Liam Fox – Showing David Cameron the Way – image by Defence Images via Flickr
I mentioned in my last post that Liam Fox was providing vision and leadership on the EU – just as David Cameron dithers.
It is well worth reading Dr Fox’s article. He has managed to summarise very neatly in a single very readable page the reasons why we need to leave.
The contrast with David Cameron’s confusion, hypocrisy and lack of vision could not be starker.
Image by DECCgovuk via Flickr
David Cameron has been trying to keep everybody happy on the EU, as usual. He has hinted that he might have a referendum. Some time. On something or other. Maybe, if it’s appropriate. When the time is right. Or at least have a manifesto commitment to a referendum. Or maybe a commitment to consider one, or a commitment to promise a commitment.
Or maybe not, if he changes his mind again.
He has written an article for the Daily Telegraph.
This world class fudger has the nerve to start his article by saying
We need to be absolutely clear about what we really want, what we now have and the best way of getting what is best for Britain.
Some of us are indeed absolutely clear. We want out, not least because the purpose of the EU is to create a single federal European state. And that’s before you even start on the immense cost, the damage caused to our economy by EU red tape and the anti-democratic tendencies of Brussels.
Others, of course, are clear the other way. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, for example, believe that Britain should be part of a federal Union of Europe. Fair enough. Wrong in my opinion, but fair enough.
Mr Cameron, though, is very far from clear. He wants to stay in the EU, whose purpose is to create a federal Union. But he wants to remove all the bits he doesn’t like – including all the bits that make it a federal Union.
We actually have two choices – in or out. Mr Cameron thinks we have three. We can stay in; we can leave; or we can wave a magic wand and make the world a different place.
As a trading nation Britain needs unfettered access to European markets and a say in how the rules of that market are written.
The single market is at the heart of the case for staying in the EU.
Numptie. The single market has nothing to do with free trade. The “single market” means a single set of regulations and standards to cover the whole EU. You can trade freely with the EU without having anything to do with the single market.
To give a simple example, a single market means you have a single standard for the design of electric plugs in Britain and Germany. Free trade, on the other hand, means that German manufacturers can sell British-standard plugs to Britain, and British manufacturers can sell German-standard plugs to Germany. (You may have noticed, incidentally, if you have been to Germany, that plugs are very different there. We don’t even have a single market.)
But let’s get back to ducker and diver Cameron.
What is wrong with what we’ve got?
he asks, and then answers:
Too much cost; too much bureaucracy; too much meddling in issues that belong to nation states…
Not a word, then, about the actual purpose of the EU. It’s a bit like the Confederates in the American Civil War saying that the reason they wanted to leave the Union was that taxes were too high and Abraham Lincoln had too many paper-pushers.
“Issues” don’t belong to nation states, in any case. Or rather, all issues “belong” to nation states. Nation states are sovereign. They govern themselves. Sure, they may make treaties and agreements to act together, but ultimately they retain the right to make decisions for themselves. States in the EU do not have that right even now, and they are being bound ever tighter to Brussels.
There is more to come where we can take forward our interests, safeguard the single market and stay out of a federal Europe.
No, there isn’t, Mr Cameron. We are already in a federal Europe. We already have EU law taking precedence over British law, a supreme EU court, an EU foreign ministry complete with EU diplomats, the core of an EU army, common fishing and agricultural policy … the list is endless. Increasingly we hear British Ministers telling us their hands are tied, because of EU “rules” – for which read “laws”. And we have only just begun.
How do we take the British people with us on this difficult and complicated journey?
asks our Prime Minister. For Mr Cameron, it really is difficult and complicated. It is difficult and complicated because what he wants is self-contradictory, meaningless and confused.
As we get closer to the end point, we will need to consider how best to get the full-hearted support of the British people whether it is in a general election or in a referendum.
“We will need to consider how best to get the full-hearted support of the British people”. Really, just think on that for a minute. For this man, the only purpose of general elections and referenda is to get the full-hearted support of the people. For him, votes are not choices. Votes are means to manipulate the public.
