comment that is easy to make and impossible either to prove or disprove. There is absolutely no reason to suggest that the neo-Baathists and power-hungry extremist Shia clerics would have behaved any differently had that “second” UN resolution been passed. What makes anyone think that these people do not view the UN as another evil tool of decadent western imperialism?
Or perhaps Mr Mandelson meant that there would have been more international troops in Iraq to deal with the insurgency. Given the NATO and, specifically French and German shenanigans over the much needed troops in Afghanistan this, too, is questionable. Who else would have gone in and what would they have done?
The statement does, however, illustrate the obsession with the UN that European politicians and media seem to have. Mr Mandelson’s comments were analyzed in various ways to see whether he really meant that Britain should not have joined an undertaking that had not been blessed by the UN (having joined various others, such as the sorting out of the Balkans). He was very careful not to say so, merely to stroke the back of the pro-UN transnationalists, many of whom stop being transnationalists or internationalists once their own real or perceived interests are at stake. See France, Russia and China passim.
On the other hand Mr Mandelson’s statement could have implied a criticism of the UN, whose track record at sorting out tricky problems and standing up to aggressive dictators is distinctly patchy, and of those members of the Security Council who furiously opposed the war for their own private, less than admirable reasons.
Which brings me to the food for oil scandal, unsurprisingly not referred to by Mr Mandelson. The French media, as we know, is refusing to write about it, on the slender grounds that it is not news (what is, one wonders, in their opinion) and the outrageous fact that apparent French participants have been named while American ones cannot be until everything has been investigated.
I imagine some American participants have been named on the odd blog but, in any case, what is to prevent the French authorities investigating the various claims or the “accused” defending themselves? Of course, at least one of them, Charles Pasqua is under investigation in France for sundry other peccadillos, which makes him rather busy.
The British media has covered the scandal for one day, then decided that it was less important than the latest football story. Other media outlets have been more bemused. In a thoughtful leader on Friday the International Herald Tribune maintained that, despite the gradually emerging details of the enormous scam,
According to the Trib the preliminary findings published in the Duelfer report do not imply
Furthermore, the oil for food scandal may be the biggest but is only the latest tale of either corruption or incompetence connected with the UN in Srebrenice, Rwanda, DR Congo, the Balkans in general, most recently Sudan and others, too numerous to list.
The difference here is that the whole of the UN seems to have been involved. The Trib thinks that “Kofi Annan has wisely asked the respected Paul Volcker to head an investigation”. Others disagree. The Volcker investigation is suspected of being little more than a cover-up.
As Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation wrote in the Washington Times:
Meanwhile the World Health Organization, the UN’s agency that is supposed to deal with crises all over the world (though not, one assumes, in Geneva, where it is based) has issued an angry statement that the international community was not providing the money needed to deal with the emergency in Darfur.
It is interesting the way the UN, which has a great deal of money, as it happens, ceases to be the international community as soon as action is required. Besides, whose money are we talking about? The EU, has provided well over €100 million since the beginning of the year for various projects. It is just that there has been no accounting of the money and no evidence that any of it has done any good at all. The same can be said for the UN in general. Before countries, such as the USA or Japan contribute more to the never filled coffers of the UN and bearing in mind such problems as the food for oil scam as well as the remarkable lack of any action in Darfur, should we not have some accounting of what the WHO, the UN, the EU and all the other members of the “acronymia” have been doing?
I imagine Mr Mandelson knows all this very well. He also knows how to make friendly purring noises. It will be a pleasure to watch him in action in Brussels.
Peter Mandelson, an astute politician and a staunch Blairite, whatever that may mean at any given time, gave all the right answers and pressed all the right buttons. No, he would never go against any existing EU policy (not that he could, as these policies together with the budget are laid down for years ahead) and no, of course, he will not bring any new ideas to his position. Yes, of course, he believes in free trade but only as defined by the EU, which is usually somewhat Orwellian in the true sense of the word, that is meaning the exact opposite of what it says. (Remember Ministry of Truth, whose job it was to produce complete lies day after day?)
Mr Mandelson is, as we know, very smart when it comes to politics, though, perhaps less so in private financial matters. He has always managed to present different faces to different people. (And, let it be said in patenthesis, proved himself to be a very skilful Northern Ireland Secretary.) It would not have taken him long to work out that the European Parliament and its so-called tough grilling of candidates is of little significance. On the other hand, why antagonize them unnecessarily? None of this proves that he is a free-marketeer or a true Atlanticist, merely that he is a Blairite.
His comments on the Iraqi war during a jamboree of centre-left politicians in Budapest prove the same point. Mr Mandelson suggested that the UN should have supported the war in Iraq; had it and the various members of the Security Council done so, much of the present instability in that country would have been avoided.
The second part of that statement is the sort of feel-good comment that is easy to make and impossible either to prove or disprove. There is absolutely no reason to suggest that the neo-Baathists and power-hungry extremist Shia clerics would have behaved any differently had that “second” UN resolution been passed. What makes anyone think that these people do not view the UN as another evil tool of decadent western imperialism?
Or perhaps Mr Mandelson meant that there would have been more international troops in Iraq to deal with the insurgency. Given the NATO and, specifically French and German shenanigans over the much needed troops in Afghanistan this, too, is questionable. Who else would have gone in and what would they have done?
The statement does, however, illustrate the obsession with the UN that European politicians and media seem to have. Mr Mandelson’s comments were analyzed in various ways to see whether he really meant that Britain should not have joined an undertaking that had not been blessed by the UN (having joined various others, such as the sorting out of the Balkans). He was very careful not to say so, merely to stroke the back of the pro-UN transnationalists, many of whom stop being transnationalists or internationalists once their own real or perceived interests are at stake. See France, Russia and China passim.
On the other hand Mr Mandelson’s statement could have implied a criticism of the UN, whose track record at sorting out tricky problems and standing up to aggressive dictators is distinctly patchy, and of those members of the Security Council who furiously opposed the war for their own private, less than admirable reasons.
