The Euro’s plight proves the fallacy of the European project

The news over recent weeks that the Euro is crumbling comes as a great relief to our island nation. Thank goodness we did not enter the Euro when we were under extreme pressure to do so just a few years ago. Poor old Greece has had to suffer the embarrassment and indecency of being bossed around by its European neighbours. Given our budget deficit is just as bad as Greece’s, there is no doubt that had we been in the Euro we would have faced the same indignity. It would do well to remember such things in the future, when we may face similar pressure to join the monetary union (if it lasts long enough) once the in-the-moment-obsessed media forget.

But the Greek crisis (and perhaps Ireland, Spain and Italy to follow) also provides a lesson as to the wider European project. One of the reasons why the Euro is doomed to failure is that its premise is ‘one size fits all’. We clearly know now (if we didn’t before) that this premise is flawed. The individual economic requirements from setting interest rates, maintaining growth, and controlling inflation are evidently very different from country to country. The only way that such an illogical union could work is if some countries compromise for the benefit of others. This is what has been happening since the Euro’s inception, but there comes a point when a compromise becomes too much. In a crisis, you find out who your friends are, or to put it another way, you find out how strong your friendships are. Last week’s statement that the other Euro nations would stand behind Greece has yet to be translated into real support. Even if there is some genuine support in the future, this will only represent another compromise. Ultimately the same problem exists with the wider political union.

The reason why we talk in terms of compromise is that every state in the European Union is self-interested. They will only act if it is in their interest to act. There is no true strength of friendship; there is no real union at all. The only way a union can come about is to dilute the independence of the individuals within the union so that the individuals do not have the capacity to make their own decisions. The masters of the European project understand this and that is why they have been slowly chipping away at each country’s independence to realise a true union- when the union’s interests become more important than those of the independent states that constitute it. Such an example would be the United States of America.

The Greek crisis shows us that no matter their efforts to emulate the USA, when it comes down to it, we are all interested in our own.

Long may it continue.

My hope is that Europe experiences further crises until we have a final climax that proves what the people want- the independence of their respective nations and the dignity that this provides.

The earth is flat after all!

A number of times over the last few years, I have been ridiculed with the familiar jibe of the environmental zealots, that the equivalent of holding my position on climate change was to deny the earth was round. It remains to be seen whether my scepticism will be vindicated, but how encouraging it is that the climate change debate is finally heading back to just that- a debate. It is no longer acceptable to dismiss ‘the sceptics’, such as myself, as simply round earth deniers. I say this with some emphasis, because the tide only began to change very recently.

Only two years ago, Nigel Lawson struggled to find anyone who would publish his excellent book on climate change, ‘An Appeal to Reason’. I recall the Question Time audience (see below for my thoughts on this bunch) uniting in a collective gasp when Peter Hitchons so much as dared to suggest that the case for climate change had not yet been proven. Indeed, if you were a sceptic back then, you could be forgiven for having moments of doubt as to your position- such was the strength of ridicule and incredulity being directed against you.

Well done for holding firm.

At the end of last year, two polls were carried out in The Times and the Daily Telegraph showing that a near majority of people in this country did not accept the consensus on climate change. It is with some regret that following this, the climate change scientists discredited themselves with a succession of embarrassments, not least the latest not-so-quickly-disappearing Himalayan glaciers which went to the top of the IPCC. (Secretly, I mean regret for them and absolute smugness for me.)

But smugness aside, let me try to achieve what Nigel Lawson implored us all to do- to have a cool look at global warming. For me, there seems to be some fundamental problems with the climate change consensus at every stage of the argument.

Firstly, is the globe actually getting warmer? The answer is not certain, yet the IPCC insists on telling us that it is. If one takes the time to have a look at the evidence (not least that from the Hadley Centre, which works with the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia) the forecast is far from clear. Even if it does point to a slight rise in temperature, can we be sure that it will rise to the extent that the IPCC has predicted?

Let us jump this hurdle for a moment and accept that the planet is getting warmer. Is this warming solely created by the activity of humans? The answer again is not conclusive. Indeed, on this point, a wealth of scientific studies and theories have concluded that humans are not responsible at all; that natural variations or the effect of water vapour from clouds are the more likely culprits.