But Mr Cameron finally reveals the true extent of his banality, and the true emptiness of his position right at the end.
As I have said, for me the two words “Europe” and “referendum” can go together, particularly if we really are proposing a change in how our country is governed, but let us get the people a real choice first.
We already know that for Mr Cameron the two words “referendum” and “Europe” can go together. As in, “No, you can’t have a referendum on Europe”.
And what does he mean by “get the people a real choice”? Presumably it means he wants to make sure they choose what he wants them to.
David Cameron will face a record rebellion over Europe unless he clears up his confused plans for a referendum, Conservative MPs warned.
Looks like he didn’t convince them either, then.
Image by World Economic Forum via Flickr
Angela Merkel has given in at the Eurozone summit. She agreed to the European Central Bank giving direct support to struggling banks in Southern countries. And she agreed to the European Stability Mechanism buying government bonds issued by Southern countries, to reduce their borrowing costs.
In short, she agreed to German taxpayers giving a yet bigger bailout to Spain, Italy and the others – or rather to their banks.
The agreement – as with most EU agreements – also included a further step in the direction of increasing the power of Brussels. A joint banking regulator will be set up, to oversee banks in all the member states.
Mrs Merkel will portray that as a victory. She thinks that such a regulator will be controlled by the European Central Bank, and that the ECB will continue to be effectively controlled by the German government.
She is not right. That banking supervisor will have power over German banks as well as Southern ones. One day, German banks will be following orders from Brussels.
Mrs Merkel seems to think that because the ECB is in Frankfurt, it will dance to her tune (or the tune of her successors in Berlin). It will not – any more than the Stock Exchange in New York follows the orders of the New York State government.
The European Union has a life of its own. It will come to dominate Germany as much as the other member states.
Germans should take note of how it feels to be mobbed and defeated at a Eurosummit. It has happened often enough to Britain.
The BBC reports that over 100 MPs have signed a letter asking David Cameron to
place on the Statute Book before the next General Election a commitment to hold a referendum during the next parliament on the nature of our relationship with the European Union.
The BBC is portraying this as pressure from the Tory Eurosceptics to hold a referendum on leaving the EU.
It really is not all it seems.
First, as even the BBC notes, the motion merely has those weasel words about a referendum “on the nature of our relationship”. Such a referendum would not be along the lines of whether we want to leave or not. There would be a third option – actually a false option that is not on offer – of “renegotiating” our relationship.
Looking at the nature of the EU, it is abundantly clear that the intention is to create a single federal State. With such a thing, you are either in or out. You can’t “negotiate your relationship” with a single State of which you are part.
The French and the Germans are arguing ferociously about the right way to resolve the European sovereign debt crisis. But neither wants to resolve it by moving even one iota away from that “ever closer union”. Their only difference is that the Germans want the EU central government to have direct authority over member states’ budgets, whereas the French “just” want the EU to issue its own Eurobonds.
They are arguing over what that single State should be like, not about whether there should be a single State. If we try to negotiate, their response will be, “If you don’t want to be part of a federal Union, then leave.”
Second, this fashion for putting in statutory commitments for future governments is an attack on our democracy. Tony Blair’s lot started it, with a statutory commitment to certain levels of overseas aid and a statutory commitment to reducing relative poverty (i.e. increasing equality).
There is a constitutional principle that no government can bind its successors. This principle is vital to protect the right of the voters to elect the government they want, with a mandate to do the things they want it to do.
This commitment to hold a referendum after the election might not infringe the letter of that principle, because a future government could repeal the law. But it sails pretty close to the wind. Governments should not be deliberately placed in a position where the default position is the policy of the old government, and they have to actively change the law to go a different way.
If you don’t see that, imagine the government passed a legal commitment to setting income tax at 19% from 2017. Would that be reasonable, or shouldn’t that be a matter for the government that is in office at that time?
