The Boy retreats - by Richard... Monday, January 30, 2012

The Boy retreats - by Richard... Monday, January 30, 2012

Bruno Waterfield says that Britain has officially dropped its opposition to the use of EU institutions to administer and enforce a eurozone fiscal pact. The Tory europlastics will be cross, their leader now stripped of his eurosceptic mask. That effectively snuffs out even the Tory version of the "veto". It is a deceased veto, dead without even being born.

This is confirmed by the AFP agency, which seems to be inventing even newer non-vetoes, Cameron, not for the use of. Britain "will not veto the use of European Union institutions by the other 26 members of the bloc as they push forward a new fiscal pact which excludes London", it says.

Apparently, though, it is citing Willie Hague, who is saying that Britain has "real legal concerns" about the use of the ECJ under the new treaty arrangements, but "would reserve its position for now". He told BBC radio: "If the use of the EU institutions at any point threatens Britain's fundamental rights under the EU treaties or damages our vital interests such as the single market then we would have to take action about that, including legal action."

Translated, that definitely means that Cameron is to take no action.

Nick Wood in the Daily Mail seems to be up to speed on this: "Backsliding" will be a word not far from the lips of Eurosceptic MPs as they anxiously scrutinise David Cameron's foray into the Brussels bearpit today, he writes, adding such gems as: "Dave is in danger of being outmanoeuvred by a European ruling class …", and: "Dave's Brussels triumph looks more threadbare by the day …".

"Once again", concludes Wood, "we are muddling through in the EU slipstream". And so it will always be, as long as we have a europhile masquerading as our prime minister. Yet they are still calling him "Teflon Cameron" over at Tory Boy Blog, although they acknowledge that "backsliding on the veto, would provide the conditions for a major revolt".

Well, it looks as if "Teflon" has met his Brillo pad. However, Duncan Smith is still being quoted as saying: "I absolutely trust the prime minister on this, I know where he stands".

And don't we all?

"Senior Conservative backbencher" Bernard Jenkin thus has the measure of the man. According to the Evening Standard, he says: "This is a retreat. What is the difference between refusing to sign the treaty of 27 and then allowing the hijacking of the EU institutions with a treaty of 17 plus?"

Are the Tories revolting?

What happened? - by Richard...

Booker is not the only one to notice that Obama has gone shy about "climate change". Maxwell T. Boykoff in The Washington Post has picked it up as well, calling it a "dangerous shift" in the rhetoric. Asking "what happened" to the terms "climate change" and "global warming", Boykoff observes that they have nearly disappeared from the political vocabulary,

A recent study at Brown University looked specifically at the Obama administration's language and calls for "clean energy" and "energy independence" now occupied the terrain. Graciela Kincaid, a co-author of the study, wrote: "The phrases 'climate change' and 'global warming' have become all but taboo on Capitol Hill. These terms are stunningly absent from the political arena".

This somewhat ties in with a report from Reuters last week, which noted that the United Nations "earth summit" scheduled for June in Rio is also abandoning "climate change" in favour of setting goals for "sustainable development".

This rather confirms the inherent flexibility in the green objectives, with "climate change" being but one issue in the UN's ambitious "Agenda 21" programme. This, in fact, stems from the Bruntland Report in 1987, which talks of "interlocking crises", which enables activists to switch from one heading to another, which still pursuing the same overall game plan.

Changing the rhetoric, therefore, gives the Greens tactical flexibility and a degree of resilience, enabling them to reflect the public mood and political realities – more so in the US. There, it would seem, if "climate change" is encountering resistance, the people can be sold "energy independence". But the underlying agenda remains the same.

In the UK, though, there seems to be less flexibility. Even while the Mail on Sunday, the same edition is covering the British administrations "first national risk assessment of climate change", warning us that – quite literally – some of us are going to die (5,900 every year – it would seem).

Given that the UK has been more committed than the US to tackling climate change, and for longer, it maybe will take longer to change the rhetoric. Already, though, we see multiple job adverts for "sustainability officers" (and variations), more so than climate change vacancies.

However, the purists are not happy. Rebranding is all very well but Boykoff complains that calling climate change by another name creates limits of its own. "The way we talk about the problem affects how we deal with it", he says. "And though some new wording may deflect political heat, it can't alter the fact that, 'climate change' or not, the climate is changing".

Perhaps, though, rebranding is not necessary. After all, global cooling is also "climate change", even if one suspects that our response to cooling might be a tad different from how we deal with the proclaimed but non-existent warming.

On the ball - by Richard...

The man who doesn't know what a veto is, is employed by the Failygraph, it seems, to keep watch "on Gordon Brown and the Labour government". It is always good to know that our MSM journalists are on the ball.y

Fiddling around - by Richard...

One really should not take any pleasure in other peoples' misfortune, but it is virtually impossible not to smile at the idea that the "colleagues'" informal European Council tonight might be disrupted by strikes in Brussels.

The news of possible disruption comes via The Guardian, the Associated Press and the Evening Standard, and others. They are telling us that public transport will be halted and flights disrupted, and even the Eurostar Brussels service is to be suspended for the day.

No doubt most of the "colleagues" will be able to avail themselves of military flights if need be, and the federal police are well practised in shepherding high-speed convoys of limousines down the motorway into the European quarter. If need be, the heads of state can be flown into Charleroi under military control, and brought closer to town by helicopter.

The problem, if there is one, will be for the media and all the thousands of hangers-on who attend upon European Council meetings. But even if the disruption is minimal, the irony will not be lost – the strikes are in protest against the austerity packages which the "colleagues" have adopted as one of their main weapons in their attempts to salvage the euro.

Even then, the main focus of this salvage operation – Greece – is not formally on the agenda. That means that the audacious suggestion, proposed by the German economics minister, that the Greek puppet government should relinquish control of its budget policy, will not be discussed in plenary sessions. You can bet though that, with the sharp reaction from Greece, in rejecting the idea, will trigger plenty of discussion in les couloirs.

The main agenda item, according to the invitation letter, is a continuation of "efforts to ensure financial stability and fiscal consolidation", which means that draft treaty will almost certainly be discussed.

But there will be one person there who perhaps would be happy if the unions did their worst, and prevented the meeting from happening. This is David Cameron who yesterday was cast as being ready to withdraw his opposition to the use of the EU institutions to administer and enforce aspects of the new treaty.

Now, however, despite the Financial Times maintaining that Cameron remains in a conciliatory mood, we are being told that work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has "insisted" that Britain would continue to block the use of EU institutions for these purposes. This rather puts The Boy on the spot. Either he must anger the "colleagues", or upset the Tory Party rank and file who are desperate to hang onto the illusion that their leader is a eurosceptic.

On the other hand, with the rare intervention of Charles Kennedy, the Lib-dims are getting uppity. Kennedy, bolstered by The Clegg, wants The Boy "to take an active and confident role at the heart of the European Union". He must "never again isolate Britain as he did at last month's summit when he wielded the British veto".

Given these conflicting demands, it would be rather convenient for The Boy if strikes did stop play, even if that is rather unlikely. More likely the meeting will take place and we will get another glorious fudge – in public at least – which takes us no further forward. In the meantime, someone needs to teach Duncan Smith some history. He is going round telling people that "lack of democratic freedoms is what caused the Second World War", which is not exactly how I saw it.

That is in the context of Duncan Smith warning against the EU "fiddling around" with democracy, in its plans for Greece. But there should be no concern on this account. The very last thing the "colleagues" will be fiddling about with is democracy. That departed a long time ago.