Britannia Radio

Eurocrash: crisis on hold?   Tuesday 25 September 2012 After a brief hiatus, Speigel is saying that we are back to where we started with Greece. This is after the €11.5 billion deficit had first expanded to some €14 billion and, over the weekend, has been claimed to top €20 billion. It was, of course, in October 2009 that the Greek deficit was suddenly found to be much greater than originally forecast, and now we are going through exactly the same process. Yet, although the Greek deficit is nearly twice what it originally forecast, there is no chance that it can impose enough spending cuts to cover the gap. And, despite that, it still needs the €31-billion tranche of the bailout funds to avoid a plunge into uncontrolled bankruptcy. Closing the gap, however, was a condition on which the release of new funds was based., leaving the eurozone countries to decide whether they dip their hands in their pockets again, or finally dump Greece. So it is that rumours are intensifying to the effect that Greece will be given more time to implement its cuts. But even that can't be assured. As it stands, there is no agreement on how much the Greek deficit actually is, or when a definitive figure will be available. Even the Troika report has been further delayed. The chances are, therefore, that a decision will be required on releasing funds to Greece before the extent of indebtedness is known, adding to the growing unreality of this non-crisis. If there were any sense here, the money men would be heading for the hills. Instead, there does seem to be a determination not to have a crisis, adding fuel to the other set of rumours, that the lid is being kept on the mess until after the US presidential elections. If there is any truth in that, we have a crisis on hold – the fun has yet to come.  COMMENT THREAD Richard North 25/09/2012

Harrogate Agenda: the distribution of power   Monday 24 September 2012 Even though he is revered in some British eurosceptic circles, Václav Klaus has no monopoly of wisdom and one cannot help but groan inwardly when he is reported telling us that "the destruction of Europe's democracy may be in its final phase". The problem with this is that we have never had a true democracy anywhere in Europe and, while such a state might have been an aspiration, not even in the UK could we claim to have got anywhere close.  Nor is it a matter of pedantry when one recoils at the use of the word "superstate", in this case with the charge levied that: "'Two-faced' politicians have opened the door to an EU superstate by giving up on democracy". Any rational analysis of the EU would have it described as a super-governmentrather than a "superstate". The important issue here – as we have pointed out before is that the European Union is a collective. It is a series of institutions whose governance is shared by several bodies, not least the European Council which is made up from the heads of states and governments of the EU member states. Crucially, in this context, the essence of a nation state is a territorial entity, stemming from its occupation and legitimate ownership of land, making it a geographical as well as a political unit. The European, lacking any territorial possessions that could remotely be called a state, and having no ambitions in that direction, cannot be considered a nation state. Like the Vatican of old, which it increasingly resembles, the EU is a supra-national government - a government without a state. It exercises its power over and via the governments of formerly independent nation states, of which it is the supreme government. Such a super-government cannot, by its very nature, be democratic, but its owes its continued existence to the assent of the parliaments and governments of those individual member states. For them, the EU is a mechanism for by-passing democracy. Vesting their powers in this supra-national body makes them people-proof, insulating them from democratic control. And therein lies the motivation for our Harrogate Agenda. Personally, I see little value in seeking our withdrawal from the EU if it simply means reclaiming powers which are then vested in our current governmental system – local and national – which is no more democratic than the EU. In the longer term, I see the fight for democracy – embodied in the Harrogate Agenda - as ultimately more productive (and necessary) than seeking to replace one ruling élite with another. Whether our government is in Whitehall or Brussels actually makes very little practical difference. Neither affords power to the people, and it the distribution of power which makes for democracy, not just its location. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 24/09/2012