Tag Archives: UK

7/7 attacks, four years on

Posted on by

If you haven’t, read the liveblog from the day, have a look at the one year on post, much of which still stands (though, thankfully, this country seems to be rather less hysterical about terrorism these days), and flick through the London Terror Attacks archive.

It’s important not to forget those that died. But although a memorial is being unveiled later today, the thing about terrorism remains that it exists to terrorise.

Four years on, the level of fear in London is back to what it was on 6th July 2005. People carry on their lives quite happily. The underground is packed with people not even giving a thought to the possibility of being blown up on the way to work. The majority of commuters this morning will not even remember that today is the anniversary of those deeply unpleasant events.

This is the best memorial.

Despite the best efforts of the terrorists – and the tabloid-whipped politicians scrabbling around in their wake with plans for detention without trial, stifling protest, DNA databases and countless other pointless draconian measures – our way of life has not been changed.

We, the people of London, were attacked – not the politicians, and not the innumerable armchair warmongers from around the world. The politicians and sabre-rattlers could do well to learn from our response – we dusted ourselves down, had a quick look around, and carried on with our lives.

The terrorists, hoping to have a major impact on the lives of everyone in this country, managed merely to kill and maim a few score innocents. They hoped to become heroes – they ended up little better than animals. And, four years on, they have been all but forgotten.

This is how it should be. If terrorists attack us to scare us and make us change our way of life, what better response is there than to carry on as if nothing has happened?

The Speaker elections: Some perspective

Posted on by

The MP expenses scandal has rocked Westminster for over a month now (with more revelations *still* emerging). Many MPs have found their careers cut short – among them Speaker Michael Martin (a man who never should have got the job back in 2000, but that’s beside the point).

As is the way of things these days, public and press outrage over the perceived piss-taking by MPs of all parties has led parliament to jump to entirely the wrong conclusion. In hunting for a scapegoat, they picked on Michael Martin; in the process, they tarnished the office of Speaker itself with smears designed primarily to hit this man they had collectively decided to blame. “Oh,” they said, “If only we had someone like Boothroyd or Weatherill this never would have happened!” Yet despite professing that it was the man, not the office, which had been found wanting, it looks as if the next Speaker is intended to “update” and “make relevant” an institution that has doing very well, thank you very much, without any meddling from mere gadfly politicians.

Altering the office of Speaker is not what is required. That way lies failure and recrimination down the line. Because we cannot do constitutional reform – not when it’s hasty; not when it’s carried out by politicians; and most especially, it would seem, not when it’s carried out by the lot we’ve got at the moment. (Remember the half-arsed attempt to reform the House of Lords, that has left us in an arguably worse situation than we had before? The dismal attempt to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor? The various residual angers and squabbles over devolution? The back-of-an-envelope creation of a supreme court? The constant renaming of government departments, often at vast expense and with no discernible impact? The gradual downscaling of both the Cabinet and parliament, hand-in-hand with the politicisation of the previously stringently impartial civil service?)

The office of Speaker has been brought into disrepute? One Speaker’s failures over a nine-year period is enough to destroy the respectability of a position that has existed (more or less) since the 14th century? By the same logic, shouldn’t we abolish the office of Prime Minister about now?

What we need is not to alter the office of Speaker and “make it more relevant”, as seems to be the buzz phrase at the moment. We need someone respectable, unimpeachable, with an intricate understanding of the rules of parliament (something Martin never had), a sense of the history of the place, and an ability to stand up for what’s right in the face of overwhelming opposition from a chamber full of shouty, petulant MPs.

Few of the candidates can live up to this:

- Margaret Beckett is a party animal through and through, heavily implicated in the expenses scandal
- Sir Alan Beith is another party man – and to have former deputy leader of any party take over such a high profile position at this stage is just silly, even if he is only a Lib Dem
- Sir George Young is a former Secretary of State, and therefore he too has too much of the party man about him
- John Bercow is both incredibly smug and, with only 12 years in the Commons, too inexperienced
- Parmjit Dhanda only entered the Commons in 2001, so just cannot be taken seriously no matter how intelligent and earnest he may seem
- Anne Widdecombe is more a TV personality than a politician these days, and is stepping down at the next election anyway, so really – what’s the point?
- Sir Alan Haselhurst put £12,000 on his expenses for gardening over four years, based on a figure just £1 below the receipt threshold every month throughout that time, so surely can no longer be a contender
- Richard Shepherd is a man of principle, no doubt, but with the ongoing difficulties over the positioning of the UK within the EU I can’t see the Commons going for one of the most fervent of the Maastricht rebels (plus he’s a friend of Robert Kilroy-Silk, which must show poor judgement, surely?)

Which leaves us with two genuinely decent candidates: Sir Michael Lord, and Sir Patrick Cormack. Both Tories? Yes. Both with Knighthoods? Yes. Between them, they have 65 years in the House (39 of those Cormack). Lord, like Shepherd, was a Maastricht rebel – but I wouldn’t discount him for that, as it does, after all, show some independence. More impressively, however, Cormack was a Poll Tax rebel – one of the very few Tories to refuse to support that most unpopular of policies, and was also the first MP to force a debate on the Yugoslav crisis in the 1990s – much against the wishes of the then government (which was, yes, Tory again).

Yes, I’m biased here – I used to work for Cormack. This does, however, also mean that I’ve seen his character up close and know him to be a man with a genuine, passionate belief in doing the right thing. The Telegraph’s Ben Brogan seems to see much of the same in him that I do.

If you want to return a sense of decorum to the Commons, what better than someone who knows the place inside out, with four decades’ experience? What better than someone who’s been through ten general elections and seven Prime Ministers, who’s seen countless MPs come and go – and yet has, throughout, watched the institution of parliament endure, despite all the scandals, all the infighting, all the failures and ill-considered reforms?

We don’t need a big media star – the Speaker should never *be* high-profile, that was part of the reason Martin had to go – we need someone who can command quiet respect. We don’t need rapid reform – we need someone with a sense of perspective who can take a step back and calmly assess, because that is what the Commons has been lacking above all during the last few weeks. Cormack would be ideal.

