The real enemy

One of the few advantages of having satellite television is that we can watch endless re-runs of MASH – about the only thing worth watching on television these days.

From that programme recently, very much belonging to the school of "many a true word spoken in jest", came an episode recently where our two heroes, Hawkeye and BJ, were sheltering a North Korean soldier – who also happened to be a doctor – by disguising him as a South Korean officer.

Trying to explain what they were doing to the company clerk, Radar, they whispered to him that the new man was in fact the "enemy", only to be met with puzzlement. Hawkeye and BJ were forced to explain laboriously that the man was North Korean. "Oh", says Radar, "I thought you meant the real enemy – Supply Corps".

Such is the case in real life, where the real enemies so often appear to be on our own side, witness the extraordinary incompetence of the North East Says No campaign and its failure to get involved in the Neil Herron's judicial review, thus watering down the impact of a major initiative against the ODPM.

Yet the unrepentant NESNO is now suggesting that Neil Herron, in order to get its support, should have made an appointment to see one of its representatives in Durham, discussed the case with them and left the papers for their board to consider and make a decision.

That he was supposed to do, in addition to preparing the case papers for the judicial review with a lawyer in London, against a 48-hour deadline, with the writ drawn up only hours before it had to be served.

That our own side has the potential to do more harm than good is also the very great danger with the self-appointed "Vote No" campaign which, in unnecessarily proclaiming its support for our continued membership of the EU, risks splitting the Eurosceptic movement down the middle – as NESNO has by launching a rival bid for official designation – and weakening the overall campaign against the constitution.

But the other "enemy" - if the traffic on the Eurosceptic discussion groups this morning is any indication - is fast becoming UKIP. Topic of the morning was the "unadulterated drivel" uttered by deputy leader of UKIP, Mike Nattrass, and faithfully conveyed by the Guardian.

Nattrass apparently claimed in a debate sponsored by the Institute of Citizenship that Britain might have to fight its way out of Europe in the same way that Chechyna was fighting to free itself from Russia. "We are entering a federal trap", he is reported to have said.

The constitution is a federal trap and once signed we cannot get out. In the same way that Chechnya is part of the Soviet Union, we are being dragged into the European Union. I hope we never have to fight our way out ... It will be like the Chechnya situation because the Russians won't let the Chechens out.

Observed the Guardian, with an untypically British understatement, such comments "will raise questions about the politics and judgment of some of the senior figures in the party."

By contrast, The Telegraph, once it could tear itself away from the lovely Nancy Dell’Olio, profiles Sir Stephen Wall, foreign office mandarin, Europhile extraordinaire and advisor to both John Major and Tony Blair.

Urbane, intellectual, cultured, multi-lingual and all that, the man is the very antithesis of the ranting Nattrass – to say nothing of the brawling bore Bloom – and if the EU issue were to be judged on personalities alone, Wall would have it.

His complaint is that he feels "let down by Blair on Europe", having left Blair’s side a disillusioned man for a post advising Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster.

Writes interviewer, Toby Helm, "his relationship with the Prime Minister appears to have been very professional but also very cool" and, as the relationship developed, "he increasingly suspected that Mr Blair, shackled by the ever more euro-sceptic Gordon Brown, would not deliver on his promise to promote the case for positive engagement in the European Union."

As early as 1995, when he was ambassador to the EU in Brussels, Sir Stephen was convinced that New Labour's obsession with keeping the sceptic media sweet could never co-exist with a bold pro-European policy. "I thought then, when I read that Tony Blair was going off to Australia to secure the support of Rupert Murdoch, that this is going to put the kibosh on European policy," he says. "Maintaining the support of the Murdoch press is obviously very critical to Labour's interest - or that is how it seemed. I do regret that with the most massive majority in post-war history that we couldn't have done more to turn it round."

The turning point, it seems was when Blair decided to over-rule him and most of his other Downing Street advisers by agreeing to grant a referendum on the European constitution. Sir Stephen felt that the treaty would not fundamentally change the way Britain was governed and agreeing to a referendum was an insanely high-risk strategy for a pro-European Prime Minister. "It was a demoralising moment."

Sir Stephen remains highly critical of Mr Blair for failing to make the case for Europe consistently enough. While John Major had ample excuse - with a majority of just 20 and a rebel army of euro-sceptics in his own party - the same defence could not be made for the current Prime Minister. "This Government wasn't in that position. It had a massive majority, and yet the case for Europe hasn't been made." And, if the Government wants to win the referendum, "every single senior minister has got to be out there making the positive case," he says.

But Wall's real enemy is Gordon Brown, whom he condemns for making "fatuous" and "gratuitous" attacks on Brussels that cause severe damage to relations with the EU. To Wall, Brown's behaviour is "loopy", a point picked out in the Telegraph’s main (and virtually the only) front page story.

Partly making up for its decision to abandon its role as a newspaper, the Telegraph then puts Wall’s comments in perspective, with a leader headed: "Too much democracy – a mandarin's lament" in which it offers mock sympathy for those "sincere Europhiles" such as Stephen Wall.

For many years, it writes, these well-bred, well-meaning and in some ways visionary people waged their lonely campaign against public opinion. Then, to their unfeigned delight, Tony Blair was elected, the first prime minister since Edward Heath who seemed willing to advance their agenda… But, nearly eight years on, Mr Blair's majority has been squandered, his promise broken. No wonder the pro-Europeans sound so crotchety these days: they can see things slipping away from them.

Noting that the issue over which Sir Stephen and Mr Blair fell out was the referendum on the EU constitution, the leader continues:

Sir Stephen, true to the values of his caste, vigorously opposed the idea of consulting the public. He well understands that the EU would never have got where it is today if each new treaty had been referred to the voters for approval. He can see that people will probably vote "no" to the constitution - not only because of what they read in that document, but also as a surrogate verdict on 30 years of transfers of power to Brussels. For him, as for other Euro-enthusiasts, that is reason enough for not asking them. The EU, as it exists, is the creation of men like Sir Stephen: a bureaucratic construct with little room for democracy. That has been the objection all along.

And that has been the objection – the lack of democracy. Strangely, it is democracy, warts and all, that allows Nattrass and his likes to rant away with their absurd messages, but it is also democracy which allows us to ignore them, and make up our own minds what we want. Sir Stephen Wall would not allow us that privilege.

Nor, indeed would the egregious Mr Brown if it suited him. He is clearly playing his own game in his internal battle with his arch-rival Tony Blair, so it would be unwise to cast him in the role of a friend. One is ever conscious of the role of James Callaghan in the 1975 referendum who, as the token Eurosceptic in Wilson’s cabinet, made a last-minute Damascene conversion to the cause, pulling many doubters into the "yes" camp.

But, if Brown is not our friend, the ones to watch are the cultured Sir Stephen Wall and his ilk, the ranks of fonctionnaires who believe in the managerial concept of government and who regard democracy, at best, as an irritation and generally as an impediment to their plans. While we may be irritated and occasionally appalled by the behaviour of our allies (and doubtless will continue to be), it is as well, occasionally, to remember who the real enemies are.

Says it all really

Following my crie de coeur on the vacuity of the media yesterday, the front page of today’s Daily Telegraph is dominated by a giant colour photograph of Nancy Dell’Olio, girlfriend of Sven-Goran Eriksson. This is followed by page two and three devoted to "my life with Sven". The right hand section of the front page is then taken up with adverts – for the Daily Telegraph - leaving room only for three stories on the front page.

Claims that the Daily Telegraph is still a newspaper should be reported to the department of trading standards.

We’ve had enough of this game

Did you know that Article 31(1)(e) of the Treaty on European Union – the Maastricht Treaty (formerly Article K.3) - provides for the gradual adoption of "measures establishing minimum rules relating to the constituent elements of criminal acts and to penalties" in certain fields?

If the answer is: no I bloody didn’t, then you probably have a great deal in common with most of the population of the United Kingdom and also with most of the other citizens of EU member states.

The "certain fields" relate to organised crime (whatever that means - is there such a thing as "disorganised crime"?), terrorism and drug trafficking, and the original treaty provision has been much amplified by the the "Council and Commission Action Plan" on how best to implement the provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam on an area of freedom, security and justice (known as the Vienna Action Plan) and the conclusions of the Tampere European Council.

These provisions, however, currently form part of the "third pillar" of the Maastricht Treaty and are therefore subject to intergovernmental agreements between the member states – a matter of "co-operation" rather than compulsion through EU legislation. Issues are decided by the European Council, on the initiative of a member state, rather than by the Council of Ministers on the initiative of the Commission, and all agreements are subject to unanimity.

That much I did know, but last night I received an e-mail suggesting that I looked at the Green Paper on the approximation, mutual recognition and enforcement of criminal sanctions in the European Union COM(2004)334 final written by the Commission, launching a detailed consultation on this subject.

The paper, 94 pages long, is disturbing in many ways, not least because this area or "pillar" of the treaty is, in theory, none of the Commission’s business – yet here it is launching into a major consultation exercise.

