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)?

He’s not a name periously much bandied about – he doesn’t warrant a single mention in Alexander Litvinenko’s grand anti-Putin conspiracy Blowing up Russia, for example – and for the last few years he’s held fairly anonymous positions in the finance ministry.

However, if you buy in to the Litvinenko conspiracy theory that the Russian presidency has been taken over by an elite group of ex-KGB men, and that the Russian polity is currently being carefully manipulated by the security services, Zubkov is an ideal successor to Putin to make the theory hold up.

Firstly, he (like Putin in 1999) is barely known. Secondly, Zubkov is also father-in-law to Russia’s Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, so can be assured of total loyalty should he become president and decide on yet more bomb tests, bomber flights into European airspace, or wars in Chechnya.

But, naturally enough, that’s not all…

His only previous attempt to gain proper elected office was running for governor of St Petersburg in 1999 – where he only managed fourth place. As anyone who’s been interested enough in Putin’s Russia to dig into the links a bit will know, it is Putin’s home town of St Petersberg which provides the clue.

Zubkov’s campaign manager back in 1999 was one Boris Gryzlov – currently Speaker of the Duma and leader of far and away the biggest political party, United Russia – despite having only moved into high-profile politics for the first time in 1999, coincidentally the same year that his fellow St Petersburger Putin suddenly burst onto the scene.

Gryzlov is also little-known, despite being a major political figure and routinely described as “a close ally of Putin”. One thing that is known, however, is that he went to school with both former head of the FSB (the successor to the KGB) Nikolay Patrushev (the man who succeeded Putin in the role, and who is a central character in Litvinenko’s allegations over the Russian apartment bombings) and current FSB head Sergei Smirnov. To top it off, Gryzlov’s business partner is one Viktor Ivanov, Putin’s deputy head of the presidential staff, and another former KGB man.

But that’s not the only interesting St Petersburg connection. Zubkov was also personally involved as a member of the “St Petersburg mafia” – as the group of ex-KGB and Red Army men working for the regime of St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak in the early 1990s became known – as first deputy chief of the Mayor’s Office external relations committee, the central official organisation from which the group operated, from 1991-93.

Viktor Ivanov was chief of the administrative staff at the time, and during the same period, the external relations committee also saw the presence of one Alexei Miller – currently CEO of energy giant Gazprom, which has arguably been holding much of Europe to ransom over the last couple of years thanks to its delightful way of playing politics with gas supplies. Some have even claimed that Gazprom’s decision to withhold gas supplies from places like Ukraine have been on the orders of the Kremlin, in order to help exert greater political pressure.

From 1991-96, the head of the St Petersburg external relations committee happened to be one Vladimir Putin.

Zubkov, in other words, would make an ideal presidential caretaker during the term in which old Vlad is constitutionally unable to stand for office. Come 2012, he could step down and our man Putin sweep back into the Kremlin on waves of populist glory. No one else, once again, will have a look-in.

More background and analysis: Scraps of Moscow, Russia Blog, Financial Times, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post and the Economist.

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.

(Chuck web readership on top, the basic split will barely change, as despite the Guardian‘s online popularity, much of GuardianUnlimited’s readership is not UK-based – and the more UK-dominated websites of the other newspapers have seen a huge boom in readership in the last couple of years. In terms of blogs, there’s pretty much only three regularly-updated British pro-EU blogs: this place (which is only loosely pro anyway), Jon Worth and Richard Corbett. Between us, we might manage a dozen posts a week, and a few thousand readers. Meanwhile the anti-EU British blogland consists of dozens of blogs with daily updates, and includes the likes of Tim Worstall and EU Referendum – who between just the two of them often put out a dozen posts a day, generating tens of thousands of visitors a week.)

But, of course, the EU is excruciatingly dull, so EU stories rarely ever make the papers. The only EU stories that sell are “Brussels bans…” or “Meddling bEUreaucrats want to take away your…” scare stories. Because, as with anything, bad news sells. Who’s interested in “Government initiative achieves everything it sets out to achieve”? We all want to hear about the cock-ups and imaginary conspiracies.

So even though the Guardian is mostly pro-EU (it still maintains a few loose ties to the traditionally anti-EU Labour left, after all), it’s very odd that it has decided to devote a leader to praising the EU today.

