A problem with the Conservative Party

In particular, I am talking about the Conservative Party's attitude to foreign policy. As I pointed out on the other blog, there has been a certain lack of foreign policy ideas coming out either from the Cabinet or the Shadow Cabinet, especially on the subject of NATO, its expansion and attitudes to Russia. Since then these subjects became more acute because of Russia's invasion of Georgia and the obvious failure of the new political "geometry" to deal with it.

As far as the Conservative Party leadership is concerned, we have had the Shadow Foreign Secretary blathering about hope that all sides of the "dispute" will sit down and discuss matters peacefully and the leader of the party, David Cameron, coming out with forceful statements, going to Georgia for a photo-op, which was appreciated by President Saakashvili, and explaining belatedly that NATO should have been clearer in its statements about Georgia and Ukraine. He was, naturally enough, attacked by various MPs, particularly John Redwood, for being bellicose and unfair to Russia.

Since then David Cameron managed to row back by announcing that, as Tory Diary reported:

We should accept that we cannot impose democracy at the barrel of a gun. We cannot drop democracy from 10,000 feet and we should not try. Put crudely that was what was wrong with the "neo-con" approach and why I am a liberal Conservative not a neo-Conservative.

This is, sadly, unmitigated rubbish. There are no particular rules as to how democracy is arrived at and the methods he dismisses were the very ones that were used to impose democracy on Germany, Austria, Italy and Japan. They seem to have worked quite well and would have worked with other countries such as Hungary if the Soviet Union had not intervened. As one contributor to the discussion points out, those methods did no harm to Serbia in the long run, either.

More to the point, however, is the Boy-King's platitudinous insistence that he is not a "neo-con", an attitude that goes down very well with many of the more vociferous members of the party if the discussions on ToryBoy Forum are anything to go by.

There is an insistent cry that the Conservative Party, when in government (since it is not going to be in power, in view of who legislates for this country), should distance itself from the "neo-cons". In fact, anyone who points out that, no matter who is in government on either side of the Pond, our closest and greatest ally is the United States, like Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservative Home, is immediately described in slightly hysterical tones as being a "neo-con".

The truth is that neither David Cameron nor those members of his party who shriek for the need to abandon the "neo-con" path have the slightest idea what that means or who the "neo-cons" are. It does not mean simply "more conservative" or "aggressively conservative". The people who can be described as "neo-con", such as Richard Perle or Irving Kristol, have usually followed a certain political path that started reasonably far on the left. Therefore, the term cannot seriously be applied to anyone else, even if they think the war in Iraq is a sensible and successful way of dealing with the problem of international jihad and terrorism.

Most certainly it cannot be applied to President Bush or his closest advisers or to John McCain or Sarah Palin, though they all support the war. Senator McCain was one of the first advocates of the now obviously successful surge in Iraq, which is not a shambles or a disaster, despite what numerous Conservatives in Britain maintain.

I shall pass over the implication, too often voiced that through the "neo-cons" the Jewish lobby successfully controls America's foreign policy as there is no evidence for any of that. Support for Israel comes from different sources, which both my colleague and I have discussed at length on EUReferendum.

The trouble from the Conservative Party's point of view is that this is the wrong way of going about the task of developing a foreign policy. Both the leadership and various vociferous members are looking at structures rather than content, the method normally used by the European Union in the furthering of its aims, particularly the development of the common foreign and security policy.

In their obsession with having to distance themselves from the poorly understood and, as it happens, not that important "neo-cons", the Conservatives are losing sight of certain matters. Foreign policy does not emerge from dislike of certain groups and should not grow from the right-wing envy and dislike of the United States. If the Tories think that the US and the rest of the Anglosphere are not this country's natural allies, they should come up with alternative ideas and simply talking vaguely of China and India (an Anglospheric country), as the Shadow Foreign Secretary did in a major speech inFebruary 2007 is not enough.

Furthermore, problems of international relations and crises that occur from time to time, like the one that was precipitated by Russia when it decided to invade Georgia because the latter was not sufficiently enthusiastic about being in the former's sphere of influence, requires an understanding of what is going on and an opinion of what is best for Britain and for the West. If the Conservative Party decides that foreign policy consists of looking at what they think those much-derided and completely unknown "neo-cons" do and then do the opposite, the country under Mr Cameron's government will speedily find itself in the sort of messy, anomalous position it has achieved under Mr Brown.

A crisis for feminists

Naturally enough, I am enthralled by the sight of Governor Sarah Palin, the representative of middle America, so despised by our own clever-dicks and those who take their views from them, storming onto the political arena and cutting a swathe through the enemy.

This is not a blog about American politics, so I shall not discuss the details of her views (though if it is wished by the readers, I can do so, having followed the whole story in the American rather than British media and blogosphere).

One aspect needs to be pointed out though. Sarah Palin is a crisis for modern, left-wing feminists and that applies to Britain and the EU as well. Since John McCain's announcement of his choice, Governor Palin and her entire family have been subjected to a barrage of deeply unpleasant personal attacks, among which the mantra that she should not take on the Vice-Presidency but stay at home and look after her children has been pre-eminent. This came from journalists who rarely see their own children in pursuit of their careers but, more importantly, have praised many a left-wing woman for doing just that: running a career with a family in the background. (And yes, someone needs to ask how many times has Barack Obama has seen his adorable little girls in the last year and a half outside the photo opportunities.)

We have seen no outrage from the feminist organizations. But then we have seen nothing from the feminist organizations on the subject of women's position in Islamic societies, as a random example.

Now that I think of it, we have seen no outrage from the usually vociferous disability lobby at the repeated mantra that she should have aborted her Down's Syndrome baby because such people should not be polluting the earth.

How is this? Well, the obvious explanation is that feminist organizations and the disability lobby, like all such lobbies, see their position on the left, that is on the side of big government with plenty of hand-outs. To this end, the victim mentality has to be encouraged in order to get greater hand-outs.

The EU has, therefore, managed to insert itself into all these discussions by presenting itself as the true defender of women, minorities, disabled people and the old (as the various lobby groups on behalf of the elderly have been silent on the subject of all those insults flung at John McCain because he happens to be a vigorous 72 year old).

The theme is that these people cannot be allowed to lead their own lives but must remain under the aegis of the benign government in a communal society. Anyone who cuts across these ideas is to be thrown to the wolves of the media at their nastiest, be they truly conservative women, disabled people who just want to get on with their lives or right wing members of what might be termed ethnic minority. If these people succeed then the entire extended, government-funded industry of "helping the weak" will collapse. Given the EU's claims of providing better help out of taxpayer funding and employing more people to provide that help to these groups than national governments do, those who show disdain for such "help" are a threat.

Sarah Palin is a threat to the whole cosy consensus.

Who says religion and politics don't mix?

Forum 18, so far as I know the only organization that pays attention to religious persecution in the former Soviet territory, including Russia, reports from the newly "liberated" Abkhazia (in the same way as numerous countries were "liberated" after the Second World War by the benign Soviet Union).

Two monasteries of Georgian Orthodox monks and nuns in the Upper KodoriGorge, captured by Abkhaz forces from Georgian forces in mid-August, arebeing pressured by the Abkhaz Orthodox Church to change their jurisdiction."They must submit to the authority of our Church or leave Abkhazia," thehead of the Abkhaz Orthodox Church, Fr Vissarion Aplia, who visited themonks and nuns within days of the fighting, told Forum 18 News Service.Asked who had given him the right to pressure members of a differentreligious jurisdiction to submit to his authority, Fr Aplia responded angrily: "It's not your business. It's our territory." Abkhaz DeputyForeign Minister Maxim Gvinjia backs the right of the Abkhaz Church toenforce its will on the monks and nuns. "Of course we won't defend theirrights, given the context of current developments," he told Forum 18."Abkhazia is a Christian Orthodox country and the Abkhaz Orthodox Church is the main church." Since the expulsion of a Georgian Orthodox priest inApril, the two monasteries are the only remaining Georgian Orthodoxinstitutions left in Abkhazia.

It is a mistake to think that freedom of speech and of religion and human rights in general are issues that can be separated from political and economic relations between countries. Eventually, I trust, we shall learn this lesson and realize that it is true not just in individual cases but in all of them.

Developments in law

Today's newspapers are full of this story. "EU approves proposal to try Britons in their absence in foreign courts". There are one or two problems with the headline. It is not, as yet, the EU that has approved the proposal but merely the European Parliament that is not the legislator in the EU. Of course, one cannot expect Frances Gibb, Legal Editor of the Times, to know such things. I suppose, one ought to be fair, and assume that the headline was created by a sub-editor, except that, judging by the number of typos and other errors I see day in, day out, I am no longer sure newspapers emply such people.