What is more disturbing is that the Commission, in this document, is anticipating the implementation of proposed EU constitution, discussing glibly "framework laws" which are "intended, where necessary, to approximate national laws…", and many such sundry delights, all directed at attaining a "European law-enforcement area."

I seriously do not like the sound of this and my guess is that anyone reading this document will also feel a profound sense of unease.

Readers will, however, be comforted to learn that our Westminster guardians (aka MPs) have already looked at this, and the consultation period was extended to 15 October to allow them to comment. They debated the issue last week, on 15 September in European Standing Committee B – and that’s another thing the media did not tell us about. It was only the e-mail sent to me that alerted me to it.

The debate is worth a read, and so is the Green Paper – but who the hell as got time. Out there, there is a government in waiting, fulminating with plans, itching for the green light afforded by the ratification of the EU Constitution, and it is churning out proposals and ideas so fast and in such volume that it is impossible to keep up with them.

In any democratic system of government, the fundamental changes outlines in the Green Paper would be the subject of a major and prolonged public debate, with full media participation, discussion shows, polls and the rest. But all it gets is a debate in an obscure committee in the House of Commons, whence the deadline for comment will drift past unheeded.

This, as they say, is no way to run a democracy. If anyone needs a reason why the EU Constitution should be rejected, this document alone is enough. It is the thin edge of a very large wedge that has been waiting in the wings since Maastricht, 14 years ago. And you just know that, sooner or later, the ideas in it are going to drift into force, little bit by litle bit, and our nationhood will be that much reduced.

Time to say, I think, we’ve had enough of this game.

Something sensible

Actually, there was something interesting in the newspapers today – The Times to be specific – but not anything produced by a journalist.

In the wake of Michael Howard's recent speech on the environment, pledging his support for Kyoto, followed by Blair scarcely a day later, we see a letter from the following:

Lord Lawson of Blaby, Thatcher’s former chancellor; Wifred Beckerman, Emeritus Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford; Ian Byatt, Director-General of Water Services, 1989-2000; David Henderson, Visiting Professor, Westminster Business School; Julian Morris, Executive Director, International PolicyNetwork; Alan Peacock, David Hume Institute, Edinburgh; and Colin Robinson, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Surrey.

The subject of this letter, headed “Political action on climate change”, deals with Blair’s and Howard’s support for Kyoto, noting that they “hold the same alarmist view of the world, and call for much the same radical - and costly - programme of action.”

The authors, however, assert that “there are no solid grounds for assuming, as Messrs Blair and Howard do, that global warming demands immediate and far-reaching action”. The measures proposed would “raise costs for enterprises and households, both directly as consumers and as taxpayers” and “…make all of us significantly and increasingly worse off”. “There are no worthwhile gains to set against these costs”, they add, then concluding:

It is absurd to argue, as the Prime Minister did in his speech (and Howard took a similar line), that such policies can “unleash a new and benign commercial force”. The new opportunities created for high-cost ventures come as the direct result of suppressing opportunities for their lower-cost rivals: this is already happening in power generation.

It is not only the Prime Minister and Mr Howard who are advancing questionable economic arguments. We consider that the treatment of economic issues by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not up to the mark. It is time for finance and economics ministries everywhere, including HM Treasury, to wake up to this situation and take action.

But, guess what, the eco-freaks in the EU already got there first and, with those great intellects, John Prescott and Margaret Beckett at the helm, we are going nowhere but down. But it is good to have a bunch of heavyweights point out the fatuity of their actions. Pity Howard didn’t consult them before he gave his own speech. If he had, for once, the Conservatives would have had something new, different – for a politician – and sensible to say.

The Myth of the Atlantic Divide

We hear a lot of that these days. Europeans and Americans do not agree on anything. Europeans do not support Americans in the fight against terror. The United States under Bush has managed to lose its European allies, has gone in for unilateral power-politics.

Then there are the supposedly more profound comments with the rather idiotic heading of Americans are from Mars, European from Venus. Presumably, that means that Americans are more action oriented, while Europeans are more emotion-oriented, emotion being a good thing in these people’s minds. (No doubt the Franco-German push to raise the arms embargo on China in despite American attitudes is one of those Venusian attitudes.)

What is actually the truth? Is the United States acting unilaterally? Well, not exactly. A recent study by the Heritage Foundation points out that the multinational force in Iraq consists of troops from 29 countries. Of these, 19 are European and of those 12 are EU members. Setting aside Sweden, Ireland, Finland and Austria, which are neutral, that makes a majority of EU members, even with Spain pulling out, in the name of peace, as Prime Minister Zapatero explained incoherently to the UN General Assembly.

France and Germany with their allies are not involved but that does not make an Atlantic divide. In Afghanistan, of course, even France and Germany are reluctantly contributing and the international security assistance force consists of 35 countries. So much for unilateralism.

On other issues, there has been a somewhat illuminating exchange of letters on openDemocracy, a somewhat Brahmin website that is definitely not part of the forces of anarchy as represented by most blogs. Petr Mach, adviser to President Vačlav Klaus, has taken to task our old friend Jeremy Rifkin, who extols the European dream as one that will surpass the American one (no doubt in a purely non-Martian way).

Mr Mach’s point is quite simple: Europe or, rather, the European Union is less free than the United States.

“European governments influence public opinion with state-run television, and use taxpayers’ money to influence the outcome of elections. Most national legislation is decreed by the European Union bureaucracy, instead of being subject to the votes of democratically elected parliaments. In short, the admired European “welfare state” relies on government interference with the media and a stronger role for bureaucracy in the legislative process.”

In his response, Mr Rifkin does not deny the accusation. He is far too smart for that, or so he says, explaining rather grandly and cringe-makingly that he has spent “one-third of [his] time in Europe over the past two decades”. Yes, the problems are there but

“…these failures notwithstanding, a new generation of Europeans is creating a radical new dream – one that may be better suited than the American dream to meet the challenges of an increasingly interconnected and globalised world in the 21st century.”

No doubt the EU tendency to support dictators, insist on protectionist trade policies, and subsidise failing economic ventures is what he means.

Actually, it is hard to work out what he means. He produces strange economic and social figures that appear to be lifted from the Commission propaganda sheets and prove that the EU (or some of it) has a higher GDP than the US and is a bigger market than the US. So what?

Then he produces all sorts of figures that show there are more physicians per 100,000 population and the average life span in the “fifteen most developed EU countries” is higher than in the US. (I expect the average life span in the twenty five richest states in the US is even higher.) These figures are a little slippery, in that sometimes they apply to 25 member states and sometimes to 15, depending on what Mr Rifkin wants to prove.

There is no mention, for instance, of high unemployment, the low growth, aging population, straining welfare systems, increasingly desperate attempts to reform those apparently wonderful European social systems.

It is, however, in the general arguments that he really tries to score:

“For Europeans, however, freedom is not found in autonomy but in embeddedness. To be free is to have access to many interdependent relationships. The more communities one can access, the more options one has for living a full a meaningful life. It’s inclusivity that brings security – belonging, not belongings.”

This is, of course, how poverty-tourist Europeans tend to talk of the poorer countries. One would dearly like to know whether Mr Rifkin lives up to this precept. Certainly, he prefers to live in the materialistic America rather than the embedded Europe, whither he comes on visits to lecture us all.

However, he is right on one thing: there is a new European outlook and Petr Mach is an authentic spokesman of it. He concludes his letter with a direct challenge, that, alas Mr Rifkin fails to answer, perhaps because the analysis of his own thoughts is more accurate than he would wish to acknowledge:

“In short, the ‘European model’ that European socialist politicians proclaim and liberal Americans admire is not necessarily the model appreciated by ordinary Europeans.

What you admire about Europe are policies influence by intellectuals and bureaucrats rather than ordinary citizens. As a consequence, what you admire about Europe is its lack of freedom.”

Old Europe and new clash but old Europe seems to have a very odd champion.

A full circle

That is how the BBC correspondent reports recent developments in Hungary. Specifically, he describes wryly that the two rivals Viktor Orbán and the new Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány are once again squaring up to each other. And when did they have their last struggle? Well, now, this is a very interesting tale and indicative of developments in the new member states.

Ference Gyurcsány was, in the late eighties, the leader of the Communist Youth Movement (KISZ – Kommunista Ifjusági Szövetség, since you ask). At the time this was the only student organization allowed in the relatively free but not that free Hungary. Of course, the old system was dying and another nail in the coffin was driven in by the creation of the Young Democrats’ Association (FIDESZ – Fiatal Demokráták Szövetsége, since you ask).

Viktor Orbán was the young lawyer who created the new organization and has since led it to political success and temporary failure. In fact, FIDESZ, the conservative party of Hungarian politics, remains popular with youngsters, not least because it appeals to the ever-present Hungarian romantic idealism.