The timing is, of course, all thanks to the rumbling monster that is the supposedly growing popular support for a referendum on a complex legal document containing some 60,000 words and that can only be fully understood by continued cross-referencing to numerous other complex documents. (Well, the referendum campaign and the fact that we’re still in silly season waiting for parliament to come back from its insanely long summer holiday, so there’s nothing else to fill the paper with, at any rate…)

But it’s still rather odd. Guardian readers are usually of the instinctively pro-EU kind (“Well, it sounds lovely, doesn’t it, Prunella? People of all nationalities coming together to help each other out and stuff?” “Exactly what I was thinking, Quentin. Sod the reality – the idea’s lovely, isn’t it? Now let’s pick up an organic soya milk fair trade frappuccino on our way to the Islington recycling point, shall we?”), and no one else is going to read the thing. Why waste space blathering on about how the EU’s good for Britain?

But, you see, that’s the delight of discussing the EU in a positive light in this country. I remain firmly convinced that most people aren’t actually fully anti-EU, just not remotely interested. Most people aren’t interested in Westminster politics, after all – why the hell would they be interested in what goes on in Brussels? Add to that the sheer complexity of the EU – I’ve been writing about it almost daily for three years, and there’s still large chunks I don’t understand – and little wonder that apathy and lack of knowledge and interest is easily converted to knee-jerk hostility in a country with an overwhelmingly anti-EU public sphere.

So the Guardian‘s leader is utterly pointless, though making some good points. What us rare pro-EU types need to do to win converts is not list the benefits of EU membership or the positive things that the EU has achieved – because such things are both incredibly dull to read and ridiculously easy for anti-EU types to rebuff with sarcasm and humour.

What pro-EU types need to do is find a way of making the EU interesting – because that’s the only way it’s going to start gaining popular support in the UK. But with the current set-up, it is interesting only to hardcore politics geeks and people who like slow train wrecks. Its current set-up is too vast and dull ever to appeal to the masses, and it has also utterly lost the unifying ideal with which it set out fifty years ago. The missed opportunity of the constitution (why not a US-style text full of catchy soundbite ideals? I mean, seriously, why?) is one that no amount of after-the-fact hand-wringing is going to be able to fix.

It’s time for pro-EU types to start looking rationally at the situation, and to realise that the time to win converts to the cause is long past. Anyone who really wants the EU to succeed in the decades to come shouldn’t be defending the current behemoth of overlapping institutions that make up the thing, but attacking it.

The EU doesn’t need a reform treaty, it needs to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch. Start proposing that kind of radical change, with EU citizens involved at every stage of the rebuild, and the next stage of the EU – EU 2.0, if you will – should actually end up with genuine popular support. Without that support as its foundation, it’s only going to crumble.

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.

Yet in as much as all it achieves is a retrenchment of the current stagnation with a few superficial surface changes, perhaps the most appropriate term is “the botox treaty” – because although it may make those responsible for it think that they’ve made the EU prettier, all it’s actually going to do is pad out a few minor wrinkles while artificially fixing the thing into an unnatural pose which, when ratified, will also remove all the flexibility of expression that the uncertainty of the last two years has brought. It does nothing whatsoever to tackle the serious problems of the EU’s ageing process – and its supposedly beautifying fix is actually fairly off-putting and repulsive, the Anne Robinson, Jordan and Jocelyn Wildenstein of global diplomacy.

It also seems that no one – bar those politicians involved in bringing the thing about – is pleased with the thing. The eurosceptics (surprise, surprise) see it as yet another Brussels power-grab, the hardcore federalists (naturally enough) don’t think it goes anywhere near far enough towards promoting political integration – and everyone in the middle is finding it very hard to get enthused. Mild eurosceptics have found their vitriol somewhat lacking (at least when it comes to the treaty itself – in the UK the rage has all been directed at the supposed deception over the name of the thing rather than its content), mild pro-Europeans have found it hard to really give the thing their support.

But the one thing that all can agree on is “hang on a minute, chaps, the EU’s now 50 years old, yet it still isn’t a functioning democracy? What’s all that about, then?”

I’m still against a referendum for the various legal precedents it could set – plus anything that David Blunkett and (Blunkett’s employer via his Sun column) Rupert Murdoch are in favour of, I’m against on principle – but in many ways would welcome the thing simply because the inevitable “no” might force yet another rethink, and this time a radical one.

It’s a forlorn hope, but a realisation that it’s all gone to hell and it’s time to start again on a multi-tier system is the only thing – as a fairly rational pro-EU type – that I’ve got left to cling to.