Which is, of course, why he almost certainly won’t get it. When was the last time MPs voted for something to do with the running of parliament that actually makes sense?

What percentage of laws come from the EU?

Posted on by

Last week on the BBC’s Question Time, eurosceptic Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan mentioned 84%; UKIP leader Nigel Farrage said it was 75%, the figure most often mentioned by anti-EU types (such as French National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen or the Libertas Party) is that 80% of our laws come from the EU, while in a speech elsewhere last week, Conservative leader David Cameron said that “Almost half of all the regulations affecting our businesses come from the EU”.

These figures (or, at least, figures in this rough ballpark) are widely accepted, with everyone from universities to charities seeming to accept them at face value.

But are any of them actually true? And which is it? 84%? 80%? 75%? 50%? Or some other figure? Because they can’t ALL be right.

Daniel Hannan: 84% of all laws come from the EU

Let’s take the biggest figure first. If 84% sounds ridiculously high, that’s because it is. Even eurosceptic thinktank Open Europe have dismissed this claim as unrealistic – explaining in detail where the calculation originated.

In short, it comes from a reply by the Parliamentary Undersecretary of the German Parliament, Alfred Hartenbach, given on 29 April 2005 – relating specifically (and exclusively) to Germany, where he stated that from 1998 until 2004, 18,187 EU regulations and 750 EU directives were adopted in Germany. During the same period the German Parliament passed in total 1,195 laws (as well as 3,055 “Rechtsverordnungen” – which are like Primary and Secondary legislation). This was seized on by former German President Roman Herzog and Luder Gurken of the Centrum für Europäische Politik, who used these figures to work out 84% of all German laws originate in Brussels. As Open Europe explains:

750 (directives) + 18,187 (regulations) = 18,917 EU legislative acts
1,195 (Gesetze) + 3,055 (Verordnungen) – 750 (directives) = 3,500 German legislative acts
= 84%.

The 750 directives were substracted as they require seperate implementing laws in Germany (assuming a directive/implementing law ratio of 1:1).

Open Europe goes on to explain why this figure is, at best, misleading. And remember, Open Europe is a eurosceptic thinktank:

to conclude that 4 out 5 laws originate in Brussels is probably a step too far. Germany, for instance, is a federal system, meaning that the individual Lander has substantial powers to legislate autonomously. The many laws adopted on the Lander-level would have to be included in any all laws count, which isn’t the case here. In addition, this count says nothing about the nature of the laws.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the EU’s powers are mainly regulatory, as opposed to budgetary. This means that most issues that relate to spending and taxation (health bills, crime bills, educational reform, pensions, welfare, etc) – the “wallet” issues if you will – are mostly beyond the realm of the EU, but must also be included in any count that includes all laws.

So, the 84% figure is based on a calculation about German laws (and is therefore not directly transferable to Britain, as Hannan and others would like us to believe), and that calculation in any case left out a huge chunk of German legislation, rendering the final figure utterly obsolete.

So the 84% figure can safely be discounted.

UKIP: 75% of all laws come from the EU

Next up, the second highest figure. Where did UKIP get their 75% claim from? Well, handily they provide a video on YouTube which shows it comes from Hans-Gert Pottering, EPP MEP and President of the European Parliament from January 2007 to June 2009:

“If we were not that influential,” the subtitles show Pottering as saying, “then we would not be the legislator of 75% of all laws in Europe.”

But where it suits UKIP’s purpose to interpret this as literally meaning that, EU-wide, 75% of ALL laws stem from the EU, had they included more of Pottering’s speech the context – and therefore the meaning – would have become far more apparent. For what Pottering was actually saying was that the European Parliament (not the EU) legislates on 75% of laws *passed by the European Union*. Not passed by EU member states – just by the EU itself, at EU level. Because the European Parliament has little say in something like 20-25% of EU legislation (something the Lisbon Treaty would rectify, but that’s for another day). German speakers will also be able to confirm that the subtitles on UKIP’s video of Pottering are not 100% accurate.

So the 75% figure does not apply to the percentage of laws in individual member states that stem from the EU, but the percentage of laws that stem from the EU that the European Parliament has a say in. That’s an entirely different kettle of fish – and so the 75% figure can safely be dismissed as based on a (deliberate?) misunderstanding.

David Cameron: “Almost half”

It is worth noting again here that Cameron says “almost half of all regulations affecting our businesses come from the EU”. Some laws may be regulations, but not all regulations are laws, so we need to tread a little more carefully here. Where did Cameron get his figure from? I genuinely have no idea. I can’t track down an original source for it anywhere – though it is a claim made on the website of the Institute of Directors – albeit with the qualification that “estimates vary”, something Cameron neglected to mention.

But what is the real figure? How much say does the EU have in business regulations? Well, handily enough, last month the British Chambers of Commerce produced a report (PDF) investigating precisely this issue, “Worlds Apart: The British and EU Regulatory Systems” – their seventh annual report into the subject, and the fifth comparing the British and EU systems. Their conclusion?

In terms of the number of regulations, the EU this year accounted for only 20%. The reduction from the previous EU level of about 30% is the primary reason for the overall decline in 2007/8.

Hmmm… Only 20%, you say? And the proportion of EU regulations is declining, you say? So where did Cameron get his “almost half” from?

The House of Commons Library’s 9.1% claim

Also on Question Time last week was Europe Minister Caroline Flint, who trotted out the usual defence against the above eurosceptic claims about the EU’s influence that just 9.1% of UK laws stem from the EU. the report in question can be found as a PDF in the depths of the UK Parliament site.

The study was conducted by the (politically independent) House of Commons Library between 1998 and 2005, based on the statutory instruments passed with references to European legislation, because “The vast majority of EC legislation is enacted by statutory instruments under section 2 (2) of the European Communities Act.” It also helpfully breaks these laws down by department – the most affected of which are Defra – which deals with the Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies, so no surprises there – and the Department of Trade and Industry – hardly surprising with the Common Market and all. Both departments saw about 50% of their legislation having some kind of EU origin – which could, via the DTI, be where Cameron got his “almost half” figure from, perhaps?

