The elephant in the elephant in the room

In numerous postings on the Blog we have referred to the "elephant in the room", describing that strange phenomenon whereby the media, politicians and others comment on events, usually the announcement of legislation or some such, without mentioning the provenance – the European Union.

So much of what the EU does, or is responsible for, passes without comment simply because people are unaware of it, and have not been told.

Recently, however, I have enjoyed – if that is the right word – reading a series of correspondence in the Yorkshire Post on the "democratic nature" of the EU, with the egregious Richard Corbett MEP making the running.

More recently, he has been joined by his press officer, who goes under the name Toby Harman, writing on his own Blog, Straight Banana. In two of his more recent posts, here and here, our Toby seeks to rebut the claim that the EU is "fundamentally undemocratic".

As an aside, it is interesting to note that our Toby uses the familiar "straw man" technique, succinctly analysed on the Eurealist Blog, citing no less an authority as Godfrey Bloom as the spokesman for the Eurosceptic argument. He does not attempt, for instance, to tackle the arguments raised in our Blog here and here.

Howsoever, the point at issue is that, in making their claims for the democratic credentials of the EU – servant and master speak with one voice – both exhibit an amazing enthusiasm to discount the role of the EU commission. Both focus on the parliament and the council, with our Toby stating that, "the Commission has no legislative powers". "It can only propose legislation," we are told. It cannot pass it.

The intent here, clearly, is divert attention from the core institution of the EU, its supranational government and guardian of the treaties. Thus, while Corbett & Co are prepared to acknowledge the role of the EU in our lives, they are keen to conceal the dominant role of the commission. Rather like a set of Russian dolls, this is in effect, the elephant in the elephant in the room.

But to deny that the commission has no legislative role is, to say the very least, obtuse. No-one would deny that the US president does have a legislative role, yet the relationship between the president and congress if very similar to that between the EU commission and the other two institutions, the parliament and the council.

As with the commission, the president can only propose legislation. The president requires the assent of congress before his legislation is passed. The commission requires the assent of the council and the parliament (for some legislation).

The major difference is, of course, that the US president is elected while the commission is not. I do not think anyone would assert that the United States woudl qualify as a democracy is its president was appointed, yet the Crobetts of this world seem happy with the prospect of an unelected commission dictating the legislative agenda, and want to beleive that this is democratic.

Some might suggest here that the antidote is to have an elected commission but that would not make it democratic. There is the minor problem of the lack of a European demos. Either way, the commission is a fuindamentally undemocratic institution.

In arguing the case for democracy in the EU, therefore, the Corbett faction have to play down the role of the commission, or the game is lost. But, to do so, they have to conceal the enormous power of any institution which has the right to propose legislation. In the commission’s case, that power is absolute as it has a monopoly bound within the treaties. Only the commission may propose legislation.

Furthermore, in the trade of political science, this power known as "conditional agenda setting", and the theorists have no doubts whatsoever about its strength.

That power can be used in several ways – some obvious and some more subtle. Firstly, it can propose new legislation. That means it can define the subject, scope and content. For sure, that proposal may be blocked but the commission has another weapon – it can withdraw its proposal.

Thus, it can (and does) present the council and parliament with a "take-it-or-leave-it" choice. Where there is pressure for legislation, the other institutions have to accept the commission’s version or none at all.

Thirdly, the commission can use its power to block change. Once a law is in place – however achieved – only the commission can change or repeal it. The reason is obvious. Either to change or repeal requires a new law, and neither the council not the parliament can consider such a law unless the commission first proposes it – and there is no means of compelling to do so.

By this means, the commission is able to protect its body of law – the so-called acquis communautaire – exercising the "ratchet effect". Powers only go one way, from the nation state to the commission, never the other way.

Finally, the commission can use this power of proposal with persistence and stealth. Being unelected, and working to a long-term agenda which extends beyond the span – and memory – of elected governments and parliaments, it can take a step-by-step approach, offering incremental proposals, each relatively inoffensive, their nature only becoming apparent when the full initiative is complete.

If it is blocked, it can always come back a few years later, for as many times as it takes, until it gets what it wants. As long as it sets the agenda, it holds the power.

All this, of course, is deliberate. It makes the legislative process "politician proof". Its creator, Jean Monnet, was fully aware of what he was doing. He wanted a government of Europe that did not depend on elected politicians. That is the commission, the core of the system - the rest is fluff. The result is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic.

Amendments and corrections added.

A calm and measured response

Only two days ago this Blog was railing at the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, with its report - then unpublished - on fishing.

From what we had then seen, it looked very much as if the Commission was ignoring the "elephant in the room", making recommendations to the government on fishing policy which is, in fact, controlled by the European Union.

Discerning readers might have noticed a subtle shift in direction the following day, when we placidly observed that the BBC, in featuring the Commission's report, had introduced the subject, with the opening announcement, "British fisheries policies are failing ..."; yet another example of the "elephant in the room".

With the temperate, calm, deliberation for which we have rightly become famous, we also noted that we did not have a British fisheries policy, labelling the BBC - with somewhat surgical precision, even though we say so ourselves - as "stupid, ignorant, blind people".

At the time, the Commission's report was still unpublished and we were relying on the BBC in particular for our understanding of the main recommendation which, as the BBC reported, was that the sea "should be treated in the same way as endangered areas on land".

The BBC then gave airtime on the Today programme to Sir Tom Blundell, chairman of the Commission, who argued that "We need to take positive steps to allow the environment to recover. Marine reserves should be created to protect 30 percent of the UK's seas from fishing."
But now we have the report, all 497 pages of it. If any reader feels inclined to wade through it, the link is here.

And having read it – yes, dear reader, we have read it... well... some of it – we see that we were in fact over-generous in our calm, temperate approach to the BBC. Call me pedantic if you like, but the Commission did NOT recommend closing down 30 percent of British waters. Its exact recommendation was (and, as always, bear with me on this one - the point will soon emerge) that:

...the UK government should: develop selection criteria for establishing a network of marine protected areas so that, within the next five years, a large-scale, ecologically-coherent network of marine protected areas is implemented within the UK. This should lead to 30 percent of the UK’s exclusive economic zone being established as no-take reserves closed to commercial fishing; and develop these proposals in consultation with the public and stakeholders (para 8.69).

Now, note the bit we marked up italics: "this should lead to... etc.". This has to be read in conjunction with the recommendation in para. 8.101 where the Commission says that

Changes are needed both at the UK and European level, where the UK government should be prepared to make the case for a new EC Directive for the designation of large-scale MPA networks protected from the effects of fishing.

This brings us to the meat of the issue. The Commission did not ignore the "elephant in the room" (most humble apologies).

Recognising the obvious, that the UK government has no power to close down 30 percent of UK waters – thereby excluding a large tranche of the "European" fishing fleet - the Commission's actual recommendations were that the UK government should do the preparatory work, and then go cap in hand to the EU commission and ask it if it would, ever so kindly, consider...

And did we get any hint of that from the BBC? Or, for that matter, from any other media source? I think not. But what the headlines should have read was, to the effect that the Royal Commission had recommended our government to ask Europe for permission to close its own waters ... to save fish stocks from collapse.

That is fantasy, we know, but that is the standard against which you can measure the total inadequacy of the media in reporting the facts - and the size of the "elephant in the room".

Furthermore, if you buy into the Royal Commission's own fantasy, that closure of vast areas of the UK fishery is urgently necessary, this is a damning indictment of the impotence of our government, and a graphic demonstration of quite how much power has been given over to Brussels. So powerless is it that the Commission did not even suggest that the government should close its waters – merely that it should go cap-in-hand to Brussels.

Oddly enough, this actually reverses the balance of the argument on the Tory policy of repatriating the CFP. Critics say that, in order to do this, we have to have the agreement of all the other 25 member states. “And what if they say ‘no’”, the argument goes.

In this case, we have a situation where the government is being enjoined to go to Brussels to ask if it can close off some of its waters. And what if they say “no”? The answer is brutally simple: we cannot do it.