The new Prime Minister, much preferred, incidentally by the eurocrats, as he is, supposedly, on the left, sees himself as much more pragmatic. No longer a communist (and, indeed, was he ever?) he is now a millionaire and a powerful politician in the Socialist Party. Until now, he preferred to act behind the scenes, rising to the exalted position of Sports Minister in Péter Medgyessy’s ill-fated government. Now, he has come out of the shadows.

Pragmatic or otherwise, he would be unwise to write off his old rival. The support of the Socialist Party is aging and the Hungarians have a tendency for electing a different party with each election.

That other referendum – again!

Following the distribution of a government information leaflet to all households in the North East Region, supposedly setting out the facts relating to the proposed elected regional assembly, a number of egregious errors were discovered by campaigners, not least the people's "North East No" campaign run by Neil Herron.

Formal complaints were made to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) and the Electoral Commission last week and, by the beginning of this week, it was learned that the ODPM was prepared to issue a letter of correction, but only in respect of one error, relating to the costs of local government reorganisation in the Durham area, and then only for distribution to residents in the Durham area.

With the letter due to be sent out this Monday and no response having been received from the ODPM, Herron and his team yesterday consulted lawyers in London and then wrote to the Minister of Local Government, Nick Raynsford, giving him a deadline of 5 pm that evening to undertake to circulate all the households in the region with corrections to the original leaflet.

Raynsford’s office asked for more time but, by mid morning, nothing further had been heard and a writ was thus prepared seeking to require the ODPM to withdraw the limited-circulation correction and to distribute a more comprehensive correction to all households.

The writ was served at 3.11 pm this afternoon and, at the direction of the Court, a copy was served on the Electoral Commission, as an interested party. The papers will be reviewed by a judge on Monday, when a decision will be made as to a hearing.

Throughout these events, the officially designated "No" campaign (NESNO) was kept fully informed of developments, and invited to join with the action as equal partners with the North East No campaign.

NESNO, however, was unable to come up with an official response and no representative of the campaign was present with Neil and his colleagues when the papers were served. A number of other campaigning organisations, however, did attend, to show solidarity.

In what is widely regarded as a dress rehearsal for the EU referendum campaign, therefore, we see the government being accused of promulgating misleading information, failing to respond when complaints are made, with action taken by an unofficial and under-funded people's campaign while the "official" campaign apparently sat on its hands.

One hopes that the "real thing" will be somewhat better conducted.

No news is not good news

As has become the routine over the last few months, we scanned today's newspapers in search of material for a suitable Blog, only to conclude that there was very little of merit worth remarking upon.

To an extent, that is not surprising – politics proper has not yet resumed as we are only just into the conference season and the Lib-Dims have only just concluded the warm-up act. On the EU front, we are floundering in a vague interregnum, with the Prodi commission clearing their desks and the new Barroso children yet to make their mark.

Even allowing for this, though, there is something remarkable in the lack of real news in the newspapers, a continuing phenomenon on which we have remarked before and about which my colleague commented recently.

As one does, my colleague and I have spent many earnest hours discussing this issue, as we have with some serious journalists of national repute. The general consensus appears to be that the media has in fact given up on news and gone into the entertainment business, offering news as "soap opera" rather than real events. For want of real journalism, the newspapers fill the rest of their pages with re-written agency copy, sometimes days after it was first produced.

Therein we think, is one of the reasons why the newspapers, in particular, are losing out to the internet – we can now read the agency copy ourselves, hours ahead of the print media and even ahead of the broadcasters. Any number of Bloggers can re-write and represent this material, often adding informed comment that the hacks cannot, leaving them stranded with their stale, old news.

Reviewing this situation, we have asked ourselves many times how newspapers, in particular, could improve. Of course, there are no easy answers but the one thing we are agreed on is that they could go back to reporting the wide spread of news instead of concentrating on the "soap operas", recycling agency copy and filleting press releases.

If newspapers are the first draft of history, then it would be helpful to have intelligent journalists on the spot, asking questions, finding things out, analysing events and reporting on what is really happening, not what the establishment wants them to report.

In that context, there was some news yesterday – important news. The commission announced its intentions to strengthen its grip on defence policy, and to introduce regulatory measures to further defence integration.

But you would search in vain for any mention of it in today's newspapers and the pre-publicity came not from the detail of the proposals but the commission "spin" which found its way into the press release.

There is also the ongoing drama of the North East elected regional assembly referendum campaign – to which this Blog will be referring later – but nothing at all of this has reached the nationals today. That which we do get – such as Kinnock joining BIE (really unexpected that) and other inconsequential dross, on top of flat reporting on the Turkey story - makes for a pretty dull day.

It doesn't have to be like that – and it shouldn't be like that but, as long as it is, there will be a major gap in the system of public information. There may be no news today, but no news is not good news.

Is this what they call a post-modernist irony?

“Do you realize,” – said to me my contact in the Forum of Private Business, - “that there are eight different regulations on labelling going through the process in the EU at the moment? And that is not counting the various regulations about GMOs.”

I had not added them all up but I was aware of the regulations to do with food nutrient labelling, additive labelling, supplements labelling, vitamins and minerals labelling, novel food labelling, sports food labelling, baby food labelling – there must be some I have left out.

They are coming through thick and fast and all as EU Regulations. These are directly applicable. The farce of pretending to take swathes of legislation through Parliament will not even take place. As usual, the businesses that are going to be affected did not realize this was going to happen until too late. The Food Standards Agency’s constant refrain that it is on the website means little to people who run a small business with perhaps one or two other people. They have no time to search the FSA website, which is not the most logical or easy to navigate.

To some extent the gap is filled by the Forum of Private Business (FPB) but even they can do little when the Regulations are hammered out in Brussels with 25 member states chipping in and the various officials over-ruling all business representations.

The result of all these regulations and constraints will be that a number of small businesses will have to fold. We are talking about the most dynamic and entrepreneurial part of the economy.

Those who will struggle on will find that their ability to expand, change or innovate will be severely hampered. Every new idea will now have to be presented to the European Food Safety Authority in Brussels, checked, double checked and triple checked with the presumption against anything new. Remember how all vitamins and minerals or their combination, that had not been around for a certain number of years, were banned, even though there had been not a single incident of a patient suffering? This is an unholy alliance of big business and the regulator.

The immediate effect for the European Union, is a gradual stifling of all innovation and a loss of the most dynamic businessmen and entrepreneurs. Where do they go? USA if they can, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, wherever they feel their work will be appreciated and they will not be destroyed by so-called legislators who think entrepreneurship is something that can be defined and measured against definite benchmarks.

The supreme irony is that the EU is destroying something in which it could and ought to compete with the United States: business innovation. While it tries to stand up to America in foreign, defence and security matters, which is absurd, harmful and, in so far as it leads the EU to support bloodthirsty dictators and, even, terrorists, morally shameful, it also undermines its ability to compete in a healthy way and, perhaps, to win. And so the United States surges ahead, while we put together another structure and negotiate with another tin-pot dictator in the name of integration and anti-American parity.

Game, set… to Turkey

With the news that Turkey has again "pulled" its highly controversial law on adultery – for the second time in as many weeks - I am just beginning to suspect that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, might have pulled a fast one, and finally bounced the commission into accepting his country's application to join the EU.

In an earlier Blog, I expressed the view that it was a mystery why the Turkish government sought to introduce a law which it must have known would offend the EU member states and, for as long as it was in force, rule out the Turkey’s entry to the EU, also observing that, by so rapidly shelving the law, Ankara caught the protesters off guard, and actually enhanced its chances of getting a favourable decision in October.

When the government then made moves towards restoring the law, in not so much a U-turn as a roundabout, it looked like the game was over – except that Erdogan was due to meet Günter Verheugen, the EU's enlargement commissioner, in last-ditch talks in Brussels yesterday, to see if there was any chance of salvaging the deal. And what better ploy than for Erdogan than to offer a massive and obvious painful concession, putting his opposition on the back foot?

Certainly, Turkey has invested enormous capital in seeking entry into the EU. It actually made its first application in July 1959, not so very long after the creation of the EEC – ten years before even the UK had thought about joining.

Since then, Turkey’s experience has been one fob-off after another, having to be content with an agreement of association, signed in November 1963 (called the Ankara Agreement) which laid the foundation for the establishment in three phases of a customs union which would serve as an instrument to bring about integration between the EEC and Turkey.

Over forty years of unbroken persistence later, and Turkey is still in the waiting room so it did seem incredible that its government was prepared to throw away all that hard work on such an issue as an adultery law.

If brinkmanship was Erdogan's game, however, it has paid off spectacularly. Verheugen has reacted to the concession by "praising Mr Erdogan's commitment" and promising that "no remaining outstanding obstacles remain on the table". The way is now clear for Verheugen to "make a very clear recommendation" on 6 October on whether Turkey is ready to start formal talks.

