Booker – part 2

The column is finally up, with part 2 here - more than twelve hours late, and only after a telephoned reminder. You do really wonder what the website managers think they are doing. Anyhow, you can read it off the link, and enjoy the photograph.

Meanwhile, even the BBC has noticed that it is snowing in North America – and not a word about global warming! Canada is also getting hit and Reuters is reporting on the snow and freezing conditions in China. Greater Kashmir is also having a hard time.

However, never fear, the New Scientist is telling us that the "Arctic melt [is] 20 years ahead of climate models", with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado claiming that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" - a dramatic and irreversible slide towards ice-free conditions.

The warmists, therefore, can sleep easily in their beds, in the certain knowledge that their religion is safe - while the rest of us freeze.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker - part 1

Unless you know different, Booker does not seem to be up on the Telegraph website, so here it is in full - part 1. Or click the pic to the left if you want to read it "as is"...

If the politicians who run the European Union were found to be acting repeatedly in gross breach of their own law, to appease one of the nastiest regimes in the world – and a senior British minister was found to have seriously misled Parliament in the same cause – might this not be thought worthy of some attention? Yet again last week, unreported here in Britain, the EU was reprimanded by its own courts for refusing to obey their ruling that it had acted illegally in outlawing Iran's main democratic opposition movement, the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI).

This ever murkier and more bizarre story began back in 2001 when the British Government – solely, as it later admitted, at "the behest of the Teheran regime" – put the PMOI on its list of proscribed terrorist groups. In 2002 Britain persuaded the EU to add the PMOI alongside Al Q'eda to its own list of outlawed organisations. In 2006 the EU's Court of First Instance ruled this ban to be "unlawful".

In 2007 Britain twice persuaded the EU Council of Ministers to defy their own court’s ruling. This year, after a long court battle brought by 35 MPs and peers, including several ex-ministers, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, upheld a High Court ruling that the British Government had acted "perversely" in claiming that the PMOI was a terrorist organisation, for which it had brought no evidence, ordering it to lift the ban.

Although our Government reluctantly obeyed, last July President Sarkozy, as acting EU president, moved that the EU's ban should nevertheless remain. In October and again this month, the Court of First Instance again ruled that the EU must stop acting illegally. Furthermore the judges stated that, following the British court ruling, the British Government had failed in its legal duty to veto Sarkozy's move. They directed particularly trenchant criticism at the Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown for falsely claiming to the House of Lords that Britain could not have voted against Sarkozy's proposal because this would have meant the ban having to be lifted from all terrorist organisations.

Earlier this month the EU court moved with unprecedented speed to publish its latest ruling, but Sarkozy asked for permission to delay in complying - a plea strongly opposed in a letter to him signed by 1160 mayors from all over France. Last Wednesday the court brusquely rejected Sarkozy's plea, stating that the EU must comply with the law without any further delay.

The same day in the European Parliament, in the presence of Mrs Maryam Rajawi, the leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (of which the PMOI forms a major part), a senior MEP, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, backed by 2000 parliamentarians from all over Europe, warned the Council of Ministers that obstructing implementation of the court's ruling would place it "at odds with the EU's judicial system and the European Parliament" and could "lead to a constitutional crisis within the EU". He sent a letter to Presidenr Sarkozy to warn him of ‘the dire consequences of France's disobeying the rule of law in Europe."

What makes this reckless contempt for the law truly incomprehensible is that the EU's only confessed motive is to appease the one genuinely terrorist regime in the Middle East. Its agents, the Revolutionary Guards, have done more than anyone to destabilise the entire region, from the Lebanon to Iraq and Afghanistan (including the supply of arms used to kill British troops), To this murderous theocratic dictatorship, the only real hope of a democratic secular alternative is Mrs Rajawi's NCRI and the PMOI, the very body the EU seems prepared to stop at nothing to suppress. Just as baffling, however, is why we hear so little of this remarkable drama from our media.

COMMENT THREAD

Getting in first

One has to suppress a wry smile and at least admire the speed with which General Sir Mike Jackson has got his knife in first, before the many knives are directed at his broad but inadequate back.

The man is writing in The Sunday Telegraph today about the impending departure of British forces from Iraq, telling us that the withdrawal "represents a most significant achievement after what will have been a very difficult and challenging six years."

He thus tells us that Britain’s Armed Forces "will leave Iraq with heads held high" and that they "should be proud of their efforts".

That is fair enough, applied on an individual and unit level, where the courage, tenacity, skill, dedication – and suffering – of our troops (and airmen and sailors) is to be applauded, unreservedly. They did what they could, and many did more than we had any right to expect of them.

However, we – and they – should not run away with the idea that the campaign was a success. At best, we could describe it as an "heroic failure". Our armed forces were under-resourced, undermanned and ill-equipped from the very start, given a job that they could not hope to achieve. And thus, predictably – but with no reflection on those at the cutting edge – they failed.

In the end, after abandoning the outer provinces, with their ignominious retreat from al Ahamrah, forced on them by the pitifully inadequate resources allocated to the Maysan Battle Groups – they were driven out of all but one of their bases in Basra, until they were hunkered down in the former Basra airport, out of the game.

It took Iraqi troops, with the support of the US – including its massive air power – to recover Basra from the Mahdi Army and it was not until June that they did likewise with al Amarah.

These points we have made before, but you will not hear Mike Jackson make them. To him, in his piece today, anything that went wrong was the fault of the Americans, or anyone else but Mike Jackson.

Initially, it was all the fault of the Iraqis, whose "expectations of immediate economic improvement were understandably but unrealistically high." Their frustration at not seeing this realised quickly turned to anger with the Coalition forces.

Then, this volatile situation was "much exacerbated by the security vacuum created by Washington's appalling decisions to disband the Iraqi security forces and to de-Baathify the public administration to a very low level; the latter marginalised the very people who were best placed to help."

These decisions, asserts Jackson, "may well have doubled the time it has taken to get to where we are now." Then there was the Iranian backing for Shi'a "militants", which was a further difficult complication. And there was also "the lack of a coherent reconstruction plan and the failure in Coalition capitals to understand fully the complexity of the situation."

All this may be true, and no one will disagree that the Americans made some appalling mistakes. But so did the British. Immediately after the invasion, they failed to recognise that a Shi'a insurgency was building up round them, initially attributing attacks to Saddam loyalists and the remnants of his forces. Instead of taking on the militias, they gave ground to them, made deals with them, and then eventually handed southern Iraq to them on a plate.

Much of that was entirely the responsibility of the politicians, and Tony Blair in particular, who lacked the courage, in the face of the growing unpopularity of the war, to commit the resources and the men to do the job properly. Instead, his "spin" machine went into high gear, painting a wholly false picture of a "success" that was belied by the fact that the security situation was getting worse, and worse and worse.

Writes Jackson, "the campaign became a long haul – we had to have the strategic endurance to see it through." But we didn’t. We did not have the "strategic endurance" nor the political endurance, nor the political will. So it was fudged.

But nowhere do I see any evidence at all that Mike Jackson, who was professional head of the Army until August 2006, had a grip on the campaign, knew what was needed or sought to ensure that the Army was properly equipped for the campaign. It was, after all, Jackson who authorised the sending of Snatch Land Rovers to Iraq and it was he who kept them there, long after it was abundantly clear that they could not do the job required of them.

