I'm shocked - by Richard... Tuesday, November 01, 2011

I'm shocked - by Richard... Tuesday, November 01, 2011

It's like last week never happened, wibbles The Failygraph. The FTSE 100 is now trading at around 5,400 points - below the level it reached after the bail-out was agreed in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

I almost feel like sniggering. What did they expect?

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The convulsions of the corpse - by Richard...

"Oh dear. I really didn't want my first blog post in a week to be yet another one about global bloody warming", writes Dellers. And I know how he feels. Writing about the subject has taken on the aspect of reporting on the contortions of a rotting corpse.

The game is over but, despite the stench, the grieving fans can't bear to be separated from the object of their affections ( ... a bit like the euro and the EU really - how interesting that these obsessions are falling apart together).

The problem is, Dellers adds, is that if those lying, cheating climate scientists will insist on going on lying and cheating what else can I do other than expose their lying and cheating? Well, he has a point. The last flurry of contortions should not go unremarked. I'm glad he's doing it, so that I don't have to.

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Playing the joker - by Richard...

To the complete surprise of virtually everybody, including his own parliamentarians, Greek prime minister George Papandreou has dropped a complete bombshell, calling a referendum to approve the latest EU bailout deal.

According to the Reuters report, Papandreou says he needs wider political support for the fiscal measures and structural reforms, upon which the bailout is conditional.

This is an explanation that does little to dampen speculation as to his real motives – the presumption being that the referendum must be lost. Media sources are already asking whether this is political suicide, although Papandreou seems to be playing a canny game.

He already has a confidence vote in parliament on Thursday or Friday and if he was after an abrupt end to his political career, he could have gone down without making a fight of it. The referendum announcement, therefore, looks like he wants to go down fighting.

Furthermore, this may not be as much of a gamble as might appear. An opinion poll conducted by Kapa Research SA records sentiment finely divided. While some 58.9 percent consider the bailout package has "negative" or "probably negative" implications, 50.1 percent agreed with the need for more European oversight.

Bizarrely, only 48.8 percent see the bailout as an infringement of national sovereignty and 72.5 of the respondents said they wanted Greece to remain in the eurozone.

Rumours from Athens are that the referendum is likely in mid-January, giving plenty of time for negotiations in les couloirs, once Merkel and the "colleagues" in Brussels have got over the shock – they having been kept out of the loop as well.

Meanwhile, some parliamentarians are questioning the referendum's legality under the constitution, which does not allow referendums on economic issues but only matters "of great national importance". The last referendum was in December 1974, on abolishing the monarchy - held shortly after the collapse of a military dictatorship.

Fotis Kouvelis, leader of the small Democratic Left party argues that, instead of a referendum, the country must go to early elections. It's the most honourable solution, he says. But with no party likely to win a clear lead, Papandreou might be gambling on the referendum giving him a new legitimacy, which will extend beyond the January and well into the next year.

But there is one issue – perhaps the elephant in the room – which is not being mentioned: the attitude of the Army. With a possibility of a military coup not being ruled out, we do not know who is pulling the strings.

For one brief moment though, we have a delicious certainty of knowing who isn't. And even now, such has been the shock that we have not yet had a comment from either Berlin or Brussels.

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Amateurs at work - by Richard... Monday, October 31, 2011

Rather predictably, we see the Speccytwats getting excited about Ian Milne's pamphlet on leaving the European Union – available from Civitas at a price I am not prepared to pay.

What Milne cares to reveal in The Spectator, however, does not fill one with confidence, as he sketches out his ideas of an exit, thereby displaying a less than complete understanding of the legal and practical issues that would arise from our withdrawal.

A clue as to his rather superficial grasp comes with his offhand declaration that, on "Independence Day", two years after the EU has been notified of our intention to leave, the UK "will cease involvement in all other EU policy areas", which includes "fishing".

Just taking that one issue, it would be a quite remarkable thing if within the space of two short years, the internal legal issues between Scotland, Northern Ireland and even Wales could be resolved, allowing even the foundations of a UK fishing policy to be developed.

There would be even less confidence in our ability to secure all the bilateral agreements with the EU, and states such as Norway, Iceland and the Faroes, needed to replace the standing provisions of the CFP, to enable us then to being devising and implementing the technical issues required of a fisheries policy.

And this is not the half of it. In passing, Milne states that, with immediate effect (from the day we declare our intention to leave), only British Courts will interpret and apply EU law. Conflicting rulings of the ECJ and British courts arising during the next twenty-four months will be determined by the usual international dispute settlement procedures, he says.

As far as fishing goes, that would effectively leave our seas open to the depredations of EU and foreign fleets. With our fisheries protection resource cut to the bone, we have no capability to enforce our own fisheries regime – not that we would have one – and would have no practical means of exercising jurisdiction over non-national shipping, having ceased to recognise the ECJ.

Of course, what would apply to fishing would apply, in spades, to the management of our skies, and airline traffic, which is currently subject to EU law. It would affect our merchant shipping and all matters relating, to our trucks and cars going abroad, and much else.

Our leaving would also affect British pensioners resident in the EU, our reciprocal health arrangements, our passport and visa arrangements, mobile phone "roaming" arrangements, the postal system and conventional telecommunications … as well as radio and television broadcasting.

In short, what Milne – and so many others – manifestly fail to understand are the implications of the EU being much more than a trading agreement, even though they complain that this is the case. EU law and administration systems have infiltrated the very core of UK governance, to the extent that removal will be akin to extracting a malignant and invasive cancer from a human patient.

The problem here is that, with nearly forty years of economic and political integration, disengagement will take far longer than the two years Milne suggests, and be far more complex than anyone appreciates.

Even then, much of the law would continue to apply, it having been agreed through regional bodies such as UNECE, and global bodies such as the OIE – of which Milne seems unaware. The first task we face, therefore, is attempting to understand what we will have to deal with. And here, we are not even past first base.