Britannia Radio

11 June 2010 8:35 AM

Obama on 'British Petroleum': how can Cameron be surprised?

You can't be surprised at President Obama's poisonous attitude towards 'British Petroleum,' not if you keep up with this blog.  As I wrote last March: 'Obama is the first US president who was raised without cultural or emotional or intellectual ties to either Britain or Europe. The British and the Europeans have been so enchanted with "America's first black president" that they haven't been able to see what he really is: "America's first Third World President."'

'Here is what is happening, though the British Government seems oblivious of it. The Obama administration is ready to dump the Old World in pursuit of the One World. Britain is being dumped. The special relationship, whatever is left of it, is over.'

First there was 'the kick in the teeth he gave Britain over the Falklands just a few weeks ago.' Obama sent his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Buenos Aires to give American support to President Kirchner's call for international negotiations over the sovereignty of the islands. The Foreign Office then assured us that it didn't mean anything. Oh, yes it did: and yes it does -- it was evidence of the same anti-British attitude that has resulted in Obama's sneering attacks on 'British Petroleum.'  

'What we have shaping up,' I wrote, 'but what the British Government doesn't yet grasp, is that Obama has a conscious policy of down-grading America's relationship with, first, Britain and then with the rest of Europe.'

Obama 'is a man from an Asian-Pacific [childhood] background bred to no admiration for the ancient constitutional history which, until now, has reached across the Atlantic to bind America and Britain. The president actually feels that the US Constitution, which grew out of Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights, is "inadequate."'

'Obama has made it clear he despises both the US Constitution and the British tradition from which it springs.'

'His vision is for the US to abandon its Constitution and its laws, which are tied to Britain, the country for which he has shown such disdain.'

All that and more was in this blog on March 22nd. Cameron can't say he wasn't warned.

'Belgium must die!'

This just gets better. At least, better in the way Lenin meant it: Worse is better.

Belgium is heading for an election on Sunday which is likely to mean that a Flemish separatist party led by Bart De Wever will be the largest party in the federal parliament. Given the Belgian way of doing things, that might mean the various Flemish and Walloon parties (Dutch-speaking and French-speaking of several different kinds of left and right) in the parliament will be struggling to form a government for months, maybe for the rest of this year. Yet in the second half of this year, Belgium is due to take over the rotating presidency of the European Council.

See? It just gets better. Not only are the Flemings continuing to rise against this invented country called 'Belgium,' but this invented country called 'Europe' may have a Belgian non-government in the chair for half a year.

Of course, De Wever's party, the Nieuw-Flaamse Alliantie, the 'New Flemish Alliance,' isn't the most muscular of the Flemish separatist parties. The Vlaams Belang -- 'Flemish Interest' -- party is. That is their election poster above. I picked one up in Antwerp last week, when I met a couple of the candidates and party workers (and congratulations to the local party for setting up in what must be the most conspiratorial-style bar I've every been in. I thought I'd walked in to some back-lot set held over from the 'Maltese Falcon.') It was one of the Vlaam Belang MPs who cried out, 'Belgium must die!' on the last day of the parliament some weeks ago. Fine by me. If you want your independence back, don't pussyfoot.

De Wever is less direct, however. Instead of talking about true independence, he has been talking about Flanders becoming a 'region of Europe.' That's like saying you want to achieve your freedom from house arrest by signing on next door for bonded servitude. Then he says he doesn't want any sudden break up, he wants Belgium to do something like 'evaporate.'

Not exactly a cry to get 'em to the barricades. Still, the Belgicist parties -- the ones who benefit from the non-nation invented in 1830 by the British to annoy the French, or more to the point, to keep the strategic port of Antwerp out of the hands of Britain's enemies -- want to block De Wever from being prime minister. They want to treat him as though he has cloven hooves. Can't see what's worrying them. So far all he's been showing are pussyfeet.

Anglo-German stupidity guarantees a fresh European recession

The economist Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research gets it right so often it is wise to to sit up and pay attention whenever he puts out a new note on the economy. His note out today forecasts that 'Anglo-German fiscal policies virtually guarantee a fresh European recession, possibly a medium-term recession.'

He goes on: 'The British Conservative Party always used to be called "the stupid party," but the bankruptcy of the left and an access of intelligent free-market thinking in the 1970s caused it to switch to being called the "nasty party."  Now it seems to be reverting to the stupid approach, in competition with Mrs Merkel and Co.'

