I mean, seriously. According to pretty much every opinion poll throughout his time in office, Putin has scored a 60-90% approval rating. He’s insanely popular in Russia, while the opposition – given considerable airtime in the West largely due to having the well-known and fluent English-speaking ex-chess champion Garry Kasparov as spokesman – barely manage to register in the polls. Protests organised by the Kasparov-backed coalition The Other Russia may have managed to draw a few thousand people (from a population of 145 million), but in elections and polls they can’t even muster up as much as 5% of the population in support.

So yes, there may well have been significant ballot fraud in yesterday’s elections (due to the paucity of independent observers it’s very hard to tell) – but there isn’t actually any need for it. Hell, even without the 7% cut-off needed to gain any seats in the Duma (which means that only three parties are represented out of the eleven that took part), only four – all more or less pro-Kremlin – managed to get over 3% of the vote. Even if you take electoral fraud to be widespread, that’s a bit insane. In a country the size of Russia, the level of organisation needed to completely rig such a result would be almost impossible – and no one (that I’m aware of) is suggesting that the result is a complete lie.

You could, of course, take the view that the lack of a viable opposition makes any Russian election little different to the old-school Soviet democracy – that with so many pro-Kremlin parties there is no real alternative but to vote for someone who’s going to support the government, just like under the communists. It’s a fair enough point – only it’s also perhaps worth noting that since the fall of the USSR a decade and a half ago there has also been no real sign of popular resentment over the lack of such choice, bar the occasional poorly-attended demo.

Why? It’s the economy, stupid. The standard of living in Russia has been rising consistently since the last year of Yeltsin’s presidency, with the Human Development Index on the rise solidly since 1995.

Considering the dire state the Soviets left the place in, that may be no surprise (The Only Way Is Up could have been the anthem of post-communist Russia, and I for one wish that it were) – but political/historical memories of the Soviet era are still vital for understanding the Russian political mindset. Yes, to the West Putin may not be the world’s greatest fan of human rights. Yes, opposition parties may still be subject to state oppression. But no one in their right mind would argue that the people of Russia are worse off now than they were at any point between 1917 and 1991. Russia under Putin is the best, for the average citizen, that it has ever been.

The real clincher to explain Putin’s mass appeal is the continued popularity of the Communists – the closest there is to an opposition group within the Duma (in that they do, very occasionally, express mild disapproval of Putin’s policies), and the second-placed party with 11.6% of the vote (compared to Putin’s United Russia‘s actually surprisingly low 62.8%). In Russia, if you don’t like Putin it’s more likely to be because he’s not authoritarian enough and that you long for the good old days of the USSR than that you aspire to broader, Western-style democratic liberalism.

Of course, this doesn’t really help anyone outside Russia. Putin (or his masters, if you buy the line of some of his opponents, like the late Alexander Litvinenko, that he is little more than a pawn of the FSB) has – even if you assume as many as 50% of the votes to be fraudulent – received a renewed mandate for his approach of the last eight years. He will now almost certainly shift from the presidency to the office of Prime Minister – and then, perhaps, back to the presidency again. With the lack of any viable opposition, at the age of 55 he could easily carry on in power for another two, perhaps three decades.

The only trouble is that Putin is one of the least understood, most unpredictable political leaders the world has ever seen. Nobody really knows what he’s going to do next. Theories run the full range from him being a mere puppet for shadowy forces behind the scenes to being an autocrat along the lines of Stalin and the Tsars. He may rule the country for decades to come – or he may fade into complete obscurity following March’s presidential elections (at which he must stand down), to be replaced by yet another classic Russian riddle wrapped in an enigma.

The one thing that is certain is that, for the first time in the country’s history, the vast, vast majority of the people of Russia are neither enslaved nor being massacred in their millions. Who can blame them for wanting to keep the status quo?

Update: Of course there are (via David McDuff) alternate takes on Putin’s popularity and the real meaning of the elections…

So, the deal’s been done – and it would be rather amiss of a blog focussing on European politics not to have another quick look, even though we’ve all known this was pretty much inevitable for months now. The only real wildcard was Poland – once they got placated, nothing was going to be allowed to get in the way. So now the only question is will the people of Europe (by which I mean us dear Brits) kick up enough of a fuss before the formal signing to throw a final spanner in the works of a treaty that’s been almost a decade in the making? (The reform treaty, after all, is designed to rectify the self same problems that 2001′s Treaty of Nice was originally supposed to solve…)

Matthew Parris gets it pretty much spot on on the whole issue of a UK referendum. He’s very good indeed on why suggesting a referendum in the first place was a fundamentally silly and unnecessary idea (like many of those from the government over the last decade, in fact), before going on:

“it’s my belief that though you can get some of the British angry about constitutional questions for some of the time, and a few of them angry for most of the time, you will never get many of them angry for much of the time. We are not hugely interested in constitutions. That’s why we don’t have one. We tend to drift away from arguments about abstract reasoning.”

A very vocal minority of EU-sceptics would have us believe that ordinary men and women on the street genuinely care about loss of sovereignty, or about being called “citizens” as well as “subjects”. Yet the vast majority simply don’t care.

What most people care about is how much money they’ve got in the bank, not strange arguments about whether decisions are best taken at a national or European level – because most people have just about as much connection to and understanding of what goes on in Westminster and Whitehall as they do the workings of the EU. (Plus, if you start getting het up about Brussels passing laws without sufficient scrutiny, sooner or later you’re going to have to face the fact that this happens in Westminster far more often than in Brussels. If you start arguing that the EU is too far removed from the people of Britain to take decisions for them, you’ll end up with people in Yorkshire or Cornwall asking why a bunch of people in London should have a say over their lives.)

