EU politics: the theatre has landed
Friday 5 July 2013
Then, of course, it was a cuddly little trading agreement, but somehow it has morphed into this nasty European Union. So now we need a referendum, he says - presumably so that we can have some jolly negotiations. Then we will make those horrid European chappies see sense and they will stop all this silly integration nonsense.
But, says Bill Cash: "Be under no illusion … this is about political union … This is about creating a new European government". It is now, and always has been.
And so, having started at 9.30 on a Friday morning, proceedings came to an abrupt halt at around 2.15. A vote was held which gave 305 in favour of something (a closure motion) and 30 against, only for there to be the real vote on the second reading. Off they all toddled again.
At roughly 2.30 back they all came again 304 to zero. That is a turn-up for the books. When was there ever a "zero" vote?
Richard North 05/07/2013 |
EU politics: CBI doing things by halves?
Friday 5 July 2013
 Thus, we see shaping up what may well be a key battleground. Clearly, the europhiles feel threatened by the idea that the UK could belong to the Single Market without having to be members of the EU. On the face of it, that destroys their case for continued membership. Thus, they have wheeled out their heavy guns in an attempt to neutralise the issue, with a report which aims to close down this aspect of the debate. Sky News has already done a review, under the heading, "EU: Business Warning Over Britain Pullout", and others can be expected to follow. Through the day, therefore, alongside all the other things that have to be done, I will be writing up a review of this report, which I will post here. Any comments in the interim will be helpful and very welcome. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/07/2013 |
EU referendum: gesture politics
Friday 5 July 2013
 Then we get the official House of Commons analysis that says a series of further Parliamentary votes will be required in 2016 to enshrine a future EU referendum in law. It warns that the legislation being debated in Parliament this week – if passed – could have little legal relevance as it could be ignored by a future government. Now, Sky News and the low-circulation Guardian join the growing chorus. To the broadcaster, this is a "piece of parliamentary theatre"; more about symbolism than substance. A private members' Bill has little chance of becoming law without the support of the full government including the Liberal Democrats. In Guardian land, there are serious questions in politics. And there are silly questions. Britain's place in the European Union is a serious question of the first order, it says. So, possibly with some reservations, it adds, is a referendum on continued British membership of the EU. But James Wharton MP's European Union (referendum) bill, on which the massed ranks of Conservative MPs will vote at Westminster today, does not raise a serious question at all. Instead, this attempt to bind the next parliament to hold a referendum in 2017 is a sideshow, even by the standards of the farce that now passes for Conservative party debate on Europe. It is a silly stunt, nothing more and nothing less, and the closer the day of the vote has come, the sillier it has looked. Quite. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 05/07/2013 |
EU politics: CBI propaganda
Thursday 4 July 2013
 It is fitting that, in this thoroughly dishonest piece, Cridland calls in aid the Norwegian Conservative MP, Nikolai Astrup, as he did the last time he addressed this issue. This is the Mr Astrup who is a Norwegian Conservative, and therefore belongs to a political party which has a long term commitment to Norway joining the EU. Thus, when asked what the UK outside the EU might look like, he tells CBI "fact-finders", "if you want to run Europe, you must be in Europe. If you want to be run by Europe, feel free to join Norway in the European Economic Area". This is exactly akin to asking Nick Clegg whether we should stay in the EU, yet Cridland keeps trotting out Mr Astrup, as if his endorsement or advice actually meant anything. As a propagandist, this is exactly what you might expect Cridland to do, and he will continue to do so as long as newspaper editors allow him to get away with it. But no knowledgeable editor can be unaware of the game he is playing. The newspapers are complicit is this deception. In today's piece, Cridland is pre-empting tomorrow's debate on James Wharton's Private Member's Bill, grandly declaring, "It's not for the CBI to say whether the public should have a vote on UK membership; that's for the Government". Nevertheless, he asserts that "the business community must be active in the debate and champion what is best for jobs and growth — retaining access to the single market in a reformed EU", then telling us that "the challenge for those arguing that the UK should stay in the EU is the same as for those pressing for an exit". Then says Cridland, in an almost Goebbelesque statement, they must "come up with a clear, evidence-based vision for the future, in or out". But the last thing this CBI propagandist wants is an "evidence-based vision". He immediately launches into the tendentious and highly distorted claim that: "Some hold up Norway or Switzerland as a panacea for the UK's European headache". No one I know of, and no argument I have ever seen, holds that either is a "panacea" for anything. But this doesn't matter to Cridland. He claims that CBI research, published tomorrow, "makes clear that a half-way house isn't the answer". Neither the Norwegians nor the Swiss, he says, "have developed relationships that are fully satisfactory to either Brussels or themselves — and these models certainly would not work for us". The thing is that our "relationship" with Brussels is not "fully satisfactory" either, so it is a question of choice – between one unsatisfactory relationship or another. Norway, Cridland says, is not a member of the EU, but is part of the single market through the European Economic Area agreement. This gives it access to European markets and allowed its Government, at the time of signing, to exempt industries such as fisheries and agriculture from EU rules. This, he adds, works for Norway's economy, built on plentiful natural resources and a far smaller population than Britain, but would be no good for an economy as