Anyway, the point is that, if the proposal goes through, it "allow citizens to be extradited automatically under fast-track procedures at the request of another European Union country on the basis of a decision by the foreign court". That, of course, was the whole point of the European Arrest Warrant, which was pushed into British law some time ago. Why the wailing and gnashing of teeth now?

In any case, the point of any extradition is that it is done at the request of a country because of a court decision in absentia. If it were not in absentia, there would be no point in asking for extradition. The problem seems to be that this will now extend to all sorts of minor misdemeanours and, one could argue, that people should not commit them in other countries any more than they do in their own. Furthermore, the whole extradition process is to be speeded up. But that, as I said before, was the point of the European Arrest Warrant, supposedly brought in to help us fight terrorism but really aimed at a harmonization of judicial processes.

It is worth pointing out that Britain was one of the countries that sponsored this proposal, so this is not a question of evil foreigners imposing their will on us but the usual rather muddled notion that we can somehow use the EU for our own purposes - get various miscreants back to this country and put them on trial.

This is fun

Victor Davis Hanson, one of the best writers and columnists around (he is also a military historian and a classicist), puts the Democratic National Convention into perspective, in particular having a go at that "Greek temple" that will be the background to Obama's acceptance speech.

Sheffield rally, anyone? Heh!

Where is the new political geometry?

Whatever happened to the new post-Cold War political geometry? The one that was going to have the European Union as its leader and exemplar? Gone, all gone. Well, not permanently, we expect, since the EU common foreign policy rises from dead more frequently than Dracula in an average Hammer Horror Film, but for the moment we are back to familiar territory.

NATO ships, led by the US Navy, are exercising in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, watched and growled at by Russia, who has missed the chance so far of upgrading its naval strength, if not to compete, at least to start catching up with NATO. Sinking one Georgian boat, the great boast of the war in Georgia is not the same as going against the naval power of the West.

There is talk of a new Cold War (though some of us have been saying for some time that it is there in existence) and what Britain should do. The Henry Jackson Society, for instance, has come up with various ideas with a press release today that has what one can only describe as a mish-mash of suggestions.

The Henry Jackson Society recommends the following:

· An urgent defence review following Russia’s military threats and aggression

· Increasing the national defence budget

· A permanent Defence Secretary to end the farce of having a part-time job share

· Boosting our military forces in Germany

· Starting a mass recruitment exercise for the armed services

· Calling for other European countries to take on greater military responsibility and commitments

· Strengthening NATO by encouraging its members to take European defence more seriously by having more joint military exercises and building stronger armed forces within the EU.

· NATO to accept the Ukraine’s immediate membership into the organisation

Best not to enquire too closely what purpose European defence and armed forces within the EU might mean. I suspect the well-meaning HJS has not yet managed to work out that the EU is part of the problem not the solution.

The G7, which became the G8 in the general post-Cold War euphoria and desire to be nice to Russia is now issuing condemnations of that country.

"We, the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, condemn the action," the group said, in what the UK Foreign Office described as an "unprecedented step".

"We deplore Russia's excessive use of military force in Georgia and its continued occupation of parts of Georgia.

"We call unanimously on the Russian government to implement in full the six-point peace plan brokered by President Sarkozy on behalf of the EU, in particular to withdraw its forces behind the pre-conflict lines."

Well, they can call for what they like. The time to issue warnings was some months ago. Still, there is something spectacular in the way Russia has managed to unite almost everyone against her without, it would appear, achieving a great deal.

But where, oh where is the European Union in all this? Where is Javier Solana, who is supposed to speak for the EU in matters of international importance? What will President Sarkozy, whose country is in the EU's presidential seat, do now that his efforts have been comprehensively trashed by President Medvedev? How long can Germany and France bleat about the need not to isolate Russia and to keep talking nicely to her? Where, in short, is the new soft power?

The EU and Olympics

Not content with making a mess of things over the Caucasus (though Sarkozy must be running up quite spectacular air miles) the EU is once again poking its collective nose into matters to do with sport.

Yesterday I was rung up by a journalist from the Sunday Express, who was working on an article about the EU wanting to have just one Olympic team. What did I think about that? Well, I was on a bus so it would have been difficult to say openly what I thought of such an incredibly stupid idea, so I contented myself with laughing heartily.

Iain Dale raised the subject a few days ago, making it clear that he did not agree either. The point is that some bright sparks have added up the medals that the various EU member states have won and pointed out that together they would have put the EU into top position.

Of course, I explained to the journalist, this is not how it would work. The EU operates on a proportional input principle and every member state would have to supply the right number of athletes to create a "real European" team. It would not be merely all the existing teams put together.

I must admit the journalist was sceptical that this idea would ever have legs. After all, he said, we are doing rather well in the medals table and are unlikely to support the idea of becoming part of a European Union team. That is true though it is an inadequate argument since it implies that if we were doing our usual not-very-bright sporting best, the notion of joining up with the others in one team would become acceptable.

Can you imagine, I asked, anybody cheering for an EU Olympic team. He could not even though journalists, in my experience, can believe six impossible things before breakfast with great ease.

So, will this idea now die, he asked. Certainly not. It will come up with the next Olympics, Winter Olympics and any other international competition. The point is that the EU is desperate to create that famed European identity and is failing to do so. Support for one's team is visceral and if only that could be transferred to a "European" team away from the existing national ones, the EU would see its way clear towards that "identity". Let's face it, nothing else has worked.

I did not add the obvious rider, which is that the Olympic Games are not supposed to be about national teams, anyway. That famous Olympic spirit, always trotted out pompously by the IOC when any criticism of certain countries, such as China, are voiced, says that it is individual or sport team (such as football or relay) achievements that matter not what nationality the contestants are. What a nice idea. I wonder if they will have flying pig competitions.

Forty years ago

There has been a great deal written about the events forty years ago in Czechoslovakia, not least because certain far more recent events in Georgia have been a reminder though not, I fear, necessarily that hackneyed thing, a wake-up call.

For all of that, much has changed, not least in Russia itself. On the one hand, we are unlikely to see those brave dissidents who went out to protest on Red Square - the population appears to be more supine and accepting, being somewhat tired of history, one suspects.

On the other hand, the Russian military is in a far worse state than it was forty years ago. The numbers are still there when one speaks of a small country like Georgia. But they are only just there. The birthrate has fallen below replacement levels while life expectancy, especially among men, is going down.

Military technology has not been upgraded despite the many millions poured into it, as became obvious to many observers. The country's infrastructure is falling apart and, apparently, no money is being invested in it. The revenue from gas and oil is not being used to diversify the economy and make it into a first-class modern one.

A military adventure may seem to be a good idea to divert people's attention from the undoubted problems the country has, especially, it continues Putin's policy of whipping up fear of neighbours with endless references back to the horrors of the Second World War. But a long-drawn out military adventure may cost more than the country can afford and a diversification of military adventures will, most probably, bring about a crisis. Not that's particularly useful to the rest of the world, as history will confirm.

More on the anniversary on EUReferendum.

A new venture

Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservative Home, has started a new site: America in the World. This is a much needed corrective to the prevailing and mindless anti-Americanism, particularly dangerous as we survey the world now, August 2008. We wish him good luck and hope to be able to link to the site frequently.

Don't confuse us with facts

One of the many accusations levelled at Americans (all Americans, all 370 million of them) is that they are completely ignorant of the world outside their own, admittedly very large and varied country. Actually, the ones who tend to be ignorant of both the world outside and the United States itself are the sort of "liberal" semi-intellectuals our own media and analysts love to talk to.

Two things come to mind: people in Britain asserting with a snigger that "ironically" those who were killed in the twin tower and Pentago attacks did not even know anything about the people who attacked them. It seems a little incredible that people who worked in various companies in the World Trade Centre or in the Pentagon had no idea about the rest of the world. What was ironic was that many of those sniggerers would, themselves, have been hard put to find Afghanistan, for instance, on the map.

The other chestnut is Americans know nothing about various rather unimportant British and European places. "They think Hull is just outside London," - someone said to me indignanttly once. Well, if you look at the distances, Hull is not far outside London to an American eye.

More to the point is why anyone outside Englans should want to know where Hull is. After all, the person who complained did not know where Seattle was and that is of greater importance to the world.

But, anyway, the natural assumption is that Americans know nothing about the rest of the world and that is why they blunder around. Whereas the sophisticated Europeans and, of course, British do know and do understand. In particular, they know about the United States and that is why they are entitled to make judgements about that country. Right? Well, up to a point, as Glenn Reynolds points out on Instapundit.