As Parris notes, you ask people if they want a say, they’ll say yes whether they really care or know about an issue or not. That’s where the support for the referendum has come from. But now that the reform treaty is a done deal, the momentum will fade. If Gordon can last out to the formal signing next year, public interest will have drooped so significantly that everyone will instead be wondering what all the fuss was about. As Mark Mardell points out, Brown “calculates that while the Conservatives’ charge that he doesn’t trust the people may do some short-term damage, it’s unlikely to still be hurting him come the time for an election”.

And so the EU project continues its sluggish reform. Because despite the whoops and yells from the usual suspects, the reform treaty if anything reduces the EU’s ability to further integrate. Yes, qualified majority voting is extended in some areas, but so is the ability of the European Parliament – and national parliaments – to influence legislation, and – for the first time – it brings in ways for member states to actually leave the union. The proverbial six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Because, you see, that’s what happens when you try and get a compromise between 27 different interest groups on a document designed in committee – the end result is bland and uninspiring, with little of any real substance or radicalism about it. Which is precisely why opponents of the EU have had to shift the argument on to the referendum issue – a simpler, easier to understand issue on which everyone thinks they know what they’re talking about, and about which it’s a lot easier to get excited than a massively long legal text that hardly anyone really understands, and that’s deliberately so vague it can be interpreted in any number of ways.

(Apologies for the lack of posts here of late – they’ve all been going up at dliberation, where I’ve spent the last few days trying to do statistical analysis to work out the representativeness of the Tomorrow’s Europe poll, and increasingly coming to the opinion that the EU will never and probably should never be a democracy… On which more, no doubt, later…)

The graphic above appears on the Sun’s website today as part of their “Oi, Gordon – give us a referendum on the EU reform treaty or else” campaign.

That it’s full of distortions is unsurprising, but some of these key points appear to be outright lies.

I mean, I’ve read the old constitution, upon which the new treaty is heavily based, and am fairly well up on the contents of the new reform treaty. By my reckoning:

LIES: At no point is the EU given powers to oversee the UK economy. At no point is an EU army (Churchill’s idea, that…) founded. There is no mention of the EU gaining control of health and education. Britain has maintained its opt-out over human rights clauses, as well as over immigration and asylum. Oh, and – even if it may be very similar to the old constitution – it’s no longer a constitution.

DISTORTIONS: Under the terms of the new text, there will be no EU Foreign Minister (merely a powerless foreign affairs spokesman). Even the lost vetoes and diplomatic service thing are, in context, overblown and not as drastic as they are made out.

In other words, out of the ten attention-grabbing items listed in that graphic (the only part of the story most Sun readers are likely to bother reading), no fewer than nine are more or less nonsense.

Ah… Informed debate, eh? Dontcha just love it?

Oh, and please also note that in their report on their MORI poll on the EU treaty and proposed referendum, their figures are different between the pie charts and the text.

In the pie charts, 32% are for, 38% against – a significant six point difference. In the text, 44% are for, 46% against – within the margin of error.

And, as blogging poll expert Anthony Wells notes, those figures could also – rather than suggest, as the Sun does, that a referendum is both essential and going to provide an inevitable win for the “No” camp – show that the “Yes” camp has a far stronger chance of winning than anyone ever expected.

So, is new Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov going to be the next President? After all, Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister (out of nowhere) shortly before the 2000 presidential election in which Putin took power. Is Vlad following Boris’ lead in appointing his own successor?

Because, let’s face it, Russia’s been going even more mental than usual in the last few months – always a sign that an election’s coming up. Hell, even in the last couple of days we’ve had reminders of pre-Litvinenko poisonings from the President of Ukraine, massive bomb tests and Russian bombers being intercepted entering NATO airspace.

With three months to go until the parliamentary and six months until the presidential elections (in which Putin – despite his massive domestic popularity – can’t stand for constitutional reasons), unlike the last few election periods (2003/4, 1999/2000 and 1995/6) so far there hasn’t been any major chaos in Chechnya, nor heightened threats of “Chechen terrorism” to provide a handy unifying force. Instead, Putin seems to have picked a far bigger menace to help bring Russia together behind whoever it is he picks to succeed him: the West.

Ah… Cold War rhetoric… Don’t you just love it?

But anyway, who’s this Zubkov chap, who’s now pretty much the front-runner to be Putin’s successor (following the precedent of Yeltsin’s appointment of the then largely unknown Putin as Prime Minister shortly before the 2000 presidential elections)?
Continue Reading

Everyone in the UK knows that of the national daily papers, it’s really only the barely-read (and increasingly unreadable) Guardian (c.311,000 sales per issue) and Independent (c.190,000 sales per issue) who are in favour of the European Union.

The Times (c.595,000) and Sun (c.2,916,000) follow their owner Rupert Murdoch’s eurosceptic lead. The Telegraph (c.833,000) and Mail (c.2,205,000) play to the middle-England, vaguely xenophobic gallery. The People (c.667,000) is also instinctively anti-EU in most of its approaches, most of the time. The Express (c.735,000) does what the Mail does, only with less panache. If you count the similarly unthinking Star (c.667,000) and Sport (c.93,000) as newspapers, they’re also primarily anti-EU on the rare occasions they bother to mention it.

Then there’s the effectively EU-neutral Mirror (c.1,425,000) – which will run anti-EU pieces quite happily, but also take on pro-EU government propaganda just to be different to the Sun – and largely impartial Financial Times (c.130,000).

So, daily – according to those ABC figures – that makes 13,055,000 anti-EU newspaper sales and 1,555,000 EU-neutral sales, compared to just 501,000 pro-EU newspaper sales.
Continue Reading

A fun little article on Europe in 2057, combined with Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s reiteration of the UK government’s position on a referendum over the new EU treaty, has got me pondering once again. (Warning – it’ll be a long one…)

It all starts from the fact that – and as I argued earlier this month – the new EU treaty simply doesn’t do what it needs to.