Which brings me to the food for oil scandal, unsurprisingly not referred to by Mr Mandelson. The French media, as we know, is refusing to write about it, on the slender grounds that it is not news (what is, one wonders, in their opinion) and the outrageous fact that apparent French participants have been named while American ones cannot be until everything has been investigated.
I imagine some American participants have been named on the odd blog but, in any case, what is to prevent the French authorities investigating the various claims or the “accused” defending themselves? Of course, at least one of them, Charles Pasqua is under investigation in France for sundry other peccadillos, which makes him rather busy.
The British media has covered the scandal for one day, then decided that it was less important than the latest football story. Other media outlets have been more bemused. In a thoughtful leader on Friday the International Herald Tribune maintained that, despite the gradually emerging details of the enormous scam,
“[t]he now-maligned program not only saved the lives of countless Iraqis, but it also kept the sanctions alive politically for years, right until the invasion.”Both of those statements are questionable, since a good deal of the money that should have ensured the saving of lives was diverted into private pockets. Furthermore, in so far as the “now-maligned program” kept Saddam and his psychopathic family in wealth and power, it was hardly a benefit for Iraq or the rest of the world.
According to the Trib the preliminary findings published in the Duelfer report do not imply
“… that the UN is fatally hobbled by corruption or incompetence.”That, surely, is a matter of opinion. The documents point to the fact that the oil for food scam reached into the heart of the UN establishment and involved several members of the Security Council. The Trib says that these countries were sympathetic to Iraq from the start. Either the fact that they were benefiting from the scam played a part in their sympathy “from the start” or they are naturally sympathetic to corrupt bloodthirsty dictators.
Furthermore, the oil for food scandal may be the biggest but is only the latest tale of either corruption or incompetence connected with the UN in Srebrenice, Rwanda, DR Congo, the Balkans in general, most recently Sudan and others, too numerous to list.
The difference here is that the whole of the UN seems to have been involved. The Trib thinks that “Kofi Annan has wisely asked the respected Paul Volcker to head an investigation”. Others disagree. The Volcker investigation is suspected of being little more than a cover-up.
As Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation wrote in the Washington Times:
“Members of the United Nations seem to have been deeply involved in the scandal. For example, Benon Sevan, once the executive director of Oil-for-Food, was included on an Iraqi Oil Ministry listing of hundreds of people who allegedly received oil vouchers as bribes from Saddam's regime. ...As such details have dribbled out, the U.N. has reacted predictably - by trying to sweep Oil-for-Food under the rug or change the subject. For example, the U.N.'s commission ofMr Volcker, respected or otherwise, does not seem to be too anxious to examine either Benon Sevan’s role or that of Kojo Annan, son of Kofi. His committee has no subpoena or enforcement powers. Nor will it have the authorit to punish or discipline anyone in connection with the scam. In fact, it is not clear who does have the authority to punish or discipline employees and people connected with the self-appointed guardian of the world’s morality, the UN. After all, it is not actually responsible to anybody.
inquiry, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has been at work for almost six months. But it doesn't seem to be making progress.”
Meanwhile the World Health Organization, the UN’s agency that is supposed to deal with crises all over the world (though not, one assumes, in Geneva, where it is based) has issued an angry statement that the international community was not providing the money needed to deal with the emergency in Darfur.
It is interesting the way the UN, which has a great deal of money, as it happens, ceases to be the international community as soon as action is required. Besides, whose money are we talking about? The EU, has provided well over €100 million since the beginning of the year for various projects. It is just that there has been no accounting of the money and no evidence that any of it has done any good at all. The same can be said for the UN in general. Before countries, such as the USA or Japan contribute more to the never filled coffers of the UN and bearing in mind such problems as the food for oil scam as well as the remarkable lack of any action in Darfur, should we not have some accounting of what the WHO, the UN, the EU and all the other members of the “acronymia” have been doing?
I imagine Mr Mandelson knows all this very well. He also knows how to make friendly purring noises. It will be a pleasure to watch him in action in Brussels.
Booker
In his column today, Booker leads with a story on the wind turbine battle… and it’s getting personal. He is chairman of a group that opposes the plan for the first giant turbine to surmount the 1,000-foot-high escarpment of the Mendip Hills in Somerset. This is not so much "nimby" as "niaby" – not in anyone’s back yard.
His "two" is headed "The end of the 60-year affair" which picks up on the story of the £1.8 bn contract for British Army trucks being awarded to a German firm, MAN-Nutzfarzheuge, a story which we ran last week on the Blog.
Booker also deals with the implications for the US special relationship, which we also rehearsed in the Blog, but it is interesting to note that, while he included in his copy a link to EU Referendum so that readers could find out more if they wished, this was not included in the printed copy or on the online version. Can't have informed readers can we?
In fact, it really is quite extraordinary that Booker alone should see the merits of the story, and include it in his column, crammed into a few tightly-written paragraphs, while the rest of the paper fritters away its space on such vital subjects as the account of women downloading from the website on Ken Bigley’s execution, the tale of two women who are about to canoe down the river Niger, how the sound volume of new films threatens the hearing of younger cinema-goers, and coffee made from civet cat shit.
All of these get full-page treatment, which rather confirms my colleague’s thesis in her Blog this morning, about the decline of the media. If sales of newspapers are declining, this is unsurprising, given the low-grade trivia to which they now devote their efforts.
For his third story, Booker deals with the quite remarkable episodes in the North East, where ministers are quite openly breaking the law, in promoting the regional assemblies – something you would think the media might report elsewhere if we still had grown-up newspapers – and then he retails the Fishing News story about the Whitby trawlers refused entry to the port to escape a storm.
In many ways, the Booker column is a newspaper within a newspaper. Many readers tell us that they only buy the Sunday Telegraph because of his column, and you will see stories there which many months later get front-page treatment in other papers. But it is a poor reflection of the media in general that so many of the stories you do read in Booker are only ever reported by him.
Thus does civilisation decline, not with a bang, but a whimper. As the world goes to hell in a handcart, we are fed a diet of stories about civet cat shit. Correction: delete "civet cat".