But wait just a minute! Why do the signatories to that letter want a referendum only after the election? If a referendum is right, then why do they not want one now? Even the letter itself says “the sooner it is implemented the better” – while only asking for it to happen the other side of the election.
In short, the letter is incredibly muddled and trying to fudge the issue – typical in other words of the Eurosceptics in the implacably-Europhile Tory Party. They want to be able to tell their constituents that they support British independence, while actually doing nothing about it.
If they want Britain out, they should defect to UKIP. If they don’t want British independence, or if they don’t have the guts to defect, then they should keep their mouths shut.
Image by BBC Radio 4 via Flickr
There seems to be an unspoken assumption among all commentators, and even UKIP, that we couldn’t leave the European Union without a referendum. UKIP policy is to hold a referendum on EU membership, and recommend to the British people that we should leave.
Interesting.
Commentators generally seem to say that there needs to be a referendum for any major constitutional change. That simply is not true – there is ample precedence otherwise.
Ted Heath and the Conservatives took us into the European Union in the first place, without a referendum.
Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives passed the Single European Act, without a referendum.
John Major and the Conservatives accepted the Maastricht Treaty, without a referendum.
And Tony Blair and Labour accepted the Lisbon Treaty (EU Constitution), without a referendum.
The same thing has happened in other areas too. Membership of the House of Lords, for example, was reformed by Tony Blair’s government, and devolution was granted to Northern Ireland, in both cases without a referendum.
So there is a great deal of history that tells us referendums are not needed for constitutional change.
Why, then, did we have that referendum on the EU in 1975, and why did we have a referendum recently on the voting system?
The referendum on the EU in 1975 was called by Harold Wilson’s Labour government. It was a way to finesse internal party disagreements on whether to accept the decision of the previous Conservative government to go in. The government and the Establishment weighed in on the side of a “yes” vote. The “yes” campaign outspent the “no” campaign by 10 to 1. The Prime Minister of the day declared that there was no threat to British sovereignty, while knowing full well that was not the case. And the people duly voted to stay in the “common market”.
The voting system referendum was fixed from the start. Because he was in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, David Cameron had to face the issue of voting reform. But he chose an extremely strange version of proportional representation to put to the people. The AV system that he offered is used almost nowhere. And having chosen it as the system to offer, he then poured cold water on it, pointing out its eccentricities and that hardly anyone had adopted it. During the campaign, the “No to AV” campaign outspent the “Yes” campaign, and pretty much the whole Establishment campaigned for a “No” vote, mostly by subtle attempts to scare the voters off voting for change. The people duly voted to stick with “first past the post”.
Notice a pattern here? The truth is that referendums are not devices for ascertaining the will of the people.
In both cases, the referenda were used to silence dissent, by enlisting the support of a popular vote to prevent change.
Referenda are of course unpredictable. No Prime Minister can be completely certain of the result in any referendum. They are therefore a last resort. But if there is no other way for a Prime Minister to silence critics and avoid change, they can be very effective, as those two examples showed.
In the case of any EU referendum now, pro-EU politicians like David Cameron could manipulate the question to avoid a vote to take Britain out. They could muster the full power of the government (and indeed Her Majesty’s Opposition) to persuade people to vote to stay in. They could even rely on liberal dollops of funding from the EU itself to ensure the vote they wanted.
Even imagine an unlikely but not impossible scenario of a UKIP government being elected at the next general election. If that government called a referendum, the Establishment would still weigh in for a vote to stay in. A succession of “leading business people” would be wheeled out to express their extreme concern. Shadowy Bank of England figures would mutter darkly about the “risks involved”, while declaring that of course it was a decision for the people and not for them.
The EU would pour money into the “Yes to EU” campaign. The vote itself would be held several months or even a couple of years into the Parliament, allowing ample time for that UKIP government to become unpopular. In many ways the referendum would become a referendum on the government’s performance, rather than a referendum on the substantive question.
In short, the referendum would probably be lost.
That government would have fallen into the “referendum trap”.
