Britannia Radio

29 July 2010 3:14 PM

Cameron goes native

This post is going to be --- again, the man just won't stop -- about David Cameron and the speed, indeed eagerness, with which he and his Government are handing powers over to Brussels. Last week's capitulation to EU demands that foreign police will be able to travel to the United Kingdom and take part in the arrest of Britons is just the most recent of the powers Cameron is surrendering the Brussels. I will get back to all that in a moment.

But before I start, I ask you to wonder at this: somehow the prime minister was willing to sit there on Indian television yesterday and listen to demands that the 105-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond be wrenched from the Monarch's most spectacular crown and handed to the modern state of India. This kind of polite listening to insulting demands for Britain's treasures to be handed to politicians who are running modern states which were not even in existence when the jewels -- or the Elgin Marbles, or any of the rest -- were moved to London happens now anytime a senior British politician visits one of the disgruntled countries.

Yet Cameron was in Turkey before he arrived in India. If he thinks this kind of demand merits gentlemanly consideration, I would have welcomed a demand from him to have Christianity's greatest church, the Hagia Sophia built by the great Christian Emperor Justinian in the 6th century, handed back to Christianity by the modern Turkish government. Minus the added minarets, of course.

But, odd, that: visiting British politicians never demand the return of Western Christian treasures which were seized by Muslim powers.

Indeed, if Cameron had been up on British history when that demand about the Koh-i-Noor was made on Indian television, he could have countered that he would rather more expect the demand to come from Pakistan. The defeated maharajah from whom the diamond was taken was a ruler in what is now part of Pakistan. It is likely that the then Maharajah of Lahore got it the same way the British did: he seized it, fair and square. 'If New Delhi is eager for the diamond to go back to its historic home,' the prime minister should have purred, 'would the Indian government like us to begin negotiations with the Pakistani government?'

But more, Cameron missed another trick. While some of the Indians were bleating about how Britain should feel guilty about its colonial legacy -- the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi has said the diamond should be handed back as 'atonement for the colonial past' -- he should have pointed out that it was only the British presence that ended the Muslim's Mughal empire and ensured that today India is free to be Hindu, 'but, hey, no need to say thanks.'

Not that Cameron would have the spine to say that. He was too fresh from doing Salaam around Turkey. Instead of trying to do his job -- ie, look after British interests in Asia Minor -- he was busy reinforcing the sense of grievance the Turks have because they have not yet been allowed to join the EU.

Now, normally I would applaud any British politician stirring it up about Turkey and the EU, because nothing is guaranteed to annoy both President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel as much as demands that Turkey be allowed to join The Club. The French and the Germans don't want the Turks in The Club. Having the British Prime Minister insisting that he was going to 'pave the road from Ankara to Brussels' is calculated to result in maximum fury in Sarkozy and Merkel.

Here is the reason why I would usually applaud such stirring. Turkey joining the EU would be a disaster, especially now that the Lisbon Treaty -- you remember, the one Cameron and Hague rolled over and refused to fight about three minutes after it was finally ratified -- has increased the power of vote-by-population in EU affairs. By figures from the CIA Factbook, Turkey has a population of 78m, near-level-pegging Germany's population of 82m. Bad enough for Berlin to take. But here is what causes the real panic in Berlin: Germany's birth rate is 8.21 births per thousand population. Turkey's is 18.28. The Turks can reproduce their way to EU dominance (and good luck to them: the refusal of Europeans to have babies is a disaster in every way, but that is for another post).

Plus, membership of the EU would mean no barrier to Turkish immigration anywhere in Europe. And the Turks do so enjoy staying with their relatives in Germany.

So, when anyone says, 'Turks into the EU,' I'm right there to say, 'Yes, tomorrow if possible. And what about all the former Roman Imperial colonies of North Africa -- they have just as much claim to be European as Turkey. Libya in!'

That is a particular dream of mine, to have the dead-dull European Council meetings enlivened by the presence of Col Gaddafi and his 200-member all-female personal bodyguard.

As Lenin said, 'Worse is better.' Letting Turkey join the EU will just help bust-up the EU all the faster.

But that isn't why Cameron was pushing Turkey's membership this week. No, instead he was engaged in that fashionable smear that anyone who opposes Turkey's membership is 'wilfully misunderstanding Islam.' Here is a politician who hasn't yet got a handle on British history -- reminder again to the prime minister, America wasn't in the war in 1940 -- yet he wants to pretend to a sound grasp of Islam.

Remember, Cameron is a man whose only job outside politics was as a public relations man for Ratner's Television, as Carlton is known to some of us who used to work in broadcasting. All Cameron is doing with his 'analysis' of Islam is reading the briefing notes from whomever is running his own p.r. now. Doesn't matter to him that his briefing notes are smearing three-quarters of core Tory voters. Number 10 despises them anyway, so who cares?

Trouble is, decent Conservative politicians are being sucked into Cameron's manoeuvrings, out of loyalty, I assume. Poor Old Daniel Hannan, the euro-sceptic, which is to say, euro-rational,Tory MEP, has made an argument on his Brussels blog that in all this, 'David Cameron is a remarkably traditional Tory, and his attitude to Turkey is as traditional as they come. His -- my -- party has been Turcophile since Derby's leaderhip a century and a half ago.' He says Cameron's reasons for backing Ankara's EU membership bid are 'solidly Conservative.'

So, a Tory loyalist is being pushed to insist that Cameron's reasons for admiring Islam are solidly Conservative. What unfortunate timing: in recent days the Dutch political leader and anti-immigration campaigner Geert Wilders has been reminding those of us in Brussels and The Hague what Winston Churchill wrote about Islam in his 'The River War' of 1899, and 'the curses it lays on its votaries':

'Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy...Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. ..The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property --either as a child, a wife, or a concubine -- must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men...'

And on the Young Winston went. Now, was he right? That is not the point here. The point is, he was Tory.

And the point of this blog is to note that if Turkey is allowed to join the EU, Turkish police and Turkish prosecutors will be free to come to Britain and investigate British men and women, demand information from the national DNA data base -- and remember how many innocent men and women and children in Britain now unwillingly have their DNA on the data base -- because Cameron and his Government have just agree to hand such powers to other EU states.

British law enforcement officials will be unable to stop foreign police from travelling to Britain and taking part in the arrest of HM's subjects. They will be free to keep Britons under surveillance, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, and DNA and blood samples.

Cameron wants us to believe that this is of course true Conservatism. The only question is: at what point are the true Conservatives going to rise up and roar that is isn't?