In setting up an EU president (with a maximum term of just five years) and marginally streamlining (via a – relatively – minor expansion of qualified majority voting) the process by which the EU can bring new laws and regulations into effect (because, obviously, we haven’t got enough already), it provides mere cosmetic fixes for deep structural issues while altogether ignoring some of the most vital underlying problems.

After all, where’s the vitally-needed rethink on the Common Agricultural Policy, the single most indefensible aspect of the EU’s existence? Where’s the fresh take on the Common Fisheries Policy? Where’s the expansion of democratic accountability, the significant increase in the power of the European Parliament, the long-promised massive reduction in the power of the Commission? Hell, where’s the logical and fair redistribution of political power and EU subsidies across the full 27 member states which was, after all, the primary reason for a new EU treaty in the first place?

It is, in other words, the international treaty equivalent of whacking some lipstick on the elephant man, the proverbial polishing of a turd.
Continue Reading

So, I’ve been slowly chugging through the tediousness that is the EU’s draft Reform Treaty.

Packed with boredom and predictability, with no real surprises and very few really important changes to the way the EU currently works, it’s one of the dullest documents I’ve had the misfortune to read in quite a while. Which, let’s face it, is hardly surprising considering it’s taken years of petty squabbling and bland compromises to get agreement on the thing. It is, however, rather easier to read than the old Constitution text, strikes me as a fair bit shorter too – and also seems to be full of both contradictions and missed opportunities, which should allow lawyers, politicians, journalists and analysts to argue over precisely what it means and achieves for years to come.

But first, what does the thing actually set out change?

The main new introductions are – from what I can tell – as follows: Continue Reading

Well, now that the EU has lent its collective support to the UK’s efforts, and with Gordon Brown heading off to meet Nicholas Sarkozy tomorrow (where the Russia dispute will almost certainly be raised), it’s no doubt past time to have a gander at what this is really all about – and where it’s likely to lead.

Because, let’s face it, though the high-profile murder of a political refugee on the streets of London is a fairly big deal, it’s not remotely big enough to warrant escalating an already tense European relationship with Russia. After all, if every political murder led to international incidents, when are we going to start expelling diplomats over the suspicious death of Egyptian billionaire (and alleged Mossad agent) Ashraf Marwan a few weeks back?
Continue Reading

So, according to a poll for the Financial Times, a decent majority of Europeans want the chance to vote on whatever treaty / constitution eventually emerges for the future of Europe.

We’ve now got everyone from the full-on eurosceptic UKIP and the loosely eurosceptic Tories through to the Young European Federalists all behind the referendum idea – all, naturally, hoping that the European public will back their own stance and therefore give them legitimacy. (Well, except the Tories, who are probably hoping that a British “no” vote under a Labour government would let them nicely off the hook…)

In an ideal world, yes, an EU-wide referendum – every country voting on the same day, every country needing to return a majority on a simple yes/no question – would be the best way to secure proper legitimacy for the next step in the EU’s evolution. God knows, there’s little enough democratic backing for the thing as it currently stands.

But the thing is, unless the people voting in the referendum really know what they’re voting about, the whole exercise will be pointless. As happened in the pro-EU camp after the French and Dutch constitutional referenda, and in the anti-EU camp after the British EEC referendum back in the 1970s, the losing side will simply claim that they would have had more support if the people only knew what they were doing.

This is born out fully by the FT poll – 69% of Brits surveyed want a referendum. 55% haven’t got the first clue what the EU constitution was actually all about.

Any long-term readers of this blog will doubtless be aware that the EU is both incredibly dull and insanely complex. I don’t pretend to understand half of the bloody thing, despite being fairly intelligent, well-educated, and having worked in politics in both Brussels and Westminster in my time. Having read the old constitution text all the way through, though I think I understood most of it the damned thing was so long I really couldn’t be certain.

While supporters of the referendum idea always shout this down with accusations that even bringing it up shows a patronising, paternalistic, anti-democratic contempt for the public’s intelligence, it’s simply true: the European public as a whole do not and probably can not understand enough about the complexities of EU reform to make an adequate judgement in a referendum.

That lack of understanding will most likely lead to a low turn-out – bar in those member states mid-way through a governmental term with voters getting restless – and a low turnout would again undermine the legitimacy of the entire process. It would also mean that the extremists at either end of the EU spectrum – the rabid withdrawalists on one side and the barking integrationists on the other – will get to settle the matter by sheer weight of numbers and organisational skill.

In the UK, of course, the Eurosceptics are far better mobilised, and have the press on their side to boot – with the Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun and News of the World all pretty much guaranteed to support a “no”, with only the little-read Guardian and Independent likely to come out in favour of a “yes”. In any referendum, following a solid two decades of populist (and frequently exaggerated if not outright inaccurate) anti-EU rhetoric seeping from press and politicians in a constant stream, the UK’s population is likely to vote “no” not because they’ve assessed the merits of the constitution / treaty, but through petty partisan/patriotic ignorance.

That, at least, is how it will be represented by supporters of the new treaty.

Personally, while disliking the concept of referenda and direct democracy intensely (for reasons too long-winded to go into now), and while being largely pro-EU, I’m actually in favour of a referendum for the very reason that the end result is bound to be another “no”, which will lead to yet more votes and yet more “no”s. Yes, the majority of member states will likely pass the thing – but not Britain, not the Czech Republic, not Poland, and quite possibly not Holland or France again either.

Another rejection via referendum would, hopefully, finally force the EU bigwigs back to the drawing board for real. It might, if we’re lucky, make them face up to the fact that what the EU needs isn’t just a partial reorganisation and a few bells and whistles, but wholesale reform and restructuring. And if the next rejection doesn’t do the job, maybe the one after that will.