Alex Salmond has already done so. Having won a convincing and surprising victory in the Scottish elections, he has now declared a referendum on independence. He may yet pull off a “yes” vote, but I doubt it. The vote will go against, and Scottish independence will be declared as “settled for a generation” and no longer discussed – just as voting reform has been.
Referenda are devices to stop change, not requirements before change is enacted.
We (by which I mean UKIP) should not be promising a referendum. We should be promising that a UKIP government would take Britain out of the European Union.
Image by World Economic Forum via Flickr
They really are. Bankers. Or bonkers.
Says Peter Sands, head of Standered Chartered: the biggest threat to the City is that Britain might leave the European Union. Because, well, if we left, then…er…well, something bad might happen. Possibly. He has, according to the Telegraph, been muttering dark warnings to David Cameron.
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, the biggest threat to the City is actually the EU itself. As the Telegraph says:
…Monday EU summit at which European-wide banking union, will be a key item on the agenda.
Mr Cameron is concerned that the plans – which include proposals for a pan-continental regulator – will undermine the City of London and is seeking formal safeguards to protect Britain. On Monday, European officials said a deal on banking union would be agreed with or without British backing by the end of 2013.
The City should understand very clearly that sooner or later the EU will find a way to undermine and destroy it. It is a key objective, certainly, of the Germans, who would like to see Frankfurt take its place.
The City has long prospered by being banker to the world, not by confining itself to Little Europe.
But I guess the story is all part of the strategy. Mr Cameron must be thought to be privately tough and sound – just constrained by forces beyond his control, whether that is the Liberal Democrats or the City of London. The act is beginning to wear a little thin.
The idea that David Cameron, of all people, will ever order a referendum on our EU membership, is absolutely laughable.
Angela Merkel has shocked the bien pensants of the Daily Telegraph. A couple of days ago, they were confidently predicting that she would roll over and let the ECB issue “eurobonds” to bail out the bankrupt Eurozone countries.
Mrs Merkel, it seems, is made of sterner stuff. At the latest summit, she ignored all the pressure and simply said, “No.” The Italians are apparently calling her “La Signora No”. Perhaps we should start calling her “The New Iron Lady”.
Mrs Merkel, amongst all the debt-loving Keynesian nonsense of the EU (and indeed of the US) seems to be a lone voice of sanity.
No, the answer is not for Germany to write a cheque and pay all the debts of Europe.
“The Germans are blackmailing the ECB,” said one official. “They have more or less threatened to withdraw from the euro if the ECB puts one foot out of line.”
Sounds good to me. Although it would be even better if the ECB did step out of line, and the Germans made good on the threat.
Never mind. So far Mrs Merkel has been splendid. Eventually perhaps the Germans may come to understand that the whole European project was set up to control and suppress Germany.
They may realise that, as a modern, democratic and successful state, it is time to throw off those shackles and be Germany, and not just a part of a United States of Europe.
Germans should be proud of their Chancellor, and of their country. And those of us elsewhere who despise the European Union should be cheering her on.
Look deep into my eyes … you don’t really want to decide … just leave everything to me … trust me … trust me … (Image by the Prime Minister’s Office via Flickr)
11th June 2012:
a Populus poll for the Times finds that 49% want an immediate referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU and another 33% want one “in the next few years”.
Only 18% did not want a referendum in the foreseeable future.
12th June 2012:
David Cameron’s spokesman says:
in terms of our membership of the EU, he feels that is not something we should have a referendum on now. That is not something that the British people want right now.
I suppose Mr Cameron also believes that pigs fly and indeed that the people still want him as Prime Minister.
Of course he doesn’t really believe the people don’t want a referendum. He just thinks he would lose it if there was one. No government ever agrees to a referendum they think they will lose.
Yes, I say lose because if there were a referendum, David Cameron himself would be arguing for a vote to stay in. In fact, the whole Conservative establishment would be arguing for a vote to stay in.