But, if the CFP has been repatriated (and I can reveal that the Tory policy pre-empted the Commission report by proposing permanent closed areas – although by no means as extensive as is suggested), then the Commission would have been talking directly to the government and, if it was so minded, the government could implement the closures without undue delay.

Ah, you might say. But this government could ignore the EU and go ahead with the closures anyway. Indeed it could. And so could a Tory government go ahead and repatriate the policy. The difference is that, even though there is not a snowball's chance in hell of the EU agreeing to the closures, this government will not act independently.

The brooding elephant

At least the Independent picked up the story about the effect the UKIP/Veritas had on the general election results.

With Booker in the Sunday Telegraph (plus a letter), a mention in The Business and letters today in the Daily Telegraph and The Times, this means that the point has had a fair degree of coverage, although nothing in comparison to the torrent of political comment about the election in general.

To that extent, the blindness of the mainstream political commentators is really is quite remarkable, their inability to see that brooding elephant in the room, and to understand the consequences. But, I suppose, having ignored the issue of "Europe" throughout the election (together with most of the politicos), one can hardly expect these same people to confront their own failures in their post-election analyses.

The one exception though, in today's Telegraph, is Mark Steyn who, under the opaque title of "Stealth taxes are the least of people's worries" does address the issue of the "UKIP effect".

He recalls how, on election day, he found himself in Solihull - "Conservative since the dawn of time" – which, for the first time in the constituency's history, voted other than Conservative. They are now represented by a Liberal Democrat.

Writes Steyn, "If it were three in the morning on an election night special, I'd say sternly: 'Until they can win seats like Solihull, the Conservatives will never be in government again', and leave it at that. Then I'd cross over to the returning officer in Hawick or Blaenau Gwent, and never give the place another thought."

Instead, he brooded over the result and its broader significance, discovering as indeed we did on this Blog that the Lib Dems won by 279 votes while the UKIP candidate got 990.

He then finds that, in Warwick and Leamington, Labour won by 306 votes; the UKIP bloke got 921. By some analyses, he adds, the UKIP vote cost the Tories 25 seats. Without them, the Lib Dems would have won merely an extra seven seats and the Labour majority would have been down to 34.

There may be some argument about the arithmetic and the precise extent of the "UKIP effect" but it would be facile to pretend that it does not exist. Steyn (amongst others) sees it in terms of the Right being split on the "Europe" issue.

With the Left also split, which split, he asks - the Left's or the Right's - is likely to be patched up by the next election? He concludes that, by 2009, Iraq will be a long way in the past and Gordon Brown's Labour Party will win back a lot of those anti-war votes. But, he asserts:

…Europe, like the poor, is always with us - and, whatever befalls the constitution and the euro, there's no reason to believe, after 15 years of failing to do so, that the Tories will suddenly find a form of words both the Clarkeite and sceptic wings of the party will support convincingly. And, if they go into another national election determined to avoid the subject, those 900 UKIP votes up and down the map will do their work yet again. Not to mention the BNP vote, which is a further complicating factor.

There his analysis goes a little wonky and tends towards the superficial. As we pointed out in our analysis, on its performance over the last three elections, we won't be seeing "those 900 UKIP voters" but more commonly constituency votes in the 1-2,000 range.

However, the point made that the splits on the Left may have healed is a good one (although there may be other factors to take the place of Iraq, etc). If this is added to effect of the potentially increasing UKIP vote anf the unknown (but possibly harmful) effect of there being Euro elections and a general election at the same time, the Conservatives could be in real trouble.

For sure, this is crystal ball gazing about events in four years time, based on assumptions which themselves are far from unequivocal. Whichever way you cut it, though, there is potentially a political phenomenon here of some importance. It could, conceivably, deny the Conservatives power at the next election.

Dispute this if you will. Debate it by all means, but it does not seem to me safe to ignore it. But then, "denial" has been the characteristic of the MSM and the political élites when it comes to "Europe". Our message is, "ignore it at your peril". That brooding elephant in the room could well trample you to death.

Booker

The media last week were filled with Alistair Darling's plans to impose a system of road tolls, using satellites to charge motorists between 2p and £1.34 a mile for using our roads. The BBC, showing a picture of the US global positioning satellite (GPS) system, assured us the technology was all in place to make our transport minister’s scheme viable, and that it would help cut congestion on Britain’s roads and was altogether wonderful.

Booker, in his column today looks behind this story and reports – as indeed have we on this Blog - that there is a hidden EU agenda.

"What neither Mr Darling, the BBC or anyone else bothered to explain," he writes, "was that his plans are only part of an EU-wide scheme planned for several years, using the EU's own planned satellite system Galileo, and that an important part of its purpose is to provide the EU with an independent source of income worth billions of euros a year."

Detailing the story, Booker comments that it is "this deliberate practice of concealing how many national policies are now dictated by 'Europe' which gave rise to the description of the EU as 'the elephant in the room': a presence so vast that everyone pretends it is not there."

In an ironic twist, though, Booker refers to the the technical doubts about the system and, on the basis that the "practical complexities likely to beset this hugely ambitious project" raise questions as to whether it can be made to work at all. He thus dubs the scheme: "the white elephant in the room."

Actually, the more I think of it, the idea of keeping track of over 30 million vehicles, recording every journey, raising charges for each and every one of them and collecting the money, is such a stupendous task, that even if the technology worked perfectly (and when does it ever?) it would be hard to see how a system could be devised. Perhaps, taking Booker's cue, it ought to be called: "the mad elephant in the room".

For the second story, Booker quotes Jack Straw in the Commons on Monday: "Let me make it clear that there is no plan, proposal or intention to slip elements of the constitutional treaty through by the back door," in response to the charge that many provisions of the treaty are already being implemented before it is ratified.

Straw was then asked by Bernard Jenkin MP why, in that case, the EU had already set up its European Defence Agency, "a central provision of the constitution", only to get the reply that: "the defence agency is not in the treaty."

Yet there, in black and white, is Article I-41.3 of the constitution giving legal authorisation for the setting up of the "European Defence Agency". This, without waiting for the constitution, was launched last January to play a hugely important role in planning and co-ordinating an "EU defence identity".

The truth is that, on all sides, implementation of the constitution is busily rolling forward, obviously on the assumption that there was no need to wait until the treaty became law. Caught out by the French and Dutch "no" votes, ministers and officials have no recourse but to indulge in hopelessly disingenuous prevarication, as Mr Straw did with his subsequent claim that the defence agency was somehow authorised by a vague aspirational clause in the Maastricht Treaty committing the EU leaders eventually to frame a Common Defence Policy.

As a lawyer Mr Straw must be aware that a vague aspiration is not the same as a legal authorisation. Similarly, last Wednesday, when EU ministers held a "Space Council" in Luxembourg to plan "a European space policy", they were acting illegally, in that the only authorisation ‘to draw up a European space policy’ is contained in Article III-254 of the Constitution.

In other words, writes Booker: "they had no legal power to do what they were doing, by which they are committing EU taxpayers to spend 10 billion euros (£7 billion) a year. This is twice the size of the UK budget rebate which President Chirac and others are so keen should be taken off us because the EU is so strapped for cash."

"When ministers are caught acting illegally in this way," he asks, "what do we expect them to do? Come clean and admit they have made a mistake? Or just lie about it?"

You've guessed it: It is much easier to take the second course. But whether it is wise to base our system of government on such institutionalised dishonesty is another matter.

Story three is a tale about where power really lies in this country. We have a junior transport minister in this government called Karen Buck. When she was asked to help out on a matter which involved the EU, she lived up to her name – and passed the buck. Booker asks why, if she admits that, as a minister, she no longer has power to do the job she is paid for, why is she paid at all?

The blogs have it

Devil's Kitchen was on to it early and Tim Worstall has done a magnificent job pointing out the media's total failure.

We are, of course, referring to yesterday's publication of the review of the postal services, led by Richard Hooper, a former deputy chairman of Ofcom, the communications industry regulator – which reported on the enforced "liberalisation" of the services.

The report noted that, "Large firms had seen clear benefits from liberalisation, including more choice, lower prices and more assurance about the quality of the mail service, but there had been no significant benefits for consumers and smaller businesses."