Because just as the constitution was a botched compromise – designed to lessen the problems of the botched compromise that was the Treaty of Nice, which was meant to reform the botched compromise of Maastricht, and so on ad infinitum – the new “mini-treaty” is bound to be a botched compromise instead. A meaningless, bland mish-mash of what everyone wants which will leave no one entirely satisfied.

What the EU needs is not yet another treaty designed by committee that fails once again to tackle the real problems – it needs something radical.

If a referendum rejection can force them towards a radical solution – even if that solution were to be to boot those states that vote “no” out of the club so that the rest can get on with it – so much the better. Because the current situation with the EU is decidedly a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth – and all because none of the cooks have known what the recipe is for well over a decade. It gets to a stage when what you need is not a bit more seasoning, but to throw the whole lot out and start again from scratch, this time learning from your mistakes rather than constantly adding to them.

Sadly, however, learning from mistakes doesn’t seem to be an EU strong point…

Since the initial expansion to 25 member states back in 2004, the future of the EU has been wildly uncertain. The constitution was supposed to sort everything out but, as we all know, that little project has failed dismally. For the last three years, the European Union has been in a state of growing stagnation, with no obvious way out thanks to the various petty spats and disagreements.

In Britain – rarely a country to seek active engagement in EU politics – Blair’s been on his way out for what seems like forever. Everyone’s known that Gordon Brown was likely to succeed even before Labour failed to find a viaible candidate to oppose him. But with the UK economy beginning to show signs of faltering and discontent with the government steadily rising, few would be keen to put too much money on Brown being returned with a working majority at the next general election, now most likely in 2009. Neither Brown nor opposition leader David Cameron, in any case, are likely to focus too much on the European Union in the next few years, as the issue is simply far too contentious – and with a tight election on the cards, neither can risk alienating the electorate by engaging too closely with Brussels. Expect no EU leadership from the UK.

In Germany, despite her best efforts during her current EU presidency, Angela Merkel has made little headway in pushing through EU reform, and is also still in the tricky position of ruling via a fragile coalition that could fracture in a moment, given the right point of contention. With Poland and – especially – Russia to worry about to the east, Germany is in any case too threatened by immediate problems to really care too much about theoretical long-term development.

In Italy, as always in that perennially unstable country, the government is still on the brink of collapse. Romano Prodi may be far and away the most EU-experienced national leader, but his domestic troubles mean that no one in the wider EU can rely on him to be in office in six months, let alone the few years it will doubtless take to push through major EU reforms.

Poland, the only new member state with a large enough EU vote to be a serious contender in shaping the future of EU reform, is currently led by a pair of twin maniacs set on purging their country of anyone they dislike – be it suspected former communists or homosexuals. With ever increasing lurches towards hard right authoritarianism, Poland has firmly positioned itself as the black sheep of the European Union – largely ignored with embarrassment, the rest of the time more or less gently being chastised by the other member states. The KaczyÅ„ski twins (one as President, one as Prime Minister) have only been in power for a year and a bit, and are likely to stick around for a while, but with a new model Polish nationalism increasingly at the heart of their politics, constructive engagement with the EU is highly unlikely to be on their agenda any time soon.

In Spain, meanwhile, the only other EU country even close to being large enough to exert any influence, Zapatero’s socialist government has increasingly been coming into conflict with the right – and now faces the threat of fresh ETA attacks, following the Basque terrorist group’s decision to drop their ceasefire last week. Having allowed the naturalisation of thousands of illegal immigrants – without consultation with the rest of the EU – Zapatero is also not flavour of the week in Brussels, and the recent elections of the right-wing and more pro-American Sarkzozy in France and Merkel in Germany have destroyed his previous European strategy of forming a bloc with those two countries. While friendly with Prodi (for as long as he’ll be around), Zapatero’s anti-US and pro-EU constitution rhetoric ensures he’s unlikely to find an ally in Gordon Brown, and the brief period where it looked like Spain may have some influence over the future of the EU seems to have come to an end.

So who does that leave? Surprise surprise – the country that ALWAYS seems to shape the future of the EU… France.

Six months ago, Sarkozy’s succession was highly doubtful. Chirac seemed opposed to him, Royal looked to be gaining popularity, and there was that whole potential scandal over the Clearstream affiar lurking in the background which could easily have ended his hopes of nomination, let alone election.

Now, however, Sarkozy seems to have the most secure political position of any leader of the major European powers. By all accounts, the French parliamentary elections are going to end up a landslide for the UMP – the first time in 30 years that an sitting French government has been returned with a majority.

On the domestic front, this gives Sarkozy carte blanche to put in place pretty much any reforms he likes – be it increasing the 35 hour working week, cutting immigration, cutting taxes, reducing the civil service, or reordering the criminal justice system.

But from the European Union perspective, this double endorsement of the Sarkozy approach likewise gives him a pretty much indisputable right to tell Brussels that what he says goes. Having rejected the EU constitution, French voters have now endorsed a president and a party which proposes a “mini treaty” approach, a president who has publicly declared the existing constitution “dead”. With Sarkozy now doubly endorsed, the stake has been driven well and truly through the constitution’s heart.

French opinion can (perhaps sadly) never be ignored when it comes to reforming the EU – a fact that Romano Prodi noted this time last year when he stated that any revision of the current plans could not possibly take place until after the French elections. Notably, since Sarkozy’s election, the formerly pro-constitution Prodi has begun to back the mini-treaty idea, and has even hinted at a multi-tier Europe. Surely even the nuttily pro-constitution Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who’s been performing frantic constitutional CPR for the last couple of years, can’t try and keep the thing alive now?

