King maker of pretender?

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

King maker of pretender?

Declan Ganley was in Brussels yesterday, ostensibly addressing SOS Democracy, the cross party group of MEPs in the EU parliament, chaired by Dan Hannan.

He took an amount of flak from a gaggle of Irish journalists and europhiac MEPs who had evidently conspired beforehand to give the man a hard time but, apparently, brushed off the hostility with ease. The Irish Times thus struggled to make a big deal of the meeting.

What is more interesting is the number of side meetings which Ganley conducted while he was in Brussels, where he is also opening an office to co-ordinate his response to the euro-elections. One such was a long lunch with Farage and colleagues, the latest of several meetings with UKIP MEPs, at which former MEP Jens Peter Bonde has been present.

At the top of the agenda has been Ganley’s plan to field up to 400 candidates at the euros, with UKIP wishing to convince the leader of the Irish think-tankLibertas not to stand against UKIP contenders.

However, Ganley is also being assiduously courted by the Tories, with whom he has a greater philosophical affinity – being broadly in favour of the European Union and imbued with the same fantasy that, if only the organisation could be "reformed", everything in the garden would be rosy.

Whether Ganley stands for office (if you can call it that) is very much in the balance. He told the SOS Democracy meeting that he was reluctant to run as a candidate "because he doesn't feel like a natural politician". And he is also – apparently – undecided on whether to launch Libertas as a political party to fight in the elections. He does not anticipate making a final decision before January 2009, which is leaving it rather late if he wants to get a multi-national election team up and running.

That leaves it open as to whether Ganley is to take on the role of kingmaker or pretender. In the latter, he would be up against the combined weight of all the existing eurosceptic and "euro-hesitant" parties, fighting for his share of the vote and open to the criticism that he was splitting the vote and weakening the established parties.

In the alternative role as "king maker", the endorsement of Ganley – widely seen as the architect of the Irish referendum victory – could be a powerful boost to those who gain his favours.

Despite UKIP's advances, Ganley seems more likely to favour the Tories. As Dan Hannan points out in his blog, Declan is "an insistent pro-European" and has little in common with the party. He also tends to the view – somewhat reinforced by Jens Peter – that UKIP is a busted flush.

Interestingly, this was almost precisely the view expressed recently on the other side of the divide, by no less than Alexander Stubb Finland's foreign minister. Interviewed by the Irish Times he professed himself to be "unconcerned" by the prospect of Ganley fielding candidates, seeing parallels with UKIP. "No matter how slick and brilliant Nigel Farage is, the party has become a complete footnote with no influence," he said.

Certainly, UKIP is going through yet another round of its interminable infighting, lovingly recounted by Iain Dale, which is about to leak into the regional press. 

If the Tories able to put their weight behind opposition to the constiutionalLisbon treaty and are also able to attract Ganley's endorsement, the premier anti-EU party may not only find itself outflanked and marginalised at the euro-elections, but also crippled by the burden of adverse publicity.

It is probably not an exaggeration, though, to suggest that Ganley could prove a decisive factor, and it will take more than a good lunch with Farage to turn him round.

COMMENT THREAD

By their propaganda shall ye know them

A short letter in The Daily Telegraphtoday, on the polar icecaps, makes more sense than the acres of guff promulgated by the warmist groupies on the paper's staff.

The letter, from John Marshall of Tetford, Lincolnshire, refers to a report in the paper a few days ago. This retailed the alarmist view from Prof Mark Serreze, a "sea ice specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)" that the current ice meltback images suggested the Arctic may have entered a "death spiral" caused by global warming. 

Writes Marshall, "This alarmist rhetoric is unjustified. Satellite records, which are used to show ice cover, only go back 30 years: a very short time in polar history." He adds: "Roald Amundsen sailed the Northwest Passage in 1903 and saw no ice. Therefore the ice would have been the same area as today's, or less," then informing us that, "The current melting is due to a slight change in warm ocean currents, not climate change."

In one of our posts, we referred to a report in November 1922, where "fishermen, seal hunters and explorers" were finding "radical change in climatic conditions" in the August of that year. One expedition established a record by sailing as far north as 81° 29’ in ice-free water.

In other words, there is nothing at all new or particularly unusual about extreme meltbacks in the Arctic and such conditions have hitherto been entirely unrelated to global climatic changes.

That much is effectively endorsed in a piece in the invaluable Watts up with that which cross-links to a report by NASA. This recorded an "ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales." These results, according to NASA, suggested "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming."