But is the 9.1% figure accurate? Is just looking at statutory instruments fair, when this means that normal legislation, via parliament itself, can be left out? Open Europe (in the same post where they discussed and dismissed the 84% claim) make four key points:

1) They do not seperate between budgetary and regulatory legislation, therefore comparing apples and oranges.
2) They also compare apples and oranges in another respect: Directives are usually far-reaching measures with a big impact on the economy. SIs, in contrast, can cover a variety of issues, including public administration – for example a road closure or changing arrangements for parish elections.
3) EU Regulations (as opposed to Directives) usually don’t give rise to a new UK law but are directly applicable. Therefore, most EU Regulations are not included in the 9% figure.
4) One Directive does not mean one SI. The Motor Vehicles Regulations in 2007 implemented four different Directives, for instance, making a one-for-one comparison tricky.

On point 1), of course, the EU has no say in the British budget and has no revenue-raising powers, so I’m not sure what they’re trying to say. On point 2) they have a point – but how do you measure the “far-reaching” implications and economic impact of a directive, exactly? On point 3) they also have a point – which might explain why the British Chambers of Commerce have a higher estimate of 20%. Point 4), if we’re hunting down the percentage of British laws that have an EU origin, is irrelevant.

But considering that we’re looking for a percentage of the *number* of laws that stem from the EU, it is worth bearing in mind that Statutory Instruments make up the bulk of all UK legislation, with an average of around 3,500 passed every year for much of the last two decades. In 2008, 3,389 Statutory Instruments were passed, while the UK Statute Law Database lists 2,414 results for the same year. With no study (that I’m aware of) having been conducted on how many of those have an EU origin, it is hard to tell the percentage.

However, with Statutory Instruments making up the bulk of UK legislation, and with most EU legislation brought into force via this method (having already been passed at EU level, there’s generally no need for EU legislation to then be re-enacted at national level, after all), it’s no great leap to suggest that the final percentage wouldn’t be that much higher than 9%. Indeed, Labour MEP Richard Corbett has noted other studies in other EU member states:

6.3 percent according to the Swedish parliament, 12 percent according to the Finnish parliament and between 12 and 19 percent according to the Lithuanian parliament

This would suggest that something in the region of 10-20% would be a fair guess for the UK as well (a range that has the added benefit of being backed up by the British Chambers of Commerce’s recent study of regulations).

Bonus: How much does the EU cost us?

I’ve already discussed the actual costs of EU membership based on the UK’s annual contribution, showing that the net cost is around £4 billion a year. But what about the cost to business and to the economy?

This is, of course, a hugely complex issue. How to estimate the impact of legislation on an entire country’s economy? It’s practically impossible, as without a control sample we can’t tell how beneficial or detrimental any individual piece of legislation may be – let alone the impact of other pieces of legislation that may affect the same general area.

Nonetheless, the more enthusiastic among you may have noted, in the Open Europe piece quoted above, that the same post also gives Open Europe’s own estimate that “72% of the cost of regulation is EU derived”. Is this fair? Well, it’s only an estimate, and I haven’t seen their workings, so it’s hard to tell.

However, let’s return to that British Chambers of Commerce report, also linked above. What do they have to say about the costs of EU regulation?

By value, EU legislation was only responsible for about 0.1% (£1.9m) of regulatory net costs in 2007/8 and virtually all business burdening regulatory activity can be attributed to Whitehall.

Oh… would you look at that?

Conclusion

No one agrees on how much legislation and regulation stems from the EU. The 9.1% figure stated by the House of Commons Library is too low, as it only covers Statutory Instruments, not ALL laws; the higher figures of 84%, 75% and even 50% claimed by the likes of Hannan, Farrage and Cameron are based on miscalculations, misunderstandings, or sources unknown, and often derive from parts of the EU other than just the UK – and so with no hard evidence to support them must be dismissed as either too high or inapplicable to the British situation.

What is the true figure? No one knows. So any claims that state hard and fast percentages should – if we’re being intellectually honest – be treated with equal suspicion.

Not that any of this is likely to change the opinions of those eurosceptics convinced of the malicious and all-pervading influence of the EU on our daily lives, of course. But still. I’ve looked for the evidence, and this is what I’ve tracked down. If you know different, please do let me know – I’m interested in the truth of the situation, as without total transparency, such misinformation, misunderstandings and resentments are only going to grow.

Update, October 2010:

The House of Commons Library has published a new, much more comprehensive study of the percentage of UK laws that originate from the EU. It is freely available as a PDF and despite running to 59 pages I’d strongly recommend reading it in full.

Its conclusion? The true figure is around 15%.

(Rather sweetly it also references this post in the footnotes.)

If you’re interested in this topic, you may also be interested in these old posts:

- What are the economic costs of the EU?
- UKIP’s £40 million a day claim vs the REAL costs of EU membership
- The dishonesty of the EU debate
- Why legislating and regulating at an EU level is almost always a good thing

UKIP’s “Britain paying the EU £40 million a day” claim vs the REAL costs of UK EU membership

Posted on by

This has been on various UKIP election leaflets, so it’s evidently a claim they’re proud of – but does it stand up?

Simple maths tells us that Britain paying £40 million a day to the EU would mean an annual contribution of £14.6 billion. However, the most recent Treasury Report on the UK’s EU budget contributions (PDF) shows the following GROSS figures:

2005 – £12.5 billion
2006 – £12.4 billion
2007 – £12.5 billion
2008 – £13.7 billion (estimated)

£13.7 billion divided by 365 = £37.5 million, so UKIP are, at the very least, rounding up by £2.5 million a day. Not much to round up by? That works out as £912,500,000 a year – I hope UKIP won’t be that out with their sums if they ever get near power…

But what about the rebate? What about the EU funds that are paid back to the UK in the form of things like the European Regional Development Fund, European Social Fund and the like? What’s the NET contribution? (Again from the most recent Treasury report)

2005 – £3.6 billion
2006 – £3.9 billion
2007 – £4.6 billion
2008 – £3.6 billion (estimate)

UKIP deliberately using gross rather than net to make the situation seem worse is to be expected, of course, but still – let’s be generous and take the highest figure of £4.6 billion – that’s still a lot of money, right? It may only work out as £12.6 million a day, but that’s still a lot of money.