Banking on an obdurate Turkey to give them the excuse they need to reject her, the "colleagues" seem to have been caught without a back-up excuse for denying her entry, and will have to concede the game. Although Erdogan may not be out of the woods yet, but he has certainly made more progress than many expected. He has not won the match but it is certainly game and set to Turkey.

They are beginning to notice

Some weeks after the entire American media and the ever increasing number of those who get their news and information from cyberspace, the Daily Telegraph has deigned to notice the Dan Rather affair.

Under the heading Breaking news: CBS is in trouble Alec Russell explains the significance of the downfall of CBS and its star anchorman. Mr Russell does go through the saga and what it has meant to the networks. He also explains that the networks are under attack from cable networks:

“Startling audience figures revealed that for the first time a cable network – Rupert Murdoch’s unashamedly gung-ho Fox News – had higher viewing figures for the [Republican] convention than any of the networks.”

Quite so. Well, of course, Rupert Murdoch is a bit of a hate figure over in Canada Square and Fox News is, undoubtedly gung-ho. But there might be another reason why their viewing figures went up. It is just possible that the potential audience, which may just be more intelligent than the networks and the established media gives it credit, did not trust those networks, well-known for their “liberal” a.k.a. left-wing slant, to give a fair report of what was happening at the Republican Convention. During the Iraq war, for instance, more people watched non-terrestrial channels for news in Britain than the BBC, ITN and Channel 4, probably for the same reason.

In other words, Mr Russell and the editors of the Daily Telegraph may have noticed but they still don’t exactly get it. The article quotes all sorts of media panjandrums who bemoan the possibility that the networks may be outdistanced by cable TV, websites and blogs.

Tom Rosenstiel, the director of a media think-tank, the Project for Excellence in Journalism, for example, wrings his hands in an article in the Washington Post:

“What is lost with the passing of network TV in other words is the journalism of verification.”

Excuse me. I was under the impression that the reason Dan Rather and CBS are in trouble is precisely because they did not verify their story. Presumably, these things happened in the past, but now, with the new technology they get caught out. Of course, you can understand why the Washington Post that has been riding out on its reputation as the newspaper who has brought a President down, dislikes the idea of similar shenanigans in the media itself being uncovered.

As usual, it is the audience that is to blame. And the right-wing radio shows and blogs. Or so Jonathan Alter, a Newsweek columnist opined:

“… we do live in a more fractured news environment where the tone of political discourse is set by cable news and talk radio. People want a more tangy stew.”

He then speculates of what might happen if the networks decided to abandon the middle road and decide to go more to the right. The trouble is that the networks have not been middle of the road for a long time. Numerous books and articles in the United States have proved it beyond any doubt that there is a left-wing agenda in most of them. And, let me repeat: Dan Rather was caught out peddling forged documents to further a certain political agenda.

What, our readers might ask, has this to do with the EU Referendum? A great deal, as it happens, as my colleague has pointed out before. We are also fighting a media that has for a long time sought to control the message through supposedly careful writing and editing. And we, too, now have a wonderful weapon in our hands: the internet and, in particular, the blogs. Properly used, these weapons could be killers. What will the established media do now?

They are beginning to notice but they still do not exactly get it.

We’d never have guessed

Rather an odd headline in the business section of the Daily Telegraph today: Eurozone 'crippled by single currency'

For sure, it is a quote, but the thought occurs that the "Eurozone" is defined by the group of countries which have adopted the euro – i.e., single currency. To proclaim, therefore, that the Eurozone is crippled by the single currency is rather like saying that a dog is handicapped by having fur, a tail, and barks.

Anyway, that little bit of pedantry aside, what follows is unalloyed good news – or bad, depending on what side of the divide you sit.

According to Edmund Conway, who wrote the piece (but was probably not responsible for the headline) "two enduring myths about the benefits of the euro were quashed yesterday by influential reports claiming the single currency had not encouraged fiscal prudence or attracted extra investment".

The first report is from the International Monetary Fund which, in the first part of its World Economic Outlook, has criticised the Stability and Growth Pact – there’s bravery for you – arguing that "the pact's strict rules" (Strict? Am I reading this right?) "may have had the perverse effect of encouraging profligacy from euro members."

It suggests that prospective eurozone states practised fiscal restraint in the 1990s in order to secure membership, but started to run up deficits after the currency was introduced in 1999. The report says: "The empirical analysis suggests that fiscal behaviour under European Monetary Union (no… Economic and Monetary Union, if you please) has not improved as much as might have been hoped for, and in some respects ...may have slipped, resulting in an increasing bias towards deficits."

What this hunk of jargon means – I think - is that Eurozone countries have not been charging their loving citizens enough tax and have been relying more of spending deficits to fund government spending – presumably because, in a single currency area, the markets don't take it out on the currency of the delinquent nation for the very simple reason that it doesn’t have a currency. Thus, the euro provides a shield behind which governments feel safe to practice unsound economic practices – until the whole thing goes belly-up of course, which cannot be very much longer when, as the IMF remarks, eurozone members will be permanently crippled by debt.

With that happy thought in mind, the other report is the annual United Nations analysis of foreign direct investment (FDI), which shows that the magic that the Eurozone was supposed to exercise on inwards investment simply hasn’t happened – so much for those drongos who argue that we should join or lose out on all the goodies.

It seems that FDI flows fell throughout the world by 18 percent in 2003 – which is why sundry Europhiles can claim that the UK has lost inwards investment and blaming it on our euro-less status - without saying that everyone else has lost out as well. In fact, in the UK, although FDI flows dropped in 2003, the amount of foreign stock held in the UK rose 18 percent to $672billion, making the UK Europe's top inward investment destination… so there.

The money is expected to flow again this year but that ain’t going to make any difference to the beleaguered Eurozone. “Lower growth prospects for the eurozone, compared with the United States and the United Kingdom, are likely to dampen FDI prospects there", says the report.

It is then down to Neil Collins in the Business Comment section of the paper to put all this in perspective, and one has to admire his style. "Buried in 700 pages of top class blether from the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund", he writes… (why didn’t I write that?) are two discomforting arguments against the long-term viability of the single currency. Its members are not attracting extra investment. Foreign direct investment is falling everywhere in Europe, as capital flows instead towards the cheaper and less regulated developing world to the east.

Worse still, the IMF has been surveying the euro's foundations and discovered some nasty cracks. It has long looked clear to outsiders that the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact were severely flawed, but the IMF now reckons that they actually encourage bad behaviour.

There we are… the expert has pronounced. The euro is garbage. We'd never have guessed otherwise.

Sleepwalking into disaster

Updated (2) with additional links

In the Financial Times today there is a short item noting that “Brussels” is calling for "defence market to be liberalised", a story that has been picked up by other media outlets and reproduced, offering much the same spin.

The story has, in fact, been doing the rounds for some days, and appeared in Scotland on Sunday on the 19th, this one headed "EU market law set to devastate British defence".

According to this source, "Eurocrats" were "preparing to blow a £9bn-a-year black hole in the British defence industry under controversial plans to force national governments to open up their lucrative contracts to foreign competition".

"The market for defence equipment ranging from jets and aircraft carriers to helmets, could be opened up - even to America's military industry giants - under a blueprint to be unveiled later this month by the EU's Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein."

As always, however, there is much, much more to this than meets the eye, or can be conveyed by the copy-writer's headline, and as always the detail is much more important than the fluff offered by the media.

What we are dealing with here is the Green Paper on Defence Procurement (COM(2004) 608 final), the next step in a planned sequence which was flagged up on 11 March last year in a commission communication (COM(2003) 113 final) entitled "European Defence – Industrial and Market Issues. Towards an EU Defence Equipment Policy".

This is confirmed by today's Commission press release which identifies defence procurement as one of seven initiatives announced back in March.

In keeping with the general ethos of the "Monnet Method", the commission has elected to secure greater defence (and thence political) integration through economic means, pursuing the route of integrating EU member state defence industries. Extending the remit of the procurement rules to defence forces is the one of ways chosen to achieve this.

This is openly stated in the 2003 COM, which refers to the working party on defence set up by the Convention on the future of Europe in 2002, which stressed that "the credibility of European defence policy depends on the existence and development of a European capacity and a strengthening of the industrial and technological base of the defence sector".

Today's Green Paper is, frankly, alarming. It talks about the commission's intention to "contribute to the gradual creation of a European Defence Equipment Market (EDEM) ...supporting the development of the Union's military capabilities under the European Security and Defence Policy" and is proposing to establish "an appropriate regulatory framework for the procurement of defence equipment".

The overall objective, however, is being blurred by a separate debate about the efficiency of defence procurement and the need to rationalise defence industries, in order to benefit from economies of scale and to afford the massive investments needed to find complex new defence projects.

That has been the line peddled by The Policy Exchange which in a seminar and publication under the title "The Best Kit: Why Britain's Defence Doesn't Need an all-British Defence Industry" is arguing that Britain's defence industry is "one of the last bastions of 1970s-style industrial policy" and should be taken over by foreign manufacturers, with more equipment being purchased abroad."

