Gulf Stream Blues

After Berlusconi attack, Italy on dangerous road

2009-12-15T18:25:00.003Z

It was the projectile cathedral-smack heard ‘round the world. Sunday night’s attack on Silvio Berlusconi in Milan almost immediately started generating so much internet snark and celebration that the facts quickly became clouded. First reports said he was punched – a light enough incident for the internets to make light of the situation. Then it emerged he had been hit with an object and had been seriously hurt – slightly less jovial. Then the facts just turned bizarre – a crazed man had thrown a miniature replica of the Milan Cathedral from the crowd, and managed to hit the Italian prime minister right in the mouth.

The news about Silvio Berlusconi over the past year already seemed like it had reached the height of bizarre absurdity, but this took the cake. The philandering Italian tyrant everyone outside of Italy loves to hate seemingly given a “taste of poetic justice” by being smacked in the face by a symbol of the very conservative values he has exploited to maintain his grip on power. Almost overnight the deranged man who allegedly threw the church, Massimo Tartaglia, attracted thousands of fans on Facebook.

The attack fits in perfectly with the persecution narrative the Italian prime minister has built around himself. This victim image was being hammed up to levels worthy of the worst Italian B-movie earlier today as Berlusconi whispered from his hospital bed, "love will always truimph!" All he was missing was a crown of thorns.

But over the past few days developments in Italy have made it clear this is far from just a weird quirky sideshow. The prime minister is still in the hospital, he’s apparently lost a large amount of blood as well as teeth. His allies almost immediately began blaming the incident on Berlusconi’s political enemies, saying they had fanned a “climate of hate” against him that had led to this incident. The right-wing daily Il Giornal accused the left of “remote-controlling” the demonstrations against Berlusconi that culminated 5 December in nationwide protests against him. Though those protests have been mostly peaceful, Berlusconi’s allies are using the Tartaglia attack to paint them as violent.

Berlusconi’s Freedom party announced yesterday they are beginning proceedings to charge opposition MP Antonio Di Pietro, one of Berlusconi’s most vocal critics, with “incitement to crime.” Home Secretary Roberto Maroni told papers this morning the government is planning to table emergency measures to ban all Italian websites that have been openly cheering the Tartaglia attack. Italy’s biggest daily newspaper Corriere della Sera this morning called for people on the internet who have cheered the attack to also be charged with incitement to crime.

We’ve seen this movie before. Right-wing governments often use attacks against themselves to justify harsh crackdowns on domestic opposition at home. But the political situation in

Italy

was already so unstable that this attack could make the whole country go off the rails.

By all accounts Berlusconi’s governing coalition was already on the verge of collapse in the weeks leading up to this incident, amidst the most fractious political environment seen in Italy since the chaotic political violence that rocked the country in the 1970’s. The continuing sex scandals surrounding Berlusconi, as well as the recent decision by an Italian court to strip him of the prosecutorial immunity he had granted himself, had put the prime minister on very shaky ground. More importantly, rifts within his right-wing coalition government had bubbled to the surface in recent weeks. Last week one of his closet allies, Gianfranco Fini, gave an indication that he would leave the coalition – and a former centrist partner of Berlusconi’s was calling for a grand coalition to finally oust him from power.

But Sunday night everything changed. One by one the members of Berlusconi’s coalition who had been threatening to abandon him came to the hospital to show their solidarity. Even the opposition MPs were forced to come to his bedside to show they don’t condone violence.

After a year of being politically battered by scandal, legal troubles and infighting, it may be Berlusconi’s physical injuries that will now give him political strength. But given that he is coming from such a weak position, he will need to aggressively exploit this attack against him in order to regain his footing. Few observers of Italian politics would doubt his resolve to do this. But that aggressive climb-back will be brutal, and it could tear an already fragile country apart. It is not for nothing that Italians fear a return to the violent “days of lead” of the 1970s.

In a few months, with hindsight, it will probably not be the Italian left cheering Sunday night’s attack. The cheers may be coming from Berlusconi himself.

American desires for Anglican Africa

2009-12-11T16:52:00.003Z

The continuing controversy over the American Christian right’s connection to a new law in Uganda giving the death penalty to gays may not on its surface seem like a European issue. After all this is a America-Africa story right? But watch with amazement as I find the European connection!

There is actually a third player in this story: the Anglican church. In fact this entire episode is an illustration of the continuing conflict between American evangelicals and British Anglicans in a new “scramble for Africa” – as the former works tirelessly to replace the latter as the spiritual coloniser of that “magnificent African cake.”

The new legislation in Uganda which is about to be adopted mandates life in prison for gays, death by hanging for gays with HIV, and 3 years in prison for anyone who knows of a gay but does not alert the police. The introduction of the legislation follows the heavy infiltration of that country by American anti-gay Christian evangelical groups. They have sent missionaries to talk to that country’s parliament about the evils of homosexuality. Emissaries to Uganda to talk about the American brand of evangelical Christianity have included Rick Warren, the hugely popular American evangelist who was selected by Barack Obama to deliver the national prayer at his inauguration. They have also included Republican senators James Inhofe and Chuck Grassly.

Uganda, like much of central and southern Africa, is a Christian nation. Ugandans were converted to Christianity by British Anglicans while the country was a British colony. To this day the Ugandan Anglican church remains part of the Church of England. But these African Anglican churches have been in increasing conflict with the Anglicans of Britain and North America who are making reforms like ordaining women and marrying gays. They are at the centre of a war that could tear the Anglican church apart. 40% of the Anglican Communion’s members live in Nigeria, Uganda or Kenya.

As dissatisfaction with the wider Anglican communion has grown in conservative African churches, various religious groups have been lurking on the sidelines ready to absorb defectors into their flock, including the Catholic Church. American evangelicals have also been making a concerted effort to woo the Africans.
Rick Warren, whose book “A Purpose-Driven Life’ has now sold more copies than any book history other than the bible, recently told the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life tha int the future of evangelicalism is in Africa. “In 1900 there were only 10 million Christians in all of Africa -- 10% of the population. Today there are 360 million Christians in Africa, over half the population." Warren is right, but it is important to note that these Christians are not subscribers to Warren’s brand of evangelical Christianity…yet. For the moment, they are still Anglicans.

When Warren and others visit Africa, they use the same sermons they use in the US in waging the American culture wars. In a visit to Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya in 2008 Warren told the Africans, "Homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right.” While in the US these words are a normal part of the political debate, in Africa, where there are few out gay people and no gay rights infrastructure, they are used to justify already existing violent homophobia. Why has Warren’s book shattered these earth-shattering sales records? Because by this point it is a must-read in most African Christian churches.

What’s happened in Uganda now is clearly a case of the US evangelical right struggling to control the Frankenstein they have created. By waging the American culture wars in Africa, they seem to have been oblivious to the violent interpretations of their words some of these regimes could have. Now that some of the US media has been publicising their ties to what is happening in Uganda, these evangelical leaders are bending over backwards to distance themselves from this abhorrent legislation. But is it too late?

And what does the Anglican Church make of all this? Well, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been uncharacteristically silent on the specific issue as far as I can tell. The reality is, though the politicians proposing this measure are technically Anglican, they are not doing it in the name of Anglicanism but rather Evangelicalism. The Anglican Church has become pretty much irrelevant in this debate, and that shows just how much influence that church has lost in Africa.

But as American evangelicals become increasingly involved in these formerly Anglican African nations, they may want to think about what they’re stepping into. As has been proven with this incident, the language they use in the American culture wars can have a very different meaning – and consequence – in a strange land across the Atlantic.

Obama's troublesome shadows

2009-12-10T16:58:00.001Z

Barack Obama won’t be the only high level American politician flying to Copenhagen next week. Shadowing him at the talks will be a determined group of US congressmen who have one mission: to convince the gathering that like Al Gore after Kyoto, Obama will not be able to have his commitments confirmed by the US congress after Copenhagen.

Senator James Inhofe, who once called climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” will be leading a group of Republican congressmen to deliver just that message. Climate change legislation is currently struggling in the US senate and it is by no means certain that it will pass. Polls show the number of Americans who believe climate change is caused by man is actually decreasing, falling to its lowest point in three years in October. With the entire House of Representatives and many senators up for reelection next year, it could be a tough sell to convince conservative Democrats to back legislation with teeth - particularly those from coal states. Many in congress have said they will fight any effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to bypass congress by regulating GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The Republican lawmakers at the summit next week won’t be just a sideshow distraction, they will be a reflection of political reality. Much of the American media coverage to the summit has been sceptical, with the hacked email scandal receiving a large amount of attention. An editorial by potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin calling on the US to boycott Copenhagen saw wide circulation on Tuesday.

Certainly the US won’t be the only country with opposition parliamentarians grumbling in the background next week – the Australian government faces some of the same challenges. But given that the US is key to any successful outcome, the American opposition may receive quite a bit of attention, particularly at home.

Dutch drop objection to Serbia in EU

2009-12-08T13:43:00.004Z

Serbia moved a step closer to joining the EU today as the Netherlands withdrew its objection to the accession.

The EU had been in an 18-month deadlock over whether to grant Serbia free trade and association, which is a precursor to membership. The Dutch, who are hosting the international criminal court proceedings against Serbs accused of genocide during the Balkan civil wars, had insisted for more cooperation from Serbia in tracking down war criminals first.

Serbia had argued it legitimately couldn’t find the accused, which seemed doubtful considering many of them were walking around the country in broad daylight. However Serbia recently arrested two key leaders, and apparently that was enough to satisfy Dutch concerns. Though the Dutch foreign affairs minister said the tribunal still needs more cooperation from

Serbia.

The issue of Serbia joining the EU has been a tricky one because its geography and history make it a natural candidate, but just a decade ago the country was mired in a brutal civil war and its leaders were perpetrating genocide against their own citizens. For the EU to rule out membership for the foreseeable future would provoke an already hostile Serbian citizenry to elect anti-European, isolationist rulers. However to fast-track EU membership would ignore the horrors committed by Serbia in the 1990’s as well as the festering open issues between it and its neighbours.

The EU has so far taken a carrot-and-stick approach, which seemed to be vindicated in the country’s elections last year when the pro-European party was elected. That razor-thin result was widely attributed to the fact that the EU had brokered a fast-track membership deal with the country a week before.

Right now Serbia is essentially torn between the EU and Russia. Every political party in Serbia opposes independence for the break-away state of Kosovo, and Russia has staunchly supported them in that. Russia would most likely like to see Serbia remain outside of the EU and operate as a key ally in the region – particularly as regards natural gas pipelines. For their part Serbians generally have a high opinion of Russians, unlike their Eastern European neighbours. Though it was Communist, the country was never part of the Warsaw Pact and was therefore never occupied by Soviet forces. And the Serbs still have fond memories of the Russians defending them in World War I (an alliance which triggered that war) against both the Austrians and the Turks.

On the other hand, Serbia recognises that a close relationship with Russia would make it little more than a vassal state. Pro-Western politicians in the country are troubled by this prospect, and would instead like to see Serbia become a prosperous democracy. They are of course also eager to get hold of the EU cohesion funds that would come with membership. And now that the Balkan states are surrounded by the EU, it would be a strange geographic anomaly if they were to remain out of it. However the EU's tepid support of Kosovo's independence is a big sticking point.

Slowly but surely, the Balkan states of the former Yugoslavia will likely join the EU within the next 15 years if all goes according to plan. Croatia is set for membership within the next few years, and Slovenia entered in 2004. Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and yes, even Kosovo, should round out the group and with the Balkans filled in blue EU accession should stop (assuming Switzerland, Norway and

Iceland

have joined by then).

For those who argue that the motivation for keeping Turkey out of the EU is Islamophobia, it should be noted that two of these countries (Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina) are Muslim. And no one in EU leadership is ruling them out of serious consideration based on that fact. As geography goes, the accession of the Balkan states is a natural objective. The tricky part is figuring out how to smoothly get this volatile region into the fold.

France and Britain go to war over regulator

2009-12-03T16:00:00.004Z

A war is looming between Britain and France, and Nicolas Sarkozy has his missiles pointed squarely at the City of London.

The French president made some unusually undiplomatic comments this week gloating over his Agriculture Minister, Michel Barnier, being appointed as European Commissioner for the internal market. That position is one of the most important in the EU, especially as the world recovers from the shock of the economic crisis.

He boldly and defiantly blamed the economic collapse on the “free-wheeling Anglo-Saxon” (aka British and American) economic model, saying, “I want the world to see the victory of the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism." He said the fact that a Frenchman had been appointed, while the EU had refused to even consider a Brit for the position - despite Gordon Brown’s pleading - reflected how discredited the Anglo-Saxon model has become. The bravado was an indication that Sarko intends to push Barnier hard to create a pan-EU financial regulator based on the continental European economic model that would have power over the City of London (London’s financial centre).

It was a remark seemingly calculated to elicit the most fury possible across the channel, and boy did it work. UK Chancellor Alistair Darling almost immediately put pen to paper to fire back in an editorial in the Times, saying:

"National supervisors, such as the FSA, must remain responsible for supervising individual companies…The reality is the real competition to Europe's financial centres comes from outside our borders. And that London, whether others like it or not, is New York's only rival as a truly global financial centre."

Darling signalled that he would go into Wednesday’s meeting of European finance ministers with an uncompromising stance against a pan-EU regulator that could supersede the British authorities. And thus the first Franco-British battle for economic reform commenced.

The first skirmish

The European Commission has drawn up plans for three new supervisory authorities to oversee banks, insurers and investment firms. In addition a separate body, the European Systemic Risk Board, would oversee the wider stability of the European financial system as a whole. Though the national regulators would be involved with it, it would be led by the European Central Bank. This last part would be highly controversial in Britain since it does not use the Euro and is currently not beholden to the bank in any way.