His "two" is headed "The end of the 60-year affair" which picks up on the story of the £1.8 bn contract for British Army trucks being awarded to a German firm, MAN-Nutzfarzheuge, a story which we ran last week on the Blog.
Booker also deals with the implications for the US special relationship, which we also rehearsed in the Blog, but it is interesting to note that, while he included in his copy a link to EU Referendum so that readers could find out more if they wished, this was not included in the printed copy or on the online version. Can't have informed readers can we?
In fact, it really is quite extraordinary that Booker alone should see the merits of the story, and include it in his column, crammed into a few tightly-written paragraphs, while the rest of the paper fritters away its space on such vital subjects as the account of women downloading from the website on Ken Bigley’s execution, the tale of two women who are about to canoe down the river Niger, how the sound volume of new films threatens the hearing of younger cinema-goers, and coffee made from civet cat shit.
All of these get full-page treatment, which rather confirms my colleague’s thesis in her Blog this morning, about the decline of the media. If sales of newspapers are declining, this is unsurprising, given the low-grade trivia to which they now devote their efforts.
For his third story, Booker deals with the quite remarkable episodes in the North East, where ministers are quite openly breaking the law, in promoting the regional assemblies – something you would think the media might report elsewhere if we still had grown-up newspapers – and then he retails the Fishing News story about the Whitby trawlers refused entry to the port to escape a storm.
In many ways, the Booker column is a newspaper within a newspaper. Many readers tell us that they only buy the Sunday Telegraph because of his column, and you will see stories there which many months later get front-page treatment in other papers. But it is a poor reflection of the media in general that so many of the stories you do read in Booker are only ever reported by him.
Thus does civilisation decline, not with a bang, but a whimper. As the world goes to hell in a handcart, we are fed a diet of stories about civet cat shit. Correction: delete "civet cat".
Help! Au secours!
The complaining from the mainstream media about the way it is being treated by its customers (abandoned to an ever greater extent) is continuing. We have seen various efforts at special pleading from the American newspapers and networks.
A New York Times article, reprinted in the International Herald Tribune by Frank Rich, speaks of a situation in which the media is under attack from the administration as never before. Actually, they seem to be getting away with saying rather a large number of things that oppose the administration, which is as it should be, but is hardly a sign of rampant censorship.
Nor am I greatly impressed by the suggestion that somehow the American media is not allowed to report the Iraqi “quagmire”. To a reasonably careful reader of newspapers it would appear that nothing else is reported from that country. It is interesting that this sobbing should appear just as another well-documented report is published by the American Enterprise Institute of a left-wing/pro-Democrat bias in the established media.
So, there we are: readers and viewers are looking elsewhere and the President does not think it worth his while to give too many press conferences. Not quite in the same category as journalists being arrested and murdered in Russia or Belarus or many, many other countries but it all adds to the grievances.
The same edition of the International Herald Tribune carries a similar sob story from France, where the main newspapers seem to have gone into terminal decline. Written by Catherine Field, a journalist based in Paris and, therefore, not perhaps a completely unbiased observer, the article starts on a trenchant note:
To begin with there is the outdated problem of:
The newspapers are struggling to find rich buyers who would not compromise editorial independence. And that, of course, is where the problem lies. Just how independent are those newspapers? Or for that matter any French mainstream media?
Do they, for instance, publish or present any views that are critical of the European project? Not so that you’d notice. Do they write critically about the French governing elite or openly about the scandals that darken the political scene with monotonous regularity? Hmm. On and off but not too much.
In the run-up to the Iraqi war when ferocious arguments raged in almost every country about every aspect of the issue, the only country outside the Middle East that presented a united front was France. Any criticism of Chirac’s opposition to the war was stifled (as Bernard Kouchner, formerly of Médecins sans frontières found to his cost) and no justification of the war was allowed to sully the high-minded columns of all those dying newspapers.
How much coverage has the food for oil scandal had in France? Absolutely minimal, despite the fact that several well-known French politicians seem to be involved. Haughtily the editors held their noses, announced that the story was old, though unpublished in France, and, anyway it was not fair that the French should be named while the Americans were not.
Faced with all this, can one be surprised that the French prefer to get their news somewhere else, preferably with a little less bias. Who knows? They might even chance on the odd blog that is critical of the great European Union, so magniloquently praised by French politicians for publication by their faithful journalists.
That brings me to the British mainstream media, which is apparently having problems recognizing that there is a problem. By a strange coincidence, on the same day as the above articles appeared in the Trib, there was a review in the Financial Times Magazine of three autobiographies by “[t]hree British cardinals of the Holy Media Church”, so described by John Lloyd, himself something of a papal nuncio.
The three authors are Michael Buerk, Jon Snow and Andrew Marr, well known and influential journalists, who do not seem to have noticed that their position is being eroded somewhat. Their pronouncements are no longer treated with quite the sort of respect they are used to. Even John Lloyd, their colleague and comrade in arms writes of them jocularly and acerbically, though he does not entirely dismiss their pretensions to intellectual authority.
Quite accurately he points to the parallels between the modern media and the mediaeval church, complete with not entirely credible self-laceration by the “cardinals”.
Then there is the question of criticism. Journalistic criticism is capricious. It is necessary, but it does not have to be reliable. It is not, pace Mr Lloyd, always directed at the state, but at certain elements in politics. Has anyone ever heard even one critical reference to the EU or the various international and transnational organizations from even one of the three authors?
Poor old Michael Buerk is saddled with an enormous responsibility by John Lloyd who is, in fact, a great admirer:
Is Michael Buerk really responsible for the view that Africa is a basket case and has to be supported by aid? Is he really the one who has opened the flood of charitable giving by people and organizations that has enforced a complete dependency culture, undermined the economy of various African countries, strengthened corrupt and kleptocratic political regimes which have spread violence across the continent? Was it the result of his reporting that the NGOs with their own anti-liberal agenda have tightened their grip on large chunks of that unfortunate continent and have used their power to prevent any real economic development? Surely not. No man should be made to carry a burden like that.
On the whole John Lloyd does not seem to be impressed by the pontification of the three journalists. Jon Snow uses his position to preach a simplistic anti-Americanism, which involves complete blindness to any other problem in the world.