Thus, while the Americans may have made all the mistakes in the book, they learned from their experiences, adapted and then prevailed. That the British Army came out of the campaign with much the same equipment with which they started, and recognisably similar tactics, says a great deal. Despite the courage and dedication at the cutting face, the high command failed to adapt, failed to meld the Army into an effective counter-insurgency force, and failed ultimately to provide the leadership that the Army needed.

Interestingly, Jackson observes that the period in Iraq has "been a long, hard and controversial campaign, but I believe it has largely succeeded." He is right in all respects, but the success is not his, or that of the British Army. Our forces rose to the challenge, writes the man, but the leadership – both military and political – did not.

And to the end, like his former political master, Jackson is "spinning". He writes of "the announcement that Britain is largely to close down its military role in Iraq by May 31, 2009," not acknowledging that the date is not one of our choice. It has been set not by Mr Brown, but the Iraqis. They have kicked us out.

Even then, that date might not be the final word. When Gordon Brown so confidently announced it last week, he forgot to tell the world that this was a provisional agreement, subject to ratification by the Iraqi parliament. Without its agreement, our mandate ceases at midnight on 31 December, after which we are required to leave.

But the Iraqi parliament has not agreed. Yesterday, it threw out the draft law which would have permitted the extension of our stay to 31 May – by a massive 80 votes to 68.

Another vote is due next week but there is a strong caucus in the parliament which want to see the back of the British. Not least is Nasser al-Issawi, an MP loyal to Muqtada Sadr. He has hailed the rejection of the draft as a "great national achievement", and said he hoped the foreign troops would be forced to leave when the UN mandate ends.

If the parliament finally rejects the law, it will be up to Nouri Maliki to save our blushes by exercising his executive powers and signing individual agreements directly with each of the foreign states with troops remaining, giving them – and us - a legal basis to remain. This would be a messy solution, but rather appropriate for a messy war.

Soon enough, much of that mess – or the reasons for it – will emerge. And General Mike Jackson will not come out so well from its evaluation. It was just as well he got in first. He needed to.

I am cross-posting this on Defence of the Realm.

COMMENT THREAD

Any which way, we pay

In what could have been a fine piece of journalism, Simon Neville and Christopher Hope in The Daily Telegraph today lifts the lid on the council recycling scam revealing that more than 200,000 tons of recyclable household rubbish is being dumped in landfill sites or sent to incinerators each year.

Furthermore, Neville and Hope tell us, the amount dumped this year is expected to rise sharply as councils struggle to sell recyclable waste during the economic downturn.

The fact the recycled material is being dumped is, of course, not new. It has been discussed on this blog numerous times, and in not a few newspapers. But this is the first time an attempt has been made to quantify the scale of the dumping.

The 200,000 tons though, this is probably an under-estimate, as a lot of the stuff goes to contractors. The local authorities are able to put this material towards their quotas, but a significant amount then goes "through the back door", back into the waste stream.

What is missing from the piece, however – which would really have brought it alive - is any mention of the EU and the fact that we have been saddled with a fundamentally flawed scheme, the inevitable consequences of which we are now seeing.

The clue is in the piece, where we are told that, "… with prices for recycled material falling, increasing volumes will end up dumped or destroyed," but no comment is sought to explain that, with a producer-driven scheme, that was always going to happen.

There is only one way a recycling scheme is going to be successful in the long term and that is by creating markets for the salvaged material, sufficient to pull recyclable waste through the system, rather than push it into the market where there is no assured demand.

In this country, however, it is extremely doubtful as to whether such markets can be developed, given our contracted manufacturing base and our reliance on imports. And, if those who manufacture our goods – and are thus interested in buying our waste - are in recession, and demand falls off, there is absolutely nothing we can do to improve matters.

Therein lies the bind of this being an EU scheme. Has this – or any other – British government been stupid enough to launch such a scheme, it could by now have suspended the rules and reverted to the traditional practice of landfill. But, as The Telegraph points out, there is the small matter of landfill tax.

This is entirely a child of the EU. It was devised by the British government as a means of forcing local authorities to recycle and thus to avoid the swingeing EU fines that will accrue if we do not cut landfill. But, with it standing at £32 per ton, councils are potentially spending an extra £6.4million sending recycling to be dumped. Since landfill tax will rise to £40 per ton next year, the potential cost spirals to £8million.

Thus, we are in a classic EU vice. If we do not recycle, we pay massive fines to the EU. But since we cannot recycle, because the bottom has dropped out of the market, we pay massive amounts for recyclable waste to be collected, then we pay silly amounts to have it stored and then, when the storage space runs out, we pay for the landfill tax when it has to be disposed. Then we also pay massive fines to the EU.

It is this story that is not told in the Telegraph – it should be, but the sleeping elephant rules. The EU must not be mentioned.

Instead, we get a facile, partisan comment from Eric Pickles, the Conservative local government spokesman. He is allowed to say: "This once again shatters the Government's green credentials. Labour's idea of recycling is dumping huge mountains of rubbish on landfill sites and in warehouses fuelling the 80 million strong rat population. The sad reality is that families who want to go green can't under Labour."

The fatuity of this is obvious. This is not "Labour's idea of recycling". It is an EU scheme and, if there is no market for the material, then there is little Labour or anyone else can do. What would Pickles suggest as an alternative, one wonders. Would he eat the surplus?

There is, of course, the option of producing energy from waste, and for Pickles to have suggested that would have been an intelligent and useful contribution. That is what I would have suggested. But then I am not a Tory politician.

Mind you, there is a comment of similar fatuity from Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance. His offering is: "People are constantly lectured on recycling and threatened with fines if they don't comply, so it's outrageous that councils are just throwing the stuff away." And what does he suggest as an alternative?

To be fair, though, the first prize for stupidity goes to the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs – although it has so many already, it's almost unfair to the other contenders to give it another.

It says: "There is a strong incentive for local authorities and recycling facilities to minimise the amount of contaminated recycling due to the cost of extra material going to landfill as well as the loss of revenue from recycled materials."

And its point is? There is no demand for much of recycled materials produced. The local authorities cannot even give it away. Therefore, there is no revenue to lose, and no option other than to store the materials and then dispose of them, or the cheaper option of abandoning separate collections, disposing of the material straight away and taking the hit on landfill tax.

Any which way, we pay. But it would be nice if a newspaper occasionally told us why.

COMMENT THREAD

Parliament's position

It is pertinent to ask what position the British parliament, the glory of the British (and English) system occupies in the grand vision of EU legislation. After all, we are told by numerous clowns politicians of different parties that we should vote for them and they will do such things though, naturally, they know not what they are. Nevertheless, the terror of the earth they shall be.

So should we pay any attention to what these bozos political wannabes tell us? Well, curiously enough an answer was found as I was reading the HoL European Union Committee Report that I have mentioned earlier, "Initiation of EU Legislation".