Europe has never been a uniform, monotone continent. Even under the Romans (who failed to conquer much of the north and east in any case), local languages and customs thrived, and since the end of the Empire tiny microcultures have abounded. A multi-tier EU, taking the principle of subsidiarity to its most extreme logical conclusion, is the only sensible way of ensuring that this diversity is maintained while still gaining the benefits of close cooperation and integration on issues where such partnerships are appropriate.

So far we’ve had two no votes over the old constitution text, but the EU’s still going ahead with something similar enough to give the anti-EU camp plenty of ammunition to create a convincing (if not wholly accurate) case that the voices of French and Dutch voters – not to mention those of all the other EU member states that neglected to offer their citizens referenda – have been utterly ignored.

This is, of course, hardly anything new – politicians ignore the electorate all the time – but rarely is such contempt for the people so brazenly displayed as in the repeated failure of politicians EU wide to allow their various electorates any significant say in the future of the gargantuan institution.

Subsidiarity? “Decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen”? My arse.

Of course, some anti-EU types would have us all believe that this is evidence of a vast anti-democratic conspiracy, orchestrated by some shadowy organisation of high-up politicos, all following a sacred blueprint drawn up by Jean Monnet and handed down through successive waves of utterly dissimilar governments in all the various member states over the last half century.

The truth is undoubtledly more mundane – for who knows the stupidity of the electorate more than elected politicians, who constantly beguile us with their empty promises, yet whom we continue to vote for? The electorate simply cannot be trusted to make informed choices – for if they could, elections would have to be done away with altogether lest somebody outside the political establishment gain control.

Nonetheless, everyone with any sense agrees that the only way for the European Union to maintain what little viability it has left in the long term is to get the people of Europe far more fully behind it. By failing to have a popular vote on the future of the EU, by failing to consult the people more fully on what kind of union they would like to be a part of, the successive politicians running the EU have ended up not just failing the people that the union should be aiding, but also imperilling the entire project.

A formal system of trade, security and political cooperation between European nation states is, I believe, a Good Thing. Over the coming decades and centuries, I believe, gradual political union between the various states of Europe would also be a Good Thing.

The mistake that has been made before is to try and push ahead too fast with political union, something that I don’t expect to see in my lifetime, while neglecting the fundamental groundwork that would allow such a union to occur more organically. Now, the groundwork of cooperation has begun to falter, and resentment has begun to build.

This treaty will not placate anyone, merely frustrate all sides. It is a compromise so flaccid and uninspiring that it could end up imperilling the entire union. Because why should any EU member state really have loyalty to the Brussels-based project when it is no longer working to their benefit? And with not one single member state genuinely enthused with this new treaty, how beneficial is it, really?

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:

- giving national parliaments a (little) bit more power to object to EU legislation

- opt out clauses in areas like immigration and judicial co-operation (e.g. the UK’s lovely decision not to adopt otherwise EU-wide human rights legislation)

- an exit clause to allow member states to quit the Union

- qualified majority voting in 40 areas (eventually, and mostly to do with policy areas that make sense to handle at an international level, like immigration, asylum, copyright, cross-border policing, etc., but many of which will have opt-outs)

- a watered-down version of double majority voting in the European Council, but only after 2014 (a fairly vital move to prevent continued stalemate thanks to individual member states using their vetos to blackmail the rest of the EU)

- an EU President, serving a two and a half year term, with only two terms allowed, elected by the European Council. (Not overly democratic not to allow the people or European parliament to vote for the President, but then again it doesn’t really look like the position’s going to have much real power, acting more like a figurehead/spokesman.)

- a High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (who likewise seems to have few real powers, but will act as a figurehead alongside the President)

- cutting the number of Commissioners from 27 to 15 (for no apparent reason, but it will at least save money)

None of this is really that radical. It’s certainly nowhere near as ambitious as many pro-EU types were hoping, and has very little in it to promote future closer integration or moves towards greater federalism (despite some of the rhetoric, as in Article 10, most of the language is far less federal in tone than previous EU treaties have been).