Andrew Marr seems to think that the cheeky-chappie attitude of the British as opposed to the American journalist is praiseworthy, then agonizes about the need to be trusted and respected. Who knows, maybe he and his colleagues would be if they could be shown to have shouldered the responsibilities that should go with power.
While the “cardinals” engage in disputations, confess their sins, pronounce their lofty verdicts, their public begins to look the other way. A reformation is brewing. The situation could be retrieved but it would have to involve a change in the psyche and self-understanding of mainstream journalists on quite a dramatic scale. For one thing, they will have to stop seeing themselves as plucky fighters for the truth like the heroes of All the President’s Men. The real fighters for the truth are out there, beyond the reach of the grand seigneurs of journalism.
A New York Times article, reprinted in the International Herald Tribune by Frank Rich, speaks of a situation in which the media is under attack from the administration as never before. Actually, they seem to be getting away with saying rather a large number of things that oppose the administration, which is as it should be, but is hardly a sign of rampant censorship.
Nor am I greatly impressed by the suggestion that somehow the American media is not allowed to report the Iraqi “quagmire”. To a reasonably careful reader of newspapers it would appear that nothing else is reported from that country. It is interesting that this sobbing should appear just as another well-documented report is published by the American Enterprise Institute of a left-wing/pro-Democrat bias in the established media.
So, there we are: readers and viewers are looking elsewhere and the President does not think it worth his while to give too many press conferences. Not quite in the same category as journalists being arrested and murdered in Russia or Belarus or many, many other countries but it all adds to the grievances.
The same edition of the International Herald Tribune carries a similar sob story from France, where the main newspapers seem to have gone into terminal decline. Written by Catherine Field, a journalist based in Paris and, therefore, not perhaps a completely unbiased observer, the article starts on a trenchant note:
“Those who care about democracy and public awareness in France can only wring their hands as they watch the country’s national newspapers wither away. In a country of 60 million, there are just four national news dailies of any significance – Le Figaro, Le Monde, Libération and Le Parisien, a tabloid also sold in the provinces as Aujourd’hui en France.”Apparently the circulation is going down but, equally apparently, it was never that high, people preferring to read local and regional papers. Those who are interested in the news have been moving steadily over to the internet (much of which is in English – quelle horreur!)
To begin with there is the outdated problem of:
“… the cost of printing and distribution, an area where conservative union barons and cosseted workers have long held sway. The unions press demands on pay and rostering that drive up prices, enforce early deadlines – making for stale news – and often arbitrarily throw the switch to keep an issue off the streets.”How familiar to those of us with long memories.
The newspapers are struggling to find rich buyers who would not compromise editorial independence. And that, of course, is where the problem lies. Just how independent are those newspapers? Or for that matter any French mainstream media?
Do they, for instance, publish or present any views that are critical of the European project? Not so that you’d notice. Do they write critically about the French governing elite or openly about the scandals that darken the political scene with monotonous regularity? Hmm. On and off but not too much.
In the run-up to the Iraqi war when ferocious arguments raged in almost every country about every aspect of the issue, the only country outside the Middle East that presented a united front was France. Any criticism of Chirac’s opposition to the war was stifled (as Bernard Kouchner, formerly of Médecins sans frontières found to his cost) and no justification of the war was allowed to sully the high-minded columns of all those dying newspapers.
How much coverage has the food for oil scandal had in France? Absolutely minimal, despite the fact that several well-known French politicians seem to be involved. Haughtily the editors held their noses, announced that the story was old, though unpublished in France, and, anyway it was not fair that the French should be named while the Americans were not.
Faced with all this, can one be surprised that the French prefer to get their news somewhere else, preferably with a little less bias. Who knows? They might even chance on the odd blog that is critical of the great European Union, so magniloquently praised by French politicians for publication by their faithful journalists.
That brings me to the British mainstream media, which is apparently having problems recognizing that there is a problem. By a strange coincidence, on the same day as the above articles appeared in the Trib, there was a review in the Financial Times Magazine of three autobiographies by “[t]hree British cardinals of the Holy Media Church”, so described by John Lloyd, himself something of a papal nuncio.
The three authors are Michael Buerk, Jon Snow and Andrew Marr, well known and influential journalists, who do not seem to have noticed that their position is being eroded somewhat. Their pronouncements are no longer treated with quite the sort of respect they are used to. Even John Lloyd, their colleague and comrade in arms writes of them jocularly and acerbically, though he does not entirely dismiss their pretensions to intellectual authority.
Quite accurately he points to the parallels between the modern media and the mediaeval church, complete with not entirely credible self-laceration by the “cardinals”.
“The modern media, especially in the Anglophone democracies, are more pwoerful than any other institution, apart from the state, and they have increasingly seen it as their duty to challenge the state and its governing party with all the force they can muster. Like the mediaeval churchmen, they see that the media church has blemishes, faults, even sins, but it must as a whole be protected for it is Good – that is Good for Democracy. It is good because it is independent, questioning and open. Anything that goes beyond a bit of jocular ribbing is out: worse, it betrays the faith.”Democracy, of course, involves responsibility and accountability as well as power and critical pronouncements. The media has none of that, not even, as Mr Lloyd concludes, necessarily any loyalty to truth and fairness. Our journalist heroes have been left to pursue their own agenda and their own interests largely unchecked by any consideration. So far.
Then there is the question of criticism. Journalistic criticism is capricious. It is necessary, but it does not have to be reliable. It is not, pace Mr Lloyd, always directed at the state, but at certain elements in politics. Has anyone ever heard even one critical reference to the EU or the various international and transnational organizations from even one of the three authors?
Poor old Michael Buerk is saddled with an enormous responsibility by John Lloyd who is, in fact, a great admirer:
And the problems of Ethiopia were solved! And there was gladness everywhere! Oh no, sorry, the problems of Ethiopia seem to have become worse.“...there is a good argument that he [Buerk] is the most important journalist of the post-war period – as his pieces on the Ehtipian famine in 1984, themselves the result of dogged, sensitive and yet detached reporting, opened the floodgate of charitable giving and may have changed the way people and politicians viewed Africa.”