Actually, he links to an article in the Daily Telegraph but I tend to eschew that newspaper's American coverage because it tends to be so ignorant, out of date and biased, particularly as its correspondents in the US have made themselves into cheerleaders for Senator Obama.

This article, however, is of interest. Based on a recent opinion poll conducted by YouGov/PHI showed that on almost every subject there was a complete ignorance of the truth among the British respondents.

A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states. ...

The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia.

Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent. ....

There is more about internal matters but not, perhaps, enough where many of these ignorant and erroneous opinions come from. Could it be the bulk of our media?

Let us not forget that opinion and the media that shapes it also influence policies. The reluctance to support the United States and acknowledge that the West should stick together or the importance of the Anglosphere has led, indirectly, to the crisis we are facing now in the Caucasus.

A picture's worth a thousand words

And three pictures, which is the norm of the daily dose of the Day by Day cartoon, is obviously worth three thousand words. Today's certainly cannot be bettered by any number of superfluous words.

That foreign policy remains non-common

Another one of “Europe’s hours”, a phrase first used with reference to the war in former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the nineties, has come and gone with that foreign policy remains stubbornly non-common.

Let’s forget about President Sarkozy’s great achievements. What he did was to abandon whatever plan his own foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had signed with President Saakashvili, and simply accepted what President Medvedev gave him as a working plan. He then flew to Tbilisi, got Saaksashvili’s agreement and smiled for the cameras.

Meanwhile, Russia has proceeded to ignore her own six-point peace plan, has continued fighting in Georgia, targeting largely civilian population and advancing towards the capital, Tbilisi.

The rest of the EU has split as is its wont whenever there is a real crisis. For once, Britain is nowhere, as we no longer have a foreign policy. It took days for both the Prime Minister and the Leader of HM Loyal Opposition to make any statements that made the slightest bit of sense.

Other Europeans have been somewhat bolder.

President Lech Kaczynski of Poland and his counterparts from Ukraine and the three Baltic countries traveled to Tbilisi on Tuesday to express their solidarity with Georgia, a country that, like their own nations, spent decades in the grip of the Soviet Union.

"Russia has again shown its true face," Kaczynski said Tuesday, questioning whether the Russian decision to halt military activity in Georgia was permanent.

The trip by Kaczynski, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, President Valdis Zatlers of Latvia, President Valdas Adamkus of Lithuania and President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine comes three days after their countries issued a joint statement urging the European Union and NATO to "stand up against the spread of imperialist and revisionist policy" by Russia.

How right the Polish president was to wonder.

These views from Eastern Europe stand in stark contrast to the calibrated statements from French and German officials, which have refrained from designating a culprit in the conflict. On the other end of the spectrum, Italian officials appeared to side with Russia.

"We cannot create an anti-Russia coalition in Europe, and on this point we are close to Putin's position," the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, told La Stampa in an interview published Monday, stressing that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia. Frattini is also European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security.

We have been told on numerous occasions that if only the EU would speak with one voice all would be well and Russia would see the light. But what would the EU say with its one voice? Would it take the Polish approach or the Italian one? Or would it issue those “calibrated” Franco-German statements.

Still, it is good to know that when they met the foreign ministers of the EU decided to paper over their differences and agree to send monitors to the Caucasus to oversee the “negotiated truce”. Given the news coming out of Georgia, there appears to be no need for monitors. We know what is happening and the truce has become non-existent. What will the EU propose now?

UPDATE: Der Spiegel gives a summary of German press opinions about the row within the EU over Russia's invasion of Georgia (no, we are not talking South Ossetia or Abkhazia here). It's all very well to say that "deep division has led to weakness of response" but would an EU united behind the rather feeble French and German politicians have produced a stronger one?

Back home and that elephant

It is difficult to pay attention to anything at the moment outside the Caucasus and Russia making fools out of Western politicians, who have had plenty of warnings that this would happen. Nevertheless, other matters to obtrude.

For instance, there was a certain amount of excitement about MPs demanding that Britain should have a Bill of Rights. Well, of course, Britain does have a Bill of Rights and it predates everybody else’s, as it became law in 1689. The trouble is that many of its provisions have been abolished by succeeding Parliaments, especially some of the most recent ones.

This Bill of Rights will be different because it will not simply enumerate the rights people have and the government cannot take away, such as the original 1689 one and the first ten Amendments to the American Constitution are, this one will specify what rights they are to be given by the benevolent government.

The Guardian, for example, says:

"A UK bill of rights and freedoms would be a constitutional landmark. It would provide a framework both for protecting the liberty of the individual against the intrusion of state power, and for protecting the 'little person' against powerful interests," the committee's chairman, Andrew Dismore MP, explained yesterday.

Such a move could open up the gradual prospect of individuals - especially the "vulnerable and marginalised" - being able to go to court to enforce the right to decent housing, healthcare or education for a child with special needs.

It might also prevent failed asylum seekers being denied benefits as is currently official policy, the joint Lords-Commons committee on human rights (JCHR) says in a new report. Such changes might help offset "the popular misconception that human rights are a charter for criminals and terrorism".

Of course, special rights for special groups is not precisely what a Bill of Rights should be about. The real Bill of Rights was about rights for all. With this lot one has to ask what about our rights not to be taxes till the pips squeak in order to provide failed asylum seekers benefits that even our own citizens probably should not have.

We are no longer talking about rights as something inherent but as something decided on and imposed by the state – the exact opposite of what a Bill of Rights ought to be.

However, there is another problem here. It is our old friend, the elephant in the room. Do these MPs not know that the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty, which this country has already ratified, includes a Charter of Fundamental Rights? That is the one this country’s population, both resident and transient will be governed by and MPs can say whatever they like. They will not be heeded.

Coincidences

A few people have noted an odd coincidence. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline (BTC), the only one that carries crude oil from Azerbaijan and is not controlled by Russia, was hit by an explosion on Turkish territory about a week before the war in South Ossetia and Georgia started.

BP, a major shareholder in the pipeline says that the fire has been extinguished but repairs will take another week or two. There seems to be some debate as to what caused the fire.

Kurdish separatists claimed responsibility for the explosion and said they would carry out more attacks on economic targets inside Turkey. Military and local official sources said the fire was due to a technical error and was not due to sabotage.

By Kurdish separatists, the Guardian presumably means the PKK, the organization that is widely believed to have been responsible for other recent explosions in Istanbul. The PKK is not only a terrorist but a Marxist organization with close links in the past with the Soviet Union.

If they did cause the explosion on the BTC pipeline it would be of some interest, as, since then the Russians have bombed the Georgian section of it. Or, at least, dropped bombs near to the pipeline. Or, at least, so said the Georgian Economy Minister, Eka Sharashidze, with the Russians neither confirming nor denying, according to Bloomberg.

In the Daily Telegraph Business Section we find BP denying that there is a problem.

Local reports recorded 51 missile strikes that left craters less than 100 yards on either side of a pressure vent.

A BP spokesman said that, after thorough checks, the company had "disclosed no bombing in the vicinity of the BTC line".

They may be right. Then again, BP is having a bit of a ding-dong with its Russian partners in TNK-BP and the CEO had to leave the country and retreat to an undisclosed destination not so long ago. So, they are unlikely to make any more waves.

It may not be an explosion by the PKK and there may have been no bombings, merely a case of Georgians trying to enlist Western help. Then again, there may be coincidences here that we should at least pay attention to, even if later on, we discard as being nothing more.

The West needs to look to its interests

James Sherr, acknowledged expert in post-Soviet developments and head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, writes on the war in the Caucasus and what it implies for other former Soviet republics, NATO and the West. He has been warning about Russia's intentions for some time.

Of course, with the authoritarian regimes on the attack, the notion of splitting the Western alliance and undermining the Western alliance through the determined creation of the EU's common foreign policy becomes even more dangerous.

Solana is on the job

Fine. No need to worry. The mess in the Caucasus - well the one in South Ossetia, anyway, because there are other messy situations in the Caucasus as the word Chechnya might remind everyone - is as good as solved.

An EU diplomatic delegation headed by South Caucasus envoy Peter Semneby and a U.S. team led by Matthew Byrza was heading to the Georgian capital Tblisi, the EU Observer reported. Lithuanian foreign minister Petras Vaitiekunas is also going on a separate, fact-finding mission for the EU, the newspaper said.

EU president France says there have been "multiple contacts" with Russia and Georgia and that it is "in liaison with all the protagonists" to hammer out a ceasefire. The Observer said EU foreign policy chief Javieer Solana has been in touch with the Georgian and Russian foreign ministers as well.