He goes on with an examination of the eurasian savings glut -- the thing that pumped $3 trillion into the profligate countries of the West before the crash. He reckons that the $3 trillion-plus deficit total this caused in advanced countries cannot be reduced, certainly not by policies such as those being followed by the British and German governments.

The reason is: 'If some countries deflate their economies in an attempt to cut their government deficits, other countries will have a larger deficit -- and even the deflating countries will be partially frustrated in their endeavours. Why? Because they will induce a renewed recession that will hammer tax revenue and enforce greater relief spending. The result of Anglo-German fiscal policy will almost certainly be renewed European recession, quite possibly a prolonged Depression.'

Because of this, the new coalition 'may be doomed to failure' if it tries to accelerate its fiscal stance.

As for Germany, it is stopping the Club Med countries from borrowing money: 'So its exports will be frustrated to the south, to the west -- as France is dragged down and British devaluation cuts off that market's growth (if any) -- and to the east as CEE [central and eastern Europe] growth is slow and Russia is hit by falling oil prices as the US goes anaemic and China tightens policy to slow inflation.'

Germany growth is likely to be nil by the end of 2010, 'or next year at the latest,' even though it is helped by the falling euro.

Dumas says that what we have here, as the World Cup starts, is the Anglo-German stupidity shoot-out.

Cameron: lacks the necessary equipment for the part

    I'll be at the European Council meeting next week -- which will be David Cameron's first -- and we are all supposed to be ready to believe he will provoke a row over the new European Union plans to impose an economic government on the member states of the eurozone. (And yes, Britain will get sucked into it, despite not being a member of the eurozone.)

But any 'row' which occurs will be synthetic. Cameron reminds me of an actress who appeared in a 1970s John Schlesinger movie, and then suffered this review: 'The script requires her to play a beautiful woman, but she lacks the necessary equipment for the part.'

The script for Thursday requires Cameron to play a leader ready to defend Britain's sovereignty, but he lacks the necessary moral equipment for the part. Whatever 'row' is staged on Thursday will be smoothed over later by the Foreign Office and the permanent civil servants Britain keeps in Brussels (file under: 'gone native'). Whatever is said in public, there will be a back-room capitulation which puts Britain into line with the other 26.

Mostly this is because Cameron lacks any true philosophical objection to the European 'project.' He has reached his policy on the EU not by any moral compass, but by means of the Bill Clinton method of triangulation -- he has measured out just how euro-resistant he has to be to keep Tory eurosceptics more or less quiet, and then just how euro-compliant he has to be to stay popular with the euro-lovers in both the Conservative party and the Lib Dems, then takes up the position in between.  He has not reached his position on the EU because he believes in it. In the matter of 'ever closer union,' as in every other issue, he appears to believe in nothing.

Now, you might think that moves on Thursday towards economic government of the 16 members of the single currency shouldn't even involve Cameron, because Britain has the blessing to be out of the euro. But as you will recall, Gordon Brown allowed Britain to be stampeded into joining the bail-out of the heading-to-default eurozone countries such as Greece and Portugal, despite Britain not being in the eurozone. Brown could have fought it. He didn't. Now Cameron says he will go along with the agreement. He could still fight it. But he won't, just as he wouldn't fight the Lisbon Treaty, again using the excuse that the previous government had signed on to it, so he wouldn't work to reverse the decision.

The latest encroachment by Brussels is the plan to move towards economic government of the EU, to be agreed on Thursday. The excuse being used by Herman van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, to push the plan is the reckless borrowings and deficits of many eurozone members. Van Rompuy and the rest of the European elite have decided that every government of every member state of the EU, all 27, must in future submit their budgets to the finance ministers of the other 26 to be vetted to stop any such profligacy in future -- and they must do it before their own parliaments see any part of the budget. 

This would mean the other 26 finance ministers -- the Greek one, the Portuguese one, the Hungarian one, all of them -- could demand and enforce changes in any budget drawn up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. (If George Osborne refused, the EU would levy financial sanctions on Britain.) The Chancellor's new budget would only then be shown to House of Commons. And the Commons would have no power to throw out demands made by the other 26.

Though of course, the Commons could throw the thing back in the faces of the Brussels elite and say, 'No, to hell with the powers earlier parliaments handed to Brussels, never, we won't do it.'

But that would take backbone in the Commons and leadership by the Government. And since the Commons shows no sign of backbone in any European matter, and the Government is led by David Cameron...well, he just doesn't have the equipment for the part. In the end, he will capitulate. And the Commons will let him.