Hooper's terms of reference had been to carry out an "independent review" of the postal services sector … "in the context of significant developments in the market since the introduction of the Postal Services Act 2000".

However, one does not have to go very far into the Act before one comes across the "explanatory notes" – like the first page – to find that:

The Postal Services Regulations 1999 (SI 1999/2107) completed the implementation of the EU Directive into UK law and created a Postal Services Commission. The aim of the Postal Services Act 2000 is to enable Government to complete this package of reforms. The reforms comply with the requirements of the EU Postal Services Directive (97/67/EC). The Act will re-enact those obligations set out in the Regulations.

The review carried out by Hooper was, therefore, a review of the workings (not) of the EU Postal Services Directive (97/67/EC). And, just in case you were in any doubt, his report makes seven references to the Directive, including a detailed exposition of its application on page 19.

On this basis, there can be no possible excuse for the massed ranks of the Fourth Estate not being aware of the central role of the European Union in this issue yet not one mentioned it. This has to be more than carelessness – it is a phenomenon which strikes at the heart of the relationship between the media and our new central government in Brussels. To a man – and woman – the media are in denial (much like the Conservative Party).

In the absence of media comment, it is left to the website commenters to make the point about EU involvement, such as here in The Times and here in The Daily Telegraph.

Time and time again, we have noted the media's inability to comment on EU issues or identify the involvement of the EU in our domestic affairs (use our search panel on the top left of the blog and enter "elephant in the room" – with the quotation marks), yet this has to be one of the most egregious examples of the failure. No longer do we just have an elephant in the room, it has become a "stealth elephant" (pictured), totally invisible to journalists and politicians.

But the blindness is not confined to the EU. As with global warming, and many other issues such as defence, the media have chosen to opt out of the debate, offering the public a diet of "tee hee" political soap opera, celebs, scandal and disaster and (mainly) trivia.

Today, the blogs have taken up the slack and, as the media integrates more with the entertainment industry, it seems that they will have to carry more of the load in future. If (the independent) blogs are not the future, they should be.

COMMENT THREAD

The elephant in the room

Yesterday evening Michael Howard, the Leader of the Conservative Party, gave the main speech at the Annual Meeting of the Centre for Policy Studies, in which he outlined the party’s policies and even its vision of the sort of Britain he wants to see.

Although Ruth Lea, the Director of CPS said in her own speech that the Centre has in the last year concentrated on three issues, the economy, public services and the European Union, Mr Howard kept to the first two. It seems the Conservative leadership has convinced itself that there is no need to think about the European issue, as people are not interested in it. Unfortunately, that point of view is no longer accurate. More and more people do care about Europe.

Mr Howard’s slogan for the party is “Big people, small government”, a slogan most of us can sympathize with. He talked much of the need for giving choice to all, not just those who happen to be well off; he outlined the astonishing growth of bureaucracy in this country, despite the threats of ever larger cut-backs by the Chancellor.

Britain, as Mr Howard rightly pointed out, has slipped in the competitiveness chart from number five to number fifteen; it is also the slowest growing economy among the major English-speaking country. One cannot help wondering why that is so. The regulation and public sector obsessed government, certainly, but could there be another reason? Could this lack of growth and slippage in competitiveness have anything to do with the fact that Britain is the one major English-speaking country that belongs to the European Union?

The first question one was a bit of a facer. He was asked if he could give a clear message on the Tories’ European policy. The person who asked the question was one of the many thousands of Conservatives who had voted UKIP in the European election because of their clearly enunciated policy on the subject. There was a strong applause after the question and considerably less applause after Mr Howard’s reply.

He said quite firmly that he was not going to say that we must come out of the European Union and explained equally firmly that in the general election the choice will be between a Labour Government who will give everything away and a Conservative one, who will go in there to get various powers back.

This, of course, is the Conservative calculation: that people will not vote UKIP as there is no chance of that party forming a government. And faced with the choice outlined above, they will return to the fold. Alas, it is not so. Enough people may vote UKIP because they feel the Conservatives need to start listening to what the voters want to undermine their chances of a come-back. And the threat of a complete Labour sell-out to the EU is not much of a threat for those who remember similar sell-outs engineered by Tories.

Mr Howard’s policy is to win the referendum (not, actually, a given) and then go to Brussels with a strong hand and renegotiate various matters so that powers will be repatriated. Strong hand or not, many of those powers are inscribed in treaties, which can be changed only unanimously. What Howard’s way does not allow for is the very great likelihood that the renegotiations will fail. What is the fall-back position? What threats will the Conservatives use if they do not get their way?

One thing is certain, it will not be a military threat. On the day that we hear of the MoD spending over £3 million on chairs for its civil servants (as part of a mega-refitting of the Department) while Geoff Hoon prepares to announce the most swingeing cuts in military forces yet, Mr Howard could not give unequivocal assurances that the Conservatives will deal with the matter differently.

What makes Mr Howard think that people will vote Conservative if there is no clear message on Britain’s relationship with the European Union, that is, in effect, this country’s constitutional future and if Prime Minister Howard will, just like Prime Minister Blair, send British troops all over the world, without allocating proper sums for recruitment, training and equipment?

Perhaps, he should finally acknowledge the elephant in the room.

The Irish nemesis

There is a very large measure of comfort in prospect of a "yes" vote in the Irish referendum. For, if as widely predicted - although by no means in the bag - the Europhiles prevail and the vote clears the way for the full ratification of the constitutional Lisbon treaty, today, 2 October, will go down in history as the day the EU started to unravel.

To understand why this might be the case, one has to delve into the deeper recesses of the "project", way down into the engine room. There, one will discover, as I did an obscure animal, known as the "dual international quasi-legislation/comitology mechanism". In this creature, which is far more common than most would even begin to imagine, lies the reason why the EU has been successful.

And, if the EU had stuck to their "diqules", as they have come to be known, it would have lasted forever. But hubris has intervened in the form of the constitutional Lisbon treaty, and that will be its downfall, its nemesis. Let me explain - for the secret of the current success of the EU lies in six reasons.

Firstly, at the heart of modern government (in fact central to all levels of government, local to international) is a terrible secret. Government is boring. In fact, it is more than boring. It is mind-numbingly, crashingly tedious - the sort of tedium that, if it was instituted as a form of torture would even be banned by the Peoples' Republic of China as inhumane.

Secondly, most government is invisible. What you see on the television and read in the newspapers is only the tiniest fraction of what actually goes on. We get to know about less than one percent of one percent, and the politicians even less. And so boring is it that we don't even want to know.

Thirdly, most politicians have no aptitude for government and few even understand how it works. They are, therefore, in the main, entirely content to let their officials run the nuts and bolts, while they act as front men for the system, going on the jollies and working the media.

Fourth, the European Union has become part of a nexus of legislative bodies, linking international agencies of the United Nations with regional, national and local bodies, to form one continuous, seam-free administrative machine. So embedded is it in the administrative fabric of this and other nations, that the national systems could not function with it.

Fifth, this situation, far from being unwelcome, is highly convenient to the ruling and administrative classes. It saves them no end of work and relieves them of the obligation of having to pay lip-service to democratic procedures.

Sixth, the system acts as a useful lightning conductor, diverting dissent into the labyrinthine maw of international institutions, where activists can be contained, absorbed and then neutralised (or bought off), leaving national actors untroubled… you can always blame the EU.

Over and above that, the system is now so complex that no one (not even the players) really understand it, so no one will be brave enough to touch it in case they break something they don't know how to fix. And, since it defeats even the players' attempts, the critics do not have a chance. The likes of Eurosceptics can be left to blather uselessly round the edges, their criticism so unfocussed and wide of the mark that it has little effect.

Here, one can take a core objection of the sceptics – that sixty, seventy, or is it eighty percent of our laws are now "made in Brussels". Much of this, of course, is dry technical stuff, like the dimensions of rear view mirrors on busses, the composition of cheeses from various regions, or the level of permitted toxic emissions from crematoria.