This will undoubtedly make the Russians withdraw and stop attacking Georgia proper, as opposed to invading South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After all, we can ... well, we can .... errm, do nothing and let them get bogged down. Or repeat in South Ossetia the behaviour that was so successful in Chechnya. At least this time the Russians cannot claim that the war against Georgia is part of the war against terror. Just as well. Given the air of appeasement around they would certainly get the support.

The referendum is off

No, not that referendum. We still don't know what will happen in Ireland where they may well have to vote again, as they got the original answer wrong. There will be no referendum in the UK or in Denmark, the country we are talking about.

However, a little while ago the Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that he was thinking of holding one or more referendums (that is the correct plural) on those opt-outs Denmark had been given rather grudgingly when the country first voted to reject the Maastricth Treaty.

He also thought it was time to have another referendum on the euro, which had been rejected by the Danes in 2000. This announcement was closely followed by speculation that Mr Rasmussen was a serious contender for the position of the European Council President, a new position established by the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty.

It seems that Mr Rasmussen has suddenly felt a chill in his toes. The idea of a referendum (or several referendums) on all those various opt-outs has been abandoned.

Denmark has abandoned plans for an imminent referendum on its four EU opt-outs because of uncertainty following the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty, the prime minister said in an interview Friday.

"We initially thought we would discuss the EU this autumn and perhaps organise a popular vote," explained Danish premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen in an interview published in the daily Jyllands-Posten.

"But because of the problems caused by the Irish referendum it is no longer the most pressing issue."

He said a referendum on whether to drop one or some of the Danish opt-outs to its membership of the European Union has been postponed to an unspecified date.

Hmm, I wonder what that uncertainty might be. Could it be actually a near-certainty of a resounding Danish no?

Where is the EU's soft power?

The news from the Caucasus is becoming very serious and very muddled, as such things always are. Some reports talk of 1,500 dead; others insist that the figures are lower than that.

To the usual fog of war there is the problem of conflicting political statements. Russia, who has sent a large contingent of troops to South Ossetia is talking angrily about Georgian misdemeanours and about the fact that Russian peacekeepers were fired at. The Russian troops, announced a tight-lipped President Medvedev, went in to support those peacekeepers.

This is an interesting twist on the usual tale, which is about Russian troops going in because they have been invited by the peace-loving people of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, fill in your own country.

According to the BBC Russian Service, President Medvedev has also announced that the Georgians will be forced to agree to a peace settlement. The South Ossetian government has announced that Georgian fire is preventing the transportation of wounded to hospitals.

The Russian operation, which involves contingents of the 58th Army, is conducted by General Vladimir Boldyrev, recently appointed to the overall command of the Russian land forces.

Also according to the BBC Russian Service, the Russian Ministry of Defence, has accused Ukraine in supporting Georgia in its ethnic cleansing of South Ossetia. At the moment, such accusations are to be taken very seriously.

One wonders whether this could have been avoided by a greater display of courage by certain West European countries, such as Germany, France, Spain and the Benelux, who made it clear at the last NATO Summit that they were prepared to act on Russian instructions if it meant "standing up to America" and, of course, ensuring no break in that energy supply.

Come to think of it, where is the soft power of the EU? This war is unfolding reasonably close, yet neither the EU nor its member states, whose leaders are, of course, on holiday or in Beijing, seem to have any ideas beyond wringing their hands and pleading with all sides to be good little children and play nicely with each other.

The UN, that supposed source of international law and good behaviour, is divided as Georgian and Russian representatives are trading insults. How familiar it all looks.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador, said Georgia was deliberately targeting Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and accused Tbilisi of "ethnic cleansing".

"Tbilisi is using a tactic of scorched earth. A number of towns in South Ossetia have been fully destroyed according to some reports," he said.

"Georgian snipers are not letting through ambulances, not allowing the medical services to get on with saving people."

Irakli Alasania, Georgia's envoy to the UN, rejected Churkin's charges and accused the Moscow of aggression.

"Russia is openly challenging the international community and jeopardising established international order and stability," he said. "We demand the Russian Federation immediately terminate aerial bombardments, immediately pull out the occupying forces, and negotiate ceasefire," he said, adding that Saakashvili was ready for direct peace talks with the Russians.

Towards the end of the meeting, he turned directly to Churkin, and asked, "Are you ready to stop the fighter jets who are in the air who will soon be bombing my comrades in Georgia, and what will the security council do about this now? How are we going to address this?"

He received no reply.

Insults are also traded on the BBC Russian Service Forum though there is one interesting comment on it. If you want to know who really is the aggressor, says one contributor, look at the movement of the refugees. Which way are they running? This is an extremely important point. Back in the days of the war in Croatia (not much noted in Britain, where too many people think that the Yugoslav wars started in 1999 in Kosovo) Croat refugees ignored the age-old enmity between themselves and Hungarians as well as the supposed Slav brotherhood. They ran to Hungary away from the Serbs.

It looks like the South Ossetians are running to North Ossetia, which would make a good deal of sense - they are more or less the same people, though being a tribal nation, the Ossetians fight a good deal among themselves. However, Al-Jazeera adds an interesting and little-noted detail:

Moscow began to transport on Saturday South Ossetian refugees - whom it considers as its own citizens - into the neighbouring Russian province of North Ossetia.

So, are those refugees fleeing or are they being bundled into coaches and lorries and transported?

Another crisis for the EU's common foreign policy

While the media is oohing and aahing about the spectacle China has put together for the opening of the Olympic Games, a grimmer tale is unfolding to the north-west. Georgia and Russia are on the brink of a war in South Ossetia, nominally part of Georgia but de facto independent of that country and heavily dependent on Russia.

I shall try to do a longish posting on it later this evening or tomorrow to go through the saga as it has been unfolding. Suffice it to say that while the CFSP's Chief Panjandrum, Javier Solana, was sending good-will messages to Beijing, Georgia has decided to respond to the constant attacks from South Ossetia, inspired, the Georgian government says, by the Russian military peacekeepers by shelling the capital of the break-away region.

Earlier today it was announced that the Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian Prime Minister, has ordered his troops to stop fighting and suggested negotiations with Russia as guarantor of South Ossetia's autonomy, as long as the region stays within Georgia.

This does not seem to have worked and Russia has sent in heavy armoured vehicles and tanks to strengthen their troops peacekeepers.

The West in general, and the EU in particular, are, as usual, wringing their hands. NATO, which came up with a complicated solution at its summit to the problem of Georgia is worried:

"We are very closely following the situation, and the NATO Secretary General (Jaap de Hoop Scheffer) calls on all sides for an immediate end of the armed clashes and calls for direct talks between the parties," a NATO statement said.

The EU, the still-hopeful new soft power, is also worried:

A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the EU was very concerned by how the situation was evolving. "We repeat our message to all parties to immediately stop the violence," he said.

All parties, eh? That would be what? Invaders and defenders, attackers and counter-attackers? Well, it is a complicated situation but it is hardly an unexpected one as Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation makes clear. But, of course, the EU has no idea what to do or say about Russia or the Caucasus.

We have already seen the problem. Germany is terrified of nay-saying Russia because it is so heavily dependent on that country for its energy supplies. Of course, the chances of Russia not supplying Germany with gas and oil are very slim but that is not how the German government and Chancellor see the issue.

The new member states, particularly the Balts, on the other hand are more than a little worried. If Russia is starting proxy wars in former Soviet republics, being unable to exercise its supposed renewed power any other way, who is going to be next. Lithuania, for one, is not waiting for that famous CFSP to kick into action but has sent her own foreign minister on a fact-finding mission.

The story is developing.

Funny sort of teachers they have

Yesterday's Daily Telegraph carried an article entitled "How the public is spending £7 million on Beijing Olympic staff". (The Telegraph link is a little iffy but here is one to the article in the Daily Mail. The wording is almost exactly the same, which makes one wonder which news agency provided the copy in the first place.) This details the many officials, politicians and BBC journalists that are going to the Olympics at the taxpayers' expense.

Here is the full list of the 631 people in question. Team GB (what a name!) comprises of 313 people. They are the ones who are supposed to be going to the Olympics if we must take part in this ridiculous farce.

Why does the Prime Minister need an entourage of 20 people? Why does Boris Johnson need 13? Why do all these government departments need to be represented in such numbers? Could it be because a trip to China is still very expensive and the Olympics are a good opportunity to indulge oneself in a tax-funded "jolly" at a time when most people are thinking of tightening their belts?

On the whole it was this that really shocked me:

In addition, the taxpayer is footing the £240,000 bill for 39 Metropolitan Police staff to go on a fact-finding tour in Beijing.

Dorset Police is sending four people to find out how to police the 2012 sailing event and Greenwich council, which will help host the gymnastics in 2012 in the O2 Arena, is sending six officials at a cost of £14,000.