complex as ours. For somebody who is calling for an "evidence-based vision", Cridland offers no evidence as to why this should necessarily be so. Instead, he claims that Norway still pays the bills, referring to its "obligation" under the EEA agreement of about €600 million a year, making it the tenth highest contributor to the EU, paying more than half the amount that the UK pays per person "just to be allowed to follow EU rules as a non-member". In fact, Norway contributes about €200 million to the EU budget, of which about 80 percent is contributed voluntarily to finance its participation in the EU's research programmes. The balance is made up of voluntary payments to a variety of funds through the "Norwegian Financial Mechanism". The bulk of that is directed to "reducing economic and social disparities and to strengthening bilateral relations with 15 EU countries in Central and Southern Europe", the two major components of which are the EEA Grants and the Norway Grants. Alongside Iceland and Liechtenstein, the grants amount to about €1.8 billion for the five-year 2009-2014 period. Norway pays over €1.7 billion, amounting to around €350 million a year. One thus really does wonder about Cridland. If he knows his claims are wrong, then he is lying. If he doesn't know, he is willfully ignorant and wholly unqualified to offer a reliable commentary on the state of art. A similar judgement has to apply to his claim that, "Norway lacks any clout over EU decision-making because it has no seat at the table: no commissioner, no MEPs and no ministers attending European Council meetings". Perhaps we can allow him the difference between decision-making and decision shaping, but the fact remains that Norway, even within the constraints of EFTA and the EEA, has considerable influence over EU Single Market legislation – to say nothing of its famous veto. Then, of course, we have the considerable influence exerted through higher-level international organisations, all of which makes little more than ridiculous Cridland's assertion that "having little say over the rules foisted on us and paying for the privilege is not my idea of greater sovereignty". Just as unreliable is the man's assertions on Norwegian businesses. They see access to the single market as a lifeline, with anything less integrated considered a disaster in the making, he says. Then he adds, that while some of Norway's primary industries are exempt from the EEA agreement, not being a full EU member has stunted the growth of some related industries. Most of their fish processing, he claims, has been relocated to the EU, much of it to Scotland. This, again, simply is not true. Numerous reports, such as this one, attest to the long-term decline of the Norwegian fish processing industry, but over the last 40 years, when the number of such plants has been reduced from 100 to just ten. The main problem is the high cost of processing high-cost Norway, where the relatively low cost of transport permits export to low wage countries such as China. And it is China which is the main beneficiary: frozen codfish worth a total of NOK 1.23 billion were exported to China in 2011. This represents an increase of 21 percent on the 2010 figure – and is nothing to do with not being in the EU. Cridland isn't finished yet, as he moves on to Switzerland, but he is no more reliable there than he is with Norway. It really is too tiresome to dissect his propaganda. But he has the gall to tell MPs in tomorrow's debate to consider the UK's future relationship with the EU "using hard facts and objective analysis, not emotion or hollow rhetoric". "Those who want the UK to remain in the EU must set out a clear, fact-based vision for a reformed EU that our citizens will want to be part of", he then says, arguing that, "for those who want to leave the EU, the question remains — what will we have instead and how will that be better?" We could answer him there – but he would not listen. He has not been listening, and neither does the newspaper which spreads his lies and misinformation. The only thing constant about them is that the more they call for "fact-based arguments", the less they want them and the more they lie. COMMENT: TIMES "EXIT" COMBINED THREAD Richard North 04/07/2013 |
EU politics: The Times discovers "leaving the EU"
Thursday 4 July 2013
 The newspaper's own story is safety tucked up behind its paywall, so we have reproduced it above, scanned from the print copy. Reference to the website, though, gives you a preview, in which there is an active link to the HoC report. Discerning readers will note that the link takes you to the EU Ref site, no doubt because you cannot view the paper online from the official Parliament site. If nothing else, that proves Times journalists (one, at least) read EU Ref, even if what we say is completely ignored and/or unacknowledged. As it happens in this case, the paper chooses to ignore what we have to say, presenting a pessimistic view of leaving. In so doing, it homes in on one of the weaknesses of the HoC paper, which fails completely to recognise the progress of globalisation in trade regulation and standards setting. One can only suppose the newspaper does this because, otherwise, it would contradict its own opinion piece. This has John Cridland of the CBI peddling his own brand of misinformation, telling us that "Norway and Switzerland pay the costs of membership with no say over EU law". This, even at face value, is untrue – but doubly so if we take account of the globalisation aspect, which Hannan has picked up from our own reports. So important is this dynamic that Cridland dare not acknowledge it, and thus does The Times keep from its readership any of the wider debate. Get behind the paywall and you are paying to be misinformed. In peddling his lies, Cridland is acting entirely in character, but the continued emphasis on denigrating the Swiss and Norwegian options really does show how worried the CBO and their fellow travellers are by the prospect of trade outside the EU. Thus, loathsome as it may be, the next post up will be a critique of the Cridland piece, which a very kind reader has sent to me in electronic form, so I don't have to type is all out from the print version. That will be up shortly. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/07/2013 |
Friday, 5 July 2013
EU politics: the theatre has landed
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