Well, yes. But big figures are nothing without context, so let’s see how much the UK government spends on other things:UK government expenditure breakdown, shamelessly leeched from Wikipedia

Would you look at that? The UK may be forking out a net figure of around £4 billion a year for EU membership, but at the same time we’re having to pay £31 billion a year merely to service the INTEREST on our debt. That’s not *pay off* our debt – just keep up with the interest. Christ!

In other words, the EU costs us 7.75 times LESS than it does to keep the international bailiffs from the door. (And that £31 billion was BEFORE the most recent round of government borrowing, and before the collapse of sterling, both of which will have hugely escalated the figure for this year, as and when it’s released.)

So, £31 billion in interest payments, for which we see no return whatsoever, versus £4 billion in payments to the EU, from which even its harshest critics must admit that we get *some* benefits – even if they will only admit to cheaper mobile phone charges or ease of travel. I don’t know about you, but I’d say that’s not too bad a deal, in comparison.

Update, October 2010:

If you’re interested in this post, you may also be interested in:

- What are the economic costs of the EU?
- What percentage of laws come from the EU?
- Why legislating and regulating at EU level is almost always a good thing
- The dishonesty of the EU debate

EU competence creep, the spectre of the superstate, and how governments actually work

Posted on by

In our last little discussion of the likelihood of an EU superstate (in amongst and partially as an offshoot of the rather silly sidetrack about jam), Josef noted that

there is a concern that this is how the EU will form itself into a “superstate.” Not through a series of demi-democratic treaties, but through a sort of slow, suffocating creep of boring, incomprehensible, impenetrable legislation. If you write a follow up post, Nosemonkey/J Clive, then I’d be interested to hear your take on this.

This is always a danger with any democratic system which relies largely on a more or less bureaucratic civil service to get things done. We like to think that all new legislation is debated and scrutinised by our elected representatives, dissected in minute detail and put to a vote considering only the best interests of the people – but it rarely happens like that.

In the UK, the vast majority of primary legislation is passed in the form of statutory instruments – new laws drawn up by civil servants and government ministers and put onto the statute books without (most of the time) parliament so much as being informed. In the UK in 2008 alone, there were 3,399 statutory instruments passed – that’s more than nine new laws a day that have come into existence without so much as a by your leave from an elected official. (That’s about average for the last 20 years, by the by – the number of statutory instruments began to creep up under Major, but have remained relatively constant since the mid-1990s, despite various claims that Blair used them more than any previous Prime Minister as another way of bypassing parliament.)

The vast majority of these statutory instruments are amendments to existing Acts of Parliament, fiddling with the details (most of them minor). Our last little debate got sidetracked on the use of apple geranium in jams other than those made with quince. Hardly the sort of thing – the logic goes – that it’s worth wasting parliament’s time with, and so precisely the sort of thing that would be sorted out in a statutory instrument. If the approval of British MEPs was needed for each of the law changes that statutory instruments bring in, then every one of the British parliament’s 646 MPs would have to go through more than five of the things every single day of the year – as well as all the major legislation, dealing with constituency concerns, being part of the government, holding the government to account and so on. (Remove those MPs who hold government office, it’d be more like 7 statutory instruments each to scrutinise and research the utility of per day – that’s a full-time job…)

In the EU, we have much the same problem. Having accepted the general principle that area X is best dealt with at EU level, it is impractical for MEPs to then scrutinise every subsequent tiny bit of legislation to ensure that it meets their high standards, and vote on every tiny clause about different types of fruit preserve in full session at the European Parliament. Because just as we, the people, delegate our powers of decision to our representatives at Westminster and Brussels/Strasbourg, so our representatives then delegate powers of drafting new laws to the various civil servants, be they in national civil services or the European Commission.

(At which point it’s worth noting that most EU legislation is not actually drawn up by the Commission – the EC only has a staff of c.38,000 – less than a third of that of the UK Department of Work and Pensions alone, and nowhere near enough to do everything that the Commission is accused of doing. Instead, pretty much all EU legislation is drawn up by the civil servants of the various member states, checked by civil servants in other member states, and then rubber-stamped by the Commission once it’s been looked at my enough bureaucrats in enough member states.)

And so in the normal course of events, yes – dozens of new laws will likely come into force every week without having been so much as glanced at by an elected official. But such developed social systems as ours could not possibly function any other way – unless you think that the civil service should be elected, and that it’s a practical possibility to find several hundred thousand people willing to campaign for such a thankless job (not to mention several hundred thousand people willing to turn out and vote on what would prove to be an almost daily basis as retirement and transfers necessitate by-elections to fill vacant posts…) And in any case, the general principles are already always voted on by elected representatives at both national and EU level – as long as they are doing their jobs properly, they shouldn’t vote through sweeping new powers that would allow unelected bodies or people to suddenly advance major changed without anyone checking them first. (Though that’s not to say that there isn’t always a danger that this could happen, as we found out in the UK only recently with the – thankfully defeated – Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, which would effectively have made parliament obsolete and allowed any government minister to make any law they liked, when they liked.)

When it comes to the EU, the real fear of competence creep was epitomised by this glorious clause (Article 308 EC):

If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain, in the course of the operation of the common market, one of the objectives of the Community, and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council shall, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament, take the appropriate measures.

In other words, the EU could grant itself whatever powers it liked. Or, at least, it could after unanimous agreement from the governments of the member states in the Council, and after being passed by the elected representatives of the European Parliament – but most anti-EU types conflate Council, Parliament and Commission into one monolithic-sounding “EU” to make these things sound more scary.