Time was, dear reader, when police from all over the world came to Britain to learn about crowd control. Now our boys and girls in blue go abroad to do the same. Not just any old abroad but to one of the most oppressive and brutal regimes in the world. Well, well.

Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn 1918 - 2008

It is not right that the death of such a supremely important if controversial person pass unnoted on this blog or on any other. I wrote a longish piece, part obituary, part appraisal on Umbrella 3 (one of the spin-offs from EUReferendum) and can do no better than link to it here.

Did history ever go away?

This keeps happening to me. By the time I read Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History and the Last Man” – a couple of years after it was published – the main thesis, always rather hard to sustain, in my opinion, was out of date.

Now I have started Robert Kagan’s considerably smaller and more digestible “The Return of History and the End of Dreams” a little after it has caused much discussion on the other side of the Pond, though it has not been out in Britain for very long. Its thesis is not out of date but I cannot help wondering what the fuss is about.

Eventually, I shall write a proper review on the book. In the meantime, let me make just one or two points. The basic theme of the book is that the great hopes of the early nineties, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that the world would come together, forget all enmities and proceed forward in a more or less amicable, economically and politically ever more open fashion towards a liberal, post-national future, have died.

We are back, says Mr Kagan, in a situation where great or not so great powers (of which, apparently, Europe or the European Union used interchangeably, is one) are battling for power and influence just as they did in the bad old days; where liberalism and autocracy are at war, though not openly; and where the West and Islam or, rather, some form of it are at war fairly openly.

History is back, according to this, with a vengeance. The question is did it go away. It seems to me that some of Mr Kagan’s assumptions as to what happened in the nineties and immediately after are a little foggy.

First of all, the collapse of the Soviet Union was not the beginning of a post-national period that, according to Mr Kagan, did not last. The Soviet Union was supposed to be the first and finest example of a post-national state (unlike the multinational states that were all the rage in the nineteenth century though Mr Kagan seems to avoid that point) and its collapse brought back a number of strongly nationalistic states into the political arena. Confusing the Soviet Union and Russia gets us nowhere very far. Russia’s reviving power (severely overrated by Mr Kagan in my opinion) is a reaction not to the post-national liberal world order that was supposed to be constructed in the nineties but to the nationalism of the erstwhile Soviet republics and colonies.

Secondly, the European Union, whose aim is to create a new nation possibly and a new state certainly, is not a twenty-first century construct that is facing a nineteenth century power, Russia. It is a twentieth century idea, dealing with twentieth century problems and providing twentieth century answers: doing away with the nation state, which has, in fact been reviving everywhere since the late eighties.

Thirdly, the EU’s weakness, which Mr Kagan rightly notes, comes from its basic structure and ideology. To have a common foreign policy, as we keep saying ad nauseam, one must have common interests. Absent those, there can be no common policy and, clearly, no real desire to put it into action. This is true for all transnational organizations which put policies into place as decided by their unaccountable elites. (Mr Kagan seems to think that it was the nations of Europe who decided to gamble in the nineties and put into place economic and political integration.) A world run by these organizations is not a dream but a nightmare.

More on the book and its very interesting ideas to follow in future postings.

More on Eric Varley's obituary

So many aspects of politics in those years have been forgotten. I was interested to read the following in the obituary:

When the second pit dispute erupted, Varley articulated Labour's argument that the miners had a strong case and the Government had mishandled the situation. Heath's creation of a Department of Energy under Lord Carrington led Wilson to appoint Varley as his "shadow", and he performed soundly during the snap election of February 1974. In the resulting minority Labour government, Varley at 41 became Energy Secretary.

Varley and Michael Foot, now Employment Secretary, speedily discharged Labour's mandate of getting the miners back to work. The next challenge was the arrival of North Sea oil, which was expected to transform the economy; Varley announced that a State-owned British National Oil Corporation would take a 51 per cent stake.

He paid obeisance to coal by pouring money into the industry – while upbraiding the miners for absenteeism – and curbing the nuclear energy programme, rejecting a switch to the US-designed pressurised water reactor.

There was a combination of three factors: the absolute faith that North Sea oil would solve Britain's problems, instead of which the curse of oil struck, though on a smaller scale than usual; the assumption that the miners could not be taken on and had to be subsidized indefinitely; and the normal left-wing fear of nuclear power.

Thirty-odd years on we are still paying for those decisions.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be

The obituary of Lord Varley of Chesterfield, formerly known as Eric Varley MP reminded me of the horrors that this country went through in the sixties and seventies; the difficulties that were compounded by stupid political decisions; and the desperate need for reform that was, when it came, unpleasant to many people. If only Eric Varley had his way once or twice rather than the fanatical Anthony Wedgwood Benn, later Tony Benn, or the duplicitous Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, those reforms might have started earlier.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Varley, who actually did come from a mining family was rather right-wing (it would be interesting to know why he opposed Britain's membership of the Common Market) while that child of privilege, Tony Benn, has always been on the extreme and disastrous left of the party.

However, just as I sat there thinking that we have been through difficult periods before and maybe we shall get through the one we are experiencing now as well, I found the news item, which my colleague on EUReferendum had already covered.

In their wisdom, the Law Lords have gone further than the ECJ or the ECHR had ever expected them and ruled that sham marriages of illegal immigrants were perfectly lawful and investigating them was a breach of their human right to family life. Do their lordships stop to think, one wonders. What connection is there between a sham marriage carried out with the sole intention to circumventing the laws of this country and family life?

Another thought strikes one: what of forced marriages, perhaps carried out in order to keep some member of an extended family in Britain? Are we to understand that while the men in question must not be investigated because it would be a breach of their human rights, the unfortunate women or young girls can be kidnapped, abused and raped?

Is anybody surprised?

Is anybody surprised by the collapse of the Doha negotiations after seven years of meetings, dinners, criss-crossings of the world by the negotiators and their staff, more meetings, more dinners? Everybody is blaming everybody else. The United States offered some more concessions but Brazil said it was not enough.

The European Union is in no mood for concessions and sticks to its protectionist policies. India and Brazil have constituted themselves to be spokescountries for the Third World and much good it did anyone. The rulers of various poor countries fear free trade because they know it will undermine the power and riches they get from aid and high excise duty (the easiest tax to collect).

And so on. And so on. Not being an economist I have no desire to wade into the morass of the details. The co-chairman of the Bruges Group, Dr Brian Hindley, gave a prescient talk on the subject last year. His predictions were gloomy and they have all come true.

The one thing that seems clear to many of us - these vast multilateral negotiations do not get us very far. If, on top of that, the European Union negotiates on behalf of the 27 members, as none of us have the right any longer to make international trade agreements, the picture remains rather dark. Clearly a return to bilateral negotiations, something the United States is increasingly practising (when the Democrat controlled House of Representatives under the slightly demented Speaker Pelosi does not mess things up), is what is needed. Of course, for that, we have to dispense with the European Union and that would really upset some people.

It will outlive Bush

Anti-Americanism in Europe and many other countries (whose citizens will crawl over broken glass to get into that country they so hate and despise) has been with us for many decades. It was not caused by President Bush or his so-called unilateralism, which, somehow, included many allies and supporters. It will outlive Bush, no matter who his successor will be. The Wall Street Journal is trying not to gloat. We are full of admiration for that but cannot help snickering, just a little.

Blogging elsewhere

Explaining on Chicagoboyz why there is no such thing as Europe and suggesting a solution to the Obama problem.

"The election of longtime eurosceptic David Cameron as Prime Minister...

...would bring about a much-needed shot in the arm for democracy and accountability in Britain and the European Union." So says a posting on ToryBoy Blog, known officially as Conservative Home blog.

Its starting point is a remarkably silly and predictable sounding piece in the Financial Times Magazine, which seems to hit out at euroscepticism as being outdated scare-mongering (people like going to European countries so they must like the EU) and at the Conservative Party, which, according to George Parker, has now defeated its europhiliac (sorry, europhile) wing and can go forward on a eurosceptic ticket.

This may be news to some of us as we survey the position of such luminaries as Kenneth Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind and Francis Maude, not to mention the weaselly responses given by the Shadow Foreign Secretary to perfectly straightforward questions.

What surprised me somewhat was the attitude of the posting itself, written, one must assume, by the editor, Tim Montgomerie though he may have delegated. There seems to be an assumption that the Boy-King of the Conservative Party is, indeed, a long-time eurosceptic and will restore, well, give a shot in the arm of democracy and accountability in Britain and the European Union.

First things first. How has the Boy-King's long-term euroscepticism manifested itself? Enquiring minds want to know. They want a list of his words and deeds that prove this.