In the section on national parliaments Paragraph 126 says:

126. Do those views of national parliaments have much influence over the development of legislative proposals? Sir Kim Darroch said that reports of the House of Lords, for example, were taken into account by the Government in formulating and developing policy, and thus might indirectly influence the Commission. His colleague, Paul Heardman (Head of European Parliament Section, UKRep), told us that the Reports were well regarded in the European Parliament. (QQ 299, 300) As one voice among many seeking to influence legislation, the direct influence of a national parliament should not be exaggerated, but it may be able to influence the Commission to a degree. The Minister advised that influence on the initiation of legislation would be greater if focussed on multi-annual programmes. (Q 468)

[I have left the references to the specific questions there, in case some of our readers want to follow them up in the document.]

In a couple of previous paragraphs (116 – 119) we had already been told about HMG’s efforts to influence legislation, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.

What it adds up to is very clear and I, for one, should like to hear some explanation of how they are going to deal with it from some of our politicos and political wannabes. Our Parliament and our elected government have become lobbying organizations that have to compete in the seat of power with others of that ilk. These might be other national parliaments or they might be business representatives, such as the Freight Transport Association that also gave evidence to the Committee, or an NGO, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature. The latter might even be better off as it receives EU subsidies to the tune of €600,000 a year but no, that does not affect their lobbying work at all, said the piglets as they took to the skies.

I suppose we can at least say that we elect the House of Commons to lobby at the seat of power on our behalf whereas the others merely appoint themselves. But it is not much consolation when one thinks of such people as John Hampden, John Bright [pictured above] or Richard Cobden.

The cooling has it!

Looks like all those trucks will be wasted!

And an intriguing thesis from Watts up with that. Carbon dioxide levels follow temperature, rather than the other way around. With the current spate of cooling, we can expect CO2 levels to plummet, adding negative reinforcement to the cooling trend.

I guess we knew this already, but the comments on the expanding biosphere are interesting. The corollary must also apply. If we get cooling and then falling CO2 levels, the biosphere contracts. That is of more than academic interest. The biosphere - or part of it - is what we eat.

That is the really scary thing about this global warming miasma. Even a temporary cooling will have significant effects on global crop yields. A shortfall of even five percent would wipe out global grain reserves, creating a global food deficit. The implications of that are massive.

Such a calamity, however, is readily avoidable, with a little forethough - changing in cropping patterns, putting more land into production, changing seed types, etc. But this needs planning. With governments obsessed with global warming, however, no one seems to be thinking of how to deal with the prospect of cooling, so no one is doing any planning.

Global warming, therefore, could end up creating a crisis for mankind, but not in the way that AGW advocates believe. The obsession, rather than the actuality, could be the cause of our downfall.

Meanwhile, the EU is doing it best to handicap attempts to maintain our food supply – not that you would guess this from the BBC.

COMMENT THREAD

Work that one out

"Las Vegas battered by largest snowfall in 30 years" says The Times, retailing that the US National Weather Service has said that the city faces its biggest snowstorms since 7.8 inches of snow was registered in 1979. Schools have been closed, flights grounded, and major roads have been closed as the iconic Strip was buried under five inches of snow with more forecast.

On the other hand, Russia Today tells us that Muscovites dreaming of a White Christmas are being shattered as the Russian capital is experiencing its warmest winter ever. The Russian capital now has a big problem as it is due to host the FIS World Cup Alpine promotional event on January 2, 2009. This is aimed at stimulating interest for Alpine Skiing as part of the build up to the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.

Some 30,000 people are expected to watch the events, which are impossible to stage without 4,000 cubic metres of snow, yet Moscow has seen none so far this year. However, the organisers have found a solution. They are now importing snow from the Kemerovo Region in Siberia, which was "troubled" by heavy snowfalls recently. The Siberian snow is being packed into 300 kilogram bags and sent to Moscow in refrigerated carriages, which means the skiing event will take place in time.

China, however, is suffering its coldest weather so far this winter, brought in by a Siberian cold front. Almost all of the country, except for Tibet Autonomous Region, has been affected by the strongest cold front this winter. Some regions recorded temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius.

This is relatively mild though. Temperatures in the northeast Siberian republic of Yakutia are expected to fall to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit) in the next few days.

Gobal warming or global cooling? Take your pick.

COMMENT THREAD

"Same old failings"

A piece over at DOTR (taken most of the day to write), the starting point of which is the assertion that we will never get sensible military procurement until or unless MPs and the media start to take the subject seriously.

Only then, do we assume, that they will make the effort to understand the issues and put the pieces together. And, if they do so, they will be able to target their criticisms accurately and fairly. But they must also come up with clear ideas of what should be done. There is no point whatsoever relying on the MoD – or the military. Time and time again, it has become demonstrably clear that they have very little idea of what they are doing.

Posted on Defence of the Realm

Utterly powerless

In The Daily Telegraph today, we see a lament that "EU laws stop UK Government from making foreign lorries carry safety mirrors".

The story then tells us that EU laws have prevented the British Government from compelling foreign lorries to fit mirrors which would radically cut road accidents in the UK. We are then informed that, "A simple device known as a Fresnel lens would eliminate blind spots experienced by foreign heavy goods vehicle drivers."

Government figures, we also learn, have shown that foreign hauliers are eight times more likely to be involved in a serious or fatal accident than their British counterparts on UK roads. Furthermore, the potential of the lenses is recognized by the Department for Transport, which has handed out nearly 200,000 lenses to left-hand-drive lorries as they arrive at British ports.

But, we are further told, the Government is powerless to compel foreign drivers to use them. That much is admitted by Jim Fitzpatrick, a transport minister, in a letter to John Baron, Tory MP for Billericay.

"We are bound by international convention to accept visiting foreign vehicles on our roads, provided they comply with internationally agreed construction and safety requirements," Fitzpatrick writes. "Our international obligations do not allow us to require unilaterally any additional components on these visiting vehicles."

Baron, on the other hand, believes that the mirrors should be made compulsory and complains that ministers have failed to take a strong enough stand. "The Government is taking only limited steps to combat this problem. But it could solve the problem in one go by simply making Fresnel mirrors compulsory. By refusing to do so, the Government is putting motorist's lives unnecessarily at risk."

This seems like déjà vu all over again, as we raided this precise issue on this blog in September 2006. However, in May 2007, we also reported that the issue had been resolved. And indeed, that seems to be the case. We now have Directive 2007/38/EC of 11 July 2007 "on the retrofitting of mirrors to heavy goods vehicles registered in the Community".

The Directive itself requires that member states shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with the Directive by 6 August 2008. The retrofitting must be completed by 31 March 2009, the details of which are set out in this leaflet.

As to the "blind spot" on foreign vehicles, Article 3 would seem to cover this:

1. With effect from 6 August 2007, and not later than 31 March 2009, Member States shall require that all vehicles referred to in Article 2(1) be equipped, on the passenger side, with wide-angle and close-proximity mirrors which fulfil the requirements for class IV and class V mirrors under Directive 2003/97/EC respectively.

However, it is here that the problem becomes apparent. The Directive makes no provision for left-hand and right-hand drive vehicles to have the same sets of mirrors. A left-hand drive vehicle driving on our roads will have the mirrors on the wrong side.

The egregious John Baron, seems to have a grasp of this but he then says: "I think the Government is hiding behind EU regulations. We have a problem here and it is incumbent on ministers to do something. They should be pushing for an EU regulation to make Fresnel lenses compulsory on all lorries."