Now, while this sort of law may come from "Brussels", it would be more accurate to say that it has a Brussels label. But the bulk are no more EU than they are national laws.

Behind that screen, there are hundreds – possibly thousands - of what are known as "quasi-legislative bodies", working on a global and regional scale. These act under the aegis of obscure organisations such as the OIE, which deals with animal health issues, CODEX alimentarius, created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice, the IPCC which, of course, deals with climate change matters, and the World Health Organisation, which deals with public health and infectious diseases.

Another of these fascinating organisations is UNECE, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe – with not 27 countries but 56, including Turkey and Kazakhstan and also, for historical reasons, the United States.

One of its particular functions is to deal with transport, acting via a skein of agreements and conventions, such as the "Agreement Concerning the Adoption of Uniform Conditions of Approval and Reciprocal Recognition of Approval for Motor Vehicle Equipment and Parts, done at Geneva on 20 March 1958", copy here.

It is actually through this Agreement that international standards are worked out for things like the size of rear-view mirrors for busses, which are then handed down to the EU. It then implements them as law in the member states.

The standards themselves are not law, but become law in the EU once implemented, which is done through the comitology system, the twin-track process – through UNECE and the EU – which has acquired that rather cumbersome title of "dual international quasi-legislation/comitology mechanism".

Interestingly, the EU does not get a look in when it comes to formulating these standards, but countries like Norway do. The EU is then used to write the specific legislation for Norway as a member of the EEA. So much for "fax-machine" law. The commission is simply acting as a service provider, making laws for states which have already agreed at a higher international level to implement them.

That digression aside, so useful to the member states are the technical/legislative services provided by the EU – and so necessary are they to the functioning of modern economies – that it is unthinkable that any member state could or would even wish to dispense with them.

Therein lies the genius of the EU. It has harnessed these essential administrative functions to its own ambitions, creating structures and institutions to deal with them in the hope, one day, they will be transformed into something more than a technical organisation. Then, they hope, the EU will be able to assume wider responsibilities in the "high" political areas which include foreign policy and defence. That is what the constitutional Lisbon treaty is all about.

As we observe, so far the Union has been successful. It is still in the game, its ambitions are intact and it is exercising power. But, in the new treaty, it has over-reached itself. It is moving from its "invisible" base to take on board the "high politics" spectrum. But with the additional powers it acquires, it becomes much more intrusive and much more visible. Therein lies its vulnerabilty.

For as long as the "elephant in the room" could be ignored, for as long as it confined itself to the engine room, the political classes have been content to let it continue. They have been able to carry on with their preening and posturing, keeping up the pretence that they were still in change. But, as it becomes ever-more evident who is really in charge, even our most enthusiastic myopics will change their tunes.

With "Lisbon" in the bag, the EU will flex its muscles even more and there will come a point where the number of people it upsets will outnumber those who appreciate its value. The balance of utility will change and the EU will go. Strangely, therefore, getting a "no" vote in Ireland would be the best thing that could have happened to the EU.

But the "colleagues" could never leave well enough alone. If they get their "yes", it will not be the end, or even the beginning of the end. But, as a certain person once said, it will be the end of the beginning. Soon enough, we will see that tipping point in the balance of utility, and from there it will be downhill all the way. For that, if they vote "yes", we will have the Irish to thank.

COMMENT THREAD

Part of the problem…

If there is a phrase that is in danger of becoming over-used on this Blog, it is "elephant in the room", which we tend to use to describe the phenomenon whereby diverse commentators try to diagnose the ailments of society without recognising – or even noticing – that huge, brooding presence, the European Union

However, today in The Times, our growing frustration with the inability of apparently intelligent people (and I do say "apparently") to recognise the "elephant" is further intensified by someone who really should know better – political columnist Anthony Howard, so much so that again we are driven to use the phrase.

Howard writes a comment piece headed: "The real culprit behind the death of Parliamentary drama", in which he discussed why the standing of Parliament (the UK institution) has suffered a decline and, in particular, why there has been an erosion of the position the House of Commons, which once occupied the focal point of the nation.

For his diagnosis, though, the great political sage offers, amongst other things as the cause of the ailment, the introduction by the "modernisers" of "family hours". The House nowadays sits after 8pm only one night a week and, as a result, all the drama has gone out of the sittings.

To an extent, he is partially right, but only partially so. For what is entirely, completely and utterly missing is any mention of the "elephant". Yet, we now have a situation where, variously some 70 percent or our laws are promulgated by the EU.

They cannot be influenced by Parliament and many are implemented by way of Statutory Instruments on negative assent, where not even a perfunctory debate is required and where there is no chance of MPs setting them aside.

A graphic example of this is to come on Thursday, when there will be the annual fishing debate in the House. Traditionally, it has always been held in December, over a full day, a means by which MPs could give the fisheries minister a negotiating mandate for the December fisheries council, when the annual allocations of national fish quotas were decided, from which a raft of regulations would then be drawn up.

In days gone past, especially during the last Conservative administration (remember that?), these used to be highly charged affairs, and heavily reported by the media, with well attended, angry sessions running late into the night.

But, progressively, MPs – and the media – have learned that the debates are a waste of time. The House cannot bind the minister, and whatever the minister tells the House he will do can be overturned in Brussels, presaging a humiliating retreat. All too often this results in the minister returning home claiming a "victory" for British fishermen, hoping that no one will notice how much he has given away - yet again.

So, when it comes to Thursday, the debate has been scaled back to three hours. It is to be an adjournment debate, so there will not even be a vote. And this year, the fisheries council is unusually late – on 21-22 December – so the commission proposals are not even ready this week. MPs will be debating blind, with no knowledge of what the minister – Ben "Rear Admiral" Bradshaw – will be proposing.

In substance, therefore, the debate will be empty – a vapid, fruitless waste of time. It will achieve nothing, and can achieve nothing. As a result, it will be poorly attended, uncovered by the media and generally ignored all but by a few trade papers like Fishing News.

That is the effect of the "elephant in the room" and Mr Howard should have recognised it. He of all people should recognise that many of the traditional functions of the UK parliament are redundant. That is why so much of the drama has gone out of the Parliament, and if Howard cannot see it, he should be sacked.

As it stands,though, this rather pompous, patronising, complacent little man is part of the problem.

A Europe of results?

With an estimated 18 million Mattel toys (two million in the UK alone) having to be withdrawn in what must be one of the largest ever global recalls of consumer products, one of the major players in the ongoing drama is keeping remarkably quiet.

This, of course, is our old friend the elephant in the room. Better known as the European Union, through what some of the media so quaintly like to call its "executive arm" – the EU commission – it is entirely responsible for setting up the regulatory system on toy safety. And, if nothing else, these current recalls are evidence of a spectacular failure of the system.

The silence of the commission is in marked contrast to its hubris in November 2005 when it celebrated "20 years of safe products for Europe", a result claimed for its "revolutionary" CE safety marking scheme.

What is little understood is that, in taking over the responsibility for product standards – of which "toy safety" was a flagship programme - the commission has enforced the dismantling of national safety monitoring programmes and prevented member states from carrying out their own local checks – such as routine sampling of products in the shops and laboratory tests to ensure compliance with standards.

Instead of this, in came a system of EU-wide harmonisation, "based on the simple condition that the producer guarantees that its products are safe." It requires manufacturers to carry out a battery of procedures, which must be verified by an independent agency, on completion of which they could affix the coveted CE mark which, effectively, guaranteed immunity from official inspection.

Thus, while people were complaining about the opening of our borders to the inrush of immigrants from other EU member states, another revolution was taking place. Our borders were forcibly opened to a torrent of cheap, often substandard imports. And, as long as they carried the "magic talisman" of the CE mark and had the correct paperwork, local port inspectors were effectively prohibited from examining the goods.

What were termed "technical inspections" were condemned as "barriers to trade", on the basis of which the commission rigorously pursued their agenda of dismantling port controls, with over 1000 references to the European Court of Justice.