Next: what will be that shot in the arm and how will it be delivered? We are told that the Social Chapter will be taken back into British legislation. Hmmm. A few problems with that:

1. The Social Chapter does not exist as a separate entity. The Boy-King and his whizzkids will have to find which Articles they mean and deal with them separately.

2. The only way a Treaty can be changed is through an IGC. There are various ways of ensuring that it is called. Which one will the Conservative government use?

3. The changed Treaty at the end of the IGC has to be signed by all participants. How will the Conservative government ensure that it happens?

We at the Bruges Group are looking forward to the various plans the thinkers and strategists of the Conservative Party will produce in order to give that "much-needed shot in the arm for democracy and accountability in Britain and the European Union".

Whose side is the hostage-in-chief on?

This blog has followed the story of the Colombian hostages and its curious ambivalences here and here. It is worth returning to it and look a little more closely at the behaviour of the hostage-in-chief (at least if the media is to be believed), Ingrid Betancourt. She is, as it happens, considerably more photogenic than the other ex-hostages, not to mention the people who are still held in various parts of the jungle but she is also the one who can be relied on to speak the “right” phrases or should that be “right on” phrases.

Wednesday's Wall Street Journal Europe had an interesting letter on the subject. Unfortunately, one has to sign up to the newspaper to read letters on-line, so I shall have to copy it out. (The things one does in the line of duty.)

The letter is from Robert F. Agostinelli in Paris and it says:

The Ingrid Betancourt affair is really too rich with “faux” gratitude. I don’t remember one case that so pointedly laid out the differences between the U.S. and Europe.

On the day that Ingrid Betancourt was finally liberated by the Colombian Army (with U.S. support), the Italian Parliament was passing yet another strongly worded and “historic” measure demanding her release. It was the latest of a long, long list of European efforts to affirm their solidarity with Ms Betancourt. She was made an honorary citizen of Paris and her picture was plastered everywhere.

The entire European campaign was as pompous as it was feckless, useless and patronizing; all, sad to say, qualities we have now come to associate with Europe.

It was also dangerous. Colombia’s duly elected and popular President Alvaro Uribe, caught in an existential struggle with the FARC, the largest guerrilla group in Latin America and recognized as a terrorist organization by both the U.S. and the EU, came under pressure from Europe and Ms Betancourt’s family to “negotiate” with those who would destroy his country.

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez made good use of Europe’s angst about Ms. Betancourt by offering to “mediate”. As a carrot, Mr Chavez demanded that Europe and the world recognize FARC as legitimate “combatants”.

Mr Uribe, to his great and everlasting credit, refused. Only later, when some recordings were found on a captured FARC guerrilla, did the world have confirmation that Mr Chavez was bankrolling the FARC and pulling its strings.

Ms Betancourt was a wealthy Latin American who had grown up in Paris after her father was posted there as Colombia’s ambassador to UNESCO. Later she went to Science Po and there met such “luminaries” as Dominique de Villepin, married a French diplomat and gained a French passport.

Imbued with Left Bank idealism, she eventually returned to Colombia to run for president on a platform that included “progressive” activism. It was during her campaign against her rescuer, Mr Uribe, that she was nabbed by the FARC six years ago.

Ms Betancourt clearly gave France that which the country craves above all – she affirmed internationally that “France’s message to the world still counts”.

Ms Betancourt has already thanked France and its government, as well as President Chavez and President Rafael Correa of Ecuador; for what, one may ask? There’s still no word of any thanks for Mr Urive’s only ally in the world, which gave the rescue operation so much support, the Bush administration.

I feel a few points need to be added. First of all what Mr Agostinelli describes with such contempt is that famous “soft power” that Europe is supposed to bring to international affairs as against the despicable “hard power” of Americans and, it seems, Colombians. The fact that “soft power” gets us nowhere is irrelevant. It’s the fuzzy warm feeling that counts.

Secondly, I am looking forward to Ms Betancourt in her chic Parisian outfits running for the Colombian presidency with the help of all her international friends on an oppose-the-army-be-nice-to-the-terrorists platform. Should go down very well in Colombia. Sadly, Europeans do not vote in Colombian elections any more than they do in American ones as Senator Obama will eventually realize. They do vote in their own elections but that does no good at all, as the real government is the unelected one in Brussels.

Thirdly, I am intrigued by this idea of France’s message counting. As the French President did not even know about the operation, it would seem that his importance is of doubtful strength. Of course, he is no different from his predecessors in that he wants to get maximum kudos for minimum effort and, luckily, this rich leftie wannabe politician is ready to oblige.

Wait a minute: are we not supposed to be eschewing such things as national influence as outmoded and dangerous in favour of the EU’s common foreign policy? Just asking.

Commonwealth or Anglosphere

Among others the Irish Times reports:

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government won a vote of confidence in parliament today, ensuring the survival of the ruling coalition and a civilian nuclear deal with the United States.

The government said it would now push ahead with the pact, which would give India access to foreign nuclear fuel and technology and end decades of isolation, as well as work towards reforms to liberalise the trillion-dollar economy.

India is growing into a major regional power (as is Australia, which is ahead in that game) with her own links to other countries, particularly the United States and the Anglosphere in general.

All too often one hears of the revived Commonwealth as the alternative to Britain's membership of the European Union. Sadly, the Commonwealth is a thing of the past, even if some of the institutional structures are still in place (and aren't they useful in a crisis, such as the one in Zimbabwe?). The notion that countries like India will go back to any kind of a past arrangement is ludicrous. The notion that you can build an Anglospheric network without the United States in it is past ludicrous.

The question we must ask ourselves is how to ensure that Britain takes her rightful place in what is the political grouping with the greatest potential.

They still find it hard to understand

Open Europe the soi-disant "independent think-tank" that calls for the "radical reform of the EU" without ever specifying how it could be achieved, is all excited about William Hague's interview in the Financial Times this morning.

"Tories would seek to scupper EU Treaty" screams the headline. Worse, the first two paragraphs add:

An incoming Conservative government would lead a Europe-wide campaign against “the centralising ratchet” of the EU and seek to restore full British control over employment and social law, William Hague, shadow foreign secretary, has told the Financial Times.

Mr Hague, who could be foreign secretary within two years if the Tories win the general election, says a Cameron administration would seek to scupper the EU’s Lisbon treaty – if it has not already been ratified by Ireland and all other member states – and attempt to renegotiate parts of Britain’s membership of the club.

Gosh, say we, how exciting. Or not, as the case may be.

After all, the chances are that the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty will have been ratified one way or another by the time the Tories are back in office (though not in power, given the way legislation works in this country nowadays)and the issue will not be re-opened by them.

Furthermore, I am willing to bet that, should another treaty appear on the horizon while those self-same Tories are in office, they will roll over again (after making a great deal of those dotted red lines, of course).

So what exactly are the Tories going to do? Well, the will "let matters rest there" if they are faced with the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty in place. And that means? Well, who knows. Certainly not the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Mr Hague says a Tory government would “like to see social and employment powers restored to the UK”, a reference to the EU social chapter that has spawned rules such as better rights for temporary workers.

Someone should tell Mr Hague that the Social Chapter has not existed as a separate entity within the Consolidated Treaties for some time, which means that individual Articles will have to be changed if this promised policy is to be carried out. How, precisely, does he propose to do that? To change the Treaty, whatever form it will be in by 2010 requires an IGC. Is that what the Tories are going to call for? It then requires a great deal of negotiating because all member states have to agree to the text even before it goes back to the separate countries to be ratified? What are the Tories going to offer to their colleagues in return for the restoration of those "social and employment powers"?

"A more democratic, just and secure world"

This is the purpose, according to President Medvedev or Russia (prop. Vladimir Putin), of the latest Russian-Venezuelan agreement, which, among other matters, will have President Chávez buying $1 billion's worth of Russian arms. Just what Venezuela needs.

Well it is, according to the president as, again according to him, the United States is about to invade the country, having failed to do so in the last few decades.

President Medvedev and his Russian delegation spoke merely in generalities, not attacking the United States. Possibly, because they do not think America is about to invade Russia (or Venezuela); possibly because they think President Chávez is a clown but if he is going to pay $1 billion for arms, he is a useful clown.

Then there is the old dream of a cartel of gas-producing countries:

Medvedev said it was still possible that Russia could join Venezuela and other gas-producing nations to form a cartel similar to OPEC, a concept under discussion for several years.

He also said that such cooperation would help guarantee energy security and was "not directed against any states."

Let us not forget that Russia, a country that cheerfully breaks contracts if she does not like the buyer's politics, is the strategic partner of choice for Germany and France. If there is ever a common foreign policy, that is the protests of East Europeans and Balts are over-riddent, Russia will be the strategic partner of choice for the EU.