However, he clearly has not noticed that we already have an EU regulation. Furthermore, the mechanism used to introduce it is by way of Directive 2003/97/EC, which is the "type approval" directive.

And here we really do have a problem. It is not the EU which makes the laws on type approval but UNECE. That is why Fitzpatrick writes about "our international obligations …" and not specifically about the EU. Once again, we meet our old friend the "dual international quasi-legislation/comitology mechanism".

To make Fresnel lenses compulsory, therefore, we have to seek an amendment to a UNECE regulation. And, in the nature of these regulations, the provision would have to apply to all vehicles in the EU and wider area, not just those which come over to the UK. In practice, this simply is not going to happen. There is no way all the member states are going to agree to require their whole national fleets to be modified, just to accommodate the UK.

The problem is, though, that there is no other mechanism by which this can be achieved under the current system. Under the EU regime, "type approval" is an "occupied field". We cannot make law unilaterally. We can only implement EU law. But – and here is the ultimate Catch 22 – the EU cannot make law unilaterally either. It must rely on UNECE. And that organisation simply is not going to move on this.

Thus, we have got ourselves in a position where, clearly, a new law is needed, specifically for the UK (and Ireland). But there is no longer any mechanism available to us to make such a law.

Thus we are left with the Department for Transport defending the Government's handling of foreign lorries arriving in Britain. "We have distributed fresnel lenses to left-hand drive trucks entering the country. We are sharing the evidence of this work with European counterparts to investigate how it can be best used to direct policy on HGV design and use," it says.

What is does not say is that there is nothing else it can do. We can "share" all we like, and we can give away – at the taxpayers' expense – free lenses to foreign truckers. But we cannot make them either buy them or use them. And that is the one thing the Department for Transport cannot tell us – that we are utterly powerless.

COMMENT THREAD

Hey, I was there. So what?

Well, I promised a rant and there it is on the rarely used Umbrella 3. I could have put up pictures of people who told nonsensical lies about the places they had been to and who have been accepted as gurus but I have refrained. Not even a picture of little Mark Leonard, who is now known as an expert on China, on the basis of a few visits and the inevitable book.

This time I shall link to the forum and open up a Comments section as the "I was there" brigade should be given a chance to have a go at me. We all hope that the comments will be new, knowledgeable and written by people who know about full stops, commas and capital letters. But I know that the world is not perfect.

COMMENT THREAD

The cult of personality

Difficult few days recently, starting a new chapter of the book – number six - and having difficulty getting it flowing. With the Snatch issue flaring up again, writing a post on that took a huge chunk out of yesterday. Hence, this morning I decided on a "heads down" to crack the writing block, and am back flowing again.

That explains a late posting today, with the project forcing me to ration the posts to about two a day, which makes for an interesting problem each day as to what to select from the daily torrent of news as the most appropriate subjects on which to expend the time.

The slight (alright, almost complete) detachment from the day-to-day political theatre though lends an interesting perspective and one tends to see things if not more objectively, certainly from the point of view of the more normal mortal, who does not wake up thinking about politics and then spend the whole day ruminating (or even fulminating) about them.

From that perspective, what caught the eye this morning (apart from an article that said Brown’s bank bailout wasn't working) was a column from Irwin Stelzer arguing that – if I have understood him correctly – "we" (presumably the political classes) should be cautious about heaping personal abuse on Gordon Brown, and instead look at "the bigger picture".

The prime minister is an "easy target" – too easy – so we should instead admit that he has got some things right or that, where there were alternative courses of action, those alternatives would not necessarily have worked better that those which were applied.

However, Stelzer is now suggesting that "as David Cameron and George Osborne muster the wit and courage to forge a coherent alternative economic policy", rather than attack the persona of Gordon Brown, we should devote our energies to comparing the alternatives on offer. Then, one assumes – although this is not said – we should come to a judgement based on that comparison, rather than simply on the basis of an antipathy towards Brown.

If I have got this right, it is an intriguing thesis, and one that has a certain attraction. And it may be more politically astute than some of the commentators on Stelzer's column aver – some describing him as an "apologist" for Brown.

Effectively, Stelzer may be tapping into the mainstream – not the highly vocal "pub bore" tendency or the dominant "forum queens" on some of the political blogs, laying down the law about how terrible Brown is and how we should all hate him.

Most ordinary people (who form the bulk of the electorate) don't think that way. There is not the black, tribal hatred prevalent in the Tory camp, which assumes that because they hate Brown so much, everybody else must. This route to salvation is to "spread the hate", the consequence being that the Tories fall naturally into office at the next election, a doctrine which finds less favour out in the real world.

With the poll gap narrowing between Labour and Tories – Cameron seemingly having lost his "unassailable" lead - Stelzer's thesis might at least allow some pause for thought. With Cameron at the helm, political discourse has of late very much relied on the "cult of personality", so much so that even Tory Diary is expressing concern about Cameron "giving too many speeches".

In a nutshell, politics is traditionally about the battle of ideas rather than personalities, and I take it that Stelzer is saying that we should return to that concept. I would like to think he is right, and suspect that many people would agree. What an intriguing prospect that would be – politicians arguing about ideas instead of personalities. Is that even possible any more?

COMMENT THREAD

Brothers under the skin

You would not have thought that Nicolas Sarkozy had much in common with Dany Cohn-Bendit but it seems the French president has sided with Dany the Red after he demanded that Václav Klaus should fly an EU flag over Hradcany Castle (pictured).

Recorded nearly two weeks ago on this blog, and then by Booker, Bruno Waterfield now records that Sarkozy has sparked a diplomatic row by attacking the "wounding and outrageous" refusal of the Czech president to fly the accursed ring of stars.

"It was a wound, it was an outrage to see that flags had been taken down from public buildings," says Sarkozy, stating that "Mr Pöttering" – who was part of the plot to bounce Klaus – "can count on the full support of the French president."

Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, however, has hit back, declaring: "There is no law binding the Czech Republic to hang the EU flag over Prague Castle. Prague Castle is a symbol of the Czech state and not the EU."

Schwarzenberg adds: "It is not up to the head of another state to criticise the Czech president over flags," pointing out that even if a major part of the population and EU representatives wanted the flag to be hoisted at Prague Castle, it was only up to the president to decide on whether to do it.

Then, a statement from the office of Mr Klaus put the whole thing to bed, saying: "The Castle is a symbol of Czech statehood. There is no reason to change this historic tradition."

In siding with Cohn-Bendit, however, Sarkozy may have been misled as to what transpired by an article in Le Monde, which gave a highly skewed account of the meeting, describing Klaus as "l'ultralibéral, colérique et europhobe président".

This may explain Sarkozy's further comments where, with reference to what he imagines was said at the meeting, he states: "This is not the way one negotiates with the members of the EU parliament, regardless of what is one's political involvement. This is not the way the symbols of the EU should be treated."

However, we will all be pleased to know that, "Le petit drapeau européen est resté sur la table du président tchèque. Sans trop d'audace spéculative, on peut supposer qu'il ne s'y trouve plus." By now, on suppose that le drapeau is stuffed somewhere where the sun does not shine.