At the centre of the commission's initiative is the newly-formed European Defense Agency’s (EDA), which will be working with the commission to promote common, EU-wide procurement and standardisation throughout the forces of member states. If the commission gets its way, the standardisation programme will become compulsory, managed through CEN rather than through NATO.

This is very far from the "liberalisation" spin being pushed by the Financial Times and marks another step towards British forces being sucked into the maw of the EU defence policy, distancing this nation further from the United States.

Given that we are already co-operating with Galileo, and possibly with FRES the point will come when we are so far absorbed into EU system and equipment programmes that we will no longer have the technical capacity to act independently, and be so far removed from US systems that we are incapable of operating alongside US forces.

This is no longer an abstract possibility as our own Select Committee on Defence has remarked on the increasing difficulty in keeping separate joint US/UK collaborative projects from simliar European projects in which we are also engaged.

It can only be a matter of time before the US loses confidence in these arrangements - and there are signs that it is already doing so - to the extent that we are cut off entirely from developments in US military technology for fear that it will end up in the hands of our "partners" and from there in the hands of US strategic enemies. Any such development would lock us further into European "co-operation", whether we wished it or not.

Yet, all of this seems to be happening in slow motion, without anyone really understanding what is going on and without there being any conscious political decision to cast our lot in with the Europeans. To use an overworked but nevertheless apt phrase, we are sleepwalking into disaster.

Down with the penguins

Eursoc is running a poll on the best location for the permanent siting of the European parliament.

I don’t want to give anything away, but the current favourite is the Falkland Islands, at 73 percent.

Do you think the readers are trying to say something?

Who else has diplomatic passports?

From France comes an extraordinary story. In Liège the police arrested a criminal gang and found that, among other things, it was in possession of 100 diplomatic passes that belonged to the European Economic and Social Committee (Ecosoc).

Why precisely does Ecosoc have diplomatic passports, which presupposes diplomatic immunity wherever these shadowy committee members go. And why so many? Their ostensible purpose is to allow the holders move fast through passport checking points at airports, a matter of some security worry, if there are so many of these documents floating around in so many hands. They were originally intended for MEPs and senior officials in the EU institutions. But, as the European Voice says:

“… members of the Ecosoc – which was set up by the 1957 Treaty of Rome to give employers and trade unions a say in drafting European Community laws – can apply for them, as can local authority representatives on the Committee of the Regions.”

How very nice. And how cheering for the rest of us as we queue up for hours on end to satisfy the various security checks.

It seems that the passes were stolen by members of a removal firm (or criminals masquerading as removal men – the story is not clear on that) in June when the Committee moved to its sparkling new headquarters in the rue Belliard.

Extraordinarily, the Committee was not aware anything was amiss, though the passes had been kept in a secure place, which must have been rifled, until the police communicated the details of their find to them. The police had not been aware of anything either, until a member of the gang confessed.

But one “source” at the Committee knew where to put the blame. It is all the fault of the single market and the tendering rules for EU institutions, which obliged them to hire the company that offered the cheapest rates. Alas, there were a lot of breakages en route and a great deal of equipment was stolen. What a heart-rending story.

Goodness they do talk

In the wake of Secretary-General Kofi Annan declaiming that legality must begin at home (but not as far as the UN is concerned) and President Chirac once again calling for a tax to alleviate poverty in the Third World, caused to some considerable extent by EU policies whose reform is always undermined by France, we have Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain addressing the UN General Assembly.

Last heard, Spain had a number of economic problems and a few difficulties with its own terrorists, not to mention the various Al-Quaeda cells, in existence since long before 9/11, but, hey, what does that matter if you get a chance to pontificate in New York?

Zapatero’s big idea is perhaps less nauseating than either Annan’s or Chirac’s but equally daft. He wants Kofi Annan to set up a high level group to study an alliance of civilizations. Oh goody. Another high level study group to eat up the money that could be used to invest in all those poor countries to help eradicate poverty.

What’s the betting the group will travel round the world with large entourage, stay in the best hotels in the pleasantest spots, have lots of meetings, dinners, parties, receptions and decide … well, what? Probably that the West had better start sending a great deal more aid to the Muslim world (that, incidentally, contains some of the richest people, families and countries) to stop terrorists from feeling isolated and, therefore, murderous.

After all, if it is terrorism we are worried about, then it is not the Muslim countries that are the problem so much as the political system in them. Or is Señor Zapatero saying that all Muslims are terrorists? What is he saying?

"This alliance [of civilizations] would have as its fundamental objective to deepen political, cultural and education relations between those who represent the so-called Western world and, in this historic moment, the area of Arab and Muslim countries."

One does not necessarily need an alliance to deepen any kind of relations. More interestingly, one wonders which moment is not historic? Clearly Zapatero’s attitude to history is somewhat similar to Prime Minister Blair’s. Oh, and by the way, will this high level group discuss such problems as the murder and torture of African Muslims by Arab Muslims in Sudan? The UN seems singularly reluctant to do anything about it.

Will the group look at the oppression of Arab Muslims by their Muslim governments? Will it interview people imprisoned and maltreated by the likes of Chairman Arafat? Probably not. But it is fair to assume that some of the frustrations Arab young men feel has to do with the lack of any opportunity in their own countries, oppressed and robbed blind by their various rulers.

Will the group look at the way the EU undermines the economy of North Africa, by protective trade policies and heavily subsidized exports, with the result that hundreds are displaced from villages becoming either immigrants into European countries (to be derided and maltreated there) or drift into fundamentalist groups.

I suspect Prime Minister Zapatero did not mean any of that. He was just sounding off, as one does at the UN General Assembly.

What a total schmuck

Mirroring the worst splits of the Major years in the Conservative Party, the French socialists are now in total disarray over the EU constitution. With presidential hopeful Laurent Fabius having come out against it, calling it unacceptably "liberal" in inspiration, former prime minister Lionel Jospin has now given it his backing, making the left-wing divide unbridgeable.

Jospin – who was unceremoniously dumped by his party after trailing a poor third after Chirac and Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election - has now risen from the political morgue to tell the left-wing weekly magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur, that though the constitution was not perfect, it was an "acceptable compromise." To reject it would weaken Europe and isolate France.

Currently, party leader Francois Hollande in also in favour of the constitution, and he is left holding the ring in what is described by outsiders as an "acrimonious debate", with an internal party referendum due in November to decide on the official line. Perhaps with that in mind, Jospin is playing the "US card", claiming that a no vote would create a blockage in Europe that would "leave the field open for the United States... America prefers a handicapped Europe to an active Europe."

Er… who paid for the Marshall plan and kept troops (and is still keeping troops) in Europe to protect it from Communist invasion, while France and the rest cut back on their defence commitments in order to spend their money on their fabulous "social model"? What a total schmuck the man is.

WGAD

The father of my best friend at school spent many years of his life as a ship’s telegrapher, in the days when they used Morse code. He told me a story about a friend of his, also a telegrapher, but on one of the prestigious Atlantic liners.

It was customary in those days for each telegrapher to sign off each message with a four-letter personal code. This man always used to use the letters WGAD. My friend's father used to get relay messages from him and, living through the momentous events of the time, got such news as "The King is dead. WGAD", "Earthquake in Peru - many dead, WGAD", "War broken out, WGAD". Always, whatever the message, it was followed by the same four-figure code.

On the occasion of this man's retirement party, my friend's father commented on how he would miss seeing these messages with the familiar operator code. Only then did our man let him into the secret. It wasn't a code – it was an acronym, standing for "Who Gives A Damn". "The King is dead… WGAD", this man’s "take" on the world.

Into that category comes today’s news from The Daily Telegraph (and other newspapers): "EU fails to recover £1.8bn in false claims".

According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, at least £1.8 billion paid in inflated claims to Europe's agro-industry has never been recovered by Brussels even after the exposure of the abuses, according to a report by the the European Court of Auditors yesterday.

Apparently, the Court found that 83 per cent of all inflated farm payments under the CAP discovered by auditors since 1971 had never been paid back. And, surprise, surprise, the worst offenders have been Italy, Germany and Spain.

Many Eurosceptics get terribly excited about this further evidence of corruption, but I find it very hard to do so. When the whole of the EU's political system is corrupt, and it spends now over £80 billion a year of its own budget, together with countless more billions of member states' money, what is a mere £1.8 billion between friends? Even if it was returned, it would only be spent on an equally corrupt project.

WGAD.

The march of the hypocrites

I listened to Kofi Annan's appalling, to say nothing of hypocritical speech at the United Nations last night, when he declared that "the rule of law begins at home". Appalling it was because it is his own office that masterminded the food-for-oil scam that cheated the Iraqis out of food and medicine, and kept the funds flowing to Saddam.