From Ted Heath’s taking Britain into the EU in the first place, to Margaret Thatcher’s agreeing to the Single European Act (which gave EU law primacy over British law), to John Major’s agreeing to the Maastricht Treaty (which created the Euro), the Conservatives have been quite thoroughly and wholeheartedly in favour of the EU. Even the Labour Party has in general been more Eurosceptic than the Tories.
How long before Eurosceptic MPs like Chris Heaton Harris, or Andrea Leadsom, realise they are in the wrong party?
Treading in Mr Lamont’s footsteps – image by scatterkeir via Flickr
Through all the travails, indeed through the slow motion train crash of the collapse of the Euro, the EU integration juggernaut is grinding on.
The European Commission is now proposing what the BBC calls “an EU-wide banking union”.
This plan includes:
The BBC says
But the UK government has indicated its reluctance to sign up to closer EU ties.
It prefers a body that only covers banks in the 17-member eurozone.
Yeah right. “Reluctance.” The negotiations have already begun:
However [the UK government] would support a strengthened single market in financial services for all 27 EU states.
A “strengthened single market”. I guess that means more European regulation of our banks.
The BBC fatuously comments that
This would also remove the possibility of one set of taxpayers, for example, in Germany, having to bail out savers in another country such as Spain.
which is completely untrue, since for example if the new fund has to bail out banks in Spain, then the banks in Germany would in effect be paying via that levy. The only difference would be that the bailout would be co-ordinated by European bureaucrats instead of European politicians.
In any case, none of this would explain how to stop a systematic debt problem that afflicts all countries.
The problem is DEBT. And that means the problem is our politicians. The answer though, is not to take power from them and give it to the likes of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. The answer is instead to change the politicians.
No matter. This is all light relief. This whole proposal is so far off into fantasy-land as to call into question the sanity of the European Commissioners.
The pressure on the Euro itself is not abating. The latest bailout, of the banks in Spain, ended up being as much as €100 billion. It unravelled within hours, with Spanish 10-year bond yields reaching 6.8%. In other words, the markets believe there is a high risk that loans to the Spanish government will not be repaid – or not in Euros, anyway.
The whole Southern part of Europe – Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal – is right now where Britain stood just before “Black Wednesday”, when the country fell out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Remember Chancellor Norman Lamont telling everyone that Britain’s commitment to continuing in the ERM was unshakeable? Remember his telling us all how essential it was for the credibility of our country’s economy that we stayed in? Remember all the great and the good loudly telling us that leaving would be a disaster and a humiliation for Britain?
Remember Mr Lamont’s bumping up interest rates on Black Wednesday to 12% and then within hours to 15%, to try and defend the pound against the wall of market speculation that Britain would leave the ERM?
And remember that just hours later he was forced to capitulate and announce Britain’s withdrawal anyway?
Here is how Wikipedia describes that day:
The UK’s prime minister and cabinet members tried vehemently to prop up a sinking pound, and withdrawal from the monetary system the country had joined two years prior was the last resort. [John] Major raised interest rates to 10 percent and authorised the spending of billions of pounds to buy up the sterling being frantically sold on the currency markets but the measures failed to prevent the pound falling lower than its minimum level in the ERM.
The Treasury took the decision to defend Sterling’s position, believing that to devalue would be to promote inflation. On 16 September the British government announced a rise in the base interest rate from an already high 10 to 12 percent in order to tempt speculators to buy pounds. Despite this and a promise later the same day to raise base rates again to 15 percent, dealers kept selling pounds, convinced that the government would not stick with its promise. By 19:00 that evening, Norman Lamont, then Chancellor, announced Britain would leave the ERM and rates would remain at the new level of 12 percent (however, on the next day interest rate was back on 10%). It was later revealed that the decision to withdraw had been agreed at an emergency meeting during the day between Norman Lamont, Prime Minister John Major, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, President of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine and Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke (the latter three all being strong pro-Europeans as well as senior Cabinet Ministers), and that the interest rate hike to 15 percent had only been a temporary measure to prevent a rout in the pound that afternoon.