COMMENT THREAD

Should this be denied?

Der Spiegel has an interesting story and a conudrum for German parliamentarians. Should they acknowledge the good work German agents have done in Iraq or not? So far the government has denied any German involvement and the parliamentary committee, investigating the German foreign intelligence service is being cautious as the newspaper dryly points out:

He would make the perfect witness. The tall, slim retired US general has nothing but good things to say about the Germans. He says they are "reliable" and extremely trustworthy. Most of all, though, he knows things that German parliamentarians would like to know.

But General James Marks is not a witness, nor is he ever likely to be one. The German parliamentary committee charged with investigating the German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), prefers to question Germans in its effort to find out what role the agency played during the Iraq war. Those asked to testify tend to be government employees and, therefore, dependent on the government. Americans have not thus far been summoned. Indeed, no effort to do so has been made.

Yet, General Marks's praises of those German agents he had to work with would make the most crustily neutralist politician preen himself on behalf of his country and its heroes.

Read the whole piece. Nice pix, too.

The Army has spoken

Picked up early by The Daily Telegraph today was a statement to be delivered by defence secretary John Hutton on the continued use of the Snatch Land Rover in Afghanistan. Correctly forecast – and now retailed by the BBC - Hutton was to say in a written statement to MPs that "The clear advice to me from military operational commanders, unanimously endorsed by the Chiefs of Staff, is that Snatch remains essential to the success for our operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan."

Read more on Defence of the Realm

Euro Mail

Spread widely through the media today is the latest development in that long-running saga, the "privatisation" of the Royal Mail.

It is covered in The Times which warns that there might be "50,000 jobs at risk" in break-up of Royal Mail, and by The Daily Telegraph which tells us that a "£3billion Royal Mail sell-off could be agreed today." From this we learn that the "state-owned firm that runs Britain's postal network will be sold to a private company." The favourite to secure the stake is TNT, the express delivery service that is part of the Dutch postal company, TPG.

Lord Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness, is heavily involved, and has been "thrashing out the deal in recent days and its culmination will be seen as a part-privatisation on the nation's universal postal service."

Then we also get from The Guardian the intelligence that DHL, part of Deutsche Post, is also "thought to be keen on acquiring the stake."

Thus, we are not only seeing "privatisation" but the sale of a strategic business, uniquely identified with the Crown – hence its title the Royal Mail – to European enterprises, to become part of an amorphous trans-national service. But what is entirely missing from any of the media coverage is any explanation as to why the government – with the enthusiastic engagement of Lord Mandelson – is so keen to push through the highly contentious and unpopular measure.

The answer, of course, is the EU's Postal Services Directive, detailed here, the aim of which is to "get national monopolies to open up to competition", ostensibly in order to make postal services cheaper, faster, more efficient and more innovative – similar to the process in the telecom and energy sectors.

As we pointed out in our May piece, the real objective – as always – is entirely political. The plan is to destroy national services, those with a unique national identity, replacing them with cross-border entities which owe nothing to any particular country. Then, in the fullness of time, when the "service" is partly or mainly "trans-national", the EU steps in with a proposal to regulate on a cross-border basis and creates an EU authority with full powers to dictate the rules.

Thus, we see economic integration followed by political integration in the classic EU mould, happening in front of our very eyes. And there is barely a mention of this process made by the media in its torrent of coverage. The best you will get is a reference in Bloomberg which tells us that "EU governments are phasing in competition for postal deliveries between 2011 and 2013, forcing Britain to drop the monopoly enjoyed by the Royal Mail," but that is about all.

As for any coherent opposition to this EU-inspired plan, Bloomberg also conveys the views of David Cameron, who tells us, "The Royal Mail faces a very much more competitive market." Thus, our David supports "solutions that look at joint public and private sector investment so that the Royal Mail can get investment and get some of the changes in working practices that are needed." Not from him a whisper about the elephant in the room.

So it is that the very fabric of our nation is stripped out, with not the slightest protest as the ring of stars spreads its malign shadow over everything and anything we once held to be central to our national identity. How long before our letter boxes are painted blue?

COMMENT THREAD

An Atlantic rift?

While the UK is cosying up to the EU, with its support for the EU navy, it seems to be getting less support from the Americans for its efforts in Afghanistan.

That is certainly the case, according to the Times this morning, which has it that the US is accusing Britain "over [its] military failings in Afghanistan."

The source of the accusations (plural) is identified as Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, a man who has some good knowledge of counter-insurgency operations and who has had some impressive things to say about his own military. Furthermore, he must have something going for him as he was appointed by Bush and has been asked to remain in his job under Barack Obama.

Anyhow, it is Gates who is "understood" to have expressed strong reservations about counterinsurgency operations in British-controlled Helmand province.

One of his concerns seems to be that, since a total of 132 British soldiers have now died in Afghanistan since 2001, the government is worried about public opinion turning against the campaign. It is thus, as it was in Iraq, overly risk averse, with strategy being dictated by the need to avoid casualties rather than by operational requirements.

This is coming to a head with US plans to mount a "surge", contrasted with the British reluctance to commit large numbers of extra troops. British officials are thus concerned that the US may take over control of Helmand – if the British fail to step up to the plate.

The willingness of the US to intervene in the British zone has been a recent feature of the Afghani campaign. Unlike Iraq, where the management of the southern zone was left entirely to the British – even when it was obvious that it was going belly up – US forces have already contributed considerable forces to operations in the British area, providing US airborne troops for the re-capture of Musa Qala last year and US Marines for operations in Garmsir earlier this year.

That the Americans have had to intervene may be behind what we are told are "grievances" over Britain's lack of equipment, including helicopters, the latter having left troops unable to perform the same tasks as US counterparts and led to more cautious tactics.

That was certainly the case in Musa Qala, where troops from the elite 82nd airborne spearheaded the assault, being flown in by helicopter to the northern outskirts of the town. In that one operation, the US deployed more helicopters than the entire contingent fielded by the UK in Afghanistan.

There is also grumbling, we are told, about the regularity with which US airstrikes are called to rescue British troops – the US providing about 90 percent of the air support across the entire theatre. Much valued though the British air contribution is, there are simply not enough aircraft to cover the entire range of UK ground operations.

But something which is almost certainly a legacy of Iraq is reported "tension and resentment" over the air of superiority adopted by British commanders such as Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster. He, according to The Times has suggested that his American counterparts needed to take lessons from Britain's experience in Northern Ireland and Malaya.

The paper also tells us that David Kilcullen, an adviser to the US State Department, told a recent seminar that there had been "lots of fairly snide criticism" from the British whose attitude had been: "Look at us, we're on the street in our soft caps and everyone loves us."

The repost, not without justice, is that such claims have been undercut by the performance since then. "It would be fair to say that in 2006 the British Army was defeated in the field in southern Iraq," says Kilcullen.

At the same semiar, Daniel Marston, an American consultant who until recently was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and has been embedded with troops in Afghanistan, said that Britain was being forced to learn some humility after being "embarrassed by their performance".

This is then explained by Carter Malkesian, an expert at the Centre of Naval Analysis. He says: "Among those in the Department of Defence who are paying attention to these operations, Britain's reputation has probably fallen. But they still recognise that the British Army, among all the allies, are those that fight the most and fight the best."