Yesterday’s meeting appears to have been a draw. Both Germany and France went in pushing hard for powerful EU supervisory bodies, but by all accounts Darling was equally fierce in his opposition to them. French finance minister Christine Legarde came out saying they had found a compromise, adding “Not everyone was on the same wavelength.”

Darling came out of the meeting insisting he had negotiated a guarantee that the EU regulator could not supersede national regulators, and it could not force states to pay up for taxpayer bailouts.

But in essence both his guarantees and Legarde’s calming words are premature. The ministers only agreed on the most general of outlines for the plan yesterday, and much still has to be worked out. The thought from some in parliament is that the big ‘macroeconomic’ authority and three ‘microeconomic’ groups are being split up as a purposeful distraction. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Liberals in the parliament who favours a strong authority, indicated after the meeting that the parliament will attempt to bypass this “trick” by voting on both bodies as one. He said after the meeting:

"This "forced agreement" is difficult to understand. Member States are repeatedly saying they want a single market for financial services, but now that the time has come to agree on the basic principle of creating supra-national supervisory authorities, some of them appear totally reluctant". Moreover, by separating micro-prudential supervision from the macro-prudential one, Council tries to impose its own views and its own agenda. But the European Parliament as co-legislator will play its full role and has already decided to consider the proposals on micro and macro prudential supervision as a whole."

What comes out of this is anybody’s guess. A column in today’s Wall Street Journal suggested that the Square Mile was overreacting and taking Sarko’s bait, and the paper seems confident that in the end the city will not be regulated from Brussels. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t be putting my money on Britain winning this fight.

The UK already has dimished influence in Brussels because of its lack of engagement. And with a weakened government that will be preoccupied in the coming months with an election it is sure to lose, I don’t see them as being a very difficult foe to vanquish.

This is a shame really. As badly as financial reform is needed, Darling is correct to say that London is the leading financial centre of Europe and should have a significant say in new regulatory structures, regardless of the sins the city and its hedge funds have committed in the past to get us into this mess. One should keep in mind that Merkel and Sarko’s push for a strong EU financial regulator with power over the city is not entirely altruistic. Part of their motivation is a desire to scale down the city’s prominence in the European financial sector and give more power to Frankfurt and La Defense.

But as some commentators have pointed out, if the EU overegulates without some reform from its trading partners, there is a risk that financial services companies will flee Europe altogether. Rather than moving from Britain to France and Germany, they could be more likely to high tail it over to Switzerland.

And speaking of Switzerland, I’m about to get on a plane to fly there. My dad is having a belated Thanksgiving dinner. I’m wondering if the minaret ban vote will come up during the dinner conversation with his Swiss colleagues. It could be an interesting night!

Zapatero: the left’s last hope?

2009-11-30T18:19:00.004Z

Spain’s rather shy, gentle prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero has never been one to seek out the limelight. But with the EU’s top jobs now all handed out, Zapatero has become the lone Socialist voice at the top level of the EU. In fact, the Spanish prime minister may be the last hope of relevance for European Democratic Socialism in the coming decade. Given his personality, this is likely a position he does not relish.

In the last week the European Council has chosen the first people to occupy the much anticipated President and Foreign Policy High Representative positions, and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has unveiled the faces and portfolios of the new commissioners. Looking at the line-up one thing is clear: the next five years will see an EU dominated by the centre-right.

The Commission presidency, which will likely remain the most powerful position following the council’s decision to go with a low-profile presidency pick, is still occupied by the centre-right former Portuguese prime minister Barroso. Former Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, chosen as the first Council President (or “EU president” if you like), is also a Conservative. Baroness Ashton of the British Labour party was chosen to be the first foreign minister, but though she is technically in the Socialist camp, New Labour hardly fits comfortably in that grouping and she will be significantly to the right of most Western European Socialist parties. Even if she weren’t, she has already signalled she intends to maintain a low profile.

With the commission announcement on Friday it was clear that the most important positions had all gone to people from conservative parties. Centre-right Frenchman Michel Barnier got the all-important Internal Market position, for which Nicolas Sarkozy could barely contain his glee over the weekend. Denmark’s centre-right Connie Hedegaard got the newly-created Climate Change assignment, while Centre-right German Gunther Oettinger got the very important Energy post. Conservatives took the Industry, Development, Regional Policy, Health, Budget and Agriculture posts. So what did the Socialists and Liberals get? Something called “Digital Agenda”, Enlargement, Research and Innovation and Maritime Affairs to name a few. Nothing too flashy. It seems to me the only very important DG the Socialists got is Competition. That went to Joaquin Almunia, Zapatero’s colleague in Spain.

Following the pan-European conservative victory in the June European Parliament elections, which made the centre-right the largest party in parliament, that body also has a conservative president in Jerzy Buzek of Poland. This means the presidents of all three branches of EU government – the Commission, the Council and the Parliament – are all from the centre-right.

Wanted: a Sarkozy for the left

Contrary to what had been widely reported in the English-language press (I myself was guilty of the misunderstanding as well), the new Council presidency is not replacing the rotating council presidency that is held by a country. Here’s where it gets a little confusing. The European Council is actually made up of many different councils, each focusing on a different subject area. So for instance, there is a council of finance ministers that meets periodically with the finance ministers from each member state. Likewise for environment, agriculture or trade. Those meetings will still be chaired by the country holding the rotating EU presidency. And starting January 1st, that country will be Spain.

However the European Council of national leaders, when all the prime ministers/presidents meet, will no longer be chaired by the rotating country presidency. That all-important group will be chaired by Mr. Van Rompuy. This will take much of the pomp and ceremony out of the rotating presidency, but will leave it intact with practical power. Of course the question remains, how much power will it have? That detail will largely be settled over the coming months by Messieurs Von Rompuy and Zapatero.

It will be a critically important power struggle waged by two low-key, soft-spoken men. The Lisbon Treaty theoretically gives both men significant powers. Van Rompuy can call special summits of EU leaders, draw up the agenda of the meetings, decide on whether to hold a vote and decide if people outside the EU can attend the meetings. However Zapatero will be running the day-to-day running of the council, and the power over the details could end up eclipsing the power over the big picture. In addition the monthly general affairs council, which is extremely powerful, will still be chaired by Spain.

Zapatero has made statements in the past that he does not intend to role over and allow the rotating presidency to be sidelined. There may be ever-increasing pressure from his Socialist colleagues elsewhere in Europe for Zapatero to assert himself even further, considering he and Almunia appear to be the lone continental Socialists in positions of power anywhere in Brussels.
Of course all of this reflects the will of the voters, who have consistently elected conservatives to office in national elections over the past few years with the exception of Iberia and Greece.

Following UK election in April where the Conservatives will likely win, all three of the main EU countries will be under Conservative governments. In this kind of environment, does Zapatero stand a chance of maintaining a place at the table for European socialists? He’s hardly proved himself to be much of an internationalist in the past. Speaking only Spanish, he has largely relegated himself to focusing on Spain’s domestic issues rather than pushing for a Socialist agenda on the European stage. In this way he is almost the polar opposite of his zealous conservative counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in neighbouring France.

Perhaps Zapatero could defy all expectations and emerge from his shell to become a sort of “Sarkozy of the left”. As the saying goes, cometh the hour cometh the man. Is this the mild-mannered Spanish leader’s time to shine?

Switzerland Declares War on Architecture

2009-11-29T13:43:00.006Z

In a shocking result, 57% of the Swiss have voted to ban mosques with minarets in their country. Both the majority of cantons and the majority of people have voted to ban the mosques, reflecting the increasingly xenophobic mood of Swiss politics.

The vote follows the win of the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party (SVP) two years ago. Now the largest party in Switzerland’s parliament, the SVP strongly backed the constitutional ban, saying that minarets (the tall slender towers on traditional mosques) are a sign of militant Islam and a threat to Switzerland. However the rest of the political parties in government opposed the ban and warned that it was not only unnecessary, but also sending a hostile message to the country’s minority populations.

Of course in Switzerland it doesn’t matter that the majority of the government strongly opposed a ban, it is easy for citizens to put virtually anything to a national referendum for people to vote on. And with a saturation of posters like the one above, it’s relatively easy to whip up hysteria about what is essentially a non-issue.As demonstrated time and time again, referendums can never be counted on to protect the rigthts of minorities.

Switzerland has 4 minarets in the entire country, an incredibly low number for a Western European country. This is the result of two factors – the Muslim population is fairly small at 400,000, and planning applications for minarets are almost always refused by local authorities.

The campaigners for the ban have insisted that minarets are a symbol of militant Islam. SVP member of parliament Ulrich Schluer said "A minaret is a political symbol. It is a symbol for introducing, step-by-step, Sharia rights also in Switzerland, parallel to the Swiss law which is a result of Swiss democracy. And this is the problem. It is nothing against Muslims."

The reality of course is that the vast majority of Switzerland’s Muslims are either fellow Europeans from the Balkans or immigrants from Turkey. They’re not exactly coming from hotbeds of Islamic extremism. In fact Switzerland probably has one of the lowest penetrations of Islamic extremism in Western Europe, considering that immigration from geographic areas where Islamic extremism is a problem – North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and Indonesia – is very restricted. So it’s hard to see how such a drastic measure as changing the constitution to ban a piece of architecture is necessary.

Essentially it’s an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem. There is no Islamic extremism problem in Switzerland, and even if there were, how on earth would getting rid of minarets solve it?

The media has been making a lot of comparisons to the French head scarf ban in public schools, but I don't really think this is an apt comparison. The argument was made that the veil disrupted learning and encouraged hostility by providing visable markers of difference between students. There were also safety and practicality questions raised about students being allowed to cover their face in school. This Swiss minaret ban is entirely different, as there is no legitimate practical issue that this resolves - it's entirely symbolic. Muslim calls to prayer are already not allowed in the country because of blanket noise ordinances, so the presence of a minaret really has no practical effect on the population. A girl wearing a veil in a classroom arrguably has a very real effect on the learning environment for her, her teacher, and other pupils.

In any event, this is a dismaying result for a country that seems to be sliding into increasing xenophobia and nastiness. There is a debate to be had about Islam's place in Europe and in European law, but this largely symbolic vote has no practical effect other than alienating Swiss muslims. Perhaps even more importantly, it sends a troublingly hostile message to the world at large.

***Added 30/11/09: Analysis following the vote has found that the ban is most likely illegal under European and international law. I’ve heard a few comments in the UK about how the vote will be ok because Switzerland is not part of the EU. Actually Switzerland is a member of the Council of Europe and is party to the European Convention on Human Rights and subject to the European Court of Human Rights. Grahnlaw has a good entry summing up the various legal analysis, and the overall conclusion is that the ban is contrary to Switzerland’s obligations under European human rights law and will require corrective measures.

Brussels Defends the Pirates

2009-11-25T11:46:00.004Z

A new front is being opened today in French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s war against internet file-sharing. Yesterday the European Parliament voted on a telecoms package containing ‘right to internet’ provisions which could challenge new French and British laws that would cut off internet access for persistent illegal downloaders.

As I write this entry the Swedish presidency and the parliament’s president are signing the massive overhaul of Europe’s telecom industry in Strasbourg. Among other things it will improve cooperation between European telecom regulators, strengthen privacy protection by allowing users to opt in to the use of cookies, and push broadband rollout across the EU to achieve 100% coverage by 2013. But the lion’s share of attention to the bill has been devoted to its provision for “internet freedom” – the first time such a right has been enshrined in law anywhere in the world.

That provision was largely a response to efforts begun by Sarkozy earlier this year to introduce a French law dubbed “HADOPI” that would cut off internet access to people who persistently download music illegally. In the next few weeks the UK is expected to unveil its Digital Economy bill that will do the same. Spain and Ireland have also been considering introducing such measures. Civil libertarians have been lobbying the EU to introduce some kind of measure to protect EU citizens from an internet ban imposed by their national government.

The European Parliament took up the cause, but in the end it was forced to make a big compromise with the member state governments in order to get the telecoms package to pass. Though the original version of the legislation had mandated that any order for cutting off someone’s internet must go through a judge, the language had to be watered down to simply say internet can be restricted “only after a fair and impartial procedure including the user's right to be heard.” Of course, what constitutes a fair and impartial procedure seems to have been left up to the member states.

Lisbon Treaty’s Effect

Protests over the French and British bills have grown louder over the past few months. In the UK, an e-petition against it has so far collected 11,000 signatures. In France, the extensive Francophone blogosphere has been virtually illuminated with rage over the HADOPI bill. And noises from Spain that they will follow suit have elicited a quick and sharp response from top EU officials. Yesterday EU telecoms chief Viviane Reding warned that the EU would take action against Spain if the government moves to cut the internet access of content pirates.

Needless to say, these protestors are disappointed with the outcome of the parliament’s compromise. But this controversy has been an interesting illustration of how the Lisbon Treaty is going to change situations like these. This is a classic parliament-versus-council issue, where the MEP representatives of the people step in to override member states who they believe have overstepped their authority. It is exactly the kind of role the parliament was devised to fulfil. Because of the way the EU has worked up until now it has historically been difficult for the parliament to win these types of battles, since every provision they introduce needs the approval of the European Council, which is composed of the heads of EU countries.

However with the entry of the Lisbon Treaty into force next week, the parliament will get new increased legislative power over the other two branches of EU government. This, rather than the new position of President of the European Council which the media has focused on, is really the more consequential change heralded by the treaty. By some estimates the parliament’s power will effectively double next week. For the first time the parliament will get a say over the budget, judicial cooperation, immigration, structural funds, public services, transport, farm policy, energy security, intellectual property and personal data protection.