Is Michael Buerk really responsible for the view that Africa is a basket case and has to be supported by aid? Is he really the one who has opened the flood of charitable giving by people and organizations that has enforced a complete dependency culture, undermined the economy of various African countries, strengthened corrupt and kleptocratic political regimes which have spread violence across the continent? Was it the result of his reporting that the NGOs with their own anti-liberal agenda have tightened their grip on large chunks of that unfortunate continent and have used their power to prevent any real economic development? Surely not. No man should be made to carry a burden like that.
On the whole John Lloyd does not seem to be impressed by the pontification of the three journalists. Jon Snow uses his position to preach a simplistic anti-Americanism, which involves complete blindness to any other problem in the world.
Andrew Marr seems to think that the cheeky-chappie attitude of the British as opposed to the American journalist is praiseworthy, then agonizes about the need to be trusted and respected. Who knows, maybe he and his colleagues would be if they could be shown to have shouldered the responsibilities that should go with power.
While the “cardinals” engage in disputations, confess their sins, pronounce their lofty verdicts, their public begins to look the other way. A reformation is brewing. The situation could be retrieved but it would have to involve a change in the psyche and self-understanding of mainstream journalists on quite a dramatic scale. For one thing, they will have to stop seeing themselves as plucky fighters for the truth like the heroes of All the President’s Men. The real fighters for the truth are out there, beyond the reach of the grand seigneurs of journalism.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
A lurch to the right?
Some of the Eurosceptic community, to say nothing of the Guardian and the BBC, are getting terribly excited about an e-mail sent by John Redwood, claiming that it suggests the Tories will unilaterally withdraw Britain from its European Union agreements such as fisheries and agriculture, if it is unable to negotiate an agreed exit with its EU partners.
Writes the Guardian: "The shadow cabinet member for deregulation said this in an email to members of Ukip; on the surface it suggests he is willing to see a Tory government tear up its EU treaty obligations".
Redwood actually confined his comments to fishing, writing: "We will expect to win them [the powers] back by renegotiation. But if they refuse, we will amend the 1972 European Communities Act to take them back unilaterally. Easy isn't it?"
This is actually no more or less that Michael Howard stated on 10 June in a letter to the then shadow secretary of state for agriculture and fisheries, but many Labourites and commentators have taken it to be something new.
For instance, Alan Milburn, Labour's election coordinator, said the email was a further sign of how far Michael Howard was taking his party to the right and Denis MacShane, the Europe minister, claimed that the e-mail represented "a fundamental crossing of the line that separates legitimate criticism of EU policies to the unilateral policy of being willing to breach the EU treaties and quit the EU."
Sir Stephen Wall, a former British ambassador to the EU, also challenged Mr Redwood's approach, saying "civil servants are under obligation not to carry out any act that would be illegal. "
"And we could find ourselves before the European court facing very swingeing fines", he says. "I think it would be the first time that a British government had effectively torn up a treaty - that's normally something which dictatorships do, not normally something which democracies do."
In an attempt to clarify the scenario postulated by Wall, Jon Humphrys today interviewed Graham Brady MP, Conservative shadow minister for foreign affairs, on the Today programme, together with MacShane. The transcript is posted below, and I leave it to our readers to decide whether Brady succeeded.
John Humphrys: One of the big promises made by the Conservatives is that if they form the next government, they will pull out of the European Union fisheries treaty. Most people agree that the treaty has been bad for this country and our fishing fleet. But pulling out of it – that’s another thing. Could we do so without having ultimately… (break in recording)
Graham Brady: (recording resumes) …we believe very strongly that we can do it through renegotiation. The fisheries policy hasn’t just been bad for Britain; it’s been bad for fish stocks and it’s been bad for a number of other member states as well. And we believe we can achieve it through renegotiation but if necessary, and this is a crucial difference between the next Conservative government and the present Labour government, if necessary we will stand up for Britain’s interests; we will resort to domestic legislation and we will do it by that means if we have to.
JH: The effect of that could be that we leave the European Union
GB: We that’s not true and I think that er…
JH: Why not? If we unilaterally break a treaty, however we do it, you can… er use the language of politics – we will er… introduce new legislation, but what we would be doing would unilaterally, we’d be unilaterally leaving a treaty, abrogating a treaty to which we had signed up - and that would be tantamount to…
GB: (illegible) …a few years ago over the ban on British beef and that didn’t mean that France was going to leave the European Union.
JH: It wasn’t a treaty obligation!
GB: Well, they were clearly in breach of their treaty obligations
JH: Ah, but there’s all the difference isn’t there between saying that we will no longer have anything to do with this treaty, we will in effect leave this treaty, we will break it…
GB: We’re saying that we’d amend the treaty… and I think we..
JH: Well, what if they won’t let us amend it?
GB: Well, they will. And interestingly, if you look at some of the comments quoted yesterday in The Times, Monsieur Bayrou, the leaders of the UDF, a very pro-European centrist party in France, who was quoted as saying the EU cannot survive without Britain, which is much admired everywhere. We must find a way of keeping Britain inside and not resort to other ways forward. What we underestimate, what particularly this government underestimates, is how significant Britain is to the EU, how much they need to have us in the EU, and that’s why they constantly fail to negotiate as hard for Britain as they can, constantly fail to get as good a deal as they should, and that’s why we believe we could do so much better.
JH: All right. But ultimately, ultimately, if it comes to it, and it could – you acknowledge that it could; you think it’s unlikely but you acknowledge that it could – if it comes to it and the other countries, or some other countries say look, Britain simply cannot do this, we will not have it. Then what do you say? Do you say, OK, we’ll leave?
GB: No. I think what you have to realise that this will be in the context of a large
renegotiation of all of the treaties in any case…
JH: But you’re still not answering the question though, are you?
GB: Well… the question will be a very different question. Er.. the situation following, I hope, a Conservative victory in the next general election; following a "no" vote by at least this country and hopefully a number of other countries on the constitution will be a renegotiation of all the treaties in any case.