What this all means, therefore, is that Sarkozy is pretty much going to be able to dictate terms to Brussels. He will get his mini-treaty – at least in some shape or other. Gordon Brown is likely to back the idea, if not the detail. So is Prodi. So will – most likely – the Netherlands, Denmark and the Czech Republic, just to name a few off the top of my head.

And so we’re about to enter into another period of delaying tactics and discussions of a new direction. Despite Merkel’s hopes of sorting out the detail this summer, the mini-treaty is unlikely to be finalised until at least this time next year – most likely some time after July 2008, when France (conveniently enough) takes over the EU presidency.

That will then give Sarkozy another four years in office to sort out the longer-term fix for the EU that is increasingly desperately needed. Hell, if he gets close to the mini-treaty he wants, he may even go one step further and try his hand at broader diplomacy, and try to reignite the old special relationship between France and Russia with Putin’s successor, scheduled to take over in March 2008. So far, the signs are good, Sarkozy offering himself as mediator, and trying to position himself firmly as an unbiased party in the US / Russia missile bases dispute. Hell, he’s even been getting drunk with Putin – surely a good sign?

Possibly, just possibly, Sarkozy could be the answer to the EU’s prayers. A strong, secure leader of one of the most influential EU member states, with a cabinet that shows he’s willing to compromise and work on bipartisan terms despite his large majority, who’s regarded as both pro-US and rationally pro-EU, who looks to be cultivating friendship with Russia, and whose very first act on becoming president was to jet off to discuss the Union’s future.

I never would have thought I’d be saying this six months ago, but Sarkozy is by far our best hope for a workable European Union. Even more shockingly, I’m coming to respect this guy quite a bit.

As the G8 seems to be trying to focus on cutting emissions and the like, I’m going to set out my take on climate change, point by point. I imagine it’s different to what most people would expect, what with me being (very vaguely) a centre-left liberal – and I’m genuinely intrigued to know what it is I seem to be missing that makes me go against the current consensus.

Here’s how I see it:

1) The long view

a) The climate, the world doesn’t work to mankind’s timescales. Eons mean nothing – you have to look at hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of years to genuinely detect trends.

b) We still have polar ice caps and glaciers in many mountain ranges, therefore we are still, by definition, in an ice age.

b) Check out the global temperature history charts – we’re currently on the upturn in average temperature after a period of extreme coolness. Warming is to be expected when an ice age is coming to an end.

2) The mid-range view

a) Accurate records of earth’s temperature have only existed since the 18th century (thanks to Gabriel Fahrenheit and, to a lesser extent, Anders Celcius).

b) This was during the “Little Ice Age“, a period of increased coolness that lasted several hundred years (less than the blink of an eye in glacial terms), until the mid-19th century.

c) This means that when we’re told “it’s the hottest since records began”, you may as well say in June that “it’s the hottest since February”. Of course it’s (on average) hotter than it was during a cold spell which we’ve now come out of.

d) There was also a “Medieval Warm Period“, with some (unscientific) evidence of higher than average temperatures similar to those of the mid-20th century. Who’s to say we’re not entering another one of those.

3) The short-term view

a) Scary charts like this one make it look like the earth is warming rapidly, and that this warming started in the mid-19th century, when industrialisation was beginning to peak.

b) This ignores the long and mid-term views: this chart is more like it, but even that doesn’t give a fair indication, as the world works in cycles of tens of millions of years, not mere centuries. Correlation with the expansion of industrial emissions does not equal causation.

4) However…

a) Even if you dismiss the upturn in global temperature since the Industrial Revolution as coincidence, surely pumping loads of nasty chemicals into the atmosphere and ocean can’t be good, and it would be a very good thing for us to cut down on pollutants.

b) The cleaning up of the London fog / smog after the 1956 Clean Air Act seems to show mankind can have an effect. (Although some evidence suggests the fog was declining anyway, plus London is situated at the bottom of a rounded valley, helping to create a microclimate that trapped pollutants, so is hardly analogous with wider environments.)

c) Carbon dioxide emissions have indeed risen a lot since the Industrial Revolution, to levels higher than ever seen before (as far as we can tell). The chart could look scary – until you notice the remarkable regularity of the sudden increases in Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere approximately every 100 thousand years. The last one of which was approximately 100 thousand years ago… (We don’t, by the way, have any way of telling the Carbon Dioxide concentration in the atmosphere further back than that – and all those figures come from within the current ice age, from gas trapped in the polar ice caps. See this chart for a handy comparison of CO2 and temperature fluctuations during this ice age, from long before man had invented the coal fire…)

5) However number 2…

a) None of this means that climate change ISN’T happening, as some opponents of the global warming lobby claim. If anything, it provides additional evidence that it is.

b) It does, however, cast doubt on the claims about the CAUSES of climate change – at least as far as I’m concerned. Where’s the proof that industrialisation has really caused the current warming, when we were probably due a rise in temperatures anyway, and when – as we’re still in an ice age – the only logical way for the Earth’s temperature to go is up?

6) So what should be done?

If you take climate change to be a very long-term phenomenon, caused by regular cyclical variations in the Earth’s temperature and atmosphere caused for reasons we can barely guess at (much like the probably overdue polar switch)…

We could spend lots of time and money cutting carbon emissions and taxing cars and planes – hell, it certainly can’t hurt. Helping the energy companies to find some genuinely viaible alternative fuel sources would be nice and all.

But in reality there’s not a lot we can do bar damage limitation – at some point the current ice age is going to end no matter what we do. At that stage, the Earth’s average temperature is going to rise by as much as 10 degrees (over the course of a few centuries, most likely). That would make pretty much the entire area between the tropics uninhabitable, and destroy the majority of the world’s current breadbasket – not to mention the sea-level rises caused by the complete melting of BOTH polar ice caps.