If this telecoms package was working its way through parliament just a few months later (or if the Lisbon Treaty had been ratified earlier), the compromise on internet freedom may not have been necessary. It’s an interesting illustration of the ramifications of the treaty, a reality which I think national governments haven’t fully woken up to yet. This internet cut-off issue certainly has legs, and my guess is this isn’t the last time the issue will be brought up by parliament. But in the future, the parliament may have the heft to force the council to accept guarantees of internet rights.

Vienna - Back to the Start

2009-11-25T00:15:00.005Z

It’s interesting visiting a city again after a ten year absence. I’m on a bunpy flight back to London at the moment, after a very nice few days in Vienna. I hadn’t been there since I went on a trip with my high school band in 1998. Vienna was actually the first city I had ever visited in Europe. Given that this city was my first ‘introduction’ to this continent, it was interesting to go back there now that I’ve lived in Europe several years and have travelled extensively through it. Needless to say, my impressions were far different this time around.

I don’t remember much about that first visit – actually the main impression I remember from it was of a city full of sex. I was just 17 at the time and I remember me and the other high schoolers being amazed when we turned on our TV the first night in the Vienna hotel and saw – get this – breasts! We couldn’t get over it, there were breasts on a main Vienna network! Then we looked out of our window and saw a real live prostitute – or at least a person who we convinced ourselves was a lady of the night. Exploring the city I remember us seeing a few scattered sex shops and thinking truly Vienna was some kind of throbbing sex-obsessed mecca.

It’s amusing to look back on because in reality, Austria is one of the most conservative countries in Europe, and Vienna is known as one of the continent’s more staid and prudish major cities. But to some band geek teenagers from conservative America, it seemed pretty wild!

During the year I lived in Prague in 2002 I kept meaning to take a train down to Vienna but I never made it, which was a shame because I was there studying Central European history. Much like Prague, Vienna is a city reflecting many different eras of European history, from the glory days as capital of the enormous Habsburg empire to its awkward cold war role as a supposedly neutral zone. Because if this Cold War confusion Austria has never really had a period of national soul-searching about its Nazi past, unlike Germany. It remains a staunchly conservative country with an especially hostile attitude toward foreigners. It maintains the toughest asylum rules in Europe and getting a visa to work there is notoriously difficult.

Vienna is a bit like Prague on steroids. It's jam-packed with massively intimidating counter-reformation architecture. But thought it may look like Prague architecturally, the vibe is very different. Miraculously spared the ravages of Soviet domination through sheer luck, Austria is a prosperous country that maintains the third highest GDP in the EU. Despite the fact that it was once part of the same country as its Central European neighbours to the North and East, Austria today bears much more resemblance to Switzerland than to Hungary or the Czech Republic. The two Alpine countries are both beautiful, efficient, prosperous and, above all, uncompromisingly conservative. Austria had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the EU in 1995, and public approval ratings of Brussels remain among the lowest in continental Europe. Obsessed with its Catholic Habsburg heritage, Austria is also one of the more religious countries in Europe.

Over the past few days I couldn’t help continuously comparing Vienna to Zurich, where my father lives. Though the ethos and culture may be very similar, of course the size of Vienna dwarfs that of Zurich, as does the monumental scale of its public buildings. Switzerland, after all, was never the centre of an empire. The Habsburgs left some monumental mementos from the days in which they ruled over nearly 70 million Europeans. It’s often been said that if Martians came to Earth, they would mistake Vienna as the capital of the world.

At the same time there were plenty of reminders of the Swiss mentality, particularly in all the Christmas markets around the city serving Gluhwine. It made me excited that I’ll be in Zurich next weekend for a Thanksgiving dinner at my dad’s house. Zurich at Christmastime is beautiful, and the gluhwine aint half bad either!

Over the weekend I was able to do the three main tourist attractions – the Belvedere, St. Stephan’s Dome, and the Hofburg. I reluctantly went to the exhibit about Empress Elisabeth (“Sisi”) rather than the treasury, but actually I’m really glad I did. It was a fascinating exhibit about a monarch who, though legendary in Austria, I actually didn’t know that much about before. I did know quite a bit about her husband Emperor Franz Josef, and it was really interesting to see the state apartments where he conducted the business of the empire. You could see he was really consumed with the business of running the massive state. According to the tour he rose at 6am every morning and worked tirelessly until 10pm. Of course I took all this information with a dose of salt given the Austrians’ proclivity for glorifying the Habsburgs.

Perhaps the highlight of my trip though was just earlier today, when I stopped in to the crypt of the Kapuzieur Kirche, where all the Habsburgs were buried after 1633. The church itself is small and unassuming, but down in the crupt lies some absolutely massive tombs, including the largest containing the remains of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband. It’s a gigantic iron box mounted with angels and flourishes, and on top sit effigies of the imperial couple, who seem to be sitting on a bed embroiled in some kind of marital tiff. Further along are the tombs of Franz Josef and Sisi, along with their son Prince Rudolph, who died in the Mayerling suicide pact. Sisi’s tomb is decked out with the Hungarian flag and regalia, a testament to her sympathies for Hungarian independence (it is said it was she who finally convinced her husband to make Hungary a co-equal kingdom with Austria, creating the Austro-Hungarian Empire).

Of course it wasn’t all fun and games, I was in Vienna for work – attending a conference on upcoming changes to an EU law on biocides. The conference actually went pretty well, I’ve been covering the subject area for a bit so I felt comfortable talking with people there about it. This is in marked contrast to how I used to feel covering private equity conferences for my old job. It wasn’t a subject I was particularly interested in so it was hard to feign enthusiasm for it at the cocktail receptions. It’s so good to be covering politics again!

On my way to the airport today I also stopped at Donau City, Vienna’s version of London’s Canary Wharf or Paris’s La Defense. Like those two it was built in the 1970’s to form a business area outside the city centre where skyscrapers could be built with impugnity. However unlike the other two it doesn’t seem to have ever gotten off the ground. It was built around the United Nations Centre, which was constructed after Vienna was made the third seat of the UN in 1979. I have to say my heart goes out to anyone who has to work in this monstrosity, it is monumentally ugly. The whole complex just has giant grassy holes in it too. It looks like there were intended to be building sites but they never got around to it. The whole thing just looks rather small and unfinished, yet I didn’t see any construction activity going on there at all. Has Vienna just given up on its La Defense?

The trip out there at least provided an opportunity to actually see the Danube, Europe’s largest river. Oddly enough Vienna’s city centre is nowhere near the river, so it’s quite a hike to get over there. But ti was worth it to see these mighty waters flow south toward Bratislava, Budapest and Romania.

So all in all it was a good trip. I spent a near fortune though – museums in Vienna are not cheap. I’m looking forward to a few days at home back in London before Thanksgiving in Zurich next weekend.

EU Low Representatives?

2009-11-20T13:42:00.012Z

The look on Cathy Ashton’s face last night said it all. Shocked, flustered and almost a little embarrassed, the largely unknown British commissioner chosen to be the EU’s first “foreign minister” said it was a sign of her surprise that she had no acceptance speech prepared. Speaking in a softly reassuring tone, she said she would pursue a “quiet diplomacy” characteristic of her low-profile approach to politics.

Standing beside her, the expression of the unassuming Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy was equally telling. Constantly switching languages every few minutes, he spoke of his reluctant acceptance of the offer from member state leaders to become the European Council’s first president. Oscillating between English, French and his native Flemish, a portrait emerged of a man who has gained a reputation as a quiet consensus-builder, having rescued the national Belgian government from the brink of extinction after reforming the government two years ago following a 9-month collapse.

And with them on the podium stood a beaming European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, the clear winner from last night’s announcement. In these two very low-profile picks Barroso will not have the competition for leadership he feared from a pick like Tony Blair or Jean-Claude Juncker. Since Rompuy will largely relegate his role to being a secretary-coordinator for the European Council, Barroso will continue to be the EU’s de facto leader. And with the demise of the rotating council presidency, he no longer has the prospect of an upstart national leader stealing the show every once in awhile.

Together the three of them have been dubbed by bloggers today as the “Troika of Boredom” - three rather unengaging and unambitious politicians who are unlikely to give the EU the respected high profile it had sought to achieve by creating these new positions. Indeed, the reaction from Brussels blogs last night and this morning has been overwhelmingly hostile. Many are seeing the choice of two rather weak personalities as a deliberate effort by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy to ensure that there is no strong supranational EU figure that could challenge their authority in the council.

As for the fourth man standing in the group, his body language made it clear where his institution is headed. Frederik Reinfeldt, prime minister of Sweden (which holds the rotating council presidency), was practically being edged off the stage. The rotating country leadership will still continue to host meetings for the Council of Ministers, but it will no longer have any symbolic leadership role.

French-German Stitch-Up

But though the people selected for the new positions are being seen as boring, the selection itself is anything but. In fact, it is incredibly important. The remit of these two positions was left very vague in the text of the Lisbon Treaty, and all along its been said that the presidency would be defined by the first person who holds the job.

If it were a high-profile person with much political clout, the presidency could become a powerful position capable of speaking with one voice for the EU on the world stage. If it was a low-profile choice, the presidency would become merely a coordinator role, a consensus-builder who would work behind the scenes to get the different leaders of member states to reach agreement. With the selection of Rompuy, member state leaders have made a clear decision about which way the presidency should go. The term length may just be 2 ½ years, but if Rompuy takes a ‘low-profile coordinator’ approach to it as expected, it would be difficult for the next president to fundamentally reshape the precedent the Belgian set.

But is this really what EU leaders wanted? Gordon Brown may have had his differences with Tony Blair in the past, but he seems to have been legitimately insistent that Blair should get the position. Indeed, it appears the choice of Ashton was made as a compromise to Brown in exchange for his abandoning the Blair cause. Sweden’s foreign minister seemed less than enthusiastic about the choice this morning, and many in Eastern Europe have been voicing grumbling discontent with the decision today. Certainly the Socialist leaders of Spain, Portugal and Greece can’t be pleased about it, considering they got the short end of the stick. Ashton is a fairly moderate politician who has little to no foreign policy experience.

This will be largely seen as a Franco-German stitch-up. Merkel had indicated her preference for Rompuy early on, and after she persuaded Sarkozy to give up his preference for Tony Blair, the two announced they would be presenting a united front in their selection. This provoked accusations of bullying, with Sweden’s prime minister saying the decision should not be made by just the French and Germans. Certainly, it is a sign of Britain’s lack of influence in Europe that even as one of the ‘big three,’ it was unable to fight against a Franco-German alliance.

“Political Pygmies”

Certainly these two new ‘high representative’ positions were not the only part or even the main part of the Lisbon Treaty. Still, they were a significant part. And after eight long years of fighting for it, this decision has many asking, “What was the point?” The intention for the positions was to give someone the authority and clout to represent the EU on the world stage and stand toe-to-toe with the US and China. These two are unlikely to be able to do that, which bounces authority back to Barroso and back to the status quo, with no united voice for Europe.

Many federalist Europhiles found themselves in the strange position of agreeing with UKIP leader Nigel Farage last night. Bizarrely, he told the BBC, "We've got the appointment of two political pygmies. In terms of a global voice, the European Union will now be much derided by the rest of the world."

But…isn’t that exactly what UKIP wants? I can never understand what they’re on about. For their part the Tories praised the decision to go with a low-profile person rather than Tony Blair, with shadow foreign secretary William Hague saying, "I am very pleased that those of us across Europe who said that the president should be a chairman, not a chief, have won the argument.”

Both the Tories and UKIP were also quick to point out that Baroness Ashton has actually never been elected to anything in her life. She spent most of her career working for a charity run by Prince Charles before being appointed as leader of the House of Lords in 2007 by Gordon Brown. When Peter Mandelson left his “Brussels exile” to return to Westminster in 2008, she took his place as EU Commissioner for Trade, where she’s served for about a year. Trade Commissioner is one of the most important roles in the EU and involves a lot of negotiation with foreign trade bodies (particularly those in the US and China). However it doesn’t necessarily involve any areas of foreign policy outside of trade.

For his part Rompuy is being lauded by his supporters as someone who united the warring Flemish and French-speaking factions of the Belgian parliament and brought the national government back from its year-long long shutdown in 2008. He reportedly took that job reluctantly after being asked by the Belgian king, who pleaded with him for 90 minutes. He had been set for retirement, and had already been on a long hiatus from politics. Merkel and Sarkozy have argued that his skills as a quiet consensus builder make him perfectly suited to coordinate the diverse member states of the EU.

But it’s unclear whether this skill will translate to a European level. The disagreements in Belgium are between two parties, not 27. And authority in Belgium has been so devolved to the regions of Flanders and Wallonia by this point that the national government barely does anything at all – as evidenced by the fact that it was barely noticeable when the national government shut down for about a year. Is it that impressive that he was able to bring back to function a body that is largely symbolic by this point anyway? The EU may have it’s problems but it is by no means dysfunctional and is not about to shut down.

Realism

Perhaps the consensus reached last night appropriately reflects the fact that many Europeans are not ready for the notion of an “EU President.” The Liberal Democrats in the UK had an interesting interpretation of the decision yesterday, telling the BBC that the decision would expose the stupidity of the Eurosceptic British media referring to the Lisbon Treaty as if it was solely designed to create a powerful EU presidency for Tony Blair. Foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said,

"With low-profile appointees, no-one can take seriously any longer the Eurosceptic deception that these positions would challenge the supremacy of nation states acting together when they agree."

From the perspective of the UK and Scandinavia, where the prospect of an “EU President” was most unpopular, this may be true. But what about the many other Europeans who wanted the EU to speak with a stronger, more coherent voice on the world stage? Who now will have the clout to stand up to the United States in situations like the Iraq War? Who now will bring trade power to bear in negotiations over climate change? The decision to choose low-profile people may allay some of the fears expressed in the British media, but does it do so at the expense of offering a solution to the problem the Lisbon Treaty was trying to solve?

