Interesting - by Richard... Thursday, October 01, 2009

Interesting - by Richard... Thursday, October 01, 2009

eureferendum.blogspot.com

But, for now, Mr Cameron says his priorities are "the deficit, Afghanistan, the broken society and mending the mess of our politics". It is striking to hear the war ranking second. "I don't think we are behaving as a nation at war, which we are," he says. But he is hesitant about sending more troops to Afghanistan, and he mentions the prospect only in the context of training the Afghan army. He used his holiday to read up on Afghanistan and India, mindful that, for all this talk of domestic policy, his premiership could be defined by foreign affairs.

A couple of observations. First, no mention of the European Union ... why are we not surprised? Then, if Afghanistan does rank second in his order of priorities, why does he send out his shadow defence secretary to deliver a speech that failed to acknowledge even the most basic of strategic and political realities, while himself avoiding any comment on the issue?

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An elaborate deception - by Richard...

The Supreme Court opens for business today, taking over the role and responsibilities of the House of Lords. Tristram Hunt writes a sneering piece inThe Times, lambasting those who object to it on the basis that it "marks a further, wretched Americanisation of the British constitution".

Hunt happily chirps away about the history of the concept, and the constitutional role, citing the views of Walter Bagehot in 1867 in support of the idea. Like so many clever-dicks of his ilk, however, Hunt ignores our more recent history and the profound constitutional changes that occurred in 1973 and have developed progressively ever since.

Thus, he misses the most important reason why the idea of a supreme court is fatuous – and misleading. We already have a supreme court. It is called the European Court of Justice and it is based in Luxembourg. If the Trade Descriptions Act could be brought to apply to Jack Straw, the progenitor of the pretend supreme court in London, a conviction would most certainly be secured.

The idea, therefore, is a cruel joke – an elaborate deception which perpetuates the idea that we are still an independent country, with an independent court system. Notably, though, much expense has been lavished on a logo for the court (which, incidentally lacks the royal crest). The government could have saved a great deal of money if it had been more honest and just used the yellow ring of stars.

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Snow job - by Richard... Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Skiinfo reports that snow has been falling on almost every continent on earth over the past week. Meanwhile, the Met Office is telling us that Britain will have a mild winter.

Break out the woollies and get the central heating checked.

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Siren voices - by Richard...

Is this the message to which Mr Cameron is listening on the constitutional Lisbon treaty?

... That is what David Cameron and his highly Eurosceptic Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, will need to face up to — immediately, at their party conference next week. To threaten to reopen the whole thing when they enter government would be pointless. Worse than pointless, it would be destructive both to British and to Conservative interests.

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Calculations - by Richard...

Mr Cameron, we are told, has repeatedly refused to say what he will do if he comes to power with the constitutional Lisbon treaty ratified, saying only that he will "not let matters rest."

Now, in an LBC radio interview, the Tory leader said that if the treaty is ratified, "new circumstances" will apply, suggesting a new Tory policy will be needed. 

"If this treaty is still alive," he says, "if it is still being discussed and debated anywhere in Europe, then we will give you that referendum, we will name the date during the election campaign, we'll hold that referendum straight away and I will lead the campaign for a No."

But, he says, "if those circumstances change, if the Germans ratify, if the Poles ratify, if the Czechs ratify, if the Irish vote Yes to the treaty, then a new set of circumstances [apply], and I will address those at the time." He went on to signal that he would not consider a move that could lead to Britain leaving the EU.

He thus declares: "I want us to be in the European Union. We are a trading nation, we should be co-operating with our allies and friends in Europe over things like the environment and crime, of course we should."

It is interesting here to see a man on top of his brief. Germany, as my co-editor observes ratified on 25 September.

That aside, this makes things very difficult for us. The inference, headlined by The Daily Telegraph is: "David Cameron hints Tories would not hold referendum on ratified Lisbon Treaty".The Times has come to the same conclusion. In fact, it is very clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that Mr Cameron is not going to hold a referendum if the treaty has been ratified by the time he takes over the administration.

What precisely Mr Cameron intends to do, he himself probably does not know. He will most likely make a decision when he has to – when he is absolutely forced to make one – and not before. And what precisely he decides will be guided by calculations as to what he can get away with, and what is least damaging to his standing and the electability of his party.

Mr Cameron cannot be blamed for this. He is a politician with aspirations to become prime minister, and he is not going to let discord over the EU interfere with his ambition. Therefore, his will be a political calculus, untainted by principle or higher motivation. He will do what he has to do to get his party elected.

Those lukewarm sceptics – who put party before principle – rest on the hopes that, once elected, the "real" Cameron will emerge, to become the terror of the EU, ripping into the "colleagues" and dragging powers back from Brussels.