JH: I know, but if the negotiations don’t go the way you want them to, and you are faced finally with this critical decision – they won’t let us amend the treaty in the way we want to - would you in the final analysis say all right then, we’ll leave the club?
GB: No, we wouldn’t. Michael Howard has been very clear. We don’t intend to leave the EU. We don’t think it is necessary; we don’t think it’s appropriate or in Britain’s interests. What we do believe is that we can get a much better deal.
JH: OK…
GB: We can only get that better deal if we’re prepared to be firm, if we’re prepared to be very clear; if we’re prepared to fight our corner in the way that this government simply does not.
JH: Ah, but you’ve given away your final card, haven’t you. You know. You’ve actually said that we’ll make a big fuss, but in the end, its not…
GB: Not at all.
JH: That’s what you’ve just said..
GB: That’s the crucial distinction, that’s the crucial distinction . We said we’d use domestic legislation on this particular aspect, the Common Fisheries Policy. I think that is an indication to our colleagues in Europe how serious we are, and that we intend to succeed in renegotiation, and ultimately we will.
JH: All right let’s put that then to Denis MacShane. If they fail in the kind of renegotiation they want, could they use domestic legislation to get what they want, and if they can, why doesn’t the present government, your government do the same?
Denis MacShane: For the very same reason that John Redwood and Michael Howard didn’t do so when they were in Conservative governments; they didn’t renegotiate those policies when they were in power. Yes, I’m critical of them. But I can give you examples of other European countries who don’t like, for example, the challenge and the competition of Easyjet and Ryanair to their domestic airlines but, if they unilaterally pass legislation to stop that kind of common, single market policy then they’re without the treaty. And, I’m afraid this is music to the ears of UKIP and Paul Sykes – it’s fascinating that you’ve got this e-mail for John Redwood; I see he’s now doing an Oliver Letwin and disappearing – but Michael Howard at the party conference for the Conservatives also talked about pulling out of the social policy that gives every British citizen 28 days paid holiday a year. If you do that, you’re in breach of a treaty. John. You can’t be in the European Union, which is a treaty-based organisation and say, to quote John Redwood, we will unilaterally repudiate part of that treaty and stay in the treaty organisation.
JH: So what you’re saying, what the government is saying is there are things we profoundly do not like – for instance we don’t like the Common Agricultural Policy; we all know that, no government has for many, many years now – we don’t like in this particular case the fisheries policy. However, we value our membership of the European Union so much that, even though we don’t like it and it clearly harms Britain’s interests, we will not make a fuss about it.
DM: We make, if by fuss, you mean negotiate and play very hard ball, we are tough on that.
JH: It hasn’t worked, though, has it?
DM: No – just give me one second – we managed for example to reduce the level of the Common Agricultural Policy spending from about 70 percent of the EU budget under the Tories to getting down to close to 40 percent - not enough, I accept that. We’ve got a lot of like-minded partners but if we say to them, to quote John Redwood, we will unilaterally breach a treaty, then of course we loose all leverage and all partners in Europe. And it’s part of this problem of isolating us from Europe, because the Conservatives now are the most extreme right-wing party of any mainstream parties in Europe…
JH: All right, let’s put party politics aside for a second…
DM: OK, fine, fine
JH: …because what does puzzle people, and we had it earlier this week on this programme, what does puzzle people is what we can and cannot do within the European Union. I mean, here we have Mr Brady saying, quite clearly, look, we’ll try to renegotiate and if that fails we’ll pass domestic legislation and that’ll make it all right.. Are you saying that that simply cannot be done without ultimately having to leave the European Union.
DM: No member of the European Union can pass domestic unilateral legislation which repudiates part of a solemn treaty obligation without being in breach of the treaty…
JH: And the effect of being in breach of a European Union treaty would be…
DM: …is either you have massive fines, or you quit.
JH: Right. So there we are. That’s clear enough Mr Brady. Either we have massive fines or we have to leave the Union.
(silence)
FH: Hello Mr Brady.
GB: …it’s a very different kind of European Union.
JH: Sorry, we missed the first part of what you said there.
GB: Well, the third option that Denis MacShane refused to give is that you renegotiate, and….
JH: We’re assuming that that’s failed… we’ve moved on from that…
GB: We’re not prepared to assume we’ve failed.
JH: Yes you are prepared to assume it… (interruption) No, no, sorry, with respect, you are prepared to assume it because you’ve already given me the fallback position, which would be domestic legislation.
GB: No, no, the fallback position of using domestic legislation would be as a part of our strategy of renegotiation. It is because we are determined to succeed in our renegotiation, er, that we’ve been very clear, that if necessary on that particular point we would use domestic legislation…
JH:…in which case you would be in violation…
GB: …that would be part of our negotiations.
JH: In which case, if you did that, if you used domestic legislation, you would be in violation of the treaty.
GB: Yes, and we would then use that as part of our renegotiation.
JH: I’m sorry, you’ve lost me here. Sorry, this is terribly important – you’ve lost me here. That cannot be a part of your renegotiation because you have already, by going down the domestic legislation route, you have already abandoned the renegotiation.
GB: We have no intention of abandoning renegotiation. We intend to succeed in that
negotiation…
JH: But you’ve already accepted that the nuclear option is there…
GB: (unintelligible) …go on for a long period of time. We’re looking here, probably, a very protracted, probably, period, which we hope and intend is going to lead to a very different shape of European Union which will be far more flexible…
JH: All right.
GB: …which will have a number of different relationships, which won’t lead to the kind of constant integration, giving up more and more powers that Denis MacShane is prepared to accept. We won’t accept that and now we’ve a number of new members who don’t accept that either.
JH: Denis MacShane. A final thought to you. Isn’t that the case that we’ve too acquiescent and we are now maybe a bit out of step with the way Europe’s going.