Time will tell how these two will use their roles, but it looks like the wild card is more likely to be Ashton than Rompuy. She is younger, newer, and there is less known about her political stances on foreign policy issues (she by the way has a very left-of-centre husband I understand). Rompuy is unlikely to surprise anyone and will probably stick to a low-profile role. But it she wants to, the Baroness could shape the foreign policy position to be far more powerful than the presidency. That is, if she is so inclined.

The Sun Overplays its Hand

2009-11-11T16:20:00.007Z

I’m loath to write about this, as I’m effectively jumping on the same bandwagon I’m about to deride. But given the intense level of media attention “handwritingate” has received over the past three days, it seems it may be impossible to ignore.

I first realized I was eventually going to have to write about this nonsense on Monday, as I was watching a live announcement on SkyNews from UK environment minister Ed Miliband (David’s brother) on a planning approval overhaul that will make it easier for the UK to build nuclear and coal plants. As the speech ended, the 24-hour British news network (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp) carried about three minutes of the ensuing parliamentary debate, then cut back to the studio. Ah good, I thought, now we’ll hear some analysis of what this announcement means. But no analysis came, in fact there was no mention of the speech we had just seen at all. Instead, the station delved into hour 13 of its non-stop coverage of the fact that UK prime minister Gordon Brown has bad handwriting.

Basically the story goes like this: there have been an extraordinary number of British casualties in Afghanistan over the past few months, attracting increasing public discussion about whether the UK should still be involved in the fight there and whether the troops are properly resourced. Apparently, possibly out of political calculation but more likely out of genuine concern, Gordon Brown has started writing personal handwritten letters to the families of the fallen soldiers. Seems like a nice gesture right? Only problem is the prime minister has horrible handwriting, owing to the fact that he is blind in one eye.

One mother named Jacqui Janes received such a letter from Mr Brown offering condolences for the loss of her son and found it sloppy and riddled with what are either spelling mistakes or illegibilities, depending on your perspective. She was most offended by the fact that the prime minister had appeared to spell her name with an ‘m’ instead of an ‘n’, addressing the letter to “Mrs. James”.

Janes rung up The Sun newspaper, which recently publicly switched its support from New Labour to the Conservatives, and the paper ran with it, making it a lead story two days in a row. The rest of the British media have followed suit, even the venerated BBC. The furore forced the prime minister to personally call the woman to apologise. Janes proceeded to emotionally berate Brown, tape recording the phone conversation and giving (some have speculated selling) it to the Sun, which then released it. Here is the audio below, though I warn it feels like something you shouldn't listening to. (Incidentally, and as awkward as it is to point out, a lack of equipment most likely had nothing to do with her son's death). Brown has since had to address the issue publicly twice in news conferences.

Of course the Sun is also owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, so it is under the same umbrella as another news organisation famous for this kind of thing across the pond – Fox News. The formula works like this: the media outlet picks up a fairly trivial but emotionally charged story, runs it relentlessly as a campaign against the government, and encourages reader/viewer outrage on the subject. It then reports on the viewer outrage, continuing coverage for several more days. Other media outlets worry that they are missing a major story (after all it must be a major story if the Sun/Fox are devoting so much time to it) so they run it as well. Pretty soon the issue is dominating all the front pages, be it manufactured outrage over bad handwriting or created controversy over a presidential address to school students.

However here in Britain there are already signs of pushback against this tried-and-true Newscorp strategy. Much of the readers’ comments under the web version of the original story were defending Brown, perhaps prompting the Sun to block commenting on their subsequent story.

Other papers have begun to note that the Sun risks overplaying its hand in its vigorous crusade against Gordon Brown, which is being fought with all the intensity the newly-converted usually display. The Standard, The Guardian and The Mirror have all been pointing out that much of the public has been disgusted with the Sun’s naked (and rather clumsy) attempt to exploit a grieving mother for its own ideological gain. Even many who dislike Brown are defending him from this rather crude attack.

Given his incredibly low approval rating, the Sun surely sees Gordon Brown as an easy target. And it is a reflection of Brown’s weak position that the paper could so easily bring him to his knees and force three separate grovelling apologies in just three days. However they may have underestimated the British public’s tolerance for cheap shots or blatant manipulation on this occasion. This kind of thing may work across the pond, but in Britain News Corp should perhaps tread a bit more carefully with these kinds of tactics.

After all, as evidenced in the screengrab to the right, perhaps people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!

Miliband says there’s no place like home

2009-11-10T12:56:00.004Z

It would appear David Miliband decided to click his ruby slippers three times yesterday in Berlin, definitively turning down the new position of EU ‘foreign minister’ and opting to return home to a troubled government in the UK.

Of course this could all just be a ruse to take him out of the ‘frontrunner’ status, a notorious handicap when it comes to getting EU appointments. But all indications are that his conversation with the head of Europe’s socialist group yesterday in Berlin was genuine – he will not take the new high representative position if offered. Given that it appears Tony Blair is now out of the running for the position of EU president, it looks like there will be no Brits filling either of these two new roles. Given the UK’s lack of participation within the EU, there will be many on the continent who feel this result is appropriate.

Miliband had gained increased attention after a remarkably pro-Europe speech he delivered two weeks ago, saying the UK needed to abandon its ‘hubris and nostalgia’ and engage fully with the EU, working to reform it and make it strong. Given that this kind of talk is so rarely heard from a senior British politician, many Socialists in Europe were so elated they immediately began pushing for Miliband to take the foreign minister post.

However there was always some trouble with this logic. Miliband’s words were so encouraging precisely because he was such a senior politician delivering a pro-Europe speech in the UK. Take him out of the UK, and the beneficial aspect of that is nullified. David Miliband may have a moderately high profile in Britain, but its doubtful that his presence in Brussels would have focused British media attention on the EU in the way that Tony Blair being there would have. As I’ve written about before, a posting to Brussels is often considered a ‘banishment’ in the UK, and politicians sent there quickly disappear from the British media landscape. Having a pro-European in Brussels rather than in Westminster won’t do much to change the UK’s attitude toward the EU.

There was also a question on the mind of continental Socialists as to what sort of benefit he would bring for them as foreign minister. Though New Labour is part of Europe’s socialist grouping it is certainly at the more centrist, Atlanticist end of the spectrum. Miliband is after all a committed Blairite, which taints him with the brush of the Iraq War legacy. There were concerns that an EU foreign policy under Miliband would too often acquiesce to the plans of the United States, rather than offering a strong alternative. Then again, given that the governments of Europe will be dominated by conservative parties next year, it’s difficult to see how a far-left Socialist foreign policy chief could bring Europe to a consensus.

Miliband is still viewed by many as the last great hope for the dying Labour party, and there will be many within Labour who are relieved at today’s news. Many would have seen Miliband’s move to Brussels as a rat fleeing a sinking ship, given that Labour is almost guaranteed to lose the upcoming UK general election next year. In fact there are many who think Miliband is Labour’s last hope, and that the only way the party can win the upcoming election is if he leads a revolt against Gordon Brown and stands as Labour’s leader instead.

Given the widespread loathing of the British Conservative party in Europe these days, there were probably many on the continent from both the left and the right who thought their best hope was to keep Miliband in the UK and hope that he can somehow deal a miracle defeat to David Cameron. Of course if Labour does lose and Miliband becomes the head of the opposition, it's hard to see what benefit his pro-European views will bring then. It's all a bit up in the air, but one thing is certain - you haven't heard the last of David Miliband.

Dangerous Democracy

2009-11-06T12:05:00.005Z

In a crippling blow to the gay rights movement in the United States, citizens of the state of Maine voted in a referendum to repeal a law passed by their own elected legislature granting marriage rights to same-sex couples. It was a reminder of the reality of referendums: easily manipulated by campaigns of misinformation, public votes rarely yield progressive results, and have historically voted against protecting the rights of minorities. Out of 31 public referendums held on the gay marriage issue in the United States, every single one has voted against allowing the unions.

The success of Maine’s ‘question 1’ follows the bitter disappointment of gay rights activists following the yes vote on California’s ‘proposition 8’ a year ago, which struck down the gay marriage rights that had been granted in that state only months earlier. Though the ‘no’ campaign in Maine was fought by the same anti-gay rights groups using almost identical advertising (warning that gay marriage would mean the teaching of homosexuality in public schools), there was one significant difference between the two referendums. While gay marriage was granted in California by a ruling of the state’s supreme court, marriage rights had been passed by an act of the legislature in Maine, endorsed by the state’s governor.

This is noteworthy because one of the main arguments of opponents of same-sex unions is that they keep being granted by “activist judges” in state courts “overriding the will of the people.” But while that argument could be made in California, that has largely not been the case in the states of New England, which have enacted same-sex unions through legislative action. So in Maine, the referendum actually overturned an act passed by legislators who had been elected to represent the voters. Maine's moderate governor even campaigned against question one. To me, this is an almost painful example of how absurd these large-scale referendums are.

In talking about this issue with British friends over the past few days, they’ve all been in agreement that this Maine marriage referendum is a disgrace. After all, what is the point of having a representative democracy if people can challenge anything they do just by rounding up a few thousand signatures? In a republic, citizens elect representatives and pay them to become educated on the issues and make responsible decisions in their stead. They choose these people to act on their behalf precisely because they do not have the time or, largely, the intellectual acumen to make these decisions for themselves. Having the public make these decisions by referendum results in a ‘tyranny of the majority’, as James Madison put it, which doesn’t have the foresight to make the best decisions for the country and will rarely protect the rights of minority groups. The Brits have nodded their heads in firm agreement.

Yet these are the same British friends who have been incensed by the fact that they have not been able to vote in a public referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, a complicated foreign policy document that was instead passed by their elected representatives in parliament. They’ve been outraged that after successive ‘no’ votes in referendums in France, Holland and Irelan d, the treaty has still come to pass. Never once have they questioned the wisdom of having those referendums in the first place. Their assumption has seemed to be that public votes will always result in the best policy. Nevermind the fact that the Lisbon Treaty is a complicated and rather dull international agreement that tightens up the functioning of a union that already exists.

These British friends have tended to disregard the fact that every parliament that has voted on the issue, made up of representatives who have the time and capacity to educate themselves on what the treaty really is, has passed it (which must mean something, right?). They seem to have not thought about the near certainty that publics will cast referendum votes based on national issues (such as their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their national government), xenophobia or misinformation rather than on the realities of the actual question being put to a vote.

Favoured by Populists and Dictators

Referendums rarely result in progressive policy or well-informed decisions. Exit polling after the first Lisbon Treaty referendum in Ireland revealed that the majority of ‘no’ voters did so either based on the fact that they didn’t know enough about the treaty or based on misconceptions about it.

In Switzerland, where there is a referendum on just about everything since they are guaranteed by the Swiss constitution, women didn’t have the right to vote nationally until the 1970’s (referendums kept voting universal suffrage down). The country’s politics are well known for their near-glacial pace.

Besides Switzerland, referendums have also historically tended to be pursued vigorously by dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Both men frequently used plebiscites to disguise oppressive policies in a veneer of populism. Largely as a result of Hitler’s enthusiasm for them, Germany does not allow referendums to take place on a national level.

So where have referendums not been used? Well funny you should ask. They are not allowed in the handful of US states that still have gay marriage, such as my home state of Connecticut. If they were allowed in Connecticut, I think it’s likely that it could have been struck down there as well. And Connecticut is one of the most progressive states in the country.

The UK is one of the countries were referendums are specifically given no validity, and I would argue that's a good thing. Although Acts of Parliament may permit referendums to take place, they cannot be constitutionally binding and can be overturned by a subsequent act of parliament. The only referendum proposal to ever be put to the entire UK electorate was in 1975, asking the British if they wanted to continue membership in the European Economic Community, progenitor to the EU.

Whatever their opinion of Britain’s membership in the EU, I would urge my British friends to acknowledge that referendums are not a wise way to make policy. If they really want the UK to disengage with the European union, they’re free to vote for representatives who will reflect that stance. But they voted in Tony Blair’s New Labour three times on a moderately pro-European platform, so they can’t complain when this is the result of the parliamentary vote.

They should really ask themselves why it is that a majority of MPs, who have the time to educate themselves on these things, supported adoption of the Lisbon Treaty. Rejecting the treaty would have been a very radical move, especially after obtaining all of the opt-outs Britain negotiated. If the British public want to elect representatives who would make such radical decisions, they’re free to do so. But they should stop and ask themselves if this is really what they want.

France: ‘Autistic’ Tories will Castrate UK

2009-11-05T12:11:00.007Z

One could argue that there’s perhaps no better vote-getter for the Tories than having the French call them names, but the rather un-PC reaction from the continent to David Cameron’s speech yesterday deserves more that just a bemused reaction in Britain. It’s a reflection of how deeply concerned the continent is about a future Tory government.

I was at a conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday when the news broke that Czech President Vaclav Klaus had finally signed the Lisbon Treaty, following a Czech court ruling that the treaty did not violate Czech sovereignty. As soon as someone announced the news the room broke into applause – which is significant because this was an industry conference, not a gathering of EU policy-makers.

The capitulation by the Czech president meant that UK conservative leader David Cameron would have to abandon his crusade to put the treaty to a public referendum in the UK. He had made a “cast-iron” guarantee that the Tories would offer the British public a referendum on the document if the Tories were elected, but he had never addressed what he would do if the treaty went into effect before the Tories came into power. On Wednesday Cameron hastily arranged a speech acknowledging the obvious: now that the treaty has been ratified it is no longer a treaty, but EU law – making a referendum at this point essentially meaningless. At the same time he said he would work to "unravel" much of the treaty through negotiations over the coming years and would seek new "opt-outs" for Britain from EU policy.