Clearly, the rule of law may begin at home, but not in Annan’s office, to which effect I had intended to write a declamatory Blog on the subject today. However, the Bad Hair Blog does it better than I could and also provides a link to Claudia Rosett's piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "What's 'Illegal'? Kofi Annan helped Saddam Hussein steal food from babies". This makes the point with admirable clarity. And, of course, my colleague has also had a thing or two to say about the United Nations.

In the Bad Hair Blog today, the authors also takes in the sickeningly hypocritical speech of Chirac about world poverty – a man who has done more to promote world poverty than enough (see link), as does EU-Serf which really makes you wonder about the friends we have.

It really is quite remarkable how Blair and the Lib-Dems want to cosy up to Chirac, with their glib talk of European co-operation, when any sensible – or honest – person would be running a mile.

If Chirac and Kofi Annan truly represented the face of international co-operation, then there would be a lot to be said for isolationism.

A rather unhappy bunny

The piece on Redwood this morning has drawn an indignant retort from Dominic Cummings of the New Frontiers Foundation, who disputes that this is the first time the Tories have discussed changing the Single Market and that it signals a new leadership decision.

In support of his contention, Cummings cites "an almost entirely unreported speech" given by Michael Howard on 19 July to the European Democrat Students at their Summer University in London, "when he raised the idea of fundamental reform of the Single Market".

In our own defence, we feel we can be forgiven for missing the reference, as Mr Howard did not exactly launch an unequivocal crusade at that time. In the context of "allowing countries to pursue their own policies would force the European Union to become more competitive," what he said was:

Of course, there are some powers that all countries must sign up to – the single market being the most obvious. The single market was intended by Britain to be a vehicle for liberalization that would benefit business. It has brought real benefits to countries across Europe – but it has also been used to justify unnecessary rules and regulations. This is partly what has caused the recent
steep decline in support for the EU amongst British business.

Only then did he go on to add:

So we need to look closely at how the single market is working in practice. We need a simple set of rules that will facilitate and stimulate trade within the European Union. A reformed single market must be the bed rock of a transformed EU. It would deliver the great gains in productivity and growth that Europe so desperately needs. It would end the steady creep of bureaucratic power. And it would re-engage public support for the European Union.

However, we feel that there is a quantum difference between a rather vague call for “reform” – the mantra of successive politicians ever since we joined the EEC – and Redwood’s promise of an open-ended “renegotiation” of Britain’s terms of entry. Nevertheless, there is a continuity in the line that suggests a progressive development of thought, with Redwood picking up the loose ball and running with it.

Clearly, this is important and The Daily Telegraph today in its leader thinks that Redwood’s intervention is "a signal that the Conservatives intend to reopen Europe as an election issue". Cummings thinks otherwise: "Nobody looking intelligently at the polls would conclude that the answer to the Tory problems is to embark now on a Europe campaign when they have not yet developed an answer to the renegotiation dilemmas", he writes.

It would quickly fall apart and dismay a public yet to hear from the Tories on the issues that most concern them. Those expecting such a move are likely to be disappointed. It is far more likely that the Party will be pushing crime and immigration over the next few months than Europe.

This is worrying. We knew that the Tories were short of money, but none of us had realised that they were having to resort to "pushing crime" to make up the shortfall.

A new blog on the street

A new blogger has joined the merry band - goes by the name of EU-serf. At least he(?) seems to know his place.

Slaughter of the sacred cow

As a monument to the revered Margaret Thatcher, the Single Market has hitherto been treated with a degree of respect that has prevented all but the most extreme Tory Eurosceptic from arguing against it. Even the avowedly Eurosceptic Bill Cash will hear nothing against this sacred construct.

But that has now changed. The sacred cow is being loaded on the lorry, its final destination one of the very few abattoirs left after the depredations of – you guessed it – the Single Market.

That is the true significance of John Redwood’s pronouncements to The Financial Times yesterday, when he said that a Conservative government may have to renegotiate Britain's membership of the EU's single market to roll back excessive regulation of the UK economy.

Read quickly, it does not immediately strike home, but focus on those words "Single Market" and what we are seeing is a major shift in Conservative policy, a shift of monumental proportions. Never before has a senior Conservative politician ever challenged the sanctity of this construct.

Clearly, as Redwood says, this means that the Conservatives are preparing a "renegotiation package" to reverse 30 years of European integration and it is sweet music to hear Redwood proclaim that the Conservatives not only rejected the new constitution but wanted Britain to return to a relationship with the EU that was "more closely modelled to what we originally joined" (in 1973).

Pity that the Financial Times then had to trot out the dreary dogma that "Mr Redwood's return to the political front line has been widely interpreted as a lurch to the right for the Tories", as if returning the government of this country was a matter of right-wing politics. But the paper is probably right to suggest that Michael Howard is "preparing to bow to pressure from Eurosceptic colleagues to take a harder line on Europe to forestall the advance of the anti-EU UKIP."

As readers of this Blog will already know, the Tories are already committed to repatriating control of fishing and international development policy from Brussels, but what Redwood is suggesting is that they are preparing to go much further and reconsider the entire legal basis of British membership.

This is seen by former science and technology minister, Ian Taylor, a Tory "moderniser" (what used to be called a "wet") and chairman of the Tory Europe Network, as Redwood "attempting to throw his weight around", expressing the hope that this major shift in policy "was not authorised by the leadership".

However, one cannot imagine a situation where Redwood would take on the job of tackling regulation without also obtaining an undertaking from Howard that he could sort out EU regulation, and one also cannot imagine a situation where a senior member of Howard's shadow cabinet could announce such an important policy change with, at the very least, the tacit approval of his boss.

And you just know the policy has "wings" – a flying cow, perhaps – when Europe minister, Denis MacShame, attacks it. He claims that the Tories are now adopting "UKIP style policies". Poor Mr McShame. Since when has UKIP had policies?

Neelie again

The saga of Nickel Neelie, the Board Lady continues. As our readers will remember, Ms Kroes had promised to resign from all her numerous positions on various Boards before taking up the appointment of Competition Commissioner on the not unreasonable grounds that there might be a clash of interests in some of the decisions. Even so, she has also had to accept that some cases will have to be handed over to her colleagues to look at as she might know or care too much about some of the firms involved. It has not been made clear, however, whether in return her colleagues might hand over some matters to her if there was a clash of interests.

Would Ms Kroes be asked to go to some negotiation instead of Mr Mandelson because he has had dealings with some businessman whose interests may be involved in the particular trade deal? Or take on some duties of the Enlargement Commissioner when the latter has been found to have had too many holidays in Turkey? These are important matters. As Frankie Howerd used to say: Titter ye not.

In the meantime Our Neelie has had to sell all her shares and place future pension payments in a blind trust. Nothing odd about that. One might ask why has the whole proceduce been so painfully long drawn out.

There is, however, an interesting twist to this tale. A Commissioner spokesman said that Ms Kroes has undertaken not to engage in any business activity at all, ever again in her life. Her present term as Commissioner will expire in 2009. Usually Commissioners are forbidden to take up business appointments for a year after the ending of their term of service, though several of Prodi’s Commissioners rushed to take up directorships well before they were supposed to do so. But Ms Kroes’s term of penance will be indefinite, though commentators have expressed some doubt whether this will be legally enforceable after a year.

One need not shed too many tears for Our Neelie. She has had a good run for her money, her pension funds in blind trust will do well and she will have her Commission pension. When she accepted the position of Competition Commissioner she should have realized that there would be problems for anyone with directorships and stocks and shares, let alone someone with quite such an extensive portfolio. In fact, she should have done the resigning, selling and blind trusting immediately. Did she really think she would get away with it?

Still the rules are draconian and one wonders why that is so. Past Competition Commissioners had been accused of having no more knowledge of business than other Commissioners, which is very little, indeed. Neelie Kroes was brought in because she is supposed to be business friendly, though, as we have had occasion to remark before, it is more that business has been friendly to her. Endless directorships do not necessarily give you a complete understanding of business but you are likely to have a better grasp than someone who has been nothing but a fonctionnaire since reluctantly abandoning full time education.

Could it be that, in the end, the eurocracy as, indeed, all political elite, is frightened of business and business experience, despite all the grand talk? Do they see a definite need to sever all links between political management, which is what being a Commissioner is about and business management? All very curious but a little unsettling.

As a matter of fact they do love free trade - if they can get it

The egregious Christian Aid, that still claims to be a charity, though it has long ago become an NGO (though, naturally, with charitable status) has launched a new campaign against free trade.

They are, actually, speaking against some of their colleagues. Oxfam, for instance, for all its faults, has long ago adopted the slogan: Trade not Aid, recognizing that anyone who genuinely cares about the welfare of the poorer countries would like them to develop economically rather that subsist on hand-outs, that serve to prop up corrupt governments indefinitely. Logically enough, Oxfam has also been campaigning against CAP, that all-pervasive protectionist structure that causes a good deal of misery in the Third World.