So, for more powers to pass to the EU, even with the existence of the “competence clause”, you’d still need unanimous agreement between the governments of all 27 member states, plus a majority in the European Parliament. Hardly that scary – but even so, the Lisbon Treaty amended that same article (now Article 352) to clearly delineate (in line with the subsidiarity principle introduced with Maastricht back in 1992) just where competences lie between the EU and member states, as well as explicitly excluding common foreign and security policy as an area where the competence clause could be used to grant the EU more powers.

Oh yes, and Article 352 also introduced a new clause obliging the Commission to involve national parliaments in any moves to grant the EU more powers. So that’s unanimous agreement by all 27 member state governments, passing a vote in the European Parliament, and passing votes in the parliaments of all 27 member states before the EU can claim any major new powers for itself. Hardly a major worry.

In the meantime, life will continue as normal, with dozens upon dozens of minor changes to minor laws being brought into force merely by civil servants via statutory instruments and their equivalents across Europe – and then (despite some of the claims made in our last comment thread that alterations to jam legislation would require ratification by the Council, Parliament, and so on) amended just as easily if they turn out not to be workable.

Is there a danger that some of these laws will be bad ones? Of course there is. But at least they are generally being drawn up by civil servants who are experts in their field (rather than members of parliament who tend to be generalists), and at least they can be corrected with ease.

Is there a danger that such civil servant-drafted laws could slowly grant more power to institutions that we aren’t willing to give them? Well, a poorly-worded new law always has the potential to be misinterpreted. That’s what we have judges and courts for – if such poorly-worded laws are found, they can be challenged and struck down, if a simple amendment isn’t enough. After all, both the existing Article 308 and the proposed new Article 352 explicitly state that both the Council and the Parliament have to approve any new EU power-grab – and treaty law will always take precedence in such cases.

In short: Modern western liberal democracies are very complex systems, packed full of checks and balances that have been worked out over the course of many centuries. The EU is not a true liberal democracy, but shares many of its forms and functions. As such, I remain confident that there are enough checks and balances in place to ensure that the only way the EU will gain more powers is if the member states of the EU want to delegate more powers to it. It will not -can not – happen by accident. Unlike in the British system, where bad laws like the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill can easily slip through parliament if the government has a sufficient majority and MPs are sufficiently cowed, the EU has 27 additional chances of spotting them before they get anywhere near the statute books – something that the Lisbon Treaty would only have underscored by bringing national parliaments into the equation as well. Once again, it’s hardly the stuff of an impending superstate.

The EU, UK and civil liberties

Posted on by

Via the Convention on Modern Liberty‘s Twitter feed and following yesterday’s post on German concerns about the EU being used as a democratic bypass comes news of a worrying development for the freedom of every EU citizen:

People may be aware of the debate in the UK over access to communications data… but are less familiar with the role the UK government has played in the EU, where it first proposed mandatory data retention, backed by France, Ireland and Sweden, in April 2004. The final stages of its passage through the EU came under the UK presidency of the council, and their officials crawled all over the European parliament to get it passed. Despite widespread opposition from more than 200 civil society groups, the EU data protection commissioners and many in the parliament organised an alliance of the PSE (Socialist group, of which they are part) and the centre-right PPE (Conservative group) to steamroller it through in December 2005…

We have good reason to be very critical of the authoritarian direction the government has taken at home, but we should be equally vigilant of what the UK government gets up to in the EU – and at the same time wake up to the fact that many of the threats to our freedoms and liberties now originate from the EU. Indeed, the surveillance society, which makes suspects of us all, is to be the centrepiece of the next five-year plan for EU justice and home affairs to be adopted later this year (pdf).

As the Convention on Modern Liberty tweet noted, “EU law is now a major threat to privacy… And it’s not eurosceptic to say that”.

But, of course, this in nothing new. I noted the Blair government’s attempts to use the EU to force through unpopular changes a few years back, and was disgusted [on ID cards] and outraged [over internet regulation proposals - the first hints of this current unpleasant legislation] at the time. The real problem is, as ever, the governments of the member states and their ability to wrap up such deals behind closed doors at meetings of the Council – combined with a lack of reporting on the EU in the mainstream press that allows major national newspapers like the Guardian to fail to notice such distasteful legislation until it has already been passed, challenged in court, and passed again.

Give the people of Europe more say in how the EU is run, give the European Parliament more power to halt such unpleasantness, then press reporting on EU affairs would become more attentive, such moves by member state governments to abuse both the EU and its citizens would be spotted sooner, and effective pan-European opposition could be mobilised. As it is, everyone only finds out after it’s too late – no amount of attempts to highlight dodgy legislation from a mere small blog such as this one will ever reach enough people in time.

Meanwhile, let’s just sit back and marvel at how it is the UK – that last European bastion against the forces of totalitarian repression during the 1940s – that has been the driving force behind EU legislation that would not look out of place in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal or Vichy France.

Come on, EU – you’re meant to be better than this.

Update: Oh, the irony – the European Commission’s now complaining about people trying to steal its confidential data. What out OUR confidential data, Commission types?

A bit of weekend reading

Posted on by

A few bits and bobs that have caught my eye over the last week or so:

Robert Amsterdam on Donald Rumsfeld’s legacy to Europe:

he was the original master artist of disaggregation – a man who saw and skillfully exploited the very fissures of the contemporary European Union which today threaten its purpose and continued existence as an alliance of nations… And this week, the Rumsfeldian conception of “old and new Europe” is making a comeback in the debate over how to handle Moscow’s threat to put missiles in Kaliningrad”

It’s not just over Russian missiles – old vs. new Europe seems to be an emerging theme in the ongoing confusion over how to tackle the growing economic storm, according to Eurozine:

Even if a common set of regulations and measures were to be reached, differences would be manifest between member states, and above all between West and East: unemployment, inflation, budgetary deficits would affect each country differently. The problem is that a recession would have more severe consequences in the fragile and unpredictable eastern European countries, including at the political level.