Any such hopes lie in the realms of fantasy. Mr Cameron, in telling us that "we should be co-operating with our allies and friends in Europe" is speaking the language of the Europhile. And that is what he is.

Co-operation is not, and never has been on the table. Membership of the EU requires the subordination of our parliament to the diktats of the unelected commission and the tyranny of qualified majority voting. Our "co-operation" in that is the same as the co-operation of the handcuffed prisoner told to enter a cell by his jailers. 

In terms, Mr Cameron is probably calculating that the popular desire to relieve Gordon Brown of his command will overwhelm any doubts or concerns over his intentions towards the EU. He will know that the electorate is not going to promote the EU to the top of the political agenda. He will not lose the election because he does not promise a referendum.

Therefore, his strategy will be to offer something vaguely credible - the so-called slither-out clause - enough to give hope to the lukewarm eurosceptics that something might be on offer when he gets elected, abandoning the irreconcilables whose votes, he has calculated, he does not need in order to win.

What would make the difference is a decisive caucus of voters who support Cameron but who are not prepared to back him unless he takes a firm line on the EU. There are probably enough out there to damage him, but not enough to cost him the election. And winning is all that matters. They can be and have to be ignored.

We are thus in a situation where the leader of the opposition party has, quite deliberately, set about to reject our aspirations in order to pursue his own. The only offer on the table is that we should abandon ours in order that he can achieve his, with no promise that any concessions will be made at a later date. That is not an attractive offer.

The consequence of rejecting it, however, is that Labour might just retain power. Mr Cameron is perhaps confident that there are enough people not prepared to take that risk and will thus vote for him in spite of and not because of his policy on the EU.

That calculation is for Mr Cameron to make. Equally, a sophisticated electorate will make its own calculations. Only a fool would take them for granted.

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Entertainment value - by Richard...

The real story of the Labour years is one of under-achievement, rank failure and a vast expansion of wasteful government interference in everyone's lives. So says The Sun which, at the tail end of the Labour party conference, has ostentatiously switched sides and is now supporting the Conservatives.

Labour, in the persona of Lord Mandelson, has been quick to respond. He says: "The proprietor might have changed his mind but I don't think the readers want The Sun to set on New Labour. The last thing Sun readers want is to see their newspaper turned into a Tory fanzine. They want a newspaper, not a propaganda sheet."

One cannot resist the temptation of remarking that, if the readers wanted a newspaper, they wouldn't be buying The Sun. But then, given what is generally on offer, they would have trouble buying anything which conformed with that description.

One wonders, though, quite how much traction a tabloid rag of the nature of The Sun really has. Rather than leading opinion, as it would have us believe, the paper is more likely simply following the herd sentiment. Sensing change in the wind – which is not exactly a stunning feat – it has nailed its colours to what it perceives to be the winner's mast. This is indeed followership rather than leadership.

No one, however, will be at all deceived into thinking that The Sun's change of heart is anything to do with a new-found yearning for good government, truth, justice, apple pie and free beer on Sundays. Mandelson puts his finger on the proximate cause for the change – Mr Rupert Murdoch, the proprietor of The Sun and owner of the loss-making News International group.

With his larger business empire reputed to have lost £2 billion last year and with reports of his flagship newspaper, The Times, losing £2 million a week, Murdoch is locked in battle with the BBC over plans to charge for online web content, plans which are jeopardised by the BBC's torrent of "free" content on its taxpayer-funded websites.

No doubt, by allying himself to what appears to be the winning side, Murdoch hopes that vague Conservative ideas on curtailing the ambitions of the BBC might firm up, to his own financial advantage – with the aid of one or two Faustian deals done in the remote corners of smoke-free rooms.

Therefore, what The Sun thinks or says about which party should form our new administration should be irrelevant. What is not irrelevant is that a rich and powerful man can use his products in an attempt to shape public opinion, to his own financial advantage. 

However, while his intervention might have an effect, what is going to happen would have probably happened anyway. Most people will make up their own minds. For those people, The Sun's endorsement offers a certain entertainment value, but very little else. For the rest, those who allow their opinions to be shaped by The Sun deserve exactly what they get. The pity of it is that the rest of us do not.

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Bought and paid for - by Richard...

Michael O'Leary, the boss of Ryanair, has admitted in a television interview that one of the reasons he was campaigning for a "yes" vote in the Irish referendum was that the government was "incompetent". Yet he says, "I needed to persuade them to sell me Aer Lingus."

I think we knew that , but it is good to have it confirmed.

O'Leary had in fact said that it would be undemocratic to make the Irish vote again on the treaty after it had been rejected last June. He has now spent €500,000 (£460,000) on advertisements and free flights to support the "yes" camp. A better advertisement for voting "no" is hard to imagine.

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