Clearly, Christian Aid has not been able to think its way to a half-way rational position. A lot of NGOs are in the same boat. You cannot really blame them. If Third World countries traded with the developed ones freely and their economy grew, there would be far less for the various corporatist NGOs to do. Then again, they could go on having meetings and conferences in pleasant places at the taxpayer’s expense indefinitely.

So what is it Christian Aid does not like about free trade? Apparently, it is a mugger’s charter. Most of us would say that endless state control is a mugger’s charter, particularly in some of the more unsavoury political systems, where corrupt and oppressive rulers can prevent their people from having any kind of economic development (they might demand political rights then, and we cannot have that, can we) with the help of endless foreign aid.

I quote from the campaign leaflet:

It is the cruellest rip-off in history. Millions of farmers in poorer nations are being gradually ruined by free trade. Take the case of the onion farmers of Senegal. With Free Trade forced on them, they’re unable to sell their produce because their local markets are flooded with onions imported from Europe. The farmers are helpless to do anything but stand by and watch their crops rot and their livelihoods disappear.

I don’t know much about the onion farmers of Senegal, but I imagine their government forces a great many things on them. The only way they could stand up to their government is by making somewhat more than just a living. The only way they could make more than a living would be to sell their onions well beyond their local markets and they may be able to do so in other African countries. Christian Aid prefers to remain silent on the subject. They cannot sell those onions to European countries because there is no free trade in agricultural goods and European farmers are protected from competition.

In the same way, European onions appear on African markets at below the market price because those self-same farmers are heavily subsidized by the European taxpayer, who then subsidizes the Senegalese onion growers or, at least, the politicians in Senegal.

Now, the obvious answer to this is more free trade and less subsidy. But Christian Aid remains muddled in its thinking (if that is what they call it).

Having come up with that rather unimpressive and poorly argued sob story, it calls on all readers to write to Tony Blair to protest against free trade.

Those who write are encouraged to call for the UK government to do three things (as if the UK government could do anything about international trade, which has been EU competence since the Treaty of Amsterdam).

Firstly, Blair must

fight for policies that will allow poor countries to choose the best solutions to end poverty. These will not always be free trade policies.

Or, in other words, often they will be free trade policies; particularly if it is genuine free trade the countries are offered. Of course, the governments of those countries might not choose them but that ought not to be Christian Aid’s concern.

Then comes the killer point:

Stop the flood of cheap, subsidised exports to developing countries.

Ahem. I thought it was free trade they were against. Cheap, subsidised exports are the very antithesis of free trade. Is Christian Aid than in favour of free trade? Do they know what they are talking about?

The third point is even dafter:

“Make laws to stop big business profiting at the expense of people and the environment.

Sigh. How do these people think big business profits? Mostly by producing goods that people want to buy. What do they think big business does with profits? Among other things, employs people, builds houses and factories for people to live and work in, invests money that will help economic development.

Ah but will those people want Christian Aid, if their economy develops? We come back to the same question. Is this simply economic illiteracy, outmoded socialist thinking or something more sinister?

French support EU constitution?

Despite the growing splits in the socialist camp, AFP informs us that French supporters of the EU's proposed constitution outnumber opponents by more than two to one, according to an opinion poll released today.

Asked how they would vote if a referendum on the text were held today, 67 percent of those expressing a preference said they were in favour and 33 percent were opposed. And despite the recently declared opposition of Laurent Fabius, there is no difference between right and left wing, with 67 percent of socialists also declaring an intention to vote yes.

However, this is a majority of a minority. The real majority - 59 percent - said they would either abstain or cast a blank vote, which means that, effectively, support for the constitution stands at a meagre 27 percent. Furthermore, this is in the context of no significant opposition from a largely Europhile media, and very little public debate on the issue.

When the campaign gets going for real, the test will be where the current 59 percent intend to cast their votes.

Ouch…

From the diary of Richard Corbett MEP, dated 14 September (Strasbourg):

In the evening I go out for a bite with David Martin, Peter Skinner and Jim Nicholson, the Ulster Unionist MEP, following which we go for a beer in Murphy's, an Irish pub near the cathedral. After a while we become aware that the English speaking group in the corner noisily enjoying themselves are in fact UKIP MEPs, when one of them comes up to me and swears at me. I sometimes wonder if it's worth bothering countering UKIP's bogus arguments – they are well on the way to discrediting themselves without any external assistance!

We are reliably informed that the said UKIP MEP was Godfrey Bloom, erstwhile victim of terminal foot-in-mouth disease , who – we are reliably informed - in a somewhat tired and emotional state, subsequently got himself involved in a punch-up. For a fuller account, it is worth having a look at this site.

Strangely, although there were journalists present, nothing of the fracas reached the pages of the UK national press. Nor was there any report published of Kilroy-Silk's campaigning speech in Hartlepool last Saturday, even though the venue was well attended by "Fleet Street's finest".

Described as "overtly racist" by one observer, one wonders why more was not made of it, although our spies tell us that the Guardian will be doing a little number on UKIP just before the election poll, in which case they may saving all the goodies up for a time when they can do most damage.

Corbett's view, wholly unsound on most matters European (see link), may be spot-on when it comes to that motley crew which currently represents UKIP.

Is there a European Blogosphere?

There is an interesting article on the North Sea Diaries Blog, which explores the role of European Blogs in watching over our masters.

Well worth a read.

The Sun says…

Nice to see the Sun taking a tilt at the Lib-Dims, calling them the "danger party". Not least, the paper notes that they "add up to scrapping the Pound and signing the European Constitution", the only newspaper to make even a passing reference to the party’s consistently pro-EU policy.

It really is quite amazing that, in all the acres of coverage of the Lib-Dim conference, not one of the broadsheets could find space to mention the motion on the EU constitution yesterday, and we wait in vain for a grown-up newspaper to expose the inconsistencies behind Kennedy’s cynical opposition to the Iraq war.

Patten moves in

In a widely expected development, but completely ignored by the Britain in Europe website (its last press release is dated 9 September) Chris Patten, the European Union foreign affairs commissioner, has joined the board of Britain in Europe.

According to The Financial Times, this raises the speculation Patten could lead the "yes" campaign in the EU referendum.

This will come as no surprise to referendum watchers, as Patten has given many signals that he would like to lead the campaign and only recently the Europhile Foreign Policy Centre has urged Patten to lead the campaign, its director Mark Leonard stating that "Pro-Europeans" could not afford to let the constitution vote become a referendum on Blair.

However, Patten, in common with many of his Europhile colleagues, is arguing that the campaign can only get off the ground if Blair takes a lead, having said recently that "I for one would be reluctant to be sent over the top into no-man's land while the officers sat at the back of the trench, cheering."

Nevertheless, Patten has agreed to join the 18-strong board of Britain in Europe, which will undoubtedly be running the “yes” campaign – having played a leading role in the 1975 referendum. When the current chairman, Lord Marshall, stands down after the general election, it is widely assumed that Patten will take his place.

A back-room deal?

The continuing saga of Turkey becomes more bizarre by the day, with the EU Commission now warning that, unless Ankara reforms its penal code to remove the criminalisation of adultery, bringing it into line with "European values", it will recommend on 6 October that accession talks should not go ahead.

It will then be up to the European Council to make the final decision on 17 December 17, as to whether it will agree a starting date for accession talks but, given the hostility to Turkish accession, not least in Germany, the commission's opposition will be just the excuse the member states will need to put the issue on the back-burner.

Yet, despite Turkey’s avowed and long-standing interest in joining the EU, her prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems remarkably relaxed about the whole affair, preparing to tell EU commissioner Günter Verheugen to stop meddling in Turkey’s internal affairs.

To back this up, Ankara has signalled that it is not planning any immediate action to change its laws while Justice Minister Cemil Cicek trotted out the time-worn mantra that, "We attach importance to the EU... Everybody knows what efforts we have undertaken" in order to align with EU norms".

The attitude possibly reflects a deep-rooted scepticism in the Turkish government that the EU has any intention of starting accession talks. Said Cicek, "…even if such issue (the spat over adultery) did not exist and the EU still did not give us a date (for accession talks) on December 17, what should we do? We are not supposed to break down and cry. Turkey would continue on its way."

From this distance, it is impossible to know what really is going on, but there is something not quite right in the way the different parties are posturing. There is a smell of a back-room deal here, but, doubtless, it will be some time before we get to find out what it is.

Dangerous waffle

Yesterday’s International Herald Tribune had an interesting article about the Financial Times’ travails. Describing the British newspaper scene, it was unusually blunt:

“In a country where nearly a dozen national newspapers tussle over scraps of news about the royals, sports and celebrity gossip, the FT is the reserved, outward-looking exception.”

How true, how very true. This has not saved the FT from having various financial problems, but the point remains. Our newspapers are now seen for what they are: gossip rags.