Needless to say, a "senior British defence source" counters these points by saying: "We are punching above our weight in Afghanistan and are the second biggest contributor of all the Nato allies, so for anyone to single us out for criticism is plainly wrong and unfair."

However, whether the British find criticism hard to take, or not, there is no question that the reputation of the British Army has been considerably tarnished by its performance in Iraq. And, whatever might be the skillset of the British military in Afghanistan, they are no longer in a position to lecture the Americans about how to conduct counter-insurgency operations.

However, if the British are not disposed to listen to their allies, they might perhaps be more inclined to take note of one of their former adversaries, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. "The Americans," he said, "it is fair to say, profited far more than the British from their experience in Africa, thus confirming that education is easier than re-education."

Often the greatest barrier to learning is the conviction that the subject is already known, and that there is nothing new to learn – especially if the source of that learning is believed to be inferior. The Americans may have – and indeed have – got things wrong, but they have also shown that they are capable of learning from their mistakes. That same ability is not always evident in the British ranks.

In this, perhaps, the British would be better off with the EU. Being rude about the French and Italians comes much more naturally - and their insults are more readily ignored.

Once again, I am cross-posting this on Defence of the Realm.

COMMENT THREAD

A fair weather member

Any which way you cut it, the management of the euro has been largely dictated by Bundesbank monetary policy, predicated on keeping inflation within acceptable bounds. Other euro members' needs have always played second fiddle to this core priority.

To that extent, the euro experiment has always been driven by German self-interest and, therefore, it should come as no surprise that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is telling us today that that self-interest continues unabated.

In a piece headed, "Bullying Germany gets a free ride with its beggar-thy-neighbour policy," Ambrose confesses that, for the first time in his life, he is starting to feel twinges of anti-German sentiment, sharing what he describes as a loss of patience "with the antics of the finance ministry and Bundesbank, and with the dictatorial turn in Berlin's EU strategy."

His thesis is that Germany "is pursuing a beggar-thy-neighbour policy." It is not fulfilling its responsibilities as the world's top exporter and pivotal power of Europe's monetary union. It is leaching off global demand, even as it patronizes Anglo-Saxons, Latins, and Slavs.

For sure, Ambrose nods in the direction of "binge debtors in the Anglosphere" who he acknowledges "are much to blame for this crisis". But, he reminds is, "Germany rode the boom too." It made those Porsches and BMWs driven by the new rich. Its banks are among the most leveraged in the world.

His thesis is, as one might expect, highly contentious, with well over 100 comments on the online edition of his piece – and some unfavourable comment flying round the internet. But Ambrose has a point. The whole idea if the EU experiment is that national interest should be suppressed. We are all "partners" is this brave new enterprise, and being communautaire is the new black.

With Germany and France long considered the "motor" of European integration – and Germany the dominant economic power – this sets up Germany as the key player, imposing on it a strong responsibility to approach economic issues from a "European" perspective rather than putting national interest first.

What, therefore, Ambrose is pointing out is the difference between "European" rhetoric that has been spewing out from Germany in the last 50 years and more, and the harsh reality. When the chips are down, Germany has reverted to type and is looking after its own national interests and putting “European” needs very much in second place.

That Germany should do so is hardly surprising, but its own actions should be measured against its euro-rhetoric. Either Germany is a core member of the EU or it is an independent nation state, entitled to promote its own interests irrespective of the effects on its "partners".

In theory, it can't be both but, in practice, it is turning out to be a "fair weather" member, fully communautaire when it suits it – and when it benefits from other members so being – but just as nationalistic as it ever was when there is any conflict. But, while Germany is by many judged right to pursue its own interests, measured by its own rhetoric, it is wrong to pursue the line it is taking.

What Ambrose does not point out (in this particular piece), however, is that behind the scenes this nationalistic action is placing enormous strains on the EU construct. We know that the economies of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy – to say nothing of France and Ireland – are groaning under the additional burden of euro membership. But for the common currency, we would be seeing a number of European currencies going into a nosedive alongside the pound.

What the euro is doing though, is hiding the cracks – but that does not mean they are not there. They are indeed there and serious stresses are building up in the system which are bound to give vent in the not too distant future. When that happens, the national interest that Germany is so obviously following, will become evident amongst all the players, with the EU left on the margins, a fractured and impotent entity.

By comparison, Brown's mismanagement of the British economy will seem of minor importance, as the fracture lines grow to earthquake proportions. What is happening in Germany is only the start.

COMMENT THREAD

Some interesting speculation

Moving away from the problems of the European Union and Britain's membership of that benighted organization, here is an interesting posting on Powerline about the way sentimental left-wing twaddle has managed to instill itself into so many people's minds.

It seems that the musical "Billy Elliott" opened not so long ago on Broadway, where you have to pay considerably more than an arm and a leg to see a musical, and is as big a success there as it is in London. Wild horses would not drag me to a show with music by Elton John but, I understand, the film is not bad if you disregard the sentimental and inaccurate politics of it.

I have had to listen to far too many tearful statements about the destruction of the wonderful mining community and the evil government (Thatcher's) that turned this country towards economic success (since squandered by other governments) to be surprised by the piece on Powerline.

I also recall people's attitudes to those strikes that brought the country to a standstill every year and made life extremely uncomfortable for everyone. Yet sentimentality and left-wing mythology prevails in this country where people ought to know better and over the Pond where they probably know nothing about British miners or their strikes.

The Journal also dispatched Roger Kimball, a fan of the film, to check out the Broadway musical. Kimball derides the clichéd left-wing politics that infuse the musical. He observes: "It's an odd phenomenon. In theaters and museums across the Western world you find audiences applauding sentiments that, were they translated into the real world, would spell their demise."

Nail, meet hammer.

The final humiliation

Carried in The Independent yesterday and reinforced in The Times today is the final template for the final withdrawal of British forces from Iraq.

The Independent puts is bluntly, telling us that the departure is enforced, with Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, taking his revenge for what he regards as the British surrender of Basra to hardline Shia Muslim militias. By this means, British forces in Iraq are facing a humiliating end to their six-year mission in the country.

What brings this about is the expiry of the current UN mandate on 31 December, leaving Britain without a legal framework for its continued presence after that date. The Independent had it that "frantic diplomatic efforts" were under way to secure an extension.

The situation was described as "extremely serious" and it is this which is behind the government's announcement last week that Britain's 4,100 troops in Iraq would begin withdrawing in March, and leave completely by the end of June - apart from 400 troops in training and mentoring roles.

At the time this story was published, the situation had not been clarified with a senior figure saying that it was "quite possible" that no agreement past the end of December would be ratified, in which case British troops would have to start pulling out immediately as they would have no legal basis for remaining.

In The Times, however, there is added detail. Still heralding Britain facing a "humiliating Iraq withdrawal", the story is there that British forces are now to be required to leave by the end of next July.

The worst of it is that Britain has been lumped in with five smaller contingents, including those of Romania, El Salvador and Estonia, and included in a "mini-agreement for the six entities", separate from the main agreement which has US forces leaving within three years. The other "entities" have been given until May to cease duties and then a period of two months’ grace to get out by July 31.