Bulgaria adopts flat tax

Another country in an seriously messy economic situation decides that the way out is a radical tax reform.

Not everyone in Europe approves

The MSM has touted this idea for some time: Barack Obama's is the Europeans' choice for the American presidency. Four years ago John Kerry was the Europeans' choice (or so we were told) and much good did it do him. What with the real government of the European Union member states not being elected by the people and the new constitution being imposed without so much as a by your leave with the establishment plotting how to sideline or ignore the one and only referendum on the subject, the idea of an elected democratic government has become a little fuzzy. But that is what they have in the United States of America and it is the people of that country who are going to elect the President as well as Congress.

It is not, however, entirely true that everybody in Europe is all that entranced by the spectacle of a rather ignorant American politico doing a somewhat premature victory lap round the various countries, gathering thousands of chanting supporters and using national symbols of other countries as a background to his campaign.

Wolfram Weimer, editor of the German policial monthly Cicero, explains on Pajamas Media why he thinks Obama's idea (or his campaign's idea) of speaking before the Brandenburg Gate is a silly one and show loack of foresight.

The puzzling image of Obama that is currently the subject of passionate debate in America has now reached Germany. Following the leaden Bush years, one would in fact like there to be a youthful, reformist new-start in America, such as Obama incarnates. But when one has a closer look, one begins to have doubts: To what end exactly is this magic of “change” — the word of the year in the USA — supposed to be used? Or is it the magic, after all, just a magic of self-promotion?

Obama’s foreign policy escapades of the last few weeks have many of his European friends wondering whether one will be able to be as enthusiastic about a President Obama as one is at the moment about the candidate. His latest flip-flops, whether on the Iraq War or the death penalty, give reason to suspect that Obama is a very great showman, but a very limited strategic thinker. He is indeed “amazing.”

This article appeared in German on a blog called Die Achse des Guten (The Axis of Good), which makes one hope that perhaps the blogosphere is beginning to make some inroads into the political process on this side of the Pond as well.

According to Rick Moran on American Thinker there are other dissenting voices, namely the Financial Times Deutschland.

Not the Brandenburg Gate

As Clarice Felden on American Thinker points out, Obama's "preposterously narcissistic notion of a speech before the Brandenburg Gate has been scotched by German authorities". Speeches before the Brandenburg Gate are given by Presidents not wannabes. Obama, despite what the British media says, has not even been formally chosen by the Democratic Party to be their presidential candidate though it seems highly unlikely that this will not happen. He has a long way to go to the White House and so far the route has not been easy. Even the American MSM is beginning to criticize him, which is, presumably why he has decided to do a grand tour of abroad to bolster up his rather feeble credentials in foreign policy. That and appointing 300 advisers on the subject. That's almost two per UN member state.

From one of the Deutsche Welle blogs we learn that he will be speaking at the Victory Column with the Brandenburg Gate in the background. An interesting compromise that will give little to anyone except the European members of the Obamania. In the end it is the American electors who will choose their President. This is called democracy, a concept we have abandoned on this side of the Pond. Oh, one more point. No matter what Obama says or does during his trip (and there have already been numerous such trips by Senator McCain), as far as the American foreign policy establishment and analysts are concerned, Europe is of ever lessening importance. Live with it.

Brown, Cameron and the lack of foreign policy

Still recycling other material, I am afraid, though the paper I have been labouring on mightily will be finished tomorrow and blogging will be resumed with a vengeance. Double vengeance.

In the meantime, let me flag up, as they say, a theme that is beginning to worry me and all of us at the Bruges Group. Why is it that neither Prime Minister Brown nor the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition has something resembling a foreign policy? Indeed, why is it that neither of them nor their respective underlings, the youthful looking Foreign Secretary and Shadow Foreign Secretary, have any interest in foreign parts?

This article was offered to the new political magazine, Total Politics, but found no space in it. Instead, I have put it up on EUReferendum2, the outlet for longer articles.

Groundhog day in Belgium

Blogging is still a little light as that paper finally reaches its conclusion. Still, one cannot pass by the Belgian government's resignation. It was something of a makeshift with agreements on the real problems between Flanders and Wallonia postponed until July 15. So, having achieved its real purpose - the signing and implementation of the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty - the government resigned. International Herald Tribune has the story. EUReferendum had it yesterday.

Another story EUReferendum had yesterday was that the Polish President, after the usual huffing and puffing, seems likely to sign the legislation that ratifies that Treaty. There's a surprise. Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski denies that anything has been promised to Poland such as a fudge over the Gdansk shipyard fine. Must be true if he denies it.

Goody - goody!

First of all, apologies for light blogging. Other commitments yesterday meant that I did not even switch on the computer (withdrawal symptoms were severely dealt with) and today I am desperately finishing a paper on the common foreign policy that is months overdue and seems to grow every time I just want to tweak it a little.

However, I could not let this item on the europhiliac EUBusiness site go without a mention.

The European Commission adopted plans on Monday to ease rules for granting public aid to projects that create jobs, boost economic activity, protect the environment or help women entrepreneurs.

"These new rules set out a clear framework to allow member states to grant aid targeted at creating jobs, boosting competitiveness and improving the environment without the commission having to get involved," Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said.

When Neelie Kroes was appointed to be the Commissar for Competition (an oxymoron, surely) there was much rejoicing in the world. Ms Kroes was supposed to know how a business works. After all, she had been out in the big bad business world herself.

Not precisely as her official profile shows. She sat on numerous boards of private and public corporations, which is not quite the same as running a business.

Above all, she clearly shares the view of all politicians and regulators that it is government that makes business successful not entrepreneurs or people who run businesses. So, they need to be taxed and regulated for their own good and then given grants, for which they have to fill in forms and complete a great deal of paperwork to use the money for purposes the government, in this case the EU, thinks appropriate. Then they wonder why European countries are falling behind in the world competitive stakes.

Whose side are journalists on?

Don't even ask. We have already linked before to an article on how NGOs have been helping FARC and thus, inadvertently, made it easier for the Colombian army to rescue the 15 hostages. Here is a new link to an article on Pajamas Media about highly regarded European media outlets casting doubt on the hostage rescue, basing their accounts on "reliable" but not named and not indicated sources. It would appear that one of the sources is an independent Swiss diplomat, who has been allegedly mediating between the Colombian Government and FARC. By day, that is. By night, the Government says, he has been acting as a courier for the terrorists. Read the whole piece. Of some interest to those who still trust the MSM.

Could we dispense with the word "tsar"?

Naturally, I do not mean that people who write about Russian history should not use that word when describing the ruler of Russia before 1917. It is even allowed to refer to the great democrat Vladimir Putin as “tsar”, particularly if it is done in quotation marks, as he has arrogated himself a great deal of the old rulers’ power. (His successor, Medvedev, known by Russians as Putin’s mishka, i.e. teddy bear, seems to be determined to hang on to that power.)

What I have in mind is people no longer using that word when yet another outside expert is appointed to solve some big problem or another. Well, actually, I am against the appointment of outside experts to positions of power in order to solve some political problem, anyway, but to call such experts “tsars” is ridiculous. Do our politicians know so little history that they cannot even recall what happened to the last Tsar?

I am afraid, Iain Dale, whose blog I read every day, has come up with the most bizarre title on that subject: “Why David Davis won’t be a Liberty Tsar”. The piece is all about David Davis not intending to accept a position on the Conservative front bench that would make him a “civil liberties tsar”. A most extraordinary combination of words.

I have tracked the story down

It was, indeed, Hazel Blears, as one comment on the previous story suggested, who came up with the fatuous suggestion of rewarding people for voting in local elections. I am not sure which American schemes of awarding donuts and chicken dinners to voters the article mentions, as I have not heard of any and the author gives no details, hoping to get away with airy anti-Americanism.

The truth is that the only way to ensure that people will vote in larger numbers in local elections is to make them meaningful. In other words, let local councils raise their own money and justify their spending to the electorate and, hey presto, people will turn out to vote. Of course, local sales tax is not a possibility while we are in the EU because we are stuck in the VAT system, which is set for us in Brussels.

But, naturally enough, nothing of that kind is being proposed:

The move is one of a series of measures outlined by Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, to boost local democracy and “empower” communities. Other proposals in the White Paper Communities in Control will make it easier to hold a referendum for a directly elected mayor and will force town halls to respond to petitions. Local neighbourhoods will also be given “community kitties” worth millions of pounds where improvements are needed to council sevices.

This is almost too stupid to comment on but I shall make a few points.

In the first place, giving local neighbourhoods "community kitties" - I take it we are not talking about cats who adopt several homes - is the very opposite of what should be done. The money will still be controlled by central government and handed out as it sees fit, probably to areas that are more likely to vote for the party in power. How is that going to encourage people to become involved in local government?