In fact, a ‘no’ vote on the treaty would at this point mean a ‘no’ vote to the EU, and the implication of such a result would be that Britain must exit the union – something Cameron knows would be a disaster for the UK. His decision to abandon his plans for a referendum is less an active policy choice that an acknowledgement of reality.

The reaction to Cameron’s speech in the British press has been strangely schizophrenic. The right-leaning papers have focused on Cameron’s “capitulation to Europe” and a supposed “abandonment” of the Eurosceptic wing of the party. The Telegraph ran this headline yesterday: “David Cameron tells Eurosceptics: get over it,” followed by an interpretation that Cameron has rejected the Tory Eurosceptics by putting Europe low on the agenda. They point to the resignation of the two most rabidly anti-Europe MEPs, Daniel Hannon and Roger Helmer, from their front-bench positions in protest over Cameron’s decision.

On the other hand the left-leaning papers have focused on the nonsensical nature of Cameron’s speech yesterday, highlighting the fact that Cameron is still being antagonistic toward Europe yet he is not being clear in exactly what he wants from it. They point out that the UK already has many of the opt-outs Cameron said he would ask for in the coming years, including not being part of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Brown already negotiated a UK opt-out to that part of the treaty). And they have recounted the baffled reaction of many leaders on the continent to the content of Cameron’s speech. Cameron’s promise to renegotiate employment law is almost laughably absurd, the continental politicians said, considering there is almost no chance Britain's European partners would approve an opt-out as it would be seen as giving the UK an unfair advantage in attracting foreign investment. And his promise that “never again” would a treaty pass without a public referendum in Britain is an empty gesture considering the Commission has already said it will not attempt any further institutional reform for at least a decade and probably much longer.

But it was the furious reaction from the French government to Cameron’s speech which the left-leaning papers focused on the most. In a stunning abandonment of diplomatic niceties, France’s Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche came out with a remarkable condemnation of the Tories, saying he was conveying French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s “sadness and regret” over the path Cameron has chosen to take. Lellouche told the Guardian:

"It's pathetic. It's just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest and disappearing from the radar map …. This is a culture of opposition…I have told William Hague: go away for two to three years, in your political economic situation you're going to be all by your self and you'll come back. Go ahead and do it. That is my message to them … You want to be marginalised? Well, you go for it. But it's a waste of time for all of us.”

The minister’s comments reflect the depth of the anger felt by Europe’s Conservative parties at Cameron’s decision to take the Tories out of the main centre-right European party, the European People’s Party, to form a new “anti-federalist” party in alliance with hard-right parties from Eastern Europe. Lellouche said Cameron’s decision had “castrated” British influence in the parliament, and his continued antagonism toward the EU – saying the same thing over and over but not expressing any coherent question or demand – seemed like “a very bizarre sense of autism”.

The comments were particularly surprising considering that Lellouche is one of the most Anglophile members of Sarkozy’s government. It should be kept in mind that these unusually harsh diplomatic words are not coming from socialist governments on the continent, they are coming from fellow conservatives.

Despite the very different coverage of the issues from the different British papers, it is actually really heartening to see Europe being discussed so much in the British media this week. Though Cameron seems to be trying his best to get rid of Europe as a campaign issue, it would probably be the best thing for the UK if Europe were made a central part of next year’s campaign. Labour certainly has every interest in bringing it up as much as possible, considering it has historically been an issue that has caused civil wars within the Conservative Party, and Labour will be eager to exploit lingering fears and doubts the public has about the Tories’ ability to govern.

But more importantly, having Europe as a major issue of the campaign could mean that Britain will finally get the frank, honest Europe discussion it has never had. If the Tories want to unravel the European project then they need to present to the British public what their alternative vision is for the UK to be a relevant part of the 21st century. So far the discussion of the EU in the UK has focused on silly euromyths about the length of vegetables rather than a real education on what the EU does and that its purpose is to make Europe a relevant, strong global player in the 21st century. That discussion has never been had here because most politicians dance around the central truth regarding the necessity of Britain’s EU membership: the UK is no longer a world power and it faces a future of marginalisation and irrelevance if it tries to go it alone. As Lellouche said Wednesday:

"It is a time of tumultuous waters all around us. Wars, terrorism, proliferation, Afghanistan, energy with Russia, massive immigration, economic crisis. It is time when the destiny of Europe is being defined – whether or not we will exist as a third of the world's GDP capable of fighting it out on climate, on trade, on every … issue on the surface of the Earth. We need to be united, otherwise we will be wiped out and marginalised. None of us can do it alone. Whether you're big or small, the lesson is the same. And [Britain's] risk is one of marginalisation. Irrelevance."

It remains to be seen whether similiarly outraged words will be publicly expressed from Europe’s other conservative governments in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Denmark – but such views have already been expressed privately by Conservatives from all corners of Europe. Angela Merkel is reportedly refusing to even meet with Cameron, and joint policy groups between Germany’s CDU and the Tories have been cancelled.

If the Tories are elected next spring it would mean that all three major EU countries will have Conservative governments. Yet far from being an ideologically unified block that could plow through badly-needed reforms in Europe’s social model, there will be a huge chasm between the continent and Britain as a result of Cameron’s decisions.

Europe in Denial of a Changing World

2009-11-02T12:13:00.003Z

The European Council on Foreign Relations came out with an interesting report today on the US-EU relationship, concluding that Europeans “remain in denial about how the world is changing, making a fetish out of the transatlantic relationship.”

In essence the report concludes that Europeans remain stuck in a ‘spectator’ mindset, harbouring damaging “illusions” acquired over “decades of American hegemony.” The result, the authors conclude, is “an unhealthy mix of complacency and excessive deference” to the United States, which has a “rapidly decreasing interest” in a Europe as it fails to speak with a strong united voice in the world.

The report is not just a rebuke of the nationalists and isolationists spread across Europe, it is also a rather grim summary of how the US views the prospects of the EU actually rising to the challenge. Though the US badly needs a strong partner to counter the rising influence of China and would like to see a more united EU, the consensus in Washington since 2005 has been that it is unlikely to see that materialise. So it now essentially takes a piecemeal approach to treating Europe as an equal partner. When Europe is strong and united in trade issues, Washington listens. When it is split in foreign policy however, it ignores them. In the later scenario, where different national governments act individually, the report concludes, “Europeans are asking to be divided and ruled.”

The result of all this, the authors concludes, is “a frustrated US and an impotent Europe.” The situation manifests itself, for example, in the Afghanistan conflice – where Europe has 30,000 troops yet virtually no say in strategy. They write:

“European governments need to get over the mistaken belief that their individual ‘special relationships' matter in Washington, and learn instead to act together and speak to the US with one voice.”

Reading this report, I can’t help but feel that it is in large part addressed to the UK in particular. The British public should keep these things in mind when they head to the polls next year. As I’ve written about before, Cameron’s Europe policy will have important ramifications for not only the future of the UK, but the future of Europe as a whole. As the report points out, the danger of ‘damaging illusions’ in policy-making are no insignificant matter.

Little Support for 'President Blair'

2009-10-30T17:51:00.003Z

The big European Council meeting is wrapping up this afternoon, and it looks like two definite conclusions are emerging: the Lisbon Treaty will shortly be signed by Czech president Klaus and Tony Blair will not be the first “president of Europe”.

Sources at the council meeting are saying that almost all EU leaders are now unfavourable toward the prospect of Blair getting the presidency - most notably the leaders of Portugal, Spain and Greece (basically the only socialist governments in the EU other than the UK) and Angela Merkel, the main power broker as the leader of the largest EU country. It looks like the only leader supporting Tony Blair is his former rival, Gordon Brown. How bitterly ironic.

The British media has run with this story today, effectively proclaiming the idea of a Blair presidency dead. In fact the story has been so widespread, and Downing Street so willing to publicly accept defeat, that I can’t help but wonder if this is an attempt by New Labour to feed this story to the media in order to take Blair out of the “frontrunner” status. Frontrunners are notoriously handicapped when it comes to getting nominated for EU positions. It may be that Blair now thinks the best way of getting the position is by appearing to be out of the race.

Much of the British media has been focusing on Blair’s role in Iraq and economic policies that stoked the financial crisis as the reason so may on the continent are opposed to his presidency. But I can tell you the biggest objection I hear coming from Brussels is there mere fact that he is British. They say the presidency should not go to someone from a country that is not really a fully participatory member of the EU – considering that it doesn’t use the euro, is not in the borderless Schengen zone, is the only country to receive a rebate from its EU financial contributions and has opted out of the charter of fundamental human rights.

Interestingly it would appear that the socialists are not backing Blair because they’ve made the political calculation that David Miliband is the only socialist who stands a chance of getting the new foreign policy chief position. And since both new positions can’t go to Brits, they want to squash talk of Blair right now in order to get Miliband in the running early. And his very pro-European speech earlier this week certainly ingratiated him to many on the continent.

So it looks like we’re back to square one, though Blair could conceivably pull it off. There is a lot working against him, but in the end the powers that be in continental Europe may decide that the appeal of having a “heavy hitting” president outweighs the baggage that Blair would bring to the position with him.

Miliband: UK Must Drop the 'Hubris and Nostalgia'

2009-10-27T15:45:00.006Z

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband delivered a stunningly pro-European speech yesterday, laying out a plea for the UK to stop being “lost in hubris, nostalgia or xenophobia” and instead become a leader within the EU.

It was probably the most pro-Europe speech from a British politician in two decades, and was a dramatic departure from New Labour’s characteristic avoidance of the Europe issue. It was an almost shockingly honest levelling with the British public – thee hallmark of a politician on the way out (He’s probably already accepted the fact that Labour will lose the UK general election next year). Today the British press was speculating over whether the speech was an audition for the newly created position of EU Foreign Minister, for which Miliband’s name has been circulating as an idea should Tony Blair not be nominated as the new President of the European Council.

Miliband made a clear case for why it is in the UK’s national interest to be part of a strong EU. It is a given that the 21st century will be dominated by two superpowers: China and the United States. Miliband stressed that the UK would be lost and forgotten in this new world if it tried to go it alone, but a strong EU would be an important, equal competitor/partner with these two. Speaking in London, he said:

“The choice for Europe is simple. Get our act together and make the EU a leader on the world stage, or become spectators in a G2 world shaped by the US and China. I think the choice for the UK is also simply stated: we can lead a strong European foreign policy or – lost in hubris, nostalgia or xenophobia – watch our influence in the world wane.”

There was no talk of “red lines” or the ‘us-versus-them’ rhetoric that has dominated the Europe discussion in the UK. There was also no glorification of the largely imaginary “special relationship” between the UK and US as an alternative to European integration, in fact there was an acknowledgement that the current US administration would prefer the UK to be more cooperative with its EU partners.

Miliband also called out the Tories on the false promise they have been offering the British public - that it is possible for the UK to ‘go it alone’ without the EU and still be prosperous. Miliband implied that Tory leader David Cameron knows full well that a British ‘divorce’ from the EU is not only unwise, it is also realistically impossible.

"The truth is that there is a deception here at the heart of [the Conservative’s] policy – a deception of the country that you can hate Europe as it exists today and remain central to European policy making,"

A Tough Sell

Some of the British press reaction today to Miliband’s speech has been hostile. It is, after all, a tough pill for the Brits to swallow. I don’t begrudge the British for being resistant to the idea of giving up some national sovereignty. It’s natural for any area or group to want to be completely independent – especially since the advent of the nation state in the 19th century. The question is whether complete independence is feasible or productive. In theory, I would love the idea of having an independent New England, my home region in the US. I don’t feel much of an affinity with vast swathes of America, especially the South, and I instinctively like the idea of New England not having to be linked with them, instead being allowed to set up its own national laws. But I also recognize that there are practical benefits to being part of a large union, and that New England would not be a very relevant or wealthy power all by itself.

What the British public don’t seem to realise is that this isn’t a choice – it’s a necessity. It’s not an option for Britain to maintain its current standing in the world alone – it currently punches too far above its weight now as a result of being a former great power, but it will lose its relevance (including the inevitable loss of its seat on the UN Security Council) in a century dominated by the US and China. At the same time, relying on the so-called “special relationship” (a term I’ve never heard used in the US) is no longer an option either. Barack Obama has signalled that the US no longer sees the UK as a significant partner separate from Europe, and he would actually prefer that the UK work fully as part of the EU and stop obsessing over its relationship with the US.

And as The Independent’s Mary Dejevsky notes today, the “special relationship” was always a one-way ‘vassal state’ arrangement, and it no longer makes sense for either party in the 21st century. “Identifying our national interests so closely with those of the United States placed us in the demeaning position of having to change our foreign policy whenever the US elected a new administration, even though our own government was the same,” she writes.

If the UK wants to be a relevant, important country going forward it has only one option – to be a big player in a cohesive, strong EU. As foreign secretary, David Miliband understands this. Yet he has been the only Foreign Secretary in living memory with the courage to say it.
Of course Miliband’s words would be more encouraging were he not about to be ousted from power by British voters next year. If polling data is to believe the Brits will vote in a new government that is the most Eurosceptic of any since the UK joined the EU. As Dejevsky notes, Cameron is swimming against the tide of history, his only European allies on the margins.

Still, there is reason to believe that Cameron’s anti-Europe rhetoric is only a show, a cheap populist pantomime in order to win votes before settling into a more real politik stance once he gets into office. Who knows, the future could follow the old ‘Only Nixon could go to China’ rule and Cameron could end up being far more cooperative with Europe than Labour was. I attended a policy talk in Brussels back in March where economist Simon Titley was actually predicting that it would be the Tories who will introduce the euro in the UK.