That the warmists are so ready to enlist what may be short-term cyclical changes to their cause speaks volumes for their misuse of data and their evangelistic approach to science. That newspapers like the Telegraph so uncritically retail their alarmist doctrines also speaks volumes as to their loss of objectivity and their shallow approach to science reporting.

In the letters column today, Mr Marshall has issued a valuable corrective but, of course, it will not make one blind bit of difference to the torrent of propaganda emanating from the warmists. But, with the BBC in full flowtoday, by their propaganda shall ye know them.

COMMENT THREAD

Two articles from over the Pond

Though the American media and blogosphere on the left seems to be taken up with dishing dirt - some relevant, most not so - about Sarah Barracuda, with the occasional irruption of fingernail-gnawing comments of what an utterly bad choice she was and how this will give the Dems the election, other matters do turn up as well, though mostly on the other side of the spectrum.

Oh, before I leave the subject of Governor Palin, here is an interesting reading of the situation by the highly regarded "maverick" blogger Spengler.

On to what really matters and that is what to do about Russia (and if there is one politician who knows about that country, it is the Governor of Alaska). John O'Sullivan produces a jeu d'esprit in the New York Post in which he envisages that famous 3 a.m. phone call for President Obama but as he says the situation would be much the same for President McCain, though he is unlikely to be quite so wimpish. Also, I don't think President Obama will make Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State. But as to what the Europeans might do if there is another crisis, the description is fairly accurate.

"Maybe the Germans can lean on them," mused the president, remembering his warm reception in Berlin.

"Germany won't agree to using force without a UN resolution. It's a constitutional thing with them," chimed in the secretary of state.

"I'm not talking force, Hillary," replied the president. "That's Bush-think. No, we have to respond with diplomacy and, as a last resort, sanctions."

"Maybe the Germans can impose oil and gas sanctions on Russia," said Mrs. Clinton sweetly. "Sit in the dark and warm themselves by burning the money they've saved until the Kremlin crumbles."

"Well, there's a united Europe today," replied the president, brightening. "Sanctions by the whole European Union would worry the Russians. Aren't they a possibility?"

"We'll know for sure in two weeks, sir, when the European Summit meets to discuss the crisis. But the signs aren't good. Poland and the Baltic states want a strong response, but they lack the clout of Germany and France. I'd say a moderately worded rebuke to Moscow is the best we can hope for."

Mr O'Sullivan's conclusion is entirely predictable and is obviously correct, since it is completely in line with what this blog has been saying for some time.

Multilateral forces can work only if there is a clear agreement of what the purpose is and who provides those forces. The European Union, on the other hand, without managing to provide an alternative by way of power, soft or hard, has an entirely negative effect on Western ability to deal with crises:

If the next US president wants effective multilateralism, he must re-establish NATO as the sole supplier of European security. Otherwise, when the phone rings, he'll have one rival to call instead of 25 allies.

There is, presumably, the possibility of re-creating NATO in a completely different form, which would leave out a number of West European countries.

One of the editorials in today's Wall Street Journal is also on the EU's inability to deal with the situation created by President Medvedev's refusal to live up to any of the agreements, supposedly sealed, signed and delviered by President Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating presidency.

"Stop! Or we'll say stop again!" just about sums up the outcome of Monday'sgrand summit, whether it is the comedian Robin Williams's line or not.

We are glad to see that the newspaper is not falling for Sarkozy's bully tactics with which he tries to masquerade his own incompetence:

Mr. Sarkozy also insisted that his efforts to reach a cease-fire had borne fruit. The Georgians might disagree. Russia has used the agreement's vague language to justify a continued presence in Georgia far beyond the original conflict zone. The cease-fire called for international talks about the separatist regions, but that didn't stop Mr. Medvedev from recognizing their independence.

The most cynical comment of the day was Mr. Sarkozy's attempt to use the conflict to bully the Irish over their rejection of the EU's Lisbon Treaty in June. "This crisis has shown that Europe needs to have strong and stable institutions" like those it would have gotten under Lisbon, Mr. Sarkozy said.

No, what Europe needs is political will. Rather than scolding Irish voters, Mr. Sarkozy would do better to name and shame those member states whose desire to curry favor with Moscow keeps the EU from taking a firmer stand.

The one problem is that the Wall Street Journal still considers that Europe and the European Union are one and the same, thus assuming that "Europe" can have such a thing as political will.