In the second place, whenever there were referendums for a directly elected mayor, outside London, they all failed because people do not want them. They probably take one look at the mess known as the GLA and say, "thank you, but no thank you". Why make it easier to have more of those referendums? Which part of no does Ms Blears not understand?

Thirdly, if referendums are now part of the British political system and we are to have them on matters like locally elected mayors, why, precisely cannot we have one on the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty?

ADDENDUM: I seem to have missed the most outrageous of all proposals in the forthcoming White Paper:

Ms Blears will also announce the abolition of the “Widdecombe” rule, which forbids council staff from standing as councillors if they earn over £33,000. Under the latest regulations all but the most senior town hall officials will be able to stand for election as councillors and continue in their job if they are elected.

Oh my, this really will bring people out to vote.

It ought to be quite simple

In one of the freebie London newspapers yesterday there was a tiny paragraph to the effect that "the Government" has suggested that people should be given all sorts of free gifts and big stickers to wear in order to entice them into the polling booth. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a more detailed coverage of the story and, so, do not know which member of HMG came up with this fatuous suggestion.

If they really want to entice the electorate into polling booths, perhaps offering some policies that they intend to stick to might be a good idea. You know, if you promise a referendum in the manifesto then you actually hold a referendum. That sort of thing.

I cannot see that those members of the electorate who took a considered decision not to vote for any of our politicians who have no power to stop legislation coming in from Brussels are likely to change their minds when they are offered a sticker that says "I have voted". Why not a gold star for good behaviour?

A promise

This blog will never, under any circumstance quote, refer to or fisk any column of Polly Toynbee's. Partly that is because I have not read any of those columns for many years and have not intention of ever doing so again but partly because I am tired of right-wing bloggers, journalists, writers using dear little Polly as the pivot in their thinking and writing. She is supposed to be one of the most influential journalists in the country. It must be because of the attention the right pays to her. Well, we are not joining that herd. This blog will be Pollyfree.

Talking Turkey

There has been little attention in the British media about the developments in Turkey. Der Spiegel has an article about the battle between the more or less Islamist AKP, the party in power and the Kemalists. The newspaper is not precisely objective for two reasons.

Many of the Kemalists tend to be highly sceptical about Turkey joining the European Union, something no aspirant country is allowed to be. On the other hand, a political turmoil in that country will be a gift to both the French and the German governments who want to keep Turkey out.

Whether a constitutional and political upheaval in the one secularist and democratic Muslim country is a good thing for the region or the rest of the world is questionable. But who cares as long as the EU does not have to worry about its membership?

The elephant reappears

There has been a good deal of fuss about campaigns to lower VAT on various parts of the British economy that may be suffering from it. The TaxPayers' Alliance, for one, became involved in a Cut the VAT Campaign. To be fair, they seem to understand that the British Government is in no position to cut the VAT and the House of Commons has no control over this tax, having abandoned its right to control taxation, won centuries ago by their predecessors.

Never mind, the real government has stepped in:

The European Commission has opted to allow reduced sales tax for housing, local restaurants and some small services in a move welcomed by France but poised to spark opposition in other countries, mainly Germany.

The proposal, unveiled by EU tax commissioner Laszlo Kovacs on Monday (7 July), enables the bloc's member states to apply lower VAT rates for some specific sectors on a permanent basis.

How very kind of them. This does not mean any country can abolish VAT or introduce competitive local tax or, even reduce VAT to the minimum level on other goods and services. We are merely allowed to be a little flexible as instructed by the European Commission.

EU pact on immigration

The International Herald Tribune reports that the European Union's ministers of interior have agreed to proceed towards an integration of asylum and immigration policies.

Under the pact - so far a political accord rather than a binding legal document - EU nations pledge to expel illegal immigrants from European soil, to strengthen border controls and to seek a joint asylum policy by 2012.

Has anyone told the Tories who are placing the creation of a British border police at the heart of their manifesto?

Non-governmental organizations work for humanity...

... or so they say. Many of us who have had to deal with NGOs at any time would have noted that they were all too often linked to various left-wing organizations or government, some of them none too savoury. Most recent evidence comes from Colombia.

The most extraordinary aspect about the daring and imaginative resuce operation mounted by President Alvaro Uriba and the Colombian army was the ease with which the FARC rebels were tricked into accepting that the helicopters with the Che t-shirt wearing young men on it had been sent by some "humanitarian" organization.

As Mary Anastasia O'Grady says in today's Wall Street Journal, is this not evidence that a number of these organizations have close links with FARC and othe suchlike groups?

Sources of radicalism

Clicking through some past postings on EUReferendum I found this piece I did on the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. It compared the fight England waged in the sixteenth and seventeenth century against a foe that was external as well as internal, and decided that it could do with another airing. We in the Bruges Group consider the question of national identity and its opponent, "European values" to be topics of primary importance.

"God Bless America"

Were they rebels and traitors or men and women loyal "to the higher cause of English rights and liberty", as an American friend who is a fervent Anglospherist wrote to me? A bit both, I would guess but one thing is true: whenever we are asked by europhiliacs to come up with a better vision than theirs of carefully controlled rabbit hutches for people with their lives strictly ruled and defined for their own good, we can say this.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

These are English ideas even if they were penned by the Francophile Thomas Jefferson. (Unlike the American Constitution, which he did not even sign.) One look at the course of the American Revolution (which can really be described as the third English Revolution) and that of the various French Revolutions, especially the first one, will convince all.

Talking to the world

Europe's World advertises itself as the only Europe-wide policy journal and this may even be correct. I am not doubting their word, I simply have not seen enough policy journals. On the whole, they are unlikely to be on the sceptical side of the divide but they are broadminded.

Witness to this is the fact that the summer issue of the journal, now available on-line, also carries an article by the author of this blog on the subject of Eurostat and opinion. Enjoy.

Only connect

Der Spiegel collects comments from newspapers on various points of the political spectrum and finds that they are all saying the same thing. It ain't over yet. The idea that the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty would somehow get through despite the Irish no is moonshine.

So far the Czech, Polish and German Presidents have refused to sign it for various reasons - though none of them has gone so far as to suggest asking the people. The Social-Democrats in Austria are demanding a referendum.

Of course, the German newspapers do not like that eurosceptics are crawling out of the woodwork but they cannot deny that there is serious disenchantment with the whole European project among the people of the EU. Something has to be done about it. If memory serves right that was the point of the Laeken Memorandum, which resulted in the European Convention, which resulted in the Constitution for Europe, which gave us the two no votes in France and the Netherlands, which made the Euro-elite proclaim that they would now listen to the people, which resulted in the Lisbon Treaty, which has been rejected by the one country that has been allowed to vote on it. Not a success for the project.

Polish President refuses to sign

President Lech Kaczynski has stated that he will not sign the Constitutional Reform Lisbon Treaty into Polish law even though it had been passed by the parliament because it would be a "pointless" exercise in the light of the Irish No vote.

He thus joins Czech President Vaclav Klaus on the frontline and as a headache for President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country takes over the EU presidency (what a lot of presidents!) today.

Then there is the problem of Germany:

In Germany, the treaty is also facing unexpected problems over ratification. President Horst Köhler has said he cannot sign the pact into law because two legislators have asked the Constitutional Court to decide whether it is unconstitutional.

It looks like Sarkozy and his Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, will have their work cut out.

More on Lech Walesa

Edward Lucas of the Economist writing on ex-President and former heroic leader Lech Walesa and the swirling passions around his political record. (Yes, Mr Lucas is right - Mr Walesa was not a very good president. In fact, he was a disaster but that is probably because he was not a suitable person for that post and past record as heroic trade union leader is not necessarily an adequate qualification.)

The problem is only partly a matter of not being able to understand human frailty as Mr Lucas says - these messy situations are bound to arise if lustration is to continue. Those who have been calling for full lustration have largely ignored one of the most important aspects of Communism. It deliberately involved everyone in the system. Nobody was allowed to stay outside it as long as they kept quiet as it would be possible in an ordinary autocracy.

Lenin was much influenced by Sergei Nechayev in his political thinking. Nechayev's idea (never fully worked out in practice) was just that - involve everyone in the bloodletting. There can be no innocent victims.

Really odd

The sergeant, whose name has not been disclosed, who fired live ammunition during a display of the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment's bravado at the week-end in Carcasonne is insisting that he loaded them by mistake. It is hard to understand how such mistakes can happen in the French military whose record on such matters is extremely good. When they fire live ammunition they do so with intent.

The investigation continues but the wounded, including the children are out of danger.