This has happened many times before, and when it happens again, we’re screwed, many millions of people are going to die, the world we know will be utterly changed, and there’s precisely nothing we can do about it.

So hell, might as well enjoy the cheap flights while we can, eh? Especially as oil’s bound to run out fairly soon to boot (a finite supply being used up at ever-increasing rates? Doesn’t take a genius to work it out… Remember when Britain used to have coal?)

Go on then, someone show me why I’m wrong – or is it just my word against Al Gore’s?

Update: Catching up on my blog reading, this is very interesting – a series of profiles of respected scientists who deny the supposed consensus on climate change (via). This one, on the role of Carbon Dioxide, is of particular interest, as far as my own doubts are concerned, largely due to step 3′s summary of the reason for picking on man’s activity as the cause of the current apparent rise in temperatures:

No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

And therein lies my problem – as I’ll no doubt elaborate in the comments a bit later. We simply don’t know what caused the Earth to warm up in the past, nor what caused C02 levels to rise and fall on a 100,000 year cycle. Until we know the past causes, how can we possibly predict the future consequences? – not least in a system as complex as the atmosphere, so notoriously difficult to predict that it’s well nigh impossible to accurately say what the weather will be like next week, let alone in a hundred years.

(It also reminded me of a post from a year ago, Merrick on why “carbon offsets are a fraud”, which is well worth a read, though Merrick would doubtless disagree with the main thrust of this post…)

In lieu of inspiration I’ve been reading a few precursors to bloggers to try and get the creative juices flowing.

As such, pertinent find from Dr Johnson’s Rambler (No.3, June 5th 1750):

It is… quickly discoverable, that consultation and compliance can conduce little to the perfection of any literary performance; for whoever is so doubtful of his own abilities as to encourage the remarks of others, will find himself every day embarrassed with new difficulties, and will harass his mind, in vain, with the hopeless labour of uniting heterogeneous ideas, digesting independent hints, and collecting into one point the several rays of borrowed light, emitted often with contrary directions.

Of all authors, those who retail their labours in periodical sheets would be most unhappy, if they were much to regard the censures or admonitions of their readers : for… it is always imagined, by those who think themselves qualified to give instructions, that they may yet redeem their former failings by hearkening to better judges, and supply the deficiencies of their plan, by the help of the criticisms which are so liberally afforded…

Of the great force of preconceived opinions I had many proofs, when I first entered upon this weekly labour. My readers having, from the performances of my predecessors, established an idea of unconnected essays, to which they believed all future authors under a necessity of conforming, were impatient of the least deviation from their system, and numerous remonstrances were accordingly made by each, as he found his favourite subject omitted or delayed. Some were angry that the Rambler did not, like the Spectator, introduce himself to the acquaintance of the publick, by an account of his own birth and studies, an enumeration of his adventures, and a description of his physiognomy. Others soon began to remark that he was a solemn, serious, dictatorial writer, without sprightliness or gaiety, and called out with vehemence for mirth and humour. Another admonished him to have a special eye upon the various clubs of this great city, and informed him that much of the Spectator’s vivacity was laid out upon such assemblies. He has been censured for not imitating the politeness of his predecessors, having hitherto neglected to take the ladies under his protection, and give them rules for the just opposition of colours, and the proper dimensions of ruffles and pinners. He has been required by one to fix a particular censure upon those matrons who play at cards with spectacles: and another is very much offended whenever he meets with a speculation in which naked precepts are comprised without the illustration of examples and characters.

I make not the least question that all these monitors intend the promotion of my design, and the instruction of my readers; but they do not know, or do not reflect, that an author has a rule of choice peculiar to himself; and selects those subjects which he is best qualified to treat, by the course of his studies, or the accidents of his life; that some topicks of amusement have been already treated with too much success to invite a competition; and that he who endeavours to gain many readers must try; various arts of invitation, essay every avenue of pleasure, and make frequent changes in his methods of approach.

I cannot but consider myself, amidst this tumult of criticism, as a ship in a poetical tempest, impelled at the same time by opposite winds, and dashed by the waves from every quarter, but held upright by the contrariety of the assailants, and secured in some measure by multiplicity of distress. Had the opinion of my censurers been unanimous, it might perhaps have overset my resolution; but since I find them at variance with each other, I can, without scruple, neglect them, and endeavour to gain the favour of the publick by following the direction of my own reason, and indulging the sallies of my own imagination.

Much of familiarity there to any blogger – especially to those, like me, who try to avoid petty partisanship – shot by both sides, as the title of a much-missed old blog would have it, a blog destroyed through the petty vindictiveness of a reader who utterly misunderstood the point.

Writing about the EU, the point is almost always misunderstood – the preconception is that to write about the European Union you must either be a europhile or a eurosceptic, whereas I am neither. Add to that the fact that the whole thing is so vast and complex (especially when you chuck in the internal and international politics of all 27 member states) that I doubt if any one person can fully understand and be aware of all its workings, so we’re also all discussing it from a position of greater or lesser ignorance. (This being one of the principle current concerns that has led to my current semi-hiatus…)

And then, to one of the undisputed masters, Joseph Addison in The Spectator (No.476, 5th September 1712) – whose advice on writing with “Method” I should probably heed in future, being of the tendency of rattling off the first thing that comes into my head, and hoping an argument and structure will form as I write…:

Among my Daily-Papers which I bestow on the Publick, there are some which are written with Regularity and Method, and others that run out into the Wildness of those Compositions which go by the Names of Essays. As for the first, I have the whole Scheme of the Discourse in my Mind before I set Pen to Paper. In the other kind of Writing, it is sufficient that I have several Thoughts on a Subject, without troubling my self to range them in such order, that they may seem to grow out of one another, and be disposed under the proper Heads. Seneca and Montaigne are Patterns for Writing in this last kind, as Tully and Aristotle excel in the other. When I read an Author of Genius who writes without Method, I fancy myself in a Wood that abounds with a great many noble Objects, rising among one another in the greatest Confusion and Disorder. When I read a methodical Discourse, I am in a regular Plantation, and can place my self in its several Centres, so as to take a view of all the Lines and Walks that are struck from them. You may ramble in the one a whole Day together, and every Moment discover something or other that is new to you; but when you have done, you will have but a confused imperfect Notion of the Place: In the other, your Eye commands the whole Prospect, and gives you such an Idea of it, as is not easily worn out of the Memory.