DM: On the contrary, Europe’s coming more into step with the British Labour position. As Graham said, read the Times yesterday. I don’t want to be arrogant but actually Britain stands very tall in Europe. Graham, you’ll have to persuade the Irish, the Dutch, the Danes, the Germans, all of whom have fishing fleets, to accept your policy. They won’t. Now either you stand with John Redwood and say we will unilaterally breach the treaty, which I think, and every lawyer thinks, and every functionary, every civil servant thinks means quitting
the European Union. That’s the isolationist position. And every businessman in Britain should now really look at the way the Tories have crossed the Rubicon and are much closer to the UKIP position than defending Britain’s national interest which is to be in Europe and helping to shape for what counts for Britain.
JH: Denis MacShane, Graham Brady, thank you very much.
That, it would appear, are the arguments. Brady would have us believe we will not fail in our negotiations, so the question of implementing domestic legislation seems to be a negotiating ploy. MacShane says, quite rightly, that if we unilaterally amended the treaty, we would be subject to huge fines. Then would come the crunch point - would we pay, or would we leave? But that question is unanswered by Brady. We will negotiate... "we have no intention of abandoning renegotiation", he says.
Writes the Guardian: "The shadow cabinet member for deregulation said this in an email to members of Ukip; on the surface it suggests he is willing to see a Tory government tear up its EU treaty obligations".
Redwood actually confined his comments to fishing, writing: "We will expect to win them [the powers] back by renegotiation. But if they refuse, we will amend the 1972 European Communities Act to take them back unilaterally. Easy isn't it?"
This is actually no more or less that Michael Howard stated on 10 June in a letter to the then shadow secretary of state for agriculture and fisheries, but many Labourites and commentators have taken it to be something new.
For instance, Alan Milburn, Labour's election coordinator, said the email was a further sign of how far Michael Howard was taking his party to the right and Denis MacShane, the Europe minister, claimed that the e-mail represented "a fundamental crossing of the line that separates legitimate criticism of EU policies to the unilateral policy of being willing to breach the EU treaties and quit the EU."
Sir Stephen Wall, a former British ambassador to the EU, also challenged Mr Redwood's approach, saying "civil servants are under obligation not to carry out any act that would be illegal. "
"And we could find ourselves before the European court facing very swingeing fines", he says. "I think it would be the first time that a British government had effectively torn up a treaty - that's normally something which dictatorships do, not normally something which democracies do."
In an attempt to clarify the scenario postulated by Wall, Jon Humphrys today interviewed Graham Brady MP, Conservative shadow minister for foreign affairs, on the Today programme, together with MacShane. The transcript is posted below, and I leave it to our readers to decide whether Brady succeeded.
John Humphrys: One of the big promises made by the Conservatives is that if they form the next government, they will pull out of the European Union fisheries treaty. Most people agree that the treaty has been bad for this country and our fishing fleet. But pulling out of it – that’s another thing. Could we do so without having ultimately… (break in recording)
Graham Brady: (recording resumes) …we believe very strongly that we can do it through renegotiation. The fisheries policy hasn’t just been bad for Britain; it’s been bad for fish stocks and it’s been bad for a number of other member states as well. And we believe we can achieve it through renegotiation but if necessary, and this is a crucial difference between the next Conservative government and the present Labour government, if necessary we will stand up for Britain’s interests; we will resort to domestic legislation and we will do it by that means if we have to.
JH: The effect of that could be that we leave the European Union
GB: We that’s not true and I think that er…
JH: Why not? If we unilaterally break a treaty, however we do it, you can… er use the language of politics – we will er… introduce new legislation, but what we would be doing would unilaterally, we’d be unilaterally leaving a treaty, abrogating a treaty to which we had signed up - and that would be tantamount to…
GB: (illegible) …a few years ago over the ban on British beef and that didn’t mean that France was going to leave the European Union.
JH: It wasn’t a treaty obligation!
GB: Well, they were clearly in breach of their treaty obligations
JH: Ah, but there’s all the difference isn’t there between saying that we will no longer have anything to do with this treaty, we will in effect leave this treaty, we will break it…
GB: We’re saying that we’d amend the treaty… and I think we..
JH: Well, what if they won’t let us amend it?
GB: Well, they will. And interestingly, if you look at some of the comments quoted yesterday in The Times, Monsieur Bayrou, the leaders of the UDF, a very pro-European centrist party in France, who was quoted as saying the EU cannot survive without Britain, which is much admired everywhere. We must find a way of keeping Britain inside and not resort to other ways forward. What we underestimate, what particularly this government underestimates, is how significant Britain is to the EU, how much they need to have us in the EU, and that’s why they constantly fail to negotiate as hard for Britain as they can, constantly fail to get as good a deal as they should, and that’s why we believe we could do so much better.
JH: All right. But ultimately, ultimately, if it comes to it, and it could – you acknowledge that it could; you think it’s unlikely but you acknowledge that it could – if it comes to it and the other countries, or some other countries say look, Britain simply cannot do this, we will not have it. Then what do you say? Do you say, OK, we’ll leave?
GB: No. I think what you have to realise that this will be in the context of a large
renegotiation of all of the treaties in any case…
JH: But you’re still not answering the question though, are you?
GB: Well… the question will be a very different question. Er.. the situation following, I hope, a Conservative victory in the next general election; following a "no" vote by at least this country and hopefully a number of other countries on the constitution will be a renegotiation of all the treaties in any case.
JH: I know, but if the negotiations don’t go the way you want them to, and you are faced finally with this critical decision – they won’t let us amend the treaty in the way we want to - would you in the final analysis say all right then, we’ll leave the club?
GB: No, we wouldn’t. Michael Howard has been very clear. We don’t intend to leave the EU. We don’t think it is necessary; we don’t think it’s appropriate or in Britain’s interests. What we do believe is that we can get a much better deal.
JH: OK…
GB: We can only get that better deal if we’re prepared to be firm, if we’re prepared to be very clear; if we’re prepared to fight our corner in the way that this government simply does not.
JH: Ah, but you’ve given away your final card, haven’t you. You know. You’ve actually said that we’ll make a big fuss, but in the end, its not…
GB: Not at all.
JH: That’s what you’ve just said..