Furthermore, once in the shops, the official presumption is that goods bearing the CE mark are "safe", so that officials such as trading standards officers are actively dissuaded from carrying out spot sampling. And no longer do local authorities make budget allocations for routine tests. This, of course, has liberated officials to harass errant traders who insist on selling their goods by the pound in defiance of the various EU metrication directives.

One of the consequences of the regulatory nightmare that accompanied the CE marking system has been the destruction of domestic toy-makers, driving the business offshore, particularly to China. This nation has become the "toymaker to the world" as other western economies either relied on the EU's regulatory scheme or emulated it (on the back of relentless EU propaganda, the CE mark has become recognised, world-wide as the "gold standard" of consumer safety).

Out of the reach of EU regulatory authorities, Chinese manufacturers have cynically exploited the system, to the extent that it has long been known in the trade that the CE-marking is a charade. But the regime suited the multi-nationals and big corporations which have dominated the retail sector. It provided a cheap reassurance to the consumer and, by placing the responsibility on the producer (rather than the retailer), enabled the big toy-sellers to evade their responsibility for ensuring that the products bearing their brand labels were safe.

The EU's system has, in fact, encouraged corporate irresponsiblity, instilling a culture of "plausible deniability", where retailers and their suppliers can plead that the "paperwork and procedures" were in order, thus dumping the blame for any failures on anonymous producers, largely keeping their own reputations intact.

Enter José Manuel Barroso, commission president in March of this year. In front of the EU parliament in Brussels, he made the case for his beloved treaty, arguing that he needed "better institutions for better results". "A Europe of results," he declared, "is a political vision based on constructive pragmatism: to address the concerns of our citizens, to provide European solutions for European problems."

Now, as hundreds of thousands of anxious parents scour their childrens' toy chests for potentially dangerous toys, they are gaining first-hand experience of this "Europe of results". But, as the elephant skulks quietly in the corner of the room, who is going to tell them that, yet again, they are enjoying another of the benefits of our membership of the European Union?

COMMENT THREAD

"Europe" writ large

The elephant continues to skulk, unseen, no more so than in the lead editorial in today's The Daily Telegraph, which complains that, "Business needs less, not more, red tape".

The proximate cause of its complaints is the government's new legislative programme which, it says, "will make life tougher for small firms on two fronts". One is the plan to extend the right to request flexible working hours to four-and-a-half-million parents of children aged up to 16, and the other is a plans to "give" new employment rights (not than many want them) to agency workers.

Nowhere, in the litany of grievances that follows, however, is there any hint of that elephant, the EU, yet both these measures have "EU" written all over them.

The paper, however, does have one small excuse in that neither of these issues is covered directly by existing EU directive. There is no obvious "smoking gun" to which we can point and say, unequivocally, this is an EU requirement, as such.

If there is an excuse, though, it is indeed a small one. What The Telegraph neglects – along with most of the population of the UK and almost all our provincial politicians – is the subtle but highly significant shift in the way that the EU is run.

The traditional paradigm is the legal route, whereby the commission proposes a new law, the Council of Ministers (and the EU parliament, where co-decision applies) approves it, and then member states implement it.

What is now happening though is that the EU is employing more of a political route in getting its measures introduced. The commission still makes the running, in tabling a series of proposals, but it does no go directly to the lawmaking stage. Instead, its ideas are presented first to the European Council, from which is obtained a political commitment to the ideas presented.

What happens then is that (some of) the member states start implementing the proposals, in anticipation of formal EU law, smoothing its path and, to an extent, neutralising objections when the law in finally introduced. This procedure also allows member state governments to foster the illusion that they are still in charge.

This mechanism was very much in evidence in the Spring European Council last year, when the member states apparently raised and then agreed the disastrous 20 percent quota on renewal fuels, and the ten percent biofuels quota.

In fact, what the members were actually doing was reacting to a formal commission proposal, namely COM(2006) 845 final, under the anodyne title of the "Biofuels Progress Report". And now the commission has its political "direction", the way is clear for it to move to the legislative state – in which it is currently engaged.

So it is with the so-called "flexi-working" and the "new employment rights for agency workers". The latter is already in the system as the "Temporary Workers Directive", progress on which is being help up pending the ratification of the constitutional Lisbon treaty. The government is simply paving the way for this directive.

As to "flexi-working", the agenda was agreed in principle at the 2002 Barcelona Council and the need for flexi-working was identified as an EU priority by the commission on 1 March 2006 in COM(2006) 0092 final, under the title, "A roadmap for equality between women and men 2006–2010". That was then approved by the European Council on 23–24 March 2006, when it approved a "European Pact for gender equality" which encouraged "action at Member State and EU level".

From that point on, the UK was under a political rather than legal obligation to implement flex-working and, in its pre-legislative programme, it is simply "honouring" that commitment. In due course, EU legislation will follow, with the commission already having kicked off the process, on the back of yet a further report.

One of the reasons why the Telegraph is completely unaware of this dynamic – apart from the idleness of the hacks - is that, like all the of British MSM, it fails to understand the true role and significance of the European Council, still – like many – calling its meetings "summits".

Not only do we have an invisible elephant in the room, therefore, it has the ability to change shape so that, even if it appeared, its form has become unrecognisable.

COMMENT THREAD

Mushroom government

At last, The Daily Telegraph has caught up with the crisis in the UK pig industry – an issue flagged up by The Scotsman on 15 February, when we remarked on the strange lack of interest shown by the general media – and, for that matter, the political blogging community.

True to form though, the Telegraph runs the story in the business rather than in the main news section (although it is flagged up in the "news in brief"), as if this was somehow of matter that was of interest only to the financial community rather than to every one of us.

Most striking of all, however, is that the long(ish) piece focus entirely on the local effects of the crisis. Nowhere do you see any mention of the overweight elephant in the room, the European Union, or any recognition that agricultural policy is an exclusive EU competence. And with such a absence of recognition, no clue is given to readers that the current crises stems – in part - from yet another egregious failure of EU policy.

The proximate cause of the crisis is, of course, the global increase in the price of wheat, which has doubled since last summer, but behind that is a series of errors and miscalculations on the part of the EU that is bringing an important industry to its knees – the Telegraph quite rightly telling us that it could be wiped out.

To understand why all this is happening, though, requires a basic knowledge of agriculture, agricultural economics, world food production patterns, European politics and – above all – the workings of the EU's common agricultural policy (CAP). This is a combination that defeats most writers in a newspaper which (in common with the rest) no longer sees fit to employ a specialist farming correspondent since its last one, David Brown, died prematurely.

Thus, in the hands of the generalists - in the context of the overall "dumbing down" to which newspapers have fallen prey – the emerging crisis merits attention only when it reaches a peak. But, without an ongoing background, the broader issues are far to complex to explain within the space limitations of a single report. The journalists thus resort to simplistic superficialities which do nothing to explain the issues. Even to attempt to do so would be far too complicated.

Returning to the main issue, the global increase in wheat prices – this to a very great extent was (and is) beyond the immediate control of any single agency and, therefore, was to some extent inevitable.

However, even then, that must be qualified. The looming shortage of food commodities has been well flagged up over a number of years and EU member states are substantial wheat producers in their own right, with overall production capable of influencing world prices.

Therein lies the first problem in that EU, driven by the memory of "grain mountains" of the '70s and '80s, and the attendant bad publicity, was committed to a long-term policy of cutting back agricultural production – while actually increasing CAP expenditure – and failed to see the shortfall coming. Thus, at the very time its policy was starting to "succeed" in cutting back production, the world was facing a production shortfall and increasing demand.

Secondly, as we have recorded may times on this blog, the EU allowed itself to be carried away with the idea that "surplus" agricultural capacity could be used to produce ethanol and bio-diesel, thereby adding to the stresses on the world market and driving up commodity prices further.

Then, in the shorter-term, as the global shortage crept up on it, the EU sold off its remaining intervention stocks, leaving the cupboard bare, and was extremely dilatory in reacting to the changing market conditions, only releasing some set-aside for production in this current growing season.