Irregularity and want of Method are only supportable in Men of great Learning or Genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore chuse to throw down their Pearls in Heaps before the Reader, rather than be at the Pains of stringing them.

Addison then continues with a perfect description of the two principle kinds of blogger:

Tom Puzzle is one of the most Eminent Immethodical Disputants of any that has fallen under my Observation. Tom has read enough to make him very Impertinent; his Knowledge is sufficient to raise Doubts, but not to clear them. It is pity that he has so much Learning, or that he has not a great deal more. With these Qualifications Tom sets up for a Free-thinker, finds a great many things to blame in the Constitution of his Country… He has got about half a dozen common-place Topicks, into which he never fails to turn the Conversation, whatever was the Occasion of it… This makes Mr. Puzzle the Admiration of all those who have less Sense than himself, and the Contempt of those who have more. There is none in Town whom Tom dreads so much as my Friend Will Dry. Will, who is acquainted with Tom‘s Logick, when he finds him running off the Question, cuts him short with a What then? We allow all this to be true, but what is it to our present Purpose? I have known Tom eloquent half an hour together, and triumphing, as he thought, in the Superiority of the Argument, when he has been non-plus’d on a sudden by Mr. Dry‘s deSir ing him to tell the Company what it was that he endeavoured to prove. In short, Dry is a Man of a clear methodical Head, but few Words, and gains the same Advantage over Puzzle, that a small Body of regular Troops would gain over a numberless undisciplined Militia.

The fact that Tom Puzzles vastly outnumber Will Drys in blogland is another cause for depression…

A revealing interview with Geoff Hoon in Le Figaro (in English) has confirmed something I’ve suspected for quite a while now – the UK simply does not have an EU policy.

Hoon, following his poor showing with the Defence portfolio was demoted to Leader of the House, which he also messed up, leading to further demotion to Europe Minister. On the surface, Hoon’s appointment could have been seen as a sensible move – he did, after all, spend almost a decade as an MEP, so should know what he’s talking about. But this is Geoff Hoon we’re talking about. In his year in the post, what contributions has he made to the EU debate that’s been raging in other member states? Let’s see…

On December 6th 2006, Hoon asserted that “The Government have a very clear policy on the European constitution,” and that policy was set out in a Written Ministerial Statement of 5th December 2006. The key points?

1) Pursuing British interests
2) Modernisation and effectiveness
3) Consensus
4) Subsidiarity (working at the right level)
5) Use of existing Treaties
6) Openness

How well has this been done? Well, considering that no changes to the EU can occur without consensus, point 3 strikes ma as the most important. How well has the UK done in building a consensus of opinion in the EU in the months since Hoon outlined the (decidedly vague and management jargon-heavy) British approach?

- 20th February 2007, Geoff Hoon: “There is no consensus among member states at this stage”
- 20th March 2007, Geoff Hoon: “At present there is no consensus among EU Governments”
- 1st May 2007, Geoff Hoon: “There is at present no consensus among EU partners on the way forward”

Oh dear.

But go back to the interview with Hoon in Le Figaro, and little wonder Britain’s not managed to get consensus. For one thing, it’s pretty clear that our Europe Minister – and therefore our government as a whole – is concerned less with what actually happens in terms of EU reform, but in how it appears, as with an EU foreign minister:

“We are worried because the title ‘minister’ would inevitably have a state connotation. But the aim is not to create a European state. This title will have to be reconsidered”

And again, “These are politically sensitive issues”, and the classic “We will have to discuss the details” followed swiftly by “I do not want to go into details”…

Meanwhile, has Hoon actually pressed ahead with any major meetings? Well, no. The big EU meetings, face-to-face with heads of state and the like, have been handled by Tony Blair (when he can be bothered, or if he’s been invited…). The regular policy discussions are handled at the monthly meetings of EU Foreign ministers, which Hoon’s boss Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett attends.

So, has Margaret Beckett got anywhere?

- 1st May 2007, Margaret Beckett: “At present, there remains no consensus among EU partners”

Oh dear… And as her opposite number William Hague noted when Mrs Beckett reported back from the European Council in December, “The Foreign Secretary… failed to mention one thing—the European constitution.”

This prompted a long and rambling response from Mrs Beckett that ended quite simply and revealingly with, “we will see what proposals are put forward”.

Yep, it’s John Major’s “wait and see” all over again. Which has, it would appear, been the British government’s policy towards the EU for at least two years now. As Hoon’s statements in that interview with Le Figaro make clear, no one in the British government is willing to go on record saying anything other than the most vague nonsense about the next steps for the EU.

Do we support a multi-speed Europe, as proposed again yesterday by Romano Prodi (and as Nicholas Sarkozy seems to be vaguely pushing for with his “Mediterranean Union” idea)? It seems an obvious position for Britain to adopt, after all – avoid all the nasty ramifications of the constitution, get fresh opt-outs in economic and judicial policies, and don’t hamper our partners at the same time.

