That was fun

I'm not a great fan of sports, especially athletics, but the Olympic opening ceremony was fun.  It is also an amazing sight to see the parade of athletes from over 200 countries all looking so happy - a better image of the globe than the parade of commercial sponsors.   Not sure why we had a quick flash of David Niven in "A Matter of Life and Death", one of my favourite films, unless it was to remind us how the stadium looked like the court of heaven which was to decide if Niven lived or died.

Sorry !

I have been a negligent blogger.  I have left undone those things which I ought to have done.  Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  I'm not apologising for failing to inflict my views on the world for nearly two weeks.  I've been busy and you may even appreciate a period of silence on my part.  No. I'm apologising to people who posted comments which I did not see and therefore did not publish.  I've published them now.  Truly sorry.

5 myths about the UK economy

The graph above shows  that the coalition's current deficit-reduction plans are actually slower than Alistair Darling's.   It comes from Stephen Tall's great article which shows the emptiness of the economic debate between government and opposition. If only we could spend more time and energy on who should bear the tax burden and what scarce resources should be spent on, politics might become about real choices again.


I plead guilty to spreading some of the myths that Stephen destroys and, in the spirit of scientific enquiry, thank him for correcting me.


I note Stephen calculates


"Overall, the marginally higher growth of Labour’s looser fiscal policy would have resulted in 70,000 fewer unemployed. However, that reduction would have been obtained with an increase in debt across the three years of £26 billion — the equivalent of £370,000 per job — to be repaid by the nation later."


which compares with  


"The £1bn contract for reactors for the next generation of the UK's nuclear-armed submarines to be announced by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond will create 300 jobs.  I make that a mere £3,333,333 per job"


which I reported yesterday.   In either case what we want are sustainable jobs at sustainable prices. 

Useless, expensive and dangerous

The £1bn contract for reactors for the next generation of the UK's nuclear-armed submarines to be announced by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond will create 300 jobs.  I make that a mere £3,333,333 per job.   Why is defence spending always justified by the jobs it creates ?   Also, could someone explain exactly what Trident is defending us against ?

I can't stand it

For a long time now, I have felt great disappointment (to put it mildly) with the conduct of Liberal Democrats in government.  We have failed utterly to advance Britain's role in the European Union; indeed we have kowtowed to the Conservatives' deep-seated euroscepticism.  We have supported, promoted and defended a disastrous economic policy.  We have compromised too far on the green agenda.  We have failed to reform the voting system and are en route to fail to reform the House of Lords.   Today our MPs will abstain when they should vote for the motion calling for Jeremy Hunt to be referred.  The country today has lost what little confidence there ever was in politicians and has less idea of what Liberal Democrats stand for than at any time in my life and for good reason.  We have lost thousands of voters, hundreds of councillors and at least one fifth of our members.  I am seriously considering for the first time ever joining that last group.

Yes, but an hour later they'll be hungry again

China investment in Europe triples - FT.com

www.ft.com

Chinese direct investment into Europe tripled in 2011 to $10bn, according to a new study that estimates Chinese companies are in the early stages of a global shopping spree that could see them spend as much as $500bn a year in the region by 2020.

Opik: Sad when the lust for publicity turns to masochism

This is when a great weight landed on Lembit Opik and broke his ribs, two minutes after he entered the wrestling ring in Welshpool.  Lembit's poor judgement and lust for publicity, which cost him his seat in Montgomeryshire, continue to dog his life.   After the match, he commented, "I think I need to think about what I am doing in future, because I think I may have gone a step too far this time."     As a child of ten might say, "Well duh ! You think so ?"  Perhaps if Lembit had learned that lesson long ago, Montgomeryshire would still have a Liberal MP.


I am not a fight fan and I do wonder about people who enjoy this spectacle.  After Lembit's opponent, Kade Callous, threw him on the floor he stood looking on while the crowd urged him to do more, which he did as the picture shows.  In the video you can hear the mob cheering and one man shouting "Stomp him !" repeatedly, after he had been stomped already.   According to the Shropshire Star, one fan commented "It was the best show we have seen in Welshpool in my 35 years.”.   A fight that lasts two minutes between grotesquely unequal opponents is "the best show" ?????   Clearly life in Welshpool could be better.

Hester Smallbone

Many Liberals will have been saddened to hear of the death of Hester Smallbone.   Her daughter Teresa wrote an obituary in Saturday's Guardian.   Hester was a stalwart of Richmond Liberals and I lodged with her in Kew in 1983 so that I could take part in the general election campaign which Alan Watson very nearly won.   She was larger than life, generous, vocal and enthusiastic.  Indeed, Hester's enthusiasm for liberalism was unbounded.   I remember we travelled through Richmond on an open-topped battlebus with Hester dressed in orange from head to foot.   She may sometimes have overestimated the party's impact.  Returning from a Liberal Conference in Blackpool, I met Hester at a  motorway service station.  When I commented on the amount of traffic, she told me it was all the Liberal delegates on their way home.    When her daughter voted Labour, she commented, "Born free, chose slavery".