Also on the economy, Obsolete is (as ever) really rather good on the bizarre collapse of the Tory poll lead during the current crisis:

The man who promised an end to Tory boom and bust has succeeded in abolishing boom, while the prospects for the bust look increasingly ominous. The economy which he boasted was among the best placed to deal with the global downturn is in actual fact one of the worst placed to deal with it, according to the IMF and the European Union. Unrelenting, the Labour party believes that the solution is to borrow more to fund the tax cuts to stimulate the economy. As Larry Elliot has pointed out, this is a direct contradiction of what Gordon Brown formerly believed. At the weekend the same man attended a conference which he claimed would back up his solution to the downturn; it did nothing of the sort, and predictably only agreed to more or less meet again. Gordon Brown, by rights, ought to be finished.

Elsewhere, Jon Worth asks do you think Barroso is rubbish? With more in a similar vein from Jean Quatremer:

Si, jusqu’à présent, les voix critiques étaient rares, elles commencent à se faire entendre, ce qui montre que la campagne pour le renouvellement de la Commission a bel et bien commencé.

Complementing Quatremer’s overview, the Financial Times’s (new look) Brussels Blog asks

why are political parties of the left in such poor shape across much of Europe? It’s the worst financial crisis since the early 1930s, the worst economic recession since the early 1990s, if not the 1970s – and where is the left?

And finally, a very promising signal from the European Parliament:

MEPs today overwhelmingly backed calls to strengthen the EU’s anti-fraud unit OLAF to enable it to tackle fraud more effectively…

[report author Ingeborg Grässle MEP] said that the Parliament’s zeal to strengthen OLAF and how it worked was not shared by the member states. “The Council [of Ministers] doesn’t want to strengthen OLAF,” she said… She said the Council did not want awkward discussions about the fight against fraud.

Once again, one of the EU’s biggest problems and PR disasters can be blamed nice and neatly on the reluctance of the Council of Ministers – on the governments of the member states – to press ahead with reforms to increase both efficiency and transparency.

Meet Britain’s new European Commissioner

Posted on by

Baroness AshtonBaroness Ashton. Ever heard of her? No? There’s a surprise. Her only qualification for the job seems to be that her full title is Baroness Ashton of Upholland – perhaps dear old Gordon assumed this meant she has something to do with the Netherlands?

Peter Mandelson may have been a discredited tit when he was appointed, but at least he was high-profile and quite blatantly had the ear of the Prime Minister. This dear peer? She may have been made Leader of the House of Lords last year, but she’s barely registered an impact on the public consciousness. She is, however, a staunch Labour loyalist, and the wife of similarly staunch Labour man, semi-influential journalist Peter Kellner, a co-founder of polling organisation YouGov.

Track record on Europe? Well, here are all her speeches mentioning the European Union in the last seven years. No doubt they’ll bear double-checking. From a brief skim through, all that’s stood out for me are the standard parrot phrases of a loyalist who’s memorised the talking points. Which seems to be precisely what Brown wants in Brussels – a bit of a no-mark who can make the right noises, but who hasn’t got much of a brain of their own.

Being harsh? Maybe. After all, one of her old jobs has technically had an EU element to it (along with several others, including the rather odd pairing of the National Archives and the Tribunals Service). But she was only in that post for a year, and the rest of her work history is decidedly of the parochial standard.

But it would, let’s face it, be entirely in keeping with Brown’s track record on UK-EU relations to chuck someone irrelevant and with little knowledge of the EU out to Brussels. He’s barely paid the EU a blind bit of notice since coming to power, and had precious little time for our EU cousins while Chancellor. Indeed, it’s largely down to Brown and his famous “five economic tests” that Blair wasn’t able to use Labour’s remarkable series of majorities over the last ten years to combat the rising euroscepticism of the British people. Those tests shot any pro-EU Labour drive in the foot before it even started through the simple question “So, Mr Blair, if the EU’s so great how come your Chancellor won’t let us join the single currency?”

Gordon Brown has, in other words, finally demonstrated his utter lack of interest in the EU. Hell, even Maggie Thatcher was more constructively engaged with Brussels than Gordon – and we’re in the middle of just the sort of trans-national economic crisis that the EU was in part set up to help counter. You’d be forgiven for imagining that Brown’s forgotten the EU’s existed – especially when it’s a big story that he’s going to deign an important EU crisis summit with his presence.

But hey – Ashton’s a woman! That’s, like, progressive and stuff! And it’s all the rage to appoint women no one’s ever heard of with little in the way of an appropriate CV to important political positions these days, it seems. Go Gordy! You’re with it, man!

I never thought I’d say it, but come back ex-Commissioner Peter Mandelson – all is forgiven. (Sorry, that should now be Lord Mandelson – yet another insanely stupid move on Brown’s part, albeit for entirely domestic reasons. I mean, bringing back someone who’s twice been forced to quit the Cabinet in disgrace and is hated by pretty much the entire country? And entirely unelected to boot? Seriously, Gordon? Do you WANT to lose the next election?)

Just when you thought a government couldn’t get any worse…

Update: Pertinent points from Jon Worth:

Mandelson was playing an important role in WTO negotiations, and Ashton will not be able to replicate Mandelson’s network of contacts, even if she has the opportunity to do so. For I can imagine that the French government is already on the phone to Barroso making sure someone else gets the Trade portfolio and Ashton gets allocated Multilingualism or something similar.

Agreed entirely. Meant to mention that. You can’t possibly have an unknown in as important a portfolio as Trade, no matter how big the member state. Brown’s just downsized Britain’s influence in Europe even further. Nice one, Gordon.