GB: That’s the crucial distinction, that’s the crucial distinction . We said we’d use domestic legislation on this particular aspect, the Common Fisheries Policy. I think that is an indication to our colleagues in Europe how serious we are, and that we intend to succeed in renegotiation, and ultimately we will.
JH: All right let’s put that then to Denis MacShane. If they fail in the kind of renegotiation they want, could they use domestic legislation to get what they want, and if they can, why doesn’t the present government, your government do the same?
Denis MacShane: For the very same reason that John Redwood and Michael Howard didn’t do so when they were in Conservative governments; they didn’t renegotiate those policies when they were in power. Yes, I’m critical of them. But I can give you examples of other European countries who don’t like, for example, the challenge and the competition of Easyjet and Ryanair to their domestic airlines but, if they unilaterally pass legislation to stop that kind of common, single market policy then they’re without the treaty. And, I’m afraid this is music to the ears of UKIP and Paul Sykes – it’s fascinating that you’ve got this e-mail for John Redwood; I see he’s now doing an Oliver Letwin and disappearing – but Michael Howard at the party conference for the Conservatives also talked about pulling out of the social policy that gives every British citizen 28 days paid holiday a year. If you do that, you’re in breach of a treaty. John. You can’t be in the European Union, which is a treaty-based organisation and say, to quote John Redwood, we will unilaterally repudiate part of that treaty and stay in the treaty organisation.
JH: So what you’re saying, what the government is saying is there are things we profoundly do not like – for instance we don’t like the Common Agricultural Policy; we all know that, no government has for many, many years now – we don’t like in this particular case the fisheries policy. However, we value our membership of the European Union so much that, even though we don’t like it and it clearly harms Britain’s interests, we will not make a fuss about it.
DM: We make, if by fuss, you mean negotiate and play very hard ball, we are tough on that.
JH: It hasn’t worked, though, has it?
DM: No – just give me one second – we managed for example to reduce the level of the Common Agricultural Policy spending from about 70 percent of the EU budget under the Tories to getting down to close to 40 percent - not enough, I accept that. We’ve got a lot of like-minded partners but if we say to them, to quote John Redwood, we will unilaterally breach a treaty, then of course we loose all leverage and all partners in Europe. And it’s part of this problem of isolating us from Europe, because the Conservatives now are the most extreme right-wing party of any mainstream parties in Europe…
JH: All right, let’s put party politics aside for a second…
DM: OK, fine, fine
JH: …because what does puzzle people, and we had it earlier this week on this programme, what does puzzle people is what we can and cannot do within the European Union. I mean, here we have Mr Brady saying, quite clearly, look, we’ll try to renegotiate and if that fails we’ll pass domestic legislation and that’ll make it all right.. Are you saying that that simply cannot be done without ultimately having to leave the European Union.
DM: No member of the European Union can pass domestic unilateral legislation which repudiates part of a solemn treaty obligation without being in breach of the treaty…
JH: And the effect of being in breach of a European Union treaty would be…
DM: …is either you have massive fines, or you quit.
JH: Right. So there we are. That’s clear enough Mr Brady. Either we have massive fines or we have to leave the Union.
(silence)
FH: Hello Mr Brady.
GB: …it’s a very different kind of European Union.
JH: Sorry, we missed the first part of what you said there.
GB: Well, the third option that Denis MacShane refused to give is that you renegotiate, and….
JH: We’re assuming that that’s failed… we’ve moved on from that…
GB: We’re not prepared to assume we’ve failed.
JH: Yes you are prepared to assume it… (interruption) No, no, sorry, with respect, you are prepared to assume it because you’ve already given me the fallback position, which would be domestic legislation.
GB: No, no, the fallback position of using domestic legislation would be as a part of our strategy of renegotiation. It is because we are determined to succeed in our renegotiation, er, that we’ve been very clear, that if necessary on that particular point we would use domestic legislation…
JH:…in which case you would be in violation…
GB: …that would be part of our negotiations.
JH: In which case, if you did that, if you used domestic legislation, you would be in violation of the treaty.
GB: Yes, and we would then use that as part of our renegotiation.
JH: I’m sorry, you’ve lost me here. Sorry, this is terribly important – you’ve lost me here. That cannot be a part of your renegotiation because you have already, by going down the domestic legislation route, you have already abandoned the renegotiation.
GB: We have no intention of abandoning renegotiation. We intend to succeed in that
negotiation…
JH: But you’ve already accepted that the nuclear option is there…
GB: (unintelligible) …go on for a long period of time. We’re looking here, probably, a very protracted, probably, period, which we hope and intend is going to lead to a very different shape of European Union which will be far more flexible…
JH: All right.
GB: …which will have a number of different relationships, which won’t lead to the kind of constant integration, giving up more and more powers that Denis MacShane is prepared to accept. We won’t accept that and now we’ve a number of new members who don’t accept that either.
JH: Denis MacShane. A final thought to you. Isn’t that the case that we’ve too acquiescent and we are now maybe a bit out of step with the way Europe’s going.
DM: On the contrary, Europe’s coming more into step with the British Labour position. As Graham said, read the Times yesterday. I don’t want to be arrogant but actually Britain stands very tall in Europe. Graham, you’ll have to persuade the Irish, the Dutch, the Danes, the Germans, all of whom have fishing fleets, to accept your policy. They won’t. Now either you stand with John Redwood and say we will unilaterally breach the treaty, which I think, and every lawyer thinks, and every functionary, every civil servant thinks means quitting
the European Union. That’s the isolationist position. And every businessman in Britain should now really look at the way the Tories have crossed the Rubicon and are much closer to the UKIP position than defending Britain’s national interest which is to be in Europe and helping to shape for what counts for Britain.
JH: Denis MacShane, Graham Brady, thank you very much.
That, it would appear, are the arguments. Brady would have us believe we will not fail in our negotiations, so the question of implementing domestic legislation seems to be a negotiating ploy. MacShane says, quite rightly, that if we unilaterally amended the treaty, we would be subject to huge fines. Then would come the crunch point - would we pay, or would we leave? But that question is unanswered by Brady. We will negotiate... "we have no intention of abandoning renegotiation", he says.
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