Disaster! Calamity! Er – no. That day was followed by a surge of economic growth and the resolution of the economic slump that had afflicted the country for a couple of years.
If the Southern European countries whose economies are being destroyed by the Euro – Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece – don’t leave the Euro, then Europe itself will face a bleak future. Their leaders ought to understand that this isn’t going to stop. This is not a question of getting through the next week, or the next month. The financial and economic pressure will be as great or greater in a week, or a month, or a year, or a decade. Sooner or later their citizens will decide they’ve had enough and hang them from the nearest lamp-posts.
Of course Britain could have a referendum and withdraw from the whole sorry business of the EU. In fact, that scenario is looking increasingly possible. We could watch from the sidelines as Europe rips itself apart. But we are intimately involved – partly just for historic and geographical reasons, and partly due to the disastrous misjudgements of a series of British leaders. Even though we might escape the worst of the pain, collapse in Europe would hurt us very badly.
Some leadership from David Cameron would not go amiss. He ought to be urging those Southern European leaders to go for broke and make plans to leave the Euro. But of course he won’t. Leadership and Mr Cameron do not go together. He and his mate George Osborne will just sit on the sidelines hoping it’s all going to go away. After all, they might get a kicking from their European masters if they do otherwise.
The EU issued a new set of electronic privacy regulations a couple of years ago. So far, only three countries have transposed them into law. One of the three is Britain.
The new law says you are not allowed to store a “cookie” on somebody’s PC without their explicit consent.
Cookies are small data files that are stored on your PC when you visit a website, at the request of that site. They are broadly used for two purposes.
First, they are used for the functioning of the website. For example, an e-commerce site might use one to remember the contents of your “shopping basket”, or a site might use one to remember which language you want, so that it can display the right language when you next visit the site.
Second, cookies are used to “track” users’ path through the website or the whole internet. This information is used to serve relevant ads to you, or to determine which ads actually get people to buy things.
You can turn off cookies by changing your browser settings, but not many people do. Most don’t know how, and anyway a lot of sites won’t work without cookies.
More than 90% of websites use cookies. So in order to comply with the new rules, most websites would need to ask you to click on a button to agree. You can see this sort of approach on the Information Commissioner’s website.
The new law is very simple, and very clear. Unfortunately for the bureaucrats, who clearly had no understanding of the technical operation of the internet when they drafted the new rules, if everyone complied then the internet would become a very annoying place. There would be continual popups appearing on almost every site you visit.
What’s more, most people don’t agree to accept cookies if they are asked. Less than 10% agree in the case of the Information Commissioner’s site. So the marketers are up in arms. The new rules would destroy the way they use the internet to sell things, and with that the whole business model that underpins the web.
The new law came into effect on May 26 last year. The Information Commissioner was then in the front line of a rebellion by marketers – who had been given only a couple of weeks notice of the detail of the new law. So the ICO bottled out. He gave everyone a year to comply.
The year is now up. Some sites (like the BBC) have complied. Others are sailing very close to the wind by telling everyone how they use cookies and how to turn them off, but not actually requesting their consent. BMW UK are an example of this. But the majority, including most government websites, have so far done nothing.
Faced with this mass civil disobedience, the ICO is now running scared. He has said that tracking cookies can rely on “implicit consent”. (That’s that BMW approach.) This is very clearly not what the new law says.
He has also said that if somebody doesn’t comply, he will be helping them do so rather than prosecuting.
In short, the authorities have lost control. The new law is unenforceable.
When laws are passed that cannot be enforced and are almost universally ignored, the law is brought into disrepute. The thin veneer of control that the authorities have, is exposed as being almost powerless in the face of the people.
This is not healthy and undermines our whole democracy and system of government.
The government needs to withdraw the new regulations urgently – or face the prospect of being ignored again when they try and enforce something more important.
I am a center-right moderate social libertarian.
Right: 2.49, Libertarian: 1.82
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