Perhaps this is just wishful thinking on the continent. The fact is nobody knows what Cameron will do in regards to Europe, but if his actions match his campaigning rhetoric then the UK is in trouble. New Labour may not have been very courageous or honest with its Europe stance so far, but as the saying goes, perhaps its better the devil you know.

Brussels - Europe's Pseudo Political Exile?

2009-10-25T21:27:00.009Z

The European Commission is a strange animal - a massive maze of overlaping departments, constituencies and nationalities. Given that it can be difficult to wrap your head around, I often feel that the perception of "democratic deficit" in the EU has a lot to do with the public's lack of understanding of what the European Commission - the EU's executive branch - is. So I thought this weekend's news from Germany might make a good anecdote for explaining some of its idiosyncrasies.

News is emerging this weekend that German chancellor Angela Merkel will replace Germany's Social Democrat commissioner Günter Verheugen with Conservative Guenther Oettinger. This is a natural consequence of the election result last month, when Merkel's Conservatives got enough votes to kick the Social Democrats out of her coalition government. As they say, elections have consequences. The voters of Germany cast their lot with the Conservatives, and so they will now have a Conservative German commissioner in the EC, hand-selected by Merkel.

Though the commissioners aren't directly elected, they are nominated by the national governments which people elected - so contrary to common belief they are, indirectly, accountable to voters. If (or when) Labour is voted out of power in the UK next year, the Tories will remove the current British commissioner (Baroness Ashton) and replace her with a Tory when the next commission ends after its five-year term.

Another recent election which changed the governing party was in Greece, where the Socialists ousted the Conservative government. For this reason Greece's commissioner, Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, will likely be exiting stage left very shortly.

So there's your Democracy. However, there's another aspect of this Germany news which highlights a not-so-reaffirming aspect of the Commission.

Guenther Oettinger is the premier of the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, and has been mired in some controversy in the past. In April of 2007 he gave a eulogy for one of the previous premiers of Baden-Wuerttemberg named Hans Filbinger. Filbinger served in the legal department of the Nazi regime and his involvement with them was an ever-present source of controversy throughout his career after the war (thought he contends he was made to cooperate with the Nazis against his will). In his eulogy, Oettinger played down Filberger's Nazi past and for this he was widely criticised. He even received a public scolding from Angela Merkel for it.

So immediately after news emerged of this pick there were rumblings of discontent - not so much for the fact that Merkel was putting someone with this controversial background into the position, but for the fact that it appeared like Merkel was trying to quickly shuffle a high-ranking CDU politician who had "misbehaved" out of sight. The Social Democrats came out with a statement today accusing Merkel of "withdrawing a beleaguered premier from circulation," according to M&C.

Now, failing to mention someone's decades-old loose Nazi connections in a euology may not seem like a big transgression, but in Germany it was a notable affair. So it seems as if this could be yet another instance of a national government 'sweeping problems under the rug' by sending problematic politicians to Brussels where they remain out of sight, and yet still relatively powerful.

It reminds me of what happened to Peter Mandelson in the UK four years ago. Mandelson is a hugely powerful politician who was intrumental in the rise of Tony Blair, but a series of scandals eventually made it untenable for Blair to keep him in the British cabinet, and he was shuffled off to a political exile in Brussels in 2004. Now during that time as Trade Commissioner Mandelson was hugely influential, but in the British press it was as if he had disapeared. Finally last year, when Gordon Brown's troubles were growing especially daunting, Brown made a shock move by bringing Mandelson back from Brussels and putting him in his cabinet. Speaking at this year's Labour Party Conference, Mandelson made it sound like he had been locked in a dungeon in Brussels for four years, and had at last been let out to see the light of day again.

That's the rather bizarre thing about commissioners. They are very powerful and they set the policy for Europe, yet once they are in Brussels they often disapear from the front pages of their nation's newspapers. It's a bizarre form of modern political exile in Europe, a way for governments to quickly push someone out of the spotlight who is much needed and talented, but also controversial. From some early political reaction in Germany, it appears that the appointment of Oettinger may be that kind of move.

For some people, like Mandelson, they could never be satisfied with power without prestige. For others, it may suit them fine. I don't know anything abotu Oettinger to say into which camp he falls.

But I do think that this practice of trying to 'hide' ministers in Brussels does a disservice to helping people understand how the EU works and who the people are that are running it. In the end I think what many in Europe call a "democratic defecit" is actually an attention defecit. The commissioners feel unelected and unaccountable because nobody ever hears about them. But in reality, the decisions people make at the ballot box do have an impact on the composition of the European Commission, even if it is a few steps removed down the line.

Race-Focused 'Question Time' Ignored Griffin's Europe Role

2009-10-23T17:15:00.008+01:00

It was the dramatic conclusion of a month-long drama – Nick Griffin, the controversial leader of the whites-only British National Party, appeared on revered public affairs program Question Time last night amidst massive protests outside the studio, and the largest audience in the programme’s history glued to their TV sets at home.

There’s been much written today about what went on last night, but for me what was most interesting was what was not said on last night’s program. Almost unitarily focused on race, host David Dimbleby went out of his way to avoid any discussion of the institution Griffin was actually elected to in June, the European Parliament. I found this bizarre considering it was that election which the BBC says necessitated Griffin’s appearance on the programme in the first place. If it’s the June election that changed the equation in the BBC’s mind, why was the program unitarily focused on things that were said and done well before June 2009?

The level of public attention this program and the build-up to it received has been astounding. Griffin is the leader of the far right British National Party, which has advocated for an “all-white Britain.” His own extremist history has included membership in the violent Neo Nazi group National Front in the 1970’s, denying the holocaust and advocating the criminalisation of homosexuality, the deportation of British Muslims and the denunciation of multiculturalism. He has in the past professed admiration for both the Klu Klux Klan and Adolf Hitler.

Normally a person with such extreme views would not be featured as a guest on a major British public policy show, but the BNP has a significant electoral success in June, garnering one million votes in the European Parliament election which netted them two seats in that body, their first elected positions ever (Griffin and his deputy took up the seats). The BBC said now that Griffin has been elected to a national position by the British public, it cannot justify refusing to allow him on the broadcaster’s main programs – since it has a mandate as an unbiased public institution.

This sparked a huge outcry, culminating in a massive protest yesterday at BBC Television Centre during the taping of the episode. The show itself ended up being rather predictable. Both the other panellists and the audience took turns berating him for his racist views, and Griffin gave blathering incoherent responses that showed he is essentially a rather confused idiot. The program quickly turned into a game of cat and mouse – with Griffin working hard to project an image of a new moderated mainstream BNP which isn’t overtly “racist,” and the panellists and audience reminding him of all the racist things he’s said in the past, which he repeatedly denied saying.

Of course his excuses for why he had “changed his mind” about many of the odious things he’s said in the past were as inept as they were implausible. He twisted, laughed and clapped bizarrely as he was confronted by his past statements. And he seemed completely unprepared when presented with a quote from before the June election, on video, in which laid out a plan to pretend to moderate his beliefs on race and religion in order to make the BNP palatable and get it into office. Surely, if you’re planning some kind of Machiavellian coup like that, you probably shouldn’t talk about your plans on video!

The main aim of both the BBC and the panellists seemed to be to highlight Griffin’s racist views for the BNP voters at home who don’t consider themselves to be ‘racist’ but voted for them as a “protest vote.” The BNP has tried to gloss over their racist foundations with pamphlets full of images of British flags, happy families, proud soldiers and Churchill, Churchill, Churchill. The Tory representative, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi (herself British Asian), seemed to actually be making a concerted effort to steal away those “protest vote” BNP voters over to the Tory side. (Incidentally, I thought she and the Tories were the clear winners from last night’s show. She did a great job, though I was a little creeped out by her efforts to woo BNPers to the Conservative bosom).

Race-Baiting

But throughout it all Dimbleby was hell-bent on keeping the conversation focused on race and sexuality, as Griffin’s previous statements on those subjects are repugnant to the vast majority of British people. But the newly politically calculating Griffin refused to be drawn in, saying very few overtly offensive things during the conversation. In fact the most offensive thing he said was probably that Islam is an “evil” religion, a view I suspect many in Britain share (even many on the left). Throughout the whole discussion I kept thinking what some BNP-voter up in the East Midlands would be thinking watching this – a bunch of smug West Londoners seemingly putting racist words in the mouth of Griffin while he just sat there and said very little. For people who already feel alienated from the political system, this probably just played right in to their admiration of Griffin as an ‘underdog standing up for the working class’.

The fact is that outside its positions on race and sexuality, much of the BNPs political platform are grievances shared by an increasingly large swathe of the British public – xenophobic attitudes toward the EU, immigration and resource sharing. But Dimbleby was intent on steering the conversation away from those issues so the program could highlight Griffin’s differences with mainstream British opinion rather than the overlap. He didn’t want to highlight the aspects of the caged monster shared with the stone-throwing audience. But if Griffin’s opinions are supposedly so uniformly vile to the British public, how did he attract a million votes in the last election?

The omission was evidenced by the almost absurd non-inclusion of any discussion about the body Griffin was actually just elected to, the European Parliament. Toward the beginning of the program a questioner tried to ask Griffin about Europe and Dimbleby shut him down. “We’re talking about race!” he bellowed. “We’ll get to that later.”

Of course they did not get to that later. Clearly Dimbleby considered this to be an irrelevant question. Nevermind the fact that that Griffin is now representing the UK in the European Parliament!

The fact is probably many in the audience probably agreed with Griffin’s opinion that the EU is dangerous and tyrannical, and after all, finding commonalities between Griffin and the British public was not what this show was all about. No no, let’s stay focused on race so we can all boo and jeer Mr. Griffin’s medieval views (views which, by the way, have now been largely erased or covered over in the official BNP party platform). God forbid any of the audience, or on the panel, should look in the mirror to see how their assumption of British superiority over the rest of Europe, their subtle xenophobia rather than overt racism, informs their attitude toward European integration. That probably wouldn’t have been very comfortable for them, seeing their opinions mirrored in the spittle-flecked ramblings of a far-right nationalist.

It’s puzzling to see how, while Griffin has been a unitary obsession of the British media over the past month, his new position in Brussels has been almost completely ignored. The most egregious example came yesterday in this article from the Guardian, which called on the Question Time panel to grill Griffin about his views on climate change (he denies its existence except when warning of overpopulation). Of course the show should have asked him about climate change (they didn’t, as it’s not race-related). Griffin is now on the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, meaning he has a sizable influence over environmental policy affecting the UK (the majority of which comes from Brussels), far more influence than the vast majority of MPs in Westminster. Yet the Guardian article manages to not mention Griffin’s position on the Committee even once, even though the whole purpose of the article is to rail about Griffin’s views on climate change.

I don’t mean to be a one-trick pony here, but it really irked me that this very significant development – that Griffin is now representing Britain in the EU and has a particular influence on environmental policy, was completely ignored. Perhaps there was good reason to focus on Griffin’s racism since he is so keen to gloss over it. And perhaps it was better not to delve into an actual policy discussion with him for fear of legitimising his position. But from my vantage point it was just yet another example of the British public’s steadfast determination to ignore the existence of the EU at all costs.

The British Tancredo

But perhaps I’m too hard on the British. After all I have to say, as an American I’ve actually been quite impressed and heartened by the energetic resistance to the rise of Griffin’s ideology. Much of the BNP’s current platform (the cleaned-up version that omits the group’s overtly racist origins) is nearly identical to the platform of mainstream Republican politicians in the US. Griffin’s immigration policy, as expressed on Question Time last night, is very similar to that of Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo, who was a major contender for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. That’s not to mention the BNP platform’s similarities to right-wing American television commentators like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs. And Griffin’s current stated view on homosexuality, though it was condemned by the representatives of all three major UK parties on the Question Time panel, would easily be at home in the Republican Party’s official platform. So it’s nice to see that I live in a country where these kinds of views, so common in my home country, are so reviled.

Also, Britain should keep in mind that it is hardly the first European country to send far-right politicians to the European Parliament, France beat them to that by many years. In fact the experience of France with far right Front Nationale leader Jean Marie Le Pen (also of the European Parliament) has been repeatedly brought up as a cautionary tale by British commentators. An invite by the French broadcaster for Le Pen to appear on the French equivalent of Question Time was equally controversial, and resulted in a doubling in the size of the party. Le Pen eventually rode that wave of popularity all the way to victory in the 2002 presidential race, when a fluke in the 1st round voting meant that the second round was a one-on-one contest between him and French President Jacques Chirac. There are fears that Griffin’s appearance on Question Time could lead to a similarly meteoric rise in the UK, but I just don’t see that happening.

By the way, the BBC has a great article here about how the media deals with far-right parties across Europe. It’s a very interesting side-by-side comparison, and I think helps to set all this within a larger context.

Of course, that would require some thinking about Europe, which as we learned last night, the Brits are loathe to do.

The Pope Makes a Bid for Anglicans

2009-10-22T19:06:00.004+01:00

The Anglican Church has been in pandemonium this week, with everyone trying to make sense of the surprise announcement on Tuesday that the Roman Catholic Church is making a bid for their members. According to many religion commentators, the historic invitation from the Vatican is very likely to tear the Anglican Communion (which includes Episcopalians in the US) apart. But considering the opposing sides of the church have been at each other’s throats for a decade now, perhaps this open hand from Rome is just what it needs to facilitate an amicable divorce.

The Vatican announced that it is going to make special arrangements for protestant Anglicans to defect and join the Catholic Church as full members, while still being able to preserve their Anglican traditions and practices including – most significantly – the right for priests to be married.