Now you're asking

BBC interviewers like nothing better than displaying how clever they are by asking the question which they know a politician cannot answer.  Last night on Newsnight Emily Maitlis tried to get Chloe Smith, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, to admit that the government has a Plan B in case Plan A doesn't work, as the IMF report may suggest.   This is the forward-looking version of "Have you stopped beating your wife ?".  You can't answer Yes or No.  If Chloe said Yes, then Emily would have come back with "So plan A isn't working !".  If Chloe said No, then Emily would have asked why the government was so over-confident and ill-prepared.  Chloe Smith handled it fairly well but Emily wouldn't move on.  She had her game plan and pushed the dilemma again and again.    I have heard John Humphries waste a whole interview on this technique with the net result - no new information for the listener but the politician looks shifty.
Here's how the West Wing's Josh Lyman handled the same problem and invented the President's secret plan to fight inflation:

Letchworth

Last week, I found myself at Letchworth station in the rain.  Today I found George Orwell's comments on Letchworth and socialism:

"The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle classes. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. he is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealth marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaler and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Non-conformity behind him, and above all, with a social position which he has not intention of forfeiting.
   This last type is surprisingly common in Socialist parties of every shade; it has perhaps been taken over en bloc from the old Liberal Party, in addition to this there is the horrible-the really disquieting-prevalence of cranks wherever socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words "Socialism" and "Communism" draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, "nature Cure" quack, pacifist and feminist in England
   One day this summer I was riding through Letchworth when the bus stopped and two dreadful-looking old men got on to it. They were both about sixty, both very short, pink, and chubby, and both hatless. One of them was obscenely bald, the other had a long grey hair bobbed in the Lloyd George style. They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple. Their appearance created a mild stir of horror on top of the bus.
   The man next to me, a commercial traveler I should say, glanced at me, at them, and back again at me, and murmured "Socialists," as who should say "Red Indians." He was probably right-the I.L.P. were holding their summer school at Letchworth. But the point is that to him, as an ordinary man, a crank meant a Socialist and a Socialist meant a crank."

George Orwell  "The Road to Wigan Pier" (1937)

Vince panders to the Torygraph

Vince Cable has produced a dreadful piece in the Daily Telegraph pandering to their eurosceptic readers. He rails at European legislation which he characterises as over-regulation and micro-management. He is disingenuous and wrong about the origins of EU laws, the character of them and their substance. He fails to mention the way that European legislation is produced, based on treaties freely entered into by the UK, proposals widely consulted on before draft directives emerge from the Commission and then discussed, amended and adopted by Parliament and Council. Britain is part of all these institutions but Vince's account will only confirm the fantasy of some evil Brussels bureaucrats pursuing some hideous agenda of domination. European directives, adopted by the democratic process summarised above, typically establish agreed objectives but leave the exact method of achieving them to member-states. The habit of British civil servants of adding unnecessary detail when directives are transposed into British law is famous and is known as gold-plating. Our wretched national parliament compounds the problem because it fails to scrutinise or challenge the drafts produced by the civil service and signed off by ministers. As to his argument that British workers have the right 'to choose' to work more than 48 hours a week, Vince misleads the reader. The 48-hour limitation is an average measured over a long period of time (I forget how many months). In other words there is flexibility within the directive. I will be surprised if the party's newly created Working Group on Work / Life Balance shares his view. Furthermore spreading work among a larger group of people instead of the unbalanced mixture of the overworked and the unemployed has social and economic benefits - less mental illness, lower social security payments and higher spending to fuel growth. I have always known that Vince was eurosceptic but I thought he understood economics.

Bliss

When it comes to disgruntlement I am a mere amateur compared to Ed Reardon.

I had the great pleasure of seeing Christopher Douglas perform "An audience with Ed Reardon" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last summer. I decided I wanted to go to the fringe every summer from then on but I never suspected that I would be appearing myself. Book now for "Retail Therapy" at Greenside venue from 13th to 18th August. But I digress. Ed is everything a grumpy old man should be, despising the 12-year-olds who run the mass media, astounded at the widespread success of the illiterate and the vulgar and scrabbling unsuccessfully for the crumbs that fall from their undeservedly rich tables. Spot on, Ed. In the new series he gets to spend time with Jenny Agutter and is still disgruntled ! Pace Wordsworth, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be old was very heaven."

So, farewell then Bert Weedon

Bert Weedon was in that very large category or people who you think are dead, indeed died long ago. Then quite suddenly they die and you find out, too late of course, that they were alive all along. Fans of the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band will remember how he appeared in their great song, "We are normal". The lyric ran: "We are normal and we want our freedom, We are normal and we dig Bert Weedon" You can hear it here (2m30s in if you don't want the whole song).

Would you credit it ? Accreditation (again) !

The Liberal Democrat Federal Conference Committee plan to ignore the conference decision on accreditation and have asked for my views. Here they are.

A. The request for views

1. The timing of the request on Liberal Democrat Voice
I have deliberately waited before replying to allow myself to give a calm and considered response but I find that my astonishment at FCC’s course of action has only increased. FCC have known since the conference in Birmingham in September 2011 that there would be a problem. To await until meeting the police in March 2012 and then to invite comments on 14th April giving members one week to respond is ridiculous. We would not hesitate to condemn any government department or agency which behaved like that.