If we don’t support different tiers of EU participation, are we simply looking to pick a fight with our neighbours by putting the brakes on their plans for further integration? Does Gordon Brown henchman Ed Balls’ talk of a “hard-headed pro-Europeanism” indicate a new way forward, or is it simply (as I strongly suspect) the same old prevarication dressed up in fancy new language? Does anyone in government even know what Britain’s EU policy is any more?

And the next UK Prime Minister’s attitude towards the EU? It’s anyone’s guess, as he has yet to make his position even slightly clear. All we do know is that it’s not on his list of priorities – which hardly bodes well for the future of EU reform.

As one of the largest and most economically powerful countries in the EU, the UK should be at the forefront of discussions – not just to have her say, but also because no other EU countries can possibly reach the “consensus” that is Britain’s declared aim without knowing the position of one of the big three. Yet throughout the German presidency Britain has shirked her European responsibilities, just as she did when the UK herself held the EU presidency. Once again, the UK is holding the EU back – more subtly and less confrontationally than Poland, perhaps, but just as effectively.

If the EU is ever going to get a consensus on the future of the EU, the core problem has to be tackled – and that problem is not nor ever has been the precise nature of the much-needed institutional reforms, it’s the ambiguous attitude and apathetic reluctance of the United Kingdom whenever the European Union is mentioned. It’s almost as if the British government has its fingers in its ears, humming to itself, pretending that the EU doesn’t exist and that maybe if they ignore it long enough it’ll just go away. Well, surprise surprise – it won’t. Consensus doesn’t come without discussion, the one thing the British government seems to hate above all else.

Will Gordon Brown change anything when he becomes Prime Minister? Well, just like the government when it comes to the EU, we’ll have to wait and see. But I doubt it very much indeed.

Update: More on this from the Telegraph

You see, the thing about the EU is that it’s first and foremost supposed to promote and facilitate free trade. Of course, as not every country in the world is a member of the EU, what it’s ended up being is a kind of free trade area. (Only not a perfect one, obviously, thanks to the vagaries of cross-border economics, the lack of a pan-EU single currency and such like.)

But one of the biggest, most damning criticisms of the EU is that the Single Market amounts to little more than a customs union, a zone of economic protectionism for EU member states, which is doing more than pretty much anything (well, bar the Common Agricultural Policy, perhaps) to screw the chances of developing nations to grow their own international trade and compete on the global stage.

Well, too little too late, perhaps, but in recent years the EU has been making some vague noises as if it’s going to try to rectify this situation. Most of which, it must be said, have been due to external pressure, such as the recent battle with China over EU restrictions on clothing imports, or the discussions with the US a year or so back, during which the Americans offered to drop their agricultural subsidies to US farmers if the EU would likewise drop the CAP. (Thanks to France’s reliance on the current CAP arrangements, unsurprisingly this cut no dice. But had the deal gone ahead, lefties world wide would have ended up in the amusing position of having to revise their hatred of George W Bush, because if that proposal had been accepted then it would have done more to alleviate global poverty than pretty much any agreement ever… Heads would doubtless have exploded in confusion.)

The major reason for this change of protectionist heart is that the World Trade Organisation has also ruled that the EU’s current elaborate system of deals with non-EU countries (largely the “ACP countries“) is illegal. Dubbed “preferential trade agreements”, they were largely (if unconsciously) modelled on the deals France got in at the EEC’s foundation to allow former French colonies access to European markets, but have the added benefit of artificially stabilising prices. Fine for rich European nations – cheaper food. Rather worse, however, for poor African farmers, desperately trying to find a market for their meagre goods.

So, thanks to the WTO, all these preferential trade agreements have to be replaced with “economic partnership agreements” (EPAs) by the end of this year. The idea, coming out of the Cotonou Agreement of 2000, is to gradually remove all the trade preferences and barriers that have developed between the EU and the 80-odd ACP countries over the last 30 years, to allow much more free economic development, and a much more equal trading partnership. And, to ensure that the WTO doesn’t get annoyed again, the EPAs will be available to every developing nation in the world.

With only a few exceptions, such as arms and munitions (and, I believe, sugar and rice for some reason), this will finally begin to create a much more free system of global trade, and – hopefully – begin to allow less developed countries to get a few benefits from globalisation for a change.

BUT.

Thanks to Spain (and the EU’s continued veto system, which the failed constitution was to rectify) the entire deal could be screwed, because our Iberian friends have seemingly only just realised – seven years after the Cotonou Agreement was made – that, erm, Spain grows a lot of bananas, and so do quite a few of the developing nations that the new EPAs are being set up with.

Yes, yes it does seem like Spain may have completely missed the point of “free trade” here. But they are also threatening to use their veto if they don’t get some kind of exemption for bananas (elections next year, and they don’t want to risk losing the farming vote). This will, of course, open the floodgates to every other EU member state to start demanding revisions and exemptions for their own pet products. Which will, of course, defeat the whole object of the thing.

Still, I have a solution. Scrap nation states’ vetoes. Scrap nation states. Scrap elections. Appoint me first President for Life of the European Union, and I’ll sort everything out. It’s the only way we’re ever going to get anything done, by the looks of things. The EU needs countless reforms, both major and minor, but every time it looks to be getting somewhere some uppity member state starts getting all selfish on us, usually for electoral reasons, and screwing everything up.

It can’t just be me who’s getting annoyed with this childishly petty short-termism of our dear elected representatives, can it? These new arrangements could have a massively beneficial impact on some of the poorest countries in the world, but because a few over-subsidised farmers in the Canary Islands may be unable to compete on a level playing field, Spain’s prepared to sign the death warrant for countless poor subsistence labourers throughout the third world. I mean, I’m not much of a one for all this “Live8″ and “Make Poverty History” nonsense, being far too cynical for all that, but really: what a bunch of absolute bastards.