Many media outlets, including this really interesting article from the BBC, have billed this as a historic and unprecedented decision. Historic it may be, but not exactly unprecedented. Most of the media has failed to note the fact that the arrangement will be similar to that accorded to the Eastern Catholic Churches, the ancient Christian sects of the Middle East which are in full communion with the Catholic church yet retain their own customs, including different baptism rites and the right of priests to marry.

The big difference though is that those Eastern churches predate the Roman Catholic church – they were brought in as sister catholic religions rather than splinter protestant ones. This Anglican invitation will be the first time the Roman Catholic church has made special arrangements for a protestant denomination to join the church while keeping their own separate customs and rules. Who knows, if the Catholic church had allowed people to do this in the first place there might not even be protestant churches today.

But just how protestant is Anglicanism? The answer is not very. But, it’s a bit complicated. Anglicanism is by far the most “Catholic-like” protestant denomination, in fact many call it “Catholicism in all but name”. This is a result of the fact that the church was formed not as an expression of religious protestation like its counterparts Luthernism and Calvinism, but rather as the byproduct of a marriage dispute between Henry VIII and Rome. Henry simply took the existing Catholic Church in England and made himself, rather than the pope its leader - confiscating church property and breaking up the monasteries. Essentially the two major differences between the religions today are that Anglicans don’t recognize the leadership or infallibility of the pope and they allow priests to marry.

Of course even if the split had little effect on the daily religious practices of the English, it had a huge effect on the politics and the destiny of the nation, putting it squarely on the side of the protestants and making it an enemy of Rome in the wars of religion (a conflict whose vestiges still rage today in Northern Ireland). The fact that the Vatican would extend an arm like this to its ancient enemy is a telling sign of how much things have changed. The new conflict, rather than being between religions, is between the religious and the secular. And the trend is for religions to unite against Atheist influence.

What Now for the Anglicans?

In addition to its historical significance, the move will likely have a dramatic effect on the future. Essentially there are four different competing factions within the global Anglican communion, and they overlap. Historically there has always been the old division between the “Anglo-Catholic” wing which follows more Catholic traditions and the “low-church” which is more protestant. But in the past decades a new modern split has emerged between the progressives, who favour having the church ordain women and accept homosexuality, and the conservatives, who refuse to serve under female bishops or priests and condemn homosexuality.

With this move the Vatican is specifically targeting the Anglo-Catholics, whose practices and beliefs would transition seamlessly into Catholicism barring the fact that the priests are married already. So problem solved right? The Anglo-Catholics who oppose women and gays can move into the more conservative Catholic Church, and the Anglican church is whittled down to its more protestant root. Well, it’s not that simple, because the four groups are mixed. Many of the conservative Anglicans, especially those in the US, are also die-hard “low church” protestants who would never join the Catholic Church. Likewise, many Anglo-Catholics are progressives who support women priests. Though most Anglican congregations in Africa fall into the conservative camp, they are mixed between Anglo-Catholics and low churchers.

Up till now the conservative Anglo-Catholics and low churchers have been in an uneasy alliance against the progressive moves to annoint female and gay bishops. But the Vatican’s move could drive a wedge between them. If the Anglo-Catholics leave, the conservative low churchers will be left by themselves, and with such a reduced number they certainly would be in less of a position to exert pressure on the Anglican Synod, which would then be free to push through a relatively unrestricted agenda of progressive reforms.

Already the lobby group for conservative low-churchers, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, has come out strongly criticising the Vatican’s move. According to the BBC there’s already been suggestions that the Catholic church is “capitalising on Anglican divisions to poach clergy.” If that was their wish, it seems to already be working. The leader of the Catholic Group on the Anglican Church's synod told the BBC that "several hundred" clergy would leave immediately, and something like 1,500 altogether would depart soon.

Considering that the Anglican church has been stuck in such deadlock for so long, perhaps this is the best solution. There may be questionable motivations from the Catholic Church, but if the end result is a more progressive and more protestant Anglican communion, there will be many within that religion which would be glad to see that result.

US Alarmed by Cameron’s Europe Moves

2009-10-21T12:08:00.004+01:00

It looks like worries about a future Tory government aren’t limited to Paris and Berlin. Reports are circulating today that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed concern last week during her visit to Europe over David Cameron’s increasingly combative stance toward the EU, saying the US is worried that the “direction of travel” from what will most likely be the next governing party of the UK could lead to a rupture between Britain and the rest of Europe.

Her concern is not in isolation. The Obama administration has been increasingly questioning the wisdom of Tory leader David Cameron’s recent hostile moves toward Europe, including his decision to take the Tories out of the main centre-right grouping in the European Parliament to form a new alliance with hard-right Eastern European parties and his antagonism toward the Lisbon Treaty. The Times reports today that the US Ambassador to Britain has also been voicing alarm over Cameron’s Europe plans, and that Jewish groups within the Democratic Party are expressing alarm over Cameron’s new ties to anti-Semitic politicians in Poland.

The concerns are further evidence that the Obama administration considers the so-called “special relationship” (a term I’ve never heard used in the US, though it is used almost obsessively in the UK) to be obsolete, and would prefer a united Europe to deal with in foreign policy. This is a sea change from the previous US administration, which notoriously used the idea of the “special relationship” to drive a wedge between the UK and Europe in the run-up to the Iraq war. As The Times notes,

“[Obama] believes that Britain should be at the heart of Europe — a position that has been put in doubt by French and German anger over Mr Cameron’s decision to sever ties with the federalist centre right grouping in the Strasbourg Parliament. Mr Obama is enthusiastic about the idea of a permanent EU president to replace the revolving chairmanship of the EU council, a measure opposed by the Conservatives.”

Wheras the Bush administration was hostile toward the EU and seemed to repeatedly seek to undermine it, the Obama administration has so far been an enthusiastic supporter, as demonstrated by Hillary Clinton’s speech in Brussels earlier this year. In fact I think I could without hyperbole call Obama a European federalist. He wants a strong, united Europe as a partner in combating terrorism, dealing with the financial crisis and providing a counterweight to China.

The administration’s reported comments seem to suggest that Obama has little patience for European leaders who cow-tow to old instincts of nationalism and divisiveness. And he has also demonstrated impatience with some of the more archaic, slow-moving aspects of the EU, and is likely eager for the streamlined reforms the Lisbon Treaty will bring about. Of course this is just speculation, but it’s what his administration’s statements and behaviour seem to suggest.

Indulging in a Moment of Homesickness

2009-10-20T23:44:00.005+01:00

Apologies for not having written in awhile, I’ve been away in the US – moving around between different locales so much I didn’t get any chance to write. It was a good visit “home” after having not left Europe for ten months – the longest I’ve ever gone without visiting the US.

I put “home” in quotes because at this point I’m not exactly sure where home is, and the slight disorientation I felt on this trip was a reminder of that. My family is now spread out all across the world, with my dad living in Switzerland and my youngest brother living in Australia, while my mom and my other brother are still in the US. While in Connecticut I stayed in the house in which I grew up, but it’s now empty and tenantless. While in New York I visited Roosevelt Island where I used to live, but I don’t know anyone who lives there any more. My friends kept talking about the new resurgence of witty sit-coms on American TV and I hadn’t even heard of any of them (though I did get to watch them – Glee, Modern Family, Cougar Town – they’re pretty good).

These days New York is feeling like a different city from the one I left. Times Square has been pedestrianised, the west side elevated train tracks have been converted into a park, and there are even bike paths criss-crossing Manhattan now! There were a lot of new things I had to check out. The Times Square refurb was pretty underwhelming, essentially it just looks like they’ve put a bunch of chairs in the middle of the road – not a very pleasant place to sit and eat lunch if you ask me. I was particularly amused by the fact that they’ve painted the pavement in the new pedestrian zone green in order to approximate grass. I appreciate the effort to try to make New York a little more pleasant – one of my biggest complaints about the city is that there’s nowhere to just sit and relax. But they way they’ve done it now just seems to highlight the fact that New York just isn’t a very pretty city. But it is just temporary, and hopefully if they decide to extend the scheme after the end of this year they’ll actually extend the raised sidewalk into the pedestrian area to really separate it from the road.

On the other hand Mayor Bloomberg’s other big effort at urban beautification, the new high line park on the west side rail tracks, was quite pretty. I just hope they really do follow through on extending it, because it’s quite short as it is now (just from 14th to 20th street). But my favourite part is that it provides some great views of the Hudson, which is nice because normally you never see the water in New York (my other big complaint about the city).

Autumn in New England

The second part of the trip was spent in New England, first visiting family in Connecticut and then attending my friend Sharyn’s wedding in Maine. Apparently it now snows in October in New England, it strangely did so twice while I was there. Though it was freezing up in Maine it was also very beautiful, fully demonstrating New England’s reputation for amazing fall foliage.

It was great to see so many old friends from high school and college and get updates on what everyone is up to. Of course every time I visit the US I’m always asked the same question – am I ever going to move back? Over time my answer has softened from a staunch “hell no!” to a more deliberative “I wouldn’t rule it out.” The reality is this: though I don’t see myself leaving Europe any time soon, I have no way of knowing if future circumstances might warrant a move back stateside. Certainly, the election of Barack Obama last November went some way in restoring my faith in my homeland – though the recent ugliness displayed in the healthcare debate has dulled that down to a realistic acceptance that America didn’t change overnight just because Obama was elected.

I usually tell people that I just don’t think I could go back to the US and give up the quality of life I’ve become accustomed to in Europe. I can’t imagine going from getting 30 days of vacation a year to 5 (EU legal minimum is 25 vacation days per year, 5 is how many I was allotted at my last US job). After getting hassle-free guaranteed medical care here, I can’t imagine going back to having to scrounge around for healthcare and then pay huge premiums once I have it. I can’t imagine being back in a culture obsessed with work and advancement, where cultural knowledge and intellectual curiosity is devalued in favour of wilful ignorance and celebrity worship. And I can’t imagine going back to watching a broadcast news media that has reached such epic levels of dysfunction.

The Trade-Off

But despite these downsides to US life, it would definitely be nice to move back to New York – to be back with my friends and family, to have a consistent and stable group of people to surround myself with, and to be able to once again make oblique pop culture references that people would understand! But unfortunately this is what you give up when you move abroad. It’s a trade-off, essentially. The reward is adventure and excitement – the satisfaction of challenging yourself in a new environment where you know no one. The sacrifice is that you give up the stability of life at home. I sometimes feel envious of people who have tight ‘cliques’ – small groups of friends who see each other all the time. Though I have a lot of acquaintances in London I have very few close friends – a reality driven home when I returned here after six months on the continent to find my London friends had pretty much forgotten my existence.

But would I give up everything I’ve experienced over the past three years in order to have that stability? Absolutely not. It may get lonely sometimes, this itinerant life, but the rewards make it worth it. For me at least. But I can also see the value of staying in one place your whole life. It may not be glamorous, but it’s a valuable thing to be able to be surrounded all the time by people who love you and will always be there for you. Living abroad, I have to be content with getting that in small doses when I visit my family and close friends.

But, it’s always a nice feeling when I’m able to do so.

"We Face an Aggressive Secular Attack"

2009-10-08T17:43:00.005+01:00

The words above raised some eyebrows when they were bellowed yesterday at a conference at Georgetown University in Washington, but they weren’t from a fiery American evangelical – they were from former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The same Tony Blair who is currently the bookies’ favourite to become the first “president of Europe”.

Continuing my look at the factors in the choice of the first person to take up the President of the European Council position, I thought I'd look at how these comments yesterday might affect the debate. Considering he is currently lobbying to be the symbolic leader of largely secular Europe, the speech seems remarkably ill-timed in its vitriolic attack on atheism (full text of the speach here). According to the Times, Blair said of the world’s religions:

“We face an aggressive secular attack from without. We face the threat of extremism from within.” Arguing that there was “no hope” from atheists who scorn God, he said the best way to confront the secularist agenda was for all faiths to unite against it. “Those who scorn God and those who do violence in God’s name, both represent views of religion. But both offer no hope for faith in the twenty first century.”

Apparently to Blair, Atheists and terrorists are two sides of the same coin. To call the comments incendiary is an understatement, and they may well come up during the difficult deliberations over the next month over who should take up the position of Europe’s first symbolic “president”. And it certainly won’t help Blair with secular Europeans that his speech was delivered in ultra-religious America.

Indeed it is Blair’s ties with America that are proving the biggest stumbling block to his candidacy, particularly his relationship with former President George W. Bush. The European left already reviles him for tearing Europe apart in 2003 by being an unquestioning defender of the Iraq war.

For me personally, there is just no way I could support someone for this position who said those words above. So my hesitation is over, I can unequivocally say that putting Tony Blair in that position would be a bad move for Europe, and it would not be worth the celebrity and energy he would bring to the role.

Contrary to the conclusions already drawn by the British tabloid media, I actually don’t even think it is very likely he will get the position. As the Economist’s Charlemagne column points out today, the fact that Tony Blair's name has been connected with this position for two years now actually works against him, as front-runners rarely secure euro-jobs in the end. And the reasons for various and disparate groups to oppose him are too high in number to see how he could overcome them easily. Small states don’t want to see the position go to anyone from the big three. The left hates him for the Iraq War, his abandonment of socialism to win UK elections and his sudden conversion to aggressive religiosity. The continental right is at best lukewarm toward him and at worst jealous of his celebrity. The British right reviles him. Who exactly is supporting this man?

So who am I backing? He may not be famous or charismatic, but my hopes are being placed in Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker. As leader of the Eurozone finance ministers he is keenly placed to help Europe through the recovery and to put in place new safeguards and regulatory regimes to prevent another crisis. Of course there are significant hurdles for him to overcome as well. Both Labour and the Tories hate him for his unabashed federalism, and Sarkozy reportedly thinks he bungled the start of the financial crisis.