Nonetheless, some – such as the Telegraph’s always excitable anti-EU analyst Christopher Booker (a good writer, but with a tendency to slip into hyperbole) – have been arguing that the new treaty contains a serious expansion of EU powers:

“Article 3 of the new treaty, which sets out the ‘objectives of the Union’, …has been extended since the draft constitution. It is now drawn so widely that there is virtually nothing which cannot be regarded as an EU objective… What all this amounts to is that the European Union finally wishes to set itself up as the supreme government of Britain and 26 other countries, with unlimited powers over every aspect of our lives”

But is this really the case? Article 3 is too long to reproduce in full, but specifically mentions the following areas, of which there are many but many of which are covered by opt-outs elsewhere: security, justice, asylum, immigration, freedom of movement, an internal market, economic growth, price stability, employment, the environment, promoting science and technology, combating discrimination, promoting equality, children’s rights, safeguarding cultural and linguistic diversity/heritage, expanding the eurozone, promoting peace world-wide.

A fair few areas there, to be sure, but all vague as hell – and nothing new. What could be cause for more worry is Article 4.3′s line:

“The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives”

But Article 5 (not to mention the opt-outs) has more that largely cancels this this out:

“the Union shall act only within the limits of the competences conferred upon it by the Member States in the Treaties to attain the objectives set out therein. Competences not conferred upon the Union in the Treaties remain with the Member States…

Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States”

Which, let’s face it, could easily be interpreted to mean that the EU can and should only legislate on things specifically mentioned as being part of its competence, and that it can and should only legislate if and when Member States are proved incapable of acting by themselves.

Later on there are yet more apparent contradictions, like Article 269′s “the Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies” being largely cancelled out by Article 268′s “the Union shall not adopt any act which is likely to have appreciable implications for the budget without providing an assurance that the expenditure arising from such an act is capable of being financed within the limit of the Union’s own resources”. I would go down hunting them all out, but it’s so dull I can’t be bothered.

In other words, as with any compromise-packed agreement, the language of the new Reform Treaty is so damned vague that you can interpret it pretty much any way you like. Yes, in some areas it could be seen to be granting the EU more power, but only if you ignore other areas that could be interpreted as restricting the areas in which the Union can meddle. Yes, it introduces a permanent EU President, but one who can serve for a maximum of five years and who appears to have few real powers. It introduces qualified majority voting that could force Member States into adopting legislation they don’t like, but also brings in opt-outs and greater powers for national parliaments.

In short, the new treaty is a shambles. None of the really important long-term issues (procedures for future integration, how to deal with diverging interests, the promotion of the Common Market, the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the expansion of the EU’s democratic accountability, etc. etc. etc.) have really been tackled. No radical changes have been made to the way the EU runs. Everything will chug along much the same as usual. For those countries who want further integration, it is a disaster. For those like the UK who are less keen on closer involvement, it is – bar the negative reactions from the eurosceptic press – pretty much ideal, as it utterly fails to force the kind of radical new approach to the concept of the EU of which the Union is so desperately in need.

The EU Reform Treaty is, then – despite so many years of controversy leading up to its agreement – utterly unimportant, a meaningless nonsense that will achieve and change next to nothing. Give it a few years, there will have to be another round of talks, and another, more ambitious treaty will have to be put forward. This one does nothing but buy a small amount of time – it certainly doesn’t solve any of the real issues.

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?

The most important thing to bear in mind is that as much as many in Britain would love all our international relations to be conducted largely bilaterally, that’s not possible when it comes to Russia. With so much potential to have a negative impact on the EU as a whole, any Anglo-Russian dispute was always bound to become part of the wider Russo-European spat that’s been bubbling away for the last few years – strained by gas supply disputes, American missile defence shields, disagreements over the Iranian nuclear programme and conduct of The War Against Terror, trade disputes, border spats, arguments over the treatment of ethnic Russians, you name it.

Le Croche Pied has a nice short overview of the last year or so of EU / Russia relations, which is a very good place to start. For more, the the EU-Russia Centre’s latest article is also rather good, and the EU’s own account is a good follow-up – proposals from the Robert Schuman Foundation on how to stabilise Russo-EU relations (in French, with an English summary from EurActiv) are also worth a gander. Add on to that a reminder of the arguments at the last EU-Russia summit and the Russia/Estonia cyberwarfare back in May, and this overview of Russia’s dominance of the European energy market, and you should have enough background.

The thing is, though, and as Sean’s Russia blog points out, it’s not in the interests of either Britain or Russia to have a fight when viewing them as individual nation states. Britain has been only tangentially affected by all the spats that have been going on with the rest of the EU, having the least dependence on Russian gas and not really caring that much about Russian import restrictions and bullying tactics towards eastern European EU member states as long as they don’t affect the UK (after all, where was the support for Britain when British beef was banned, eh?) In terms of Europe, Britain should be one of Russia’s most likely EU allies.