But let us jump this hurdle too and accept that global warming is not only taking place, but that we alone are causing it. Can we actually do anything about it? It seems to me that there is foolish arrogance in those who believe that humans themselves can control the temperature of the planet, as if turning up the thermostat in their homes. Correspondingly, there has been absolute failure in trying to do anything significant about it, as Copenhagen proves. More importantly for me, however, is a moral question: Were we to act in the way that some of the greenists expect in trying to reverse climate change, would we be denying millions of people in the developing world the industrial revolution- the chance to escape poverty- that we in the developed world have already had the fortune of?

Further still, even if we were to grant the environmentalists this hurdle also, (by now completing almost enough to make up the 110 meters sprint event) would their response necessarily be the right one? If global warming is happening and it is caused by humans, I am afraid the right way to respond is not by assuming we can irrevocably change our way of life and the development of our people. The correct response is to do what every other human community has done in the tens of thousands of years that we have roamed the planet- adapt! We should be investing a significant amount of time, energy and resources (or at least a proportion that is currently being thrown at global warming scientists) into adaptation through technology.

There is a definite breakthrough in this debate and I hope that the opportunity that this provides is grasped by the eminent sceptics that have previously been ridiculed and silenced. It seems the earth may be flat after all!

Iraq - Let's not over do it, Question Time

Watching Question Time sometimes, you would be forgiven for mistaking the programme to be all about David Dimbleby. Last week he was true to form, constantly interfering in free-flowing debate, picking on panellists unfairly and making all-to-easy populist quips. I am sorry David, you are not Paxman. You do not have the politicians on the stand like Paxman on Newsnight; your job on Question Time is merely to chair the debate and, crucially, you must do so impartially. Yet, rarely does Dimbleby follow this scope, and there is no subject that he and Question Time relish more than that of Iraq. Take last Thursday's show as an example: poor old Peter Hain (who gives the sense that he is very uncomfortable defending the government on this subject) had to face the wrath of his fellow panellists - and of course the BBC hand-picked audience which is always unfairly left leaning.

The strength of the attack upon Hain, combined with its frustratingly righteous delivery, prompted me to try and clear up a few misconceptions about Iraq. To recap, during the show a faltering Hain tried to defend the decision to go to war by saying that the public’s favour was split at the time. This brought about the all-too-familiar groan from the audience, with one member proudly retorting that 80% of people were actually against the war. I am unsure from which survey she took her quote, but for the record there are official polls which show - if not a split down the middle- then certainly no consensus against. On the eve of the war, an ICM poll in the Guardian found 38% approval for an attack on Iraq. Not half, but a significant amount (it is almost enough to win government for a political party in a general election). Further still, a Mori poll conducted at the same time revealed that 74% would approve of an attack if it was found that there were weapons of mass destruction and the UN were also in favour of an invasion. The two caveats here are crucial, both of which we shall deal with shortly. (My initial response to this is who on earth were the other 26%? Presumably the same sort that cram into the BBC studio every Thursday evening for Question Time and moan at the right wing view of the world). These polls at least show though, that despite the leftist-inspired BBC coverage to the contrary, the country was not wholeheartedly against the war.

Of course, some will now argue that, yes, people were only in favour because there were supposedly weapons of mass destruction. We now know there were no such weapons, and intelligence was beefed up and presented in such a way as to support what seemed like a pre-determined decision to go to war. This may be so, but it does not necessarily lead to the conclusion, as one audience member suggested, that we are ‘run by a bunch of liars’. Some will never be convinced or satisfied about Tony Blair until he faces a war crimes tribunal. My belief, reading between the lines and taking into account what we have learnt recently in the Chilcot enquiry, is that Blair desperately wanted to support America in a post 9/11 world and supported regime change generally in Iraq. He knew that in itself that it would be a hard sell to the British public, so concentrated efforts on proving the case for invasion on weapons of mass destruction. That does not mean he made it up or lied. Let us remember that at that time, Saddam Hussein was acting just as if he did have weapons of mass destruction. As poor old Hain tried to point out on Thursday: for goodness sake even the French and the Russians believed he had them!

But no, the Question Time folk will not submit to this. Blair and co not only lied, but worse, they did it all so that they could smother themselves in oil. I do not deny that I am sure a less oil-endowed country would not have gained so much attention, but this is not the same as saying it was the motivation for the invasion. If this was really all about oil then why on earth was there such a woeful plan to reconstruct the country? Surely if all they wanted to do was get oil, they would have spent a little time thinking about how they would stabilise the country subsequent to the invasion.