So even though I was on the fence, there’s just no way I can hold my nose and cast my lot for Blair after hearing what he said in Washington yesterday, no matter how much his celebrity would give the EU some much-needed glamour and cache. Juncker may not be a Barack Obama, but given the disillusion many American progressives are now feeling about that presidency across the pond, maybe celebrity presidencies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Both the Best and Worst Man for the Job

2009-10-06T17:31:00.007+01:00

Initially I supported the idea of Tony Blair becoming the first “EU President”, but recent conversations with people here in Britain are making me second-guess that endorsement.

Now that the Irish have passed the Lisbon Treaty and it’s set to be ratified within months, the British press has transferred its characteristically ferocious obsession to what the treaty will do. And to hear them tell it, the sole purpose of this document is to make Tony Blair the “President of Europe”. Of course that is not true, and in reality no such position is being created. The position being referred to is the President of the European Council, which has always existed but will now go to a person rather than to a country (Sweden currently holds the presidency). The position doesn’t come imbued with much specific power like an American president, it's more of a symbolic coordinator role like the Secretary General of the United Nations.

But though it doesn’t come with executive power, the intention of the position – to designate a high-profile figure who can speak with one voice for all of the EU - is ambitious. Right now, the member state holding the Council presidency is unable to do that because they can essentially only speak for themselves, and they don’t have much time to develop a cohesive presentation of EU objectives given that they only hold the position for six months. So having an actual person in place for a longer term will make a big difference, although he is essentially "working for" the 27 European heads of government that make up the Council, not the other way around. He can only speak when he's been given permission by the entire council, a position he may find frustrating since he is used to the unilateral system of Westminster government.

The de facto “leader” of the EU up till now has been the president of the European Commission, a position currently held by Jose Manuel Barroso. But given that the Commission (made up of independent commissioners) and the Council (made up of the prime ministers of each member state) are often in conflict, Barrosso has never been able to convincingly speak for all of the EU even when he’s sitting in as its representative in bodies such as the G8. The Commission has no control over member states’ foreign or military policy. Of course the President of the European Council won't be able to unilaterally make foreign policy decisions (and nether can the new position of EU High Representative on Foreign Policy). The president is subject to the prime ministers of the member states, but he can work to attain a consensus amongst them and then announce and coordinate that policy (much in the same way Switzerland's executive branch works).

So the new presidency position calls for someone who has talents in two distinct areas: he or she needs to know how to work a room and twist arms in order to reach group consensus, and they need to be a high-profile, charismatic figure who can represent the EU on the world stage. Obviously, Tony Blair meets both of these requirements.

The problem is he also has one giant albatross hanging around his neck: Iraq. The fact that he was prime minister when the UK followed the US in its war with Iraq hasn’t endeared him to the British public or to Europeans in general. The centre-left of Europe is deeply mistrustful of Blair because of his role in the war, and this is a stigma he is never likely to live down. And in the UK, as has been evidenced by the vitriolic reaction by the British press to the likelihood of his presidency, Blair is still widely reviled by both the left and the right. The right hates him because he presided over the humiliating defeat of the Tories and pushed for a marginal social democratic agenda, the left hates him because he acquiesced to American power, and because they feel betrayed by many of New Labour's policies and promises it did not fulfil. He’s also become an openly religious Catholic since leaving office, and that doesn’t exactly endear him to the secular left either in Britain or on the continent.

Given the painful divisions that emerged in Europe in 2003 over the Iraq War, and how those divisions exposed how weak and incoherent Europe still is in the area of foreign policy, picking someone as president who conjures up those memories may at first seem like something Europe would want to avoid. But the reality is there just isn’t any other logical choice – such is the dearth of high-profile, charismatic politicians in Europe. The runners-up? Jan Peter Balkenende of Holland, François Fillon of France, Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium and Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg. Not exactly household names.

Hated at Home

With this reality in mind I had long ago concluded that despite the Iraq problem Blair was probably the best pick. But in the past few days speaking with some of my friends here in the UK, I’m starting to get the full sense of how the wounds of the Iraq war have still not healed here. Even my most liberal friends have reacted with horror to the idea that Blair will assume the presidency, saying that after the British public and media worked so hard to push him to resign it would be an insult to see him appointed to an unelected position where he seems to be lording over them.

A recent survey showed that a majority of the British public (53%) is opposed to Blair becoming president. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that only 66% of Labour party members want him to get the job. At their party conference this week the Conservatives seem to be content to make a bogeyman out of Blair, with Boris Johnson saying Britain is faced with the prospect of Blair “suddenly pupating into an intergalactic spokesman for Europe”. The media has been almost salivating with hostility toward the idea as well, with the Telegraph newspaper actually referring to a proposed British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in a headline yesterday as the “Stop Tony Blair Referendum”.

Certainly, these fears are misguided. Logically the Tories should be rooting for the first president of the council to be British – that would give the UK the influence in Brussels to be able to push through the EU reforms they claim they are so intent on achieving. Opposing Blair is certainly a case of the Tories cutting off their nose to spite their face, perhaps succumbing to mob-pleasing populism over sound policy.

But this isn’t just the usual British paranoia about the EU revealing its ugly head. There is a real feeling of ill will toward Tony Blair in this country, and I’m starting to wonder if its really worth it for Brussels to further antagonize the British, who are already so hostile to the EU. It’s a bizarre situation – Blair being president would undoubtedly be a good thing for the UK (the vast majority of respondents to that survey admitted as much), but he remains so controversial in his home country that the appointment would infuriate many in the UK – particularly the liberal left which the EU so badly needs in its corner.

Perhaps this initial discomfort with the choice of Blair will go away after a short while, and the British people eventually will come to remember what it was that inspired and enthused them about Blair in the first place. If that were the case Blair could actually serve as the ambassador for Brussels who could finally make the British like Europe, or at least make them finally accept that they need Europe. It was always a shame that the Iraq War intervened to derail Mr. Blair’s hopes of making Britain a fully active and contributory member of the EU. Perhaps this is the opportunity for him to finally see out that goal. It would be one failed promise that New Labour could belatedly deliver on.

Ireland Rejects British Influence

2009-10-05T13:09:00.015+01:00

As news breaks that the UK will soon be shut out of a new G4 group of major economies and could lose its seat on the board of the IMF, the bizarre reaction to the Irish referendum by much of the British press continues to look more and more out of touch with the realities of the modern world.

Europe-wide ratification of the Lisbon Treaty is imminent following Ireland’s massive endorsement of the EU reform agreement with a ‘yes’ vote of 67%. It looks as if Czech President Vaclav Klaus has lost his nerve and is ready to end his grandstanding talk of refusing to sign the ratification passed by the Czech parliament – a move which would have been constitutionally questionable anyway. So barring any unforeseen complications, it looks like this long effort to reform the EU to something more appropriate for its current size has been completed.

If the British media is to be believed, after rejecting the treaty in the first referendum in June 2008 Ireland voted yes this time around out of fear. Terrified by their vulnerability in the global economic downturn, the British narrative goes, the Irish have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting dominance by Brussels, having lost confidence in their own ability to govern themselves. Under this narrative, the Irish made a courageous choice in the 2008 referendum when the treaty was, as the British press frequently puts it, “resoundingly defeated” (never mind the fact that the 2008 ‘no’ vote actually just squeaked by with 53%). Apparently in 2008 a slight majority indicated massive popular will by courageous people against an oppressive super-state, but in 2009 a large majority is the illegitimate result of misguided voters swayed by fear and intimidation. The Irish, it would seem, are only right when they agree with the British.

What is never mentioned in the British press is that after the June 2008 result Ireland has been given a basket of concessions and guarantees – the most significant being that the proposal to shrink the size of the European Commission from 27 commissioners to a more manageable size of around 20 has been abandoned. Under existing treaties each country is guaranteed a commissioner in the EC – even though commissioners are not supposed to represent national interests but rather fulfil a specific role of expertise such as trade, environment or energy. The large number of new member states that have joined in the past 10 years has meant there is now an excessive number of commissioners, with new remits for them being invented such as “Commissioner for Information Society and Media” and “Commissioner for Multilingualism”.

However even though it is supposed to be irrelevant which countries these commissioners come from that does not always prove true in practice, and the Lisbon solution to rotate a certain number of Commission seats between the small member states had caused some concern. There was a lot of misinformation spread in the 2008 ‘no’ campaign in Ireland, but this issue was one of the verifiable legitimate concerns that the ‘no’ campaign had – fearing the treaty would lessen the influence of small states in the EU’s executive body. So they won this concession, there will remain 27 commissioners.

While it is true that the actual text of the treaty has not changed (doing so would have required re-ratification by all 27 states and would have held up passage by another five years) the Irish have been given binding guarantees that these changes will be inserted at the time of the next Europe-wide ratification issue, likely the accession of Iceland and Croatia.

The British press also doesn’t mention that this time around there was a much more extensive education campaign on what is actually contained in the treaty – a response to the fact that the exit polling in the 2008 referendum revealed that the most frequently cited reason for voting ‘no’ was a lack of information on what the treaty is. Turnout this time around was also about 10% higher than before.

The British roots of the ‘no’ campaign were also more exposed this time around, making the claim that a ‘no’ vote was a vote for the spirit of dead Irish republicans seem laughable. As the Guardian pointed out in an article last week before the vote, the ‘no’ campaign was full of Brits who flew over to urge a rejection of the treaty, led by Tory lobbyists and Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers. All this prompted fears that a ‘no’ vote would result in what Irish Labour leader Eamon Gilmore called a “two-speed Europe” where there would be “a mainland Europe and the British Isles, where we fall under the influence of Britain." So much for a ‘no’ vote honouring the dead Republicans who fought against the British.

The Tories’ Eurochaos

The ‘yes’ vote was exceedingly bad timing for British Conservative leader David Cameron, as it means the Conservative Party conference this week will be dominated by the ‘Europe issue’, a quagmire that continues to cause rifts between different factions of the party. Cameron had promised to hold a referendum on the treaty in the UK if it remained unpassed by the time they (most likely) come into power next April. However now it looks like the treaty’s changes will be adopted by the EU by the end of the year – and the British parliament already ratified the treaty.

The Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party is demanding that Cameron hold a referendum on the treaty anyway, asking the public whether Britain should retroactively pull out of a treaty it already signed and which has already gone into effect. The problem is this would not only be illegal under international law, it would also be impossible. If Cameron were to hold such a referendum and the result is ‘no’ (which is the position he has advocated), there is no longer a ‘treaty’ to vote on, the treaty has become the EU. So at that stage, a ‘no’ vote on the Treaty would be a ‘no’ vote on the EU, and the British would have to secede from the union.

This is not an issue Cameron wants to put to a referendum, as the risks of a ‘no’ vote would be too great. Britain pulling out of the EU, as I’ve written about before, would mean it would have to completely renegotiate almost all of its international treaties in trade, labour and markets. It would very likely cause an immediate collapse in the pound, and investors would flee the UK like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

So Cameron has an uncomfortable reality to deal with this week. Trying to throw a bone to the Eurosceptic wing, he has hinted ahead of the conference that the Tories will launch a “public consultation” instead of a referendum, with the aim of moving significant powers away from Brussels and back to Westminster. Party insiders are saying he will announce this week an intention to “repatriate” powers involving social powers, employment and justice to a national level. Of course what he effectively would be asking for are more UK opt-outs, which would be almost impossible to attain retroactively, requiring the approval of all 27 member states. Many of those member states would surely question why the UK deserves special treatment, and would laugh any Tory who demanded such a concession out of the room. Considering Cameron has already enraged the French and German conservative governments by leaving the mainstream centre-right EPP grouping in the European Parliament to form a new alliance with the Eastern European hard right, he has few friends in Brussels or other Western European capitals these days.

UK Shut Out of World Bodies

All of this Tory talk seems particularly incongruous with reality considering that just this weekend it emerged that, following the death of the G8, the US is planning to form a new G4 group of the world’s leading economies that will not include the UK. The new group would be composed of the US, China, Japan and the Eurozone. The Eurozone, remember, does not include the UK because it does not use the Euro currency. Alistair Darling has reportedly been begging for the new group to instead include all of the EU rather than the Eurozone, but US officials have reportedly rebuffed this request saying that the member needs to be able to control a unified monetary policy. The news comes at the same time that Britain is fighting to maintain its seat on the board of the International Monetary Fund.

It was amusing to see the Daily Mail try to spin this as Gordon Brown’s fault, rather than the fault of the isolationist impulse the Daily Mail and papers like it have championed over the past two decades. The fact that it is inevitable that the UK by itself will not be able to justify its seat on these international bodies in the 21st century seems to be lost on them. The paper declines to mention the fact that were the UK on the euro, it would have a seat on this new G4 body and could maintain a board seat in the IMF. Nor does it mention that France and Italy are also in the same boat now that the G8 is being dissolved, yet they will have a major place in the G4 and IMF because they are part of the Eurozone. The comments below the story would be hilarious if they weren’t so jaw-droppingly ignorant, with each commenter deciding that this news is somehow evidence that the UK should leave the EU. Come again?

It will be interesting to see how the ‘Europe issue’ is handled at this week’s Conservative Party conference. Considering Cameron’s populist tendencies, he could probably just get up on the podium and say ‘Europe’ and have the whole hall boo and jeer in order to have a successful day. But Cameron’s crowd-pleasing rhetoric on Europe is on a collision coarse with reality. His recent defection from the EPP is probably but a first instance of this.

Hopefully, Europe can now put this treaty nonsense behind it and focus on more important things, getting on to the real work of guiding the continent through the economic recovery and leading the world in the effort to combat climate change. That is, if the Tories can let a sleeping dog lie.