Britain had hoped for a separate deal, along the lines negotiated with the US but Fawzi Hariri, the Iraqi Industry Minister, says: "There was no way we could have done a security agreement to the same level of detail that we had with the Americans in such a short period." Thus we have been lumped in with Estonia and the rest.

The Times also rehearses the background, telling us that the Iraqi Prime Minister's discontent boiled over last spring. Having done a deal with armed groups to leave Basra Palace, their last sizeable outpost within Iraq's second city, in the summer of 2007, British forces remained largely confined to the airport.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, argued that Britain's troops were the main target of attacks, and that their withdrawal had led to a reduction in violence, but in the Iraqi Prime Minister's view, Basra was simply abandoned to warring militias. He launched a successful Iraqi military operation, supported by US forces and dubbed "Charge of the Knights", to seize the city in March, with British troops taking only a small and belated part.

The senior source said a bilateral agreement on the future status of British forces had "supposedly ... been about to happen for months and months", adding: "We should not forget how angry – and mistrustful of the British – Maliki is for allowing the Shia militias to take over in Basra. He regards the British as having entirely sold the pass. It is true that it suits him, for domestic political reasons, to be seen to be giving the British a hard time, but it happens to be something he feels very cross about."

In truth, Maliki has every right to be "cross". The British retreat actually started right at the beginning in May 2003 when the government decided to opt out of running a southern Iraq devoid of government, and progressively handed over the running of the region to the militias.

The turning point came in August 2006 when the Army quit al Amarah, leaving it to the Mahdi Army, under which control it has remained until last June, becoming the weapons "depot" which supplied the rest of the Shi'a insurgency in Iraq. It was only in June that 20,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 2,500 elite US troops, finally moved back in to impose, for the first time since the invasion, the writ of the Baghdad government.

The full story has yet to be told (although it is in the process of being written) but this final humiliating chapter sets the seal on what has in reality been a comprehensive defeat for the British Army. The blame, however, lies mainly with the government, from Blair through to Brown. Nevertheless, the Army brass does not exactly come out of this with any glory.

So far, though, the government has sought to "spin" this defeat as a victory – and its has partially got away with it, relying on the Army to support it, in the knowledge that it too will not want to walk away from Iraq admitting its own failures.

Too many people though know exactly what went on and this is too big even for New Labour to "spin". The truth will out, and it is not pretty. But it typifies the utter incompetence of a government more concerned with "spin" than soldier's lives or the welfare of the people whose land it had invaded.

As our troops finally march away, to their ships and aircraft, this will indeed be the final humiliation. This government must not be allowed to get away with pretending otherwise. But the Army also needs to come to terms with its own failures for, without learning the lessons that come with that, it is setting itself up for another, more serious failure in Afghanistan.

As Thomas Harding writes in a superb piece published a few days ago, "if we are to win out in the far more challenging arena of Afghanistan, then the Army had better change, and change soon."

I am cross-posting this on Defence of the Realm.

COMMENT THREAD

How could we have forgotten this?

Yes, yes, we are all feeling sorry for ourselves what with the weather being quite seasonal and politicians being inadequate (I am shocked, shocked I tell you) but still there is something to smile about when we recall what happened five years ago yesterday. Happy anniversary to all Iraqis.

A vacuum at the heart of politics

Today in his column, quite rightly, Booker picks up on the confrontation between Václav Klaus and Daniel Cohn-Bendit (amongst others), the transcript of which we published last week.

Booker, of course, takes it further, pointing out that the confrontation in Hradcany Castle confirms "the inability of the Euro-elite to accept anyone else's opinions," and also puts it in context. He writes:

Imagine that a Franco-German MEP, invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, plonked down in front of her an EU "ring of stars" flag, insisting that she hoist it over the palace alongside the Royal Standard, and then proceeded to address her in a deliberately insulting way. The British people, if news of the incident leaked out, might not be too pleased.

This bizarre confrontation, Booker tells us, has been recounted and discussed with shock across formerly Communist eastern Europe. But not here in the MSM to any great degree until it gets in the column. But, as he says, it does confirm the inability of the Euro-elite to accept that anyone holds different views from their own, on Lisbon, global warming or anything else.

As we see from the way our own political parties are run, when it comes to "Europe", the system has no place for opposition. Everything must be decided by "consensus", directed from the top. There is only one approved "party line". Apart from a few little powerless dissidents round the edges, the EU is thus in essence a one-party state.

It was a sense of this that powerfully influenced the French, Dutch and Irish people, when they were given the chance, to vote against the constitution which will cement that one-party state into place more firmly than ever.

And, concludes Booker, it explains why, last week, the European Council told the Irish that they must hold their referendum again, on the understanding that this time they will get it right. That is the way one-party states behave – as President Klaus, who lived under one for the first 50 years of his life, knows only too well.

We then get Daniel Hannan essentially rehearsing the same theme, who in his own piece writes:

This is becoming like the closing scenes of Terminator. However many times you kill the European Constitution, it keeps lurching to its feet again. Blam! Fifty-five per cent of French voters say "Non". Zap! Sixty-two per cent of Dutch voters say "Nee".

But the automaton keeps advancing, its flesh burned away, its charred metal skeleton stamped with the words "Lisbon Treaty". Then – pow! – 53 percent of Irish voters vote "No". The machine is briefly swallowed by orange flames. Then, after a short lull, the red lights …

In The Sunday Times we get Minette Marrin writing in her own way about the same theme, under the heading: "Betrayal all around from the guardians of democracy." It's an odd coincidence, she notes …

… that while democracy and meritocracy have truly spread in the past 50 years, while all sorts of institutions and activities have been opened up to people who used never to get a look-in, political democracy seems to be coming under increasing threat.

On the intimately linked issue of "climate change" there is Nigel Lawson commenting that, "Climate change summits like Poznan and Brussels will cost us the earth", picking up on the mad "climate change circus" beloved of the "colleagues" which is the very antithesis of our system of parliamentary democracy.

A false note comes from that preening idiot Chris Heaton-Harris MEP, in the letters page of The Sunday Telegraph, writing blithely about the British who "still deserve a vote after Lisbon Treaty's ratification".

Thus he observes that there is "a long-standing convention that no Westminster Parliament may bind a subsequent Parliament," entirely oblivious to the fact that, as we noted, the very essence of our membership of the EU is that that doctrine (not a "convention") goes out the window. In front of the very eyes of Heaton-Harris, we have the "climate change agreement" which binds successive parliaments to 2020 and beyond, one of many things emanating from the EU which does likewise.

But the ultimate false note comes from Matthew d'Ancona, who fixes on the current Conservative policy – this on the recession – which as he tells us amounts to the view that "David Cameron can't do anything about recession but must say the right things."

The problem here is that David Cameron's broader view of the more intractable and long-standing problem of the erosion of our democracy is that "saying the right things" actually amounts to saying nothing at all.

In the welter of comment about the way the EU is running rough-shod over our ancient rights, about how it is tearing the economy apart with its obsession on climate change, and how it is making a mockery of the Irish "no" decision by demanding another referendum, there is no political – or any – input from the Conservative party. The Conservatives are simply not part of the debate.