Take the whole question of the United Nations. Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General, having assured the world that the U.N. would be there or, rather, would return to Iraq to supervise the transition to democracy, has now rather peevishly announced that the Iraqi war was illegal and, presumably, any transition to democracy would be illegal, too. At the same time, he has threatened the existing transitionary government of Iraq that there could be no elections until the security situation was sorted out. The Prime Minister very properly informed Mr Annan that elections would go ahead in the spring and the security situation would be sorted out. And no thanks to the U.N., who had refused American protection, had their compound car-bombed, sustaining many casualties and has virtually abandoned the country. When will these people learn that being anti-American does not save you from terrorists?

How much coverage did any of this get? A little. Charles Kennedy cosying up to Annan got a great deal more. How much have we heard about the U.N. shenanigans over Darfur? Not a great deal. What about the unravelling oil-for-food scandal? Next to nothing. The U.N. is not treated terribly seriously. Its benevolence is taken for granted by many and when “mistakes” happen there is a bit of a hoopla. Then all become somnolent again.

We need to look at this whole question seriously. The EU wishes to build up its own political structure, demolishing in the process painfully acquired legal and political realities, such as parliamentary democracy, habeas corpus or separation of powers. In its place it is putting its own structures, which are based on rather vague, even waffly, notions of international law and international rules. Apart from handing power over to international bureaucrats and international lawyers, what does that mean? Very little, as international law is, apart from the obvious need for agreements on trade, shipping, air space and so on, an impossibility, there being no international agreement on legal and criminal basics.

All this was analyzed supremely well, as one would expect, by Professor Kenneth Minogue in his Bruges Group pamphlet: The Fate of Britain’s National Interest.

Since the publication of that paper, things have not improved. The U.N. remains at the heart of that nebulous ideology of international law that the EU is basing its own structural development on. Of course, the EU goes much further in that the project is actually an integrated European state in the making but its dangerously waffly legal and moral basis is similar to that of the U.N.

On what basis does Kofi Annan say that the war in Iraq was illegal? Apparently because it did not have the unanimous blessing of the Security Council. But the Security Council is not a legal body. It is merely a very uneasy political grouping, whose moral stature is doubtful. Two of the permanent members are Russia and China, whose own record in either legal or moral terms, is not worth examining. (Think Chechnya, Tibet, Falun Gong, media control.) Another one, France, is being revealed to have been so anxious to prevent the deposition of President Chirac’s friend Saddam Hussein that it forged documents to discredit the American operation.

Other, non-permanent members of the Security Council are often failed states with disgusting human rights records whose governments are dependent on Western hand-outs.

There are several problems with the U.N. The fact that it is a political organization in which individual nations’ interests predominate, while pretending to be the bearer of to torch of international legality and morality is one.

Another one is the principle of buggins’ turn on which positions are allocated. This leads to quite breathtaking examples, the best known of which is the Human Rights Commission, which is chaired by Libya and of which Sudan is a member, re-elected until 2007.

The fact is that the United Nations was created largely by liberal democratic states to promote liberal democratic ideas. This was immediately sabotaged by the Soviet Union and its many satellites. As time has gone on, the U.N. has become an organization the majority of whose members neither believe nor practice its supposed basic principles. The idea of elevating it into a supreme arbiter of world legitimacy and morality is not only preposterous, it is criminal.

Another American newspaper, the Wall Street Journal Europe carried yesterday a corruscating leader, entitled Kofi’s Legality. Among other matters, it sought to remind Mr Annan of “some recent history”.

“For example, there was that splendidly legitimate U.N. operation in Bosnia, where its blue-helmeted peacekeepers watched with indifference as Serbian soldiers rounded up for slaughter thousands of Muslim men in the so-called U.N. ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenice. Or Rwanda in 1994, where Mr Annan – then head of the U.N. peacekeeping office – shrugged off panicked warning calls from the U.N. commander on the gound, thereby allowing the slaughter of 800,000.”

And so it goes. What of the U.N. camps in Rwanda, where the Hutu militias regrouped, terrorized the Tutsis and moderate Hutus and sallied forth on further slaughter? What of the U.N. troops’ behaviour in DR Congo, as mentioned by my colleague? What of the Security Council’s inability to come to some kind of a conclusion on Darfur because of French and Chinese interests in Sudanese oil?

Then, of course, there are all the successful expeditions that the U.N. blessed ex post facto: Kosovo, Ivory Coast and so on.

Finally, there is the small matter of the oil-for-food scandal, as well as the U.N.’s reluctance to do anything about Saddam before the invasion. Mr Annan would not like to have any of this investigated and, to divert attention, has produced the red herring of the “illegal war”, thus heartening every jihadist, as the WSJE points out, “hoping to disrupt the vote”.

An international legal system which has such a corrupt and immoral institution at its centre should not carry any weight. Yet it does and its so-called principles are evoked by the European Union in its ceaseless but doomed struggle with the United States for influence and with the member states for power.

Lost in translation?

A comment from one of our readers, Alex Dakers, on our Blog concerning the failure of the EU translation services:

Eso es bastante un interesar, si maldiciendo, la observación, como recuerdo asistir varias reuniones el año pasado, tenido por los servicios de la traducción, donde functionnaires de varias descripciones y la antigüedad aseguró nosotros que ellos encontrarían el desafío de la ampliación pero – como tanto más en la UE – ellos han fallado.

Cela est tout à fait un intéresser, si condamnant, l'observation, comme je rappèle m'assistant plusieurs réunions l'année dernière, tenu par les services de traduction, où functionnaires de diverses descriptions et le divers âge nous a assurés qu'ils rencontreraient le défi d'agrandissement mais – comme si beaucoup d'autre dans l'UE – ils ont échoué.

Das ist ziemlich ein interessantes, wenn, Beobachtung verdammend, während ich an Besuchen mehrere Versammlungen letztes Jahr, gehalten durch die Übersetzungsdienste mich erinnere, wo functionnaires verschiedener Beschreibungen und Dienstalters uns gezusichert hat, daß sie die Herausforderung der Vergrößerung aber treffen würden – wie deshalb viel sonst in der EU – sie versagt haben.

Ciò è abbastanza un interessare, se il damning, l'osservazione, come ricordo assistendo a parecche riunioni l'anno scorso, tenuto dai servizi di traduzione, dove il functionnaires di varie descrizioni e l'anzianità ci ha assicurati che incontrerebbero la sfida di ingrandimento ma – come cosí molto altro nell'UE europea – hanno fallito.

Dat is heel een interessant, indien vervloeken, waarneming, als ik bijwonen enkele meetings vorig jaar, vastgehouden door de vertaling diensten herinner zich, waar functionnaires van verschillende beschrijvingen en anciënniteit ons verzekerde dat zij de uitdaging van uitbreiding, maar zouden ontmoeten – zoals zo dat veel anders in de EU – zij hebben verzuimd.

Isso é bem uma observação interessante, se incriminadora, como lembro-me de várias reuniões assistindo no ano passado, segurado pelos serviços de tradução, monde functionnaires de várias descrições e antigüidade garantiram-nos que eles encontrariam o desafio de ampliação mas – como tão muito mais na UE – fracassaram.

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Bugger...

Thank you Alex!

Lest we forget

Direct from the new "Eurosceptic" Lib-Dims' website comes news of its policy motion on the "Referendum on the European Constitution", debated at 5.15 pm today at its conference in Bournemouth.

Moved by Jeremy Hargreaves, the motion was a "composite", as follows:

Conference

i) Believes that playing an active and leading role in the European Union is vital to the UK’s 3 national interest.
ii) Reasserts its commitment to the Party’s policy of supporting a Constitution that defines the powers of the EU.

Conference welcomes the European Constitution drafted by the European Convention and agreed by the Heads of Government of the 25 EU Member States on 18 June 2004, which in particular meets Liberal Democrat calls to:

a) Introduce greater openness and transparency into EU decision-making.
b) Simplify the processes of the EU.
c) Allow European countries to work together to achieve common aims in foreign and security policy, where they agree.
d) Give a greater role to the democratically elected Members of the European Parliament.
e) Ensure more effective scrutiny of European affairs by the British Parliament (and other national Parliaments).
f) Protect the rights of individuals, through the incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Conference believes that:

1. It is vital to the UK’s national interest, future prosperity and security that it votes "yes" to the European Constitution in the referendum.
2. A "no" vote in the constitutional referendum would prevent Britain from playing a central and influential role in Europe, and could even result in the ultimate exclusion of Britain from the European Union altogether.
3. The Liberal Democrats should take full advantage of their position as the only principled pro-European party in Britain.
4. The failure of the Labour Government since 1997 to make the case for Britain’s positive engagement in Europe has resulted in a growth in misinformed public hostility to the EU.
5. A ‘yes’ vote in the referendum can only be won if there is an extensive wide-ranging public campaign to communicate the benefits of membership of the EU and how the European Constitution will make the EU more democratic, more effective and more accountable.
6. The Liberal Democrats should campaign hard for a yes vote between now and the referendum.

Vote on motion as whole - motion carried