So at first glance, this doesn’t make much sense. Why the tetchiness between Russia and the UK over something as trivial as one conspiracy theorist’s death? Even Britain’s continued sheltering of the (almost certainly rampantly corrupt) Russian billionaire and critic of Putin Boris Berezovsky isn’t enough to get the Kremlin upset, because Berezovsky has far less support within Russia than he – and the western liberal press – likes to make out. Putin currently enjoys an 81% approval rating, and there would almost certainly be few complaints from the majority of the Russian people were he to alter the constitution to allow himself to stand for a third presidential term.

So, when the immediately obvious potential causes of tension don’t make sense, it’s time to look further afield.

Britain’s friendship with America? Too obvious, and it seems to be cooling under Brown anyway. And in any case, with Putin already dropping out of arms treaties in protest over the proposed US missile shield, the last thing Washington needs is for Moscow to be even more wound up, so the slightest hint that Britain was planning on expelling diplomats over the murder of one man, and Downing Street would doubtless have found itself getting a rather irate phone call from the other side of the Atlantic.

How about The War Against Terror? Here we could be on to something. Russia’s hardly been an active participant, despite having long had her own problems with Islamist militants in Chechnya and the Caucasus. Plus Moscow has been actively trying to win back the loyalties of the Central Asian dictatorships to which the UK and US have been cozying up in the last few years – the likes of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and the rest. Resource-rich, and very handy for military bases. But it’s still not enough to cause this dispute – Britain should be sweet-talking Russia in the hope of gaining an insanely strong military ally, not getting into a fight with her.

So how’s this for a convoluted partial conspiracy theory, placing the current Anglo-Russian dispute firmly in the Caucasus, and all revolving around stabilising Europe’s Islamic south-eastern fringe in an attempt to secure economic advantage?

Back in October 1999, several members of the Armenian parliament were murdered (including the Prime Minister), apparently by terrorist gunmen. Recently, the UK got caught (allegedly) trying to influence the Armenian elections in favour of the slightly less fervently pro-Russian opposition.

The connection to current events? Well, a certain former KGB / FSB agent assassinated in London last year claimed that the 1999 Armenian parliament attack was organised and sponsored by Russia. If you believe these rumours, both Britain and Russia have been actively involved in trying to gain influence over Armenian politics.

Armenia may be tiny, but it is, strategically, currently one of the most important countries in the world. In terms of the EU, the ongoing lack of reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey continues to jeopardise Turkish EU membership (something the UK supports), as well as continue to threaten Turkish stability, as nationalist elements within Turkey continue to pick on Armenians, just as they do Kurds. More importantly than that, however, are Armenia’s other borders – with Azerbaijan and Iran.

Ignore the ongoing disputes with Iran over nuclear policy, in which both Britain and Russia are heavily involved. More important is the Iran-Armenia Gas pipeline, with a second currently planned. Not only does this threaten Russia’s previous dominance of gas supply to Armenia itself, but these two pipelines could potentially be linked up with the vast natural gas fields of Central Asia – and with the EU.

Azerbaijan in particular has huge gas supplies – in which British firm BP has invested around $60 BILLION in recent years. Link Azerbaijan with the other gas-rich Central Asian states, and that’s a vast amount of energy just waiting to be tapped – and western powers have been doing their utmost to get their mitts on it ever since the decline of Russian influence in the area following the fall of the Soviet Union. The Central Asian states, too, are keen to reduce their reliance on pipelines through Russia to benefit from the gas-hungry European market, and the Caucasus is the obvious alternate route.

In other words, a pipeline link-up from Armenia via Turkey into continental Europe would not only undermine the increasing Russian dominance of the European gas market, but also whack a tidy profit into a major British company. New Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as former Chancellor of the Exchequer, is bound to be more than aware of the potential geopolitical and economic importance of such a move for Britain’s future finances. And, please note, this could also explain Britain’s support for Turkish EU membership – the security of energy supplies in which Britain could see a very nice profit.

So, is this what the current Anglo-Russian dispute is really about? Because I really can’t believe that Westminster is willing to enter such a high-profile and potentially damaging conflict with Russia merely over the death of an emigre dissident.

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.