In the middle of all this is the pig industry – and also the poultry industry, milk production and the rest of the livestock sector. Classically, these are low-margin industries which struggle against cheap imports from producers who are not saddled with the same cost burdens - arising in the main from tighter welfare standards and other regulatory burdens. They have survived through ever-increasing productivity and by maintaining high quality.

However, with feed (comprising mainly wheat) accounting to up to sixty percent of their costs, they are uniquely vulnerable to increases in commodity prices. And with there inevitably being a lag in input costs and being able to recover losses through increased prices, the industry cannot cope with sudden, massive increases in their basic costs (which also include rising fuel, labour and regulatory costs).

It is here that the EU – as controllers of our agricultural policy – could have helped. Had it anticipated the rise in commodity prices, the commission could have encouraged production and, at the same time, pulled the early surplus into stock, using the intervention mechanism. It could then have released it selectively to feed producers, stabilising the prices and providing a price buffer to ease the effect of sudden price rises.

This is not so much "subsidy" in the classic sense, but a matter of stock management which, handled correctly, can be cost-neutral. On a rising market, the costs of buying into intervention can be recouped as the commodity prices rise.

But, charged with the management of commodity stocks, the EU failed dismally in this task and then, to make matters worse, creamed off "surplus" funds from the agricultural fund to pay for its vanity project, the Galileo satellite navigation system.

On the other hand, there is of course a valid free market case for leaving the farmers to their fate. Farmers, traditionally, are gamblers, punting on the prices of their harvests when they invest in sowing their crops. In the livestock sector, they can "drop out of pigs" when the pork prices are low and costs are high – as they are doing at the moment – and return when the financial climate is more benign. That has always been the way of farming.

This depends, however, on farmers being able to respond flexibly. In the livestock sector, though, EU-inspired regulatory costs are steadily increasing to the extent that the investments required to return to the market are getting to be prohibitive. Against that, the down-side risks are becoming too great and many who drop out of pig production in this cycle may never return.

For a time – again as is happening at the moment – we can rely on a plentiful supply of cheap imports. Inevitably though, as global commodity price rises feed through the system, the cheap imports will dry up and, without a healthy domestic industry to provide competition, we can be held to ransom by importers who know we have nowhere else to go.

Nevertheless, there is a good argument for letting the market prevail, and there is also an argument that government should take a strategic position, balancing national stocks against demand. In this role, it acts as a stockholder of last resort, to ensure that we are protected from food shortages and rapid price rises.

By contrast, there is no case for a hybrid system, part reliant on the market but with the overall management vested in government – which just happens to be in Brussels – where the management is so poor as to amount to dereliction.

That is the situation we are in, with the consequences that we end up paying twice - in our taxes to maintain the CAP and, as we face shortages and steep price rises, in the shops as well. But, as we count our pennies and more and more of us have to make the decision as to what to cut back in order to meet the mounting food bills, we will never know the true authors of our predicaments. Neither the media nor the politicians are telling us.

Thus are we ruled - "mushroom government" by any other name.

COMMENT THREAD

Ignoring the elephant

The circus elephant in the room is still at large as the media continue to chew over the bones. Claiming ownership of the campaign to ban the use of wild animals in circuses is The Sunday Express which directs its ire at Cameron for the failure of the government to implement a ban.

It cites a Friday statement which said he was "minded" to outlaw using wild animals but the Department for Food and Rural Affairs, which instead wants a licensing regime, still insists there are "unavoidable legal difficulties" surrounding a possible legal challenge by circus bosses in the European courts. And that's as good as it gets.

Yesterday, The Independent (devoting its front page to the story - pictured) had much the same thing, also reporting Cameron as insisting that he was "minded" to outlaw circuses from keeping wild animals.

According to this newspaper though, Cameron says it is "not right" to still have lions, tigers and elephants performing in the big top. "We are minded to have a ban, but need to clear some obstacles," he told a press conference at an EU "summit" in Brussels.

Nevertheless, says The Independent, "despite Mr Cameron's conciliatory language on implementing a ban – and the promise by Agriculture minister James Paice to 'respect the will of the House' – there were signs last night the Government was prevaricating".

We are then told that the Department for the Environment is understood to be still arguing there are "legal problems" in implementing an outright ban and to be standing by its alternative proposal for a tough licensing regime for circuses.

Now, as our readers are very well aware, these "legal problems" are a matter of EU law, with the government convinced that to implement a ban would be contrary to EU law.

It really cannot be the case that the writer of The Independent piece was unaware of this – at least, one hopes so – in which case the refusal to identify the EU as the cause of the problem is more than a little interesting. This Europhile newspaper has been leading the fray in the media for the adoption of the ban, and it must be acutely embarrassing that its darling EU is blocking the way.

But this inability to report the elephant is not unique to the Europhiles. Even the self-proclaimed sceptic Daily Express was reporting yesterday that "Ministers were against introducing a ban next year, fearing it would attract lawsuits from circus owners and workers".

This paper thus did not mention the EU in its story, taking exactly the same line as the idiot Andrew Pierce in The Daily Mail, which told its readers, "Ministers opposed a ban because of fears that it would leave the Government open to lawsuits from circus owners and workers".

Exactly the same formula was seen in The Scotsman though. It seems that copy-and paste journalism is rampant – as always.

But it is not only the media which is ignoring the EU circus elephant. The RSPCA on its website is demanding action, with David Bowles, director of communications, saying: "Parliament has spoken, and government should listen". Any attempt to delay or avoid a complete ban would be wrong-headed and simply not acceptable, he says, with not a single mention of the EU.

Part of this, undoubtedly, is the insistence on trivialising politics, reducing it to the level of a low-grade soap opera, as does this piece in The Mail on Sunday.

The media and political classes have become so debauched that all they can think and write about is "self". The actual issues are of such little interest that they cannot be bothered to research them properly, much less report them accurately.

That said, I take some flak on the forum for attacking Pritchard - a potential ally. My view, though, it MPs wrote themselves out of the script a long time ago, Pritchard along with the rest, who is at heart just a vain egocentric like the rest - incapable of listening or learning, still denying EU involvement.

Demonstrated with the utmost clarity by this affair is the very simple premise – if we are going to force any changes to the way this country is governed, we are going to have to do it ourselves. We cannot rely on parliament or the media.

COMMENT: ELEPHANT THREAD

The elephant strikes again

The widely trailed cuts in the British Army have been announced today by defence secretary Geoff Hoon, who has confirmed the axing of four infantry battalions in what is described as a major restructuring of the Army.

According to various reports, this move prompted angry scenes in the Commons with Scottish National Party MP Annabelle Ewing ordered out of the chamber by the Speaker after calling Mr Hoon a "backstabbing coward".

She was angered by Mr Hoon's confirmation that two single battalion regiments in Scotland – the Royal Scots and The King’s Own Scottish Borderers – would merge into a single battalion and would combine with the other four Scottish regiments, including the Black Watch, to form the new Royal Regiment of Scotland. Details of the other cuts can be found on the Scotsman site.

Hoon claims that his plans "…will make the Army more robust and resilient, able to deploy, support and sustain the enduring expeditionary operations that are essential for a more complex and uncertain world". He added: "The move to larger, multi-battalion regiments that these changes bring about is the only sustainable way in which to structure the infantry for the long term."

But what is significant is that we are not just seeing the "axing" of famous regiments, which has tended to obscure the wider debate. This is but one part of a "wider rebalancing" of the mix of light, medium and heavy forces. This revolves round that magic word FRES, standing for Future Rapid Effects System.

This is the driver of all these changes. Hoon needs to re-equip the Army to fit the expeditionary role required for Britain's forces to fulfil Blair's commitment to playing a leading role in the EU's rapid reaction force. FRES is the answer, but it is expensive. So, with it not becoming available until 2010, at the earliest, he is taking the savings now to fund the future. costs of the project.

Nothing of this emerges from the Conservatives, with shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram, completely missing the "elephant in the room" when he confined his attack on Hoon to a condemnation of his search for "cost cutting", without seeking to enquire what the savings were for.

Good theatre, it might have been as Ancram declared: "It is a dark day for our armed forces. And an even darker day for the proud regiments it seeks to scrap. It is also a day of shame for this discredited and ineffective Defence Secretary," but he has failed to get near the real issues.