Put the weapons argument to one side for the moment. There was still an argument for invasion as alluded to previously. This was part of the neo-con ideology of transporting freedom and democracy to the Middle East. We know this to have desperately failed, and looking back it seems like a whole lot of folly, but in a post 9/11 world it was genuinely convincing. In support of this, it should be noted that there is much good (as well as bad) that has come from the invasion; the Iraqis are at least free and need not fear persecution by their own dictator. Just ask the Kurds in the prosperous north of the country how much this means, and they will tell you in no uncertain terms. Still today, the insatiability of Islamic countries (Yeman, Pakistan, etc.) poses a real threat to our security and we have still not formulated a foreign policy that reduces or even contains this threat.

Now let us reflect upon the UN and the ‘legality’ of the war. There seems to be a great deal of confusion here. International law is not like the criminal law that governs the actions of people in this country. There is no legislation in the same way that there is the Sexual Offences Act 2003, for example. Sure, there is the UN charter and some case law, but this is all pretty vague stuff and highly open to interpretation. The UN is not the High Court of the international community, nor is it (as it is often wrongly referred to) 'democratic'. Five of its members sit permanently on the Security Council and all hold a veto. There is no democracy in that. The UN is merely a forum in which we can hope that international disputes can be settled. Tony Blair had that hope and tried extremely hard to get a UN sponsored invasion of Iraq. But if there is no UN sanction (and there are still many eminent international lawyers who argue the final UN resolution was enough to justify the Iraq war) it does not necessarily mean that a war is illegal. More to the point, it does not necessarily mean that a war or particular course of action should be avoided. If we waited for China and Russia to agree to everything before we took any action on international disputes, we would never get anywhere. Many times since the UN’s inception have we had to act without its sanction, most recently in Kosovo.

The slimy Calvin McKenzie, also on the panel of Question Time for the debate, at one point banged his fist in protest at the amount of soldiers who have died. Indeed, every young man’s death is a personal tragedy and I have every respect for our soldiers and their remarkable sacrifice and bravery. But come now Calvin, they are not conscripted and every soldier knows when they sign up that they may well die in conflict, whether that conflict be politically controversial or not. Although no comfort to the personal loss, it should be said that the amount of soldiers who have died in the Iraqi conflict compare favourably with most conflicts of the latter half of the 20th century.

Iraq is a subject that many feel strongly about- and quite rightly so. There is much to be said and learnt on the matter. The number of lives lost, Iraqi in particular, gives the topic greater resonance. Yet let us not forget all the facts and simply see Bush, Blair and co as war mongering liars. The truth is something quite different, and listening to the overwhelmingly imbalanced view perpetuated through Question Time is, frankly, getting quite tiresome.

The Lisbon Treaty – anyone get the feeling like they are living on Animal Farm?

Is it just me or did the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty last month occur without so much as a whimper? On the day it became law I awoke to check the papers and I was shocked to find that no national newspapers made any significant mention of it. Surely it would make it on to one of the television news bulletins I thought? No, nothing. Ok there was a nice little blog article on the Daily Telegraph website by the ever reliable Daniel Hanan lamenting UK seising to be a nation, but was that it? Was that the sum total of marking such a significant constitutional event in the mainstream media? Surely the enactment of such a disgraceful treaty should have been met with more protest?

It is worth reminding us of where we have come from in relation to this subject. I say this because I fear that in relation to the great European project we are in danger of becoming like the inhabitants of George Orwell’s, Animal Farm. We are sleep walking into an irrevocable and unprecedented change of the state we live in and we seem even unable to recall the rules as they once were or what indeed had been promised to us. The current government promised us that we would get a vote on the European Constitution. Given that the European Community that existed in 1972 has morphed beyond recognition into a supra-national being now known as the European Union, this was the very least a patient public deserved. At last the British people that had helplessly witnessed the sovereignty of our nation be chipped away at over 30 years would finally have a say on an unprecedented constitutional question. Due to the very existence of the referendum that took place in 1972, what is not unprecedented is that when there are questions of such magnitude the people have a right to a referendum. And yet when our European brothers and sisters voted in 2005 in France and the Netherlands that they had had enough of the European project of an ‘ever closer Union’ and gave a resounding ‘no’ to the European Constitution our dear politicians thought it wise to retract their promise of a referendum. Instead they made a few minor edits, changed the name and said that because they had done so we no longer needed to be consulted and within just 4 years it has become law. Animal Farm has become Manor Farm, two legs used to be worse than four legs but two legs are now better and eventually although we all believed that ‘all animals are equal’ we now have found out that ‘some animals are more equal than others’.