Blogs, Georgia and David Miliband

Posted on by

There’s a rather good look at blogland’s attempts to cover strange going ons in faraway lands of which they know little from the chap behind tip-top Central Asia blog Registan, which is well worth reading in full:

“Elite bloggers often portray their analytical and news-gathering skills as equal or (more often) superior to those of professional journalists… But in the case of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia, the blogging world mostly failed to live up to its promises… Days after the fighting began, even normally excellent sources of analysis and insight… were still linking to the same narrow set of news sources —sources that offered little more than thin quotes from government officials. While this isn’t necessarily a knock on, say, Reuters or The New York Times (it takes a little time to get a correspondent on scene), it is a tremendous failure on the part of the blogosphere, noteworthy for precisely how it failed to deliver on its original promise: breaking out of the mainstream media’s tendency toward groupthink.”

It’s hard not to agree with pretty much every word. I’m no Caucasian expert, and wouldn’t call myself a Russia expert either (hell, I’m not sure I’d even count as an EU expert), so these criticisms apply just as much to this place as elsewhere, but still. From skimming the blogs, you’d never get the impression of the complexity and lack of clarity of the situation. You’ll get constant references to the same news sources. The same bland platitudes about sovereignty, territorial integrity, self-determination, Russia’s Cold War mentality and the like – all repeated Chinese Whispers style from some pundit in some paper somewhere, with little secondary thought, criticism or research applied. Hell, some places are still picking up on my pipelines post as if it’s an amazing new discovery that Georgia is a major point of transit for energy resources, rather than something that anyone who knows anything about the region at all has known about for years.

But you know the really worrying thing? It’s when the British Foreign Secretary ends up taking the same approach as the blogs:

“These actions need to be taken in the context of a clear diagnosis of the events of the last two weeks. For me, the fog of war does not obscure the basic points.”

Well, it should – if armed conflict doesn’t make you question your existing policy of containment of one of the belligerents, then what the hell will? The situation has changed from a year ago when Miliband first decided that escalation of the UK’s ongoing post-Litvinenko spat with Russia was the way forward. Russia has moved its troops into a sovereign nation. The Kremlin has gone from vague threats and subversion (via cyber attacks and withholding energy) into physical attacks. This requires new thinking and new approaches – not least because it shows just how ineffective the existing British strategy towards Russia has been.*

Me? I’m just a blogger, not Foreign Secretary – and yet I’m trying to revise my preconceptions of Russia. I’m reading more widely, researching in more depth, trying to work out how this might play out, and what the best options are for both sides. I haven’t got there yet, but I plan to work at it constantly – because the joy of international relations is that they are constantly shifting, affected by myriad factors, many of which are both obscure and obscured. If a week is a long time in politics, a year is an age in international relations. So why is the British government still pursuing the same course with Russia when the rules of the game have shifted once again?

(* Of course, it could also be a sign that the current policy is working fine and that Moscow is beginning to get desperate… But although I’m increasingly firmly in the “Russia is weak and trying to hide it” camp (as is the decidedly more knowledgeable Registan, I was pleased to note), this strikes me as both worrying and wishful thinking.)

Georgia, Russia, the EU and future UK foreign policy

Posted on by

Russian troops heading to GeorgiaYesterday’s Observer was on really rather good form, with a decent long article amply demonstrating the human cost – easy to forget when trying to work out the wider geopolitical remifications:

“They sifted out villagers with Georgian surnames, immediately executing all teenage boys. Nugzari Jashashvili, 65, was returning home across the fields when he saw gunmen approach the house of his neighbour, Gela Chikladze, 50. ‘They cut his throat,’ Jashashvili said.”

I’m focussing on the politics, but that’s not to say that this is just an interesting intellectual exercise in trying to predict the future of Eurasian relations. People have been killed in untold numbers in Georgia and South Ossetia, both by the Georgian and Russian armies and by bands of roving maniacs with guns, loosely fighting in what they see as the interest of one side or the other. There has been ethnic cleansing. People continue to die. The death toll may be unknown, but it is in the thousands.

Further on, a good think piece from Neil Acherson, and a moderately sensible editorial that makes a couple of interesting arguments:

“One crucial difference between the current East-West confrontation and the Cold War is that, this time, the economic ties binding the two sides are stronger. Russia needs access to Western markets; the West – and Europe in particular – needs Russian oil and gas. That creates an opportunity for the European Union, the world’s largest single market, to play a moderating role, steering the conversation away from military grandstanding and towards economic negotiation…

“Such aggression must not be rewarded. But Cold War-style brinkmanship will not make Russia’s neighbours safer. It will only reinforce the Kremlin’s view that small states are pawns in a strategic game. The best guarantee of security and peace in Europe since the end of the Cold War has been economic integration, achieved through the EU. It is Brussels, not Washington, that stands the best chance of persuading Moscow to change its ways.”

Today this is followed up by a piece on Comment is Free by Lib Dem MEP Graham Watson, again making the case for the EU as peacebroker:

“Europe is the only player that can be seen as an honest broker… Europe’s initial ambivalence might prove the unlikely key to its success. Post-Soviet member states are more inclined to lay blame for the conflict at Russia’s door; others, including Italy, have expressed an opposing view. By acknowledging that there are different opinions over responsibility for this conflict, the EU can better adopt a position of neutrality in its negotiations.”

Yes, Watson may be partisan, but I can’t do anything other than agree 100% with him on this:

Playing to the gallery of populist opinion is short-sighted but inevitable at this point in America’s election cycle. But not all EU member states have resisted that temptation either. Notably, Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, have engaged in a race to the bottom with each determined to use tougher, more anti-Russian rhetoric than the other. It is an unedifying spectacle that proves their mutual lack of suitability for the job that they are really squabbling over.

For reasons best known to himself, Miliband has been baiting Moscow for months in a series of vaguely populist soundbytes that have been highly critical of the Kremlin, further escalating the ongoing UK/Russia tensions that have been on the up since before the Litvinenko affair. Cameron… Well, what to make of Cameron? Thus far he’s rarely bothered making much of an effort when it comes to foreign affairs, far happier to score easy points at home. But his Tbilisi trip – coming as it has after the overly-extended decision to pull the Tory MEPs out of the EPP group (against their will) and his half-hearted attempt to build an alliance with the Czech Republic to push EU reform down an ill-defined new path – has nudged me right to the brink of declaring Cameron a man with no sense of the realities of international relations and foreign diplomacy.