In fact, Ancram has assiduously avoided discussing the underlying agenda: "The Secretary of State says that this is all about reorganisation", he told the Commons, "But this statement is not driven by a need to reorganise. It is driven by the chancellor's demand for financial cuts."

Unfortunately, this is partially true and close enough to sound plausible. But it is also badly wrong. Hoon is being driven by the need to reorganise, and that is being driven by Blair's plans for a greater EU military role for the Army. But Hoon is trying to do it on the cheap, because Brown will not give him the money he needs. That is where the infantry cuts come in.

Thus, instead of trying to ignore the fact that the Army is being subject to one of the most fundamental reorganisations in its history, for an entirely political objective, Ancram should be asking why it is being reorganised.

But then the answer might include the word "Europe" and, as we know, Ancram would not like that. If he was confronted with that, he would have to recognise the "elephant in the room".

A stampede of elephants

You would have thought that, given the huge number of column inches devoted to the diverse and expensive defence procurement failures, the MSM might be interested in this government's proposals for remedying the system, delivered on Wednesday in the form of a White Paper.

The official announcement on the MoD Website makes the ostensible agenda interesting enough, telling us that the "Government" has set out its plans to prioritise investment in Science and Technology, "in order to ensure the UK's Armed Forces continue to have state-of-the-art technology, equipment and support, in a White Paper published today".

Apart from the Financial Times, however (and a small, down-page item in the business section of The Times), the MSM apparently no longer feels the need to comment on such matters – possibly because there is no opportunity any longer to make party political mischief and get a "biff-bam" slanging match going.

As to the Financial Times, it picks on one issue, which is also the focus of much of the specialist press, headlining: "MoD will no longer favour UK companies". The Ministry of Defence, it tells us:

… will no longer give UK companies priority over their foreign competitors when buying equipment and weapons for the armed forces. The only exceptions will be cases where buying British is essential to maintaining national security, Peter Luff, the defence procurement minister, said in an interview. He made clear the MoD would not consider wider employment or industrial economic factors when it assessed whether a piece of equipment offered value for money.

Nevertheless, if the dailies largely ignore that issue, The Spectator gives a spot to Matt Cavanagh, who calls the White Paper the waste of another opportunity. We need clear and unapologetic government backing for a sector which, as the White Paper notes, employs 300,000 people and is a major player in a global market valued at £260 billion, says Cavanagh, adding:

In that respect, the timing of the White Paper could hardly have been worse. Yesterday brought the bad news that India has awarded preferred bidder status for its $10 billion-plus fighter contract to France's Rafale, in preference to the Eurofighter Typhoon in which Britain's BAE has a major stake. The White Paper makes the usual noises about ministers "doing their utmost" to support exports, but privately many in the industry are disappointed by the lack of help — especially given ministerial rhetoric in 2010 around reshaping our foreign policy around trade.

This long-awaited White Paper was a second chance for the government to demonstrate its seriousness about tackling the real problems in defence procurement. Instead we got feeble commitments of support and simplistic rhetoric about "buying off the shelf" in a hypothetical "open market" which, in relation to large defence equipment programmes, simply doesn't exist. Another opportunity wasted — for Defence, and for one of our better prospects for export-led growth.

But what Matt – and everybody else for that matter – is ignoring is not so much the elephant in the room, as a virtual stampede of elephants. These come in the guise of EU Directive 2009/81/EC "on the coordination of procedures for the award of certain works contracts, supply contracts and service contracts by contracting authorities or entities in the fields of defence and security, and amending Directives 2004/17/EC and 2004/18/EC".

To get a taste of what this is requiring, all we have to do is look at the recitals – two, three and four will suffice:

(2) The gradual establishment of a European defence equipment market is essential for strengthening the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base and developing the military capabilities required to implement the European Security and Defence Policy.

(3) Member States agree on the need to foster, develop and sustain a European Defence Technological and Industrial Base that is capability driven, competent and competitive. In order to achieve this objective, Member States may use different tools, in conformity with Community law, aiming at a truly European defence equipment market and a level playing field at both European and global levels.

They should also contribute to the in-depth development of the diversity of the European defence-related supplier base, in particular by supporting the involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and non-traditional suppliers in the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, fostering industrial cooperation and promoting efficient and responsive lower tier suppliers. In this context, they should take into account the Commission’s Interpretative Communication of 7 December 2006 on the application of Article 296 of the Treaty in the field of defence procurement and the Commission Communication of 5 December 2007 on a Strategy for a stronger and more competitive European defence industry.

(4) One prerequisite for the creation of a European defence equipment market is the establishment of an appropriate legislative framework. In the field of procurement, this involves the coordination of procedures for the award of contracts to meet the security requirements of Member States and the obligations arising from the Treaty.

Helpfully, albeit in an obscure footnote, the White Paper tells us that this Directive was brought into UK law as the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations on 21 August 2011. And thus, let's play "spot the difference". In that self-same White Paper, we learn that:

We are focused on ensuring best value-for-money and delivering the best equipment for the Armed Forces and the security services. That is why this paper sets out how we will use competition as our default position and why we will look at the domestic and global defence and security market for products that are proven, that are reliable, and that meet our current needs. This principle is, though, qualified by the need to take action to protect our technological advantage where essential for national security.

We believe that the best way for the UK defence and security industries to remain strong, with some of the most high-tech and advanced manufacturing facilities in the world, is to be competitive. That is why this Government will continue to support responsible defence and security exports; why we are helping to create the right conditions for companies in these sectors to invest in the UK, and why we will take significant steps to ensure small and medium sized companies can continue to deliver the innovation and flexibility we need. There was strong support for these actions in the consultation responses.

And so we get:

Wherever possible, we will seek to fulfil the UK's defence and security requirements through open competition in the domestic and global market, buying off-the-shelf where appropriate… we will also take action to protect the UK's operational advantages and freedom of action, but only where this is essential for our national security.

This is remarked upon by a trade journal, which remarks that the presumption is to buy on the basis of competition and best value, which may often mean "off the shelf", even if it's from manufacturers in France, the US, Argentina, Israel. Now, the journal observes:

… many procurement people would welcome this focus on value for money rather than preserving British jobs or capability, but it will be interesting to see whether this holds up the first time a UK manufacturer loses out and screams blue murder about jobs, national interest and so on. Look at the fuss about the Bombardier/Siemens train procurement, and that didn't have the emotive aspects that defence always carries.

But of course, it will hold up. British ministers are implementing EU law, and they are always going to obey their masters. And in this White Paper, they are providing an ex post facto explanation of how the procurement system is to be adapted in order to ensure absolute obedience.

This in governmental terms, is not a "wasted opportunity" as Cavanagh would aver. It is simply a statement of compliance, the sub-text, "we shall obey".

COMMENT THREAD

Forget the gloating…

That is the message from Peter Ridell today in his analysis piece in The Times as the news section reports: "Europe turmoil as treaty collapses", to an extent confirming yesterday’s Press Association report, claiming that France (i.e., Chirac) has "lost its fight to save the ill-fated constitutional treaty."

The fallout it seems, is set to be serious. Blair and Chirac are due to meet in Paris today, but are at loggerheads, with the prime minister accusing the French president of living in the past. Chirac, on the other hand, is refusing to hold a joint press conference and Blair is retaliating by arranging his own at the British Embassy in the French capital.

Blair's insistence on using the British presidency to reopen the CAP funding issue has, it appears, seriously rattled Chirac but the proximate cause of the acrimony seems to be a British victory in getting the constitution "kicked into the longest possible grass". Foreign ministers, we are now told, did come to a decision yesterday, or a "non-decision", abandoning plans to complete ratification of the constitution by the end of 2006. They have decided to leave it to individual countries to decide whether to hold their referendums.

The effect of this seems already evident, according to a BBC report, retailing that Danish foreign minister Per Stig Moeller has suggested that his country's referendum may be called off. Ireland, Poland and Portugal have, however, said they will stick to their plans, intensifying the confusion.