Surely such a turn of events not so long ago or even in most parts of the world today would have been met with riots on the street? The poll tax got people rioting and that wasn’t so long ago. Why are people not angered about this? Sure, a G8 meeting, a meaningless over-expensive climate change conference or if you a Muslim of particular sensitivity then perhaps the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed is cause for a good old protest complete with controversial chanting, placards and skirmishes with the police. But the enactment of a law that has changed the status of this country’s sovereignty irretrievably and that the government promised us a referendum on and then back tracked when it knew we would say no, we get no protest at all, not even a mention in the newspapers. Just tacit acceptance of the inevitable march towards a federal European state. Are people really happy to let our politicians sign away our sovereignty and say nothing about it? I cannot believe that.

Please I beseech you, protest and complain! Riot if need be! Keep doing so until the great European project is halted and reversed like the people wanted in the first place! It is not an easy battle to be won, the Dutch and French referendums prove that they are determined to achieve their goal of the United States of Europe even in the face of overwhelming support against it. But please let us not be like the passive victims on Animal Farm staring at the corrupted rule book thinking to ourselves that ‘I am sure it was different once’ but cannot recall what it was that has cheated us.

A MUSLIM-FREE AIRLINE? NOW THERE’S AN IDEA

At a family Christmas get together the other day, our conversation inevitably strayed towards the latest Islamic terrorist plot; a young man’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight. One suggested- half in jest it must be said- that we should launch a Muslim-free airline, and that it would be the most popular and successful airline around. Now of course in real terms this is a ludicrous and highly immoral idea, but it nevertheless represents the palpable fear and concern that dominates many people’s minds in this country when they think of Islam. Like so much else, these views and fears of the people are not represented by their leaders nor reflected in the mainstream media. In particular on this subject, the reluctance to admit what we actually think about Islam in public is due to a fear of upsetting the sensitivities of Muslims which has led to special treatment of this religion.

It is this special treatment of Islam that I find so distasteful, cowardly and more importantly, counter-productive to defeating Islamic terrorism. We need to face up to Islam and ask the questions that those in the public arena are too scared to ask. We keep hearing in the columns of papers that Islam is a peace loving religion where the vast majority of Muslims are moderate believers and are against the use of violence. The more that terrorist attacks- attempted and successful- occur, the more this is becoming increasingly harder to swallow. Indeed, certain surveys that have been conducted show that an increasing proportion of Islamic people in Britain have sympathy with the use of violence in the name of their religion. We need to ask the difficult question: is there something in particular about Islam which lends itself to motivating young people to want to kill themselves and murder hundreds of innocent people? Any analysis that separates the religious ideology from the terrorism is not only gutless, but ultimately useless in attempting to defend against future atrocities.

Some of these questions and discussions will not be comfortable or easy to initiate, but that is no reason to avoid doing what is right. One of the most disgraceful representations of our spinelessness for fear of Islamic sensitivities was our response to the Muslim protests through London in 2006, following the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. A protest is one thing, but when the protesters held placards and chanted “7/7 again”, openly inciting people to murder innocents, what was our response? A police escort! The most common argument played out in defence of this action is that to arrest all of the protesters on the spot (which is what should have happened) may have caused a riot. If there were to be a riot, then so be it, but this is what I mean when I say we must face up to the problem. It might not be pleasant, but we have to meet it head on.

Please do not interpret this as a call to arms. The very premise of Al Qaeda is to start a fight with the western world so that all Islamic people rise up and instigate a Jihad (they have already gone a long way to achieving this since 9/11). We must not play into their hands and pick a fight for the sake of it. We must maintain a difficult balance of facing up to the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism without putting our principles and beliefs in jeopardy. Such a response would clearly rule out the creation of a Muslim-free airline, but perhaps people in private would not say such things if they felt their fears and concerns were being reflected upon in the public arena. If we do not respond appropriately we shall never get to the root of the problem, and we can expect not to be so lucky next time.