Hell, with people like Cameron and Miliband potentially in charge of the UK’s foreign policy, I say bring on an EU-based common foreign policy as soon as possible. When it comes to The Great Game, we can’t risk having second-rate minds with no concept of history at the helm. Why are we still allowing Cameron and Miliband to go around kicking the hornet’s nest when a collective effort is so vital? Because just as it is not in the EU’s interest to alienate Russia thanks to Moscow’s control of so many vital energy supplies, it is not in Britain‘s either. Come on – this is Britain we’re talking about. We used to be good at this stuff. We didn’t get such a vast Empire by making stupid statements and shaking our fists at people – we got it through a combination of overwhelming military force and backed up with insanely good intelligence and expert diplomacy. We no longer have the overwhelming military force – which makes diplomacy and intelligence all the more vital. Miliband and Cameron, in their Georgia statements, appear to possess neither.

And now for a question, the answer to which I genuinely can’t work out. Considering that the Council of Europe exists to promote democracy, justice and the rule of law, contains all EU member states, plus every other European state with an interest in this affair – Turkey, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia – and, most importantly, both Russia and Georgia, why isn’t it the CoE rather than the EU that is taking the lead here?

Lessons from Scotland

Posted on by

On 25th July 1603 King James VI of Scotland was crowned King James I of England, sparking many of the ongoing resentments about Scottish power in England and English power in Scotland that are continuing to this day.

On 25th July 2008, Labour lost to the Scottish Nationalist Party in the Glasgow East by-election, giving the Scottish independence movement a handy boost.

1603, resentment of influential Scots; 2008, resentment of influential Scots.

405 years with the same rulers – and 301 years since the Act of Union brought the two countries together as one – and yet Scottish/English national identity is as strong as ever. The only difference? We no longer invade and kill each other when we get miffed.

Lesson learned? Political union is great.

A quick case study of the EU’s problems

Posted on by

Today marks the start of the French presidency of the EU. Sarkozy’s task as president? To guide the union from the post-Irish referendum confusion into a fresh new dawn of harmony and mutual appreciation, to an EU both truly united and sure of its purpose.

Yes, the Polish president may have refused to ratify Lisbon as well, but he’s a homophobic right-wing nutter, everyone knows that. We’ll pretend that hasn’t happened, just as we’ll pretend the Irish no vote hasn’t happened. And worst case scenario we’ll put our fingers in our ears, go “la la la la la!” whenever anyone else speaks, and then act as if we’re all singing from the same hymnsheet when we aren’t even singing from the same hymnbook. It’ll all work out fine in the end.

To wit, a case in point, from the reception the French Ambassador to the Court of St James (aka to the UK, for those not au fait with outmoded chivalry), held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London the Saturday before last to mark the start of the French EU presidency (to which I was kindly invited):

The French Ambassador speaks, listing France’s three priorities for her presidency of the EU as:


1) Culture
2) Diversity
3) The people of Europe

Up next, a representative of the British government (whose name I didn’t catch and whom I didn’t recognise), listing what the UK thinks are the three French priorities:

1) Energy and energy security
2) Climate change
3) Migration

Followed, of course, by much shaking of hands, smiling, and mutterings about how great it was that everyone was in agreement. No mention of France focussing on more abstract concepts (in an effort to reunite the EU around core shared ideals, so entirely understandable) while the UK focusses on practicalities. No acknowledgement of the complete lack of anything in the way of similarity in what the two representatives have just stated as being the key priorities. Just carrying on regardless like a couple of deaf old ladies over tea and biscuits.
“I said let’s prioritise Climate change, Ivy.”

“Culture and diversity, you say? Why Ethel, what a lovely idea! How about doing something to get the people of Europe on board while we’re at it?”

“You’re entirely right – we really should do something about all those migrants crossing the borders.”

At this rate we’re never going to get anywhere.

On the Shadow Home Secretary’s resignation

Posted on by

Three thoughts on all the Westminster excitement (for non-UK readers, the short version – the Shadow Home Secretary has resigned his seat as MP to force a by-election, which he has announced that he intends to fight on the single issue of the erosion of civil liberties in Britain, following the contentious and close vote to extend the legal period of detention without trial to 42 days):

1) No one (outside of blogland) really cares about a bunch of muslims being locked up (and no one outside of blogland thinks the risk of anyone other than terrorist suspects being affected is a serious one). Nor do they care much about ID cards and a national ID database, or about there being loads of CCTV cameras invading our privacy every second of the day with no discernible impact on crime rates (the “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to hide” mentality still being massively dominant) when their house price is plummeting and/or it’s costing more to fill up at the pumps and do the weekly shop. The next election will almost certainly be fought over the economy, with Gordon Brown’s ten years as Chancellor being painted as ten years of luck that set us up for a crash by the Tories, and as ten years of stability showing Gordon Brown to be the best man to weather the economic storm by Labour. Civil Liberties are simply not an election-winning issue.

2) This is aimed at Cameron far more than Labour, and smacks of sour grapes that Davis hasn’t got the influence within the party to make this a central plank of the Tory attack strategy. He’s throwing his toys out of the pram, because two-time leadership loser Davis can’t hack that he’s not the boss. He almost certainly does believe (pretty much) everything he says on the civil liberties front – he’s got a decent enough track record, (though his support of 28 days does raise a few questions and contradictory positions on gay rights do cause some concern) – but it’s hard not to see this as anything more than another internal Tory party spat.

3) It is, however, moderately interesting that one of the most senior opposition frontbenchers sees parliament’s influence as so diminished that it’s easier to spread his message (pretty much literally) from a soapbox. Maybe someone should get the man a blog…

(Far more interesting, of course, is the result of the Irish Lisbon Treaty referendum – expected later today, and expected to be very close indeed. But will there be any irregularities that may allow a legal challenge from the losing side?)