Ridell, in his peice, cites Mandelson who, at a Fabian Socity talk last night, made "a strong case for pressing ahead with painful economic reforms" and argues for the government to make a "positive, and consistent, case for reform, for Europe's sake and ours".

All this, though, is the same woolly rhetoric that has pervaded the EU debate for decades, and readers would be better informed by the superbly crafted article in The Business last Sunday, entitled: "Why the EU will never be reformed". They might then wish to echo the sentiment expressed by The Mail on Sunday, when the paper observed that: "It is tempting to wonder if there is any point in Britain belonging to this organisation any longer."

As for the gloating, there is none. If the European Council is to end not with a bang but a whimper, leaving the consitution "on the table" but going nowhere, this will be the worst of all possible worlds. The British will not get their referendum, nothing will have been resolved, yet all the indications are that the integration will go rolling on as before.

One is haunted by the first French rejection of a European constitution in 1954 when, in the aftermath, quite deliberately, the "project" went underground. According to Jean Monnet's biogropher, François Duchêne:

Nobody after the first two years of Monnet's presidency at the High Authority would again talk of it or its equivalents as a "European government"… Awareness that the French would have to be coaxed into further progress introduced caution into the European vocabulary. The word federal was reserved as the political equivalent of Latin for the rare religious occasion. Even supranational… tended to be used only when another fig-leaf could not be found. The idea of a Europe in some sense above the nations was no longer stated in the open.

After the frenetic debate in the French and Dutch referendums, we are already hearing the siren voices telling the colleagues to "cool it". Yesterday, there was Helmut Schmidt cautioning to take it "slow and steady" and today, in The Financial Times Professor Andrew Moravcsik advises that "it is time to shelve ideological polemics" and to return to "quiet incremental reform".

In the UK, the Conservative Party is all too keen to "bury" any talk of the EU, the government is always reluctant to acknowledge the "elephant in the room" and the media is, at best, inadequate, when it comes to dealing with the subject. Thus, history looks set to repeat itself, with the project disappearing from sight, leaving the Eurosceptics back in the wilderness.

Likely, that will not happen, as too many people are alert to the ways of the "colleagues", and the EU is too pervasive in our lives for it to do a convincing diappearing act. But life is going to be tougher and it is certainly going to be harder bringing this ghastly mess to a satisfactory resolution.

However, after all that, we may still be in with a chance. Chirac is also known as "the comeback kid". Either way, Mr Ridell, you need not worry. We certainly will not be gloating... yet.

Bring on the rain

This is the text of my address given last night to the Kings College European Week. Delivered to a largely Europhile audience, the words "pork chop", "Jewish wedding" and "as welcome as" came to mind.

Humour can be found in unexpected places. I expected to find it least in the European Parliament where, in 1999 I joined the political group led by the Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde. That's Bonde.. Jens Bonde.

It cannot have been a coincidence that in the parliament in Strasbourg, on the 7th floor, the functionnaires allocated him room 007.

I presume the same sense of humour pervades the recent appointment of the fisheries commissioner to Barroso's commission. But, to understand the joke, you really have to be a fan of Star Trek – which some people still think is fictional.

Regular viewers of "Next Generation" or "Voyager" will know of the deadly foe that infests the galaxy – half organic, half machine – which takes over the bodies of its victims, turning them into clones of themselves, wiping out whole planets and species.

Their famous catch-phrase, on confronting their prey, is "Resistance is futile… you will be assimilated". And the name of this deadly foe is the Borg.

It was with some delight therefore that we noted that the new fisheries commissioner goes by the name of Joe Borg, which rather confirmed our suspicions as to the eventual destination of "the project", otherwise known as the European Union.

We are wondering whether the Union will even stop when it reaches South Africa. Perhaps that explains why the EU is so keen on its space policy. Is it going to change it motto from "Unity in diversity" to: "to boldly go…"?

Joking aside – for those of you who think I was joking – this does seem to characterise the EU's policy towards it neighbours. Its much-vaunted foreign policy seems not so much to relate with them as to absorb them… to assimilate them. Perhaps it should change its motto to: "Resistance is futile".

My task today, though, is not to look back but to look forward, to speculate on the effects of enlargement on the body corporate of the European Union and on the assimilees themselves.

In this I want to advance a thesis – initially from the perspective of the United Kingdom, asking you to remember that we too were assimilated, albeit some 30 years ago. Where the current enlargement countries go, we went before.

But, with my thesis – yet to be introduced – goes a theme: that theme is "ignorance". No one but a diehard would argue with the assertion that, when the UK joined the then EEC, it was on the basis of ignorance.

We thought we were joining a trading association when we were actually joining a political union. Yes, there were warning voices in the 1960s and 70s but not enough believed them.

Thirty years later, much of that ignorance prevails throughout British society. Very few people, for instance, could define accurately the role of the commission, how its power rests on its monopoly of proposal and how it exploits that power through the process of conditional agenda setting.

Few people understand the role of the council of ministers, still less the European Council and how many confuse it with the Council of Ministers?

But the most ignorance is displayed in relation to that most visible of institutions – the so-called European Parliament. Having worked in that institution, having studied it close-up, dissected its workings, I am constantly surprised by the number of people, including many MEPs, who actually believe it is a democratic institution.

For sure, it is a common mistake, where people confuse form – elections, voting procedures, etc., - with substance, the actual fabric and meaning of democracy. But you just have to recall that Saddam Hussein was "elected" with a 99 percent majority and no one would have called pre-liberation Iraq an democracy.

I am reminded of the cynical Irish politician who told me, after a lengthy explanation of the political situation in Northern Ireland, "If you think you understand it, you haven't been listening". If you think the European Parliament is democratic, you know little about the parliament, and even less about democracy.

Now for the thesis. This is that all us enlargees – assimilees – joined the Union on a false bill of goods, failing to understand the true nature of the beast. The majorities of all these countries, 19 in all since the establishment of the original six, did not know what they were joining and, in the main, still do not know.

This is borne out by the recent Eurobarometer survey, and others, which have demonstrated levels of ignorance of the constitution approaching 80 percent. And since perhaps 80 percent of the constitution comprises the original treaties, it is not unreasonable to assert that the ignorance spreads to general knowledge of the EU itself.

For the recent enlargees, this is not surprising. Those in the former Soviet bloc, we are told, joined for security. Squeezed between the Bear and the Borg, they had to make a choice and the Borg looked a better bet. They didn't need to know the details – and still don't.

But things are changing. In the UK, initially, few took any notice of the EEC once we had joined. It dealt with the dry, technical details of economic integration, which directly affected very few people.

But, since the Maastricht treaty, with the EU entering the end game and acquiring a greater political dimension, people are beginning to wake up. They are noticing the elephant in the room.

Here, I can call in aid another survey, one recently conducted by Mori for the BBC which, contrary to perceived wisdom, demonstrated that the more people knew about the EU, the less they liked it.

True, the level of knowledge is far from perfect but a growing constituency has grasped enough of the basics to realise that the European Union is something they do not want. All the evidence in the UK shows that the disaffected constituency is growing and that, once converted, it holds fast to its views.

But there are no constituencies of a similar scale in the rest of the EU, except perhaps in that other mature democracy. Nevertheless, the evidence is that, from a low base, it will grow and grow.

Further, it is my belief that political activism, political dynamism is more aggressive in the former Soviet bloc countries than it is in the UK. Their peoples take their politics more seriously.

It is thus my belief that it will not take the recent enlargees 30 years to wake up to the idea that they have been "had", that they have been sold a false bill of goods.

My colleague put a time on this – five years. The CIA gave it 15 years before the EU collapses. I cannot put a time on it but I am certain that it will the recent enlargement countries who will wake up first and, together with an aroused United Kingdom, will call a halt to the project.

As an aside, if it takes 15-20 years to negotiate Turkish entry, it will never happen. There will no longer be an EU left to join.

So, my prognosis for enlargement is straightforward. The seeds of destruction have always been in the soil of the "project", with its inherent lack of democracy. Enlargement is the fertiliser. All I can say is: "bring on the rain."