Whether they like it or not, the role of an opposition party is to drive the debate on politics, to explore issues and concerns that the government does not want to talk about. Central to that debate is the way we are governed, and the increasing encroachment of that "one party state" that is the EU.

If the Conservatives refuse – as they are doing – to take part in that debate, then it leaves a vacuum at the heart of politics. And, as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. The Tory absence is being filled and will be filled by others, leaving the party even more marginalised and irrelevant than it is already.

Their silence is more damaging than they can even begin to imagine.

COMMENT THREAD

So madness descends

While our MPs were safely tucked up in their constituencies yesterday, the "colleagues" were still hard at work. It may have been a Saturday, but there's a planet out there to save, and no time to lose.

In terms of planet-saving, however, the scheme so happily paraded by the European Council on Friday looks to be about as substantial as an EU promise not to repeat a referendum that has delivered a "no" result. In fact, the package is descending into low farce.

That much comes from the details agreed today, where the "colleagues", caught between a rock and a hard place have decided they will allow energy and manufacturing companies in the member states to buy additional "carbon credits" from third countries.

This is the so-called "clean development mechanism", which some of the rabid greenies in the EU parliament wanted to block, concerned that it would reduce the pressure to achieve deep emission cuts.

What the colleagues have agreed, however, is that these filthy, dirty, capitalist polluting swine major employers can, between 2008-2020, top up their EU allowances through the CDM. Furthermore, the allowance has climbed to 1.554 billion metric tons-worth of carbon credits from developing countries such as China. The figure represents an 11 percent increase on the 1.394 billion originally proposed by the EU commission and a great deal more than the greenies wanted, their idea of a quota being "zero".

This comes to us via Bloomberg, which tells us that these permits, administered by the UN, are cheaper than EU allowances. The effect of putting them on the market, therefore, will be to drive down the overall cost of "carbon", thereby reducing the financial incentive to reduce emissions.

Here, the greenies have got it right, in that it prejudices the whole scheme and makes it extremely unlikely that the EU emissions target will be reached. But, faced with avoiding the bankruptcy of the best part of the heavy industrial base within the EU member states or saving the planet, the commission blinked.

What is particularly delicious about all this – and much more – is that much of the pressure has come from Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has been threatening to veto the whole climate change package unless it was toned down.

Here, he has been extraordinarily robust – unlike our lot which would have bought the whole thing unchanged. Berlusconi told journalists that he thought it was "absurd" to be talking about carbon emissions in the face of the more pressing financial crisis. "It's like someone with pneumonia thinking about having a hairdo," he said.

It's actually a lot madder that that – more like going for a long walk in a blizzard in your underpants. With full auctioning required for electricity producers from 2012, we are still stuffed. The only real difference is that we've been allowed to keep our socks on as well.

And so the madness descends. But I don't know what really worries me most. The package that the "colleagues" have produced is one thing. But working on Saturdays? That really is scary.

COMMENT THREAD

Take a break!

I suppose the fact that the Greek police are running out of tear gas must tell you something about the situation in that benighted country.

One smiles though to see that the Greek authorities are appealing for help to replenish their stocks … to Germany and Israel. What happened to all this EU solidarity? Surely there are stocks of "euro-gas" floating around in Brussels for just this sort of contingency? Or are the "colleagues" reserving it for when things get a bit closer to home?

We are told, incidentally, that Greece is in its ninth day of riots, with as many as nine banks having been targeted last night – an interesting reflection of where the mob sees its enemy. But the longevity of the "disturbances" has also spawned some ruminatory pieces in the media, not least The Guardian.

Here, an analysis by Maria Margaronis in Athens notes that the teenagers and twenty-somethings who have come close to toppling the Greek government "are not the marginalised".

This, she writes, "is no replay of the riots that convulsed Paris in 2005." Many of the rioters are sons and daughters of the middle classes, shocked at the killing of one of their own. They are "disgusted with the government's incompetence and corruption, enraged by the broken promises of the education system, scared at the prospect of having to work still harder than their exhausted parents."

The analysis may be off the wall, but there may well be more than a grain of truth in it and, if that is the case, there are issues here which have a strong resonance in the UK. There are distinct commonalities which should have people over here thinking hard as to whether the same unrest is about to hit here – with urgent assessments of tear gas inventories.

In a saner world, one might expect a long debate in the House of Commons, where the various issues could be chewed over, the parallels considered and some ideas offered as to what relevance these disturbances have to the UK and lessons could be learned, before rather than after the event.

The idea of such a debate, however, is wishful thinking. With the news agenda crammed, serious events happening all over the world - not least the tragic news from Afghanistan, where four soldiers have been killed – our parliament is taking a break.

This, as The Daily Telegraph tells us, is the longest Christmas break for more than 10 years. It will start next Thursday when the MPs pack their bags and return to their constituencies, not coming back until 12 January.

Quite rightly, Tory Diary expresses some dismay but, as we pointed out in our previous post, parliament has become so marginalised that it has little to do. The MPs might just as well go home, for all the good they can do in Westminster.

Some MPs themselves are unhappy with the situation, and we are told that the long break has "renewed accusations that politicians are out of touch with the working lives of ordinary Britons". But this is not merely a question being "out of touch". Parliament is impotent. What it says and does now is of very little importance and the fact that MPs can be summarily packed off home tells you all you need to know.

The trouble is that parliament does have a purpose. It is, in effect, the voice of the people, its debates articulating their concerns. Thus, if parliament is silenced, the people are deprived of a voice. But, as we see in Greece, when that happens, they go elsewhere to express their views. While MPs enjoy their break, therefore, they may care to reflect that it is more fundamental – a break between themselves and the people.

If that continues, it could become permanent and it will take more than stocks of tear gas to fix it.

COMMENT THREAD

What is the point?

The EU "climate deal" – stitched-up at the European Council – is being variously hailed as an "historic agreement" on cutting pollution (they mean Carbon dioxide) and, by the Greens a "failure".

Generally speaking, anything that pisses off the Greens is something we favour but, in this case, even their "failure" is highly destructive for democracy.

Without going into the finer points of the deal – mainly because they are so utterly tedious – what should strike everyone are some of the broader details, helpfully provided by The Independent.

This paper tells us that the "colleagues" have agreed a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared with 1990 levels … nothing new there. Then there is a 20 percent increase in use of renewable energy by 2020. Nothing new there either, except it ain't going to happen (nor is the emission cut, but never mind).

Something newish is a 20 percent cut in energy consumption via improved efficiency by 2020. That hasn't a hope in hell of happening through efficiency but, when the electricity system shuts down, that surely will help cut consumption.

Now we get to the interesting bits. The allocations of "carbon permits" under EU emissions trading scheme is to be cut by a fifth from 2005 levels, power companies will have to buy their permits at auction from 2013 and auctioning for other industrial sectors and aviation will be phased in by 2020.

The point … always the point. These are to be mandatory provisions, locked in by EU law, agreed by all the member states including our own. That makes 2013 an interesting year – it will be three years after our general election. The year 2020 is at least three if not four general elections away. Yet these matters are being decided and cast in stone by this parliament.

Whatever happened to the doctrine of "no parliament can bind its successor"? And, if this no longer applies, what really is the point of having general elections?

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