2. The wording of the request on Liberal Democrat Voice
Andrew begins by mentioning “widely differing views within the party” and ends by saying “strong views on both sides”. He finally manages to mention the conference resolution which he says FCC “has taken into account”. FCC appears to have developed a new way of deciding things in the Liberal Democrats. Conference resolutions (by the way, it is a resolution because it was resolved, not merely a motion which was moved) can be ignored and decisions will be taken by the committee itself. Consulting those members who happen to read LDV is not a democratic process as LDV has no place in our party’s constitution and nobody elects its readers.

B. The substance of the argument

1. The question of members providing personal data
Others have argued this point endlessly and the party’s tradition is well known. The Birmingham resolution specifically stated:

“Conference therefore condemns the system of police accreditation adopted for this conference which requires party members to disclose personal data to the police”

2. The selection of representatives at conference: constitutional point
Article 6.3 of the party’s constitution provides:
“Representatives of Local Parties shall be elected by all members of the Local Party concerned...”
Nowhere in the constitution or the federal conference standing orders is there any provision for officials of the party to interfere with that process. I addressed this point when summing up the debate in Birmingham which adopted the resolution which includes the following:

“Conference therefore calls upon:
...
2) The Federal Conference Committee to negotiate security arrangements for future conferences which protect the privacy of members’ personal data and which respect the party’s constitution and internal democracy.” [My emphasis]

Nevertheless FCC proposes to ignore conference’s decision and is proposing exactly the same unconstitutional powers for the three wise men, President, Chair of FCC and Chief Executive. If FCC considered that such powers should exist they could have proposed a constitutional amendment at Gateshead but they did not do so. Andrew’s request states “The final decision on accreditation rests with the party, not with the police (and the police accept this).” This misses the point. As a democratic party we cannot agree to any outside body OR federal officers interfering with the election of representatives by local parties. How could a party conference hold officers to account effectively if those same officers could decide who may attend ?

3. The selection of representatives at conference: practical point
Andrew also says that the proposed three wise men “will review the reasons for suggested declining accreditation, and the information on which it is based (where privacy laws permit)” and “will only consider not accrediting a member of the party if they believe there is very strong evidence that that individual may pose a serious security threat to the conference”. How is it possible to review information which the police or security services do not divulge ? This is exactly the problem with control orders, that the security services would not present evidence to a court which they believe would compromise their methods and their agents.

4. Spurious security arguments
Andrew says the police cited the Brighton bombing. The bomb was planted before the Conservative conference began and would now be found by the security searches of buildings conducted in advance of conference. Even if not found, accreditation would not have prevented the bombing. Apparently the police also cited Breivik’s attack in Norway. Breivik was not accredited. Nobody carrying the armament Breivik took on to the island would get through physical security. Did the police really have no better arguments for accreditation ?

5. The insurance risk
This argument was also presented last year. We know that last year the police recommended not accrediting one member and that the three wise men overruled the recommendation. What was the impact on our insurance ? None. What then is the point of accreditation if the party’s officers can overrule it ?

C. Conclusion

The FCC’s task now is to obey the party conference and not to seek views on what has already been settled. However, this is not just a question of procedural incompetence (in both senses of the word). The police proposal and the FCC’s proposed acquiescence flies in the face of our party’s most fundamental and cherished principles. The FCC’s attempt to ignore a Federal Conference decision undermines our constitution, our contract with each other as members of a party and our trust in our elected officers. As a party our devotion to liberty and our commitment to our internal democracy lie at the heart of what makes us different and valuable to our country and our voters. We throw these away at our peril and , if we do, then in a small way but of fundamental importance, the terrorists have won.

What's Liberal about this coalition ?

Don't tell me the usual shopping list which begins with increasing the personal allowance. So far in government we have abandoned Keynesian economics, our opposition to nuclear power, our commitment to higher education available on merit not wealth, our historic identification with Beveridge's welfare state and our long-held support for a united Europe but we're still the party that loves liberty, aren't we ? Well, actually, no. Today the coalition government publishes its plan, the draft Brighton declaration, to "reform" the European Convention of Human Rights or rather to re-nationalise it and undermine its ability to protect human rights. The BBC says "There is also the question of the Liberal Democrats. Many are very reluctant to question the role of the Strasbourg court and some may find these proposals hard to stomach."

Let's measure the government's performance against the declaration on my membership card.

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of
liberty (see ECHR above),
equality (err, really ?)
and community ( The Localism Bill perhaps, the Big Society maybe ?)
and in which none shall be enslaved
by poverty (welfare cuts, public service cuts),
ignorance (tuition fees)
or conformity (Any ideas ? Anybody ?)

I am a Liberal so where else should I go ?

The plank in our eye

Today William Hague again joins the American condemnation of Iran. The inconsistency of the western position is breathtaking. Iran claims it is developing civil nuclear power; the West says it is developing nuclear weapons. Israel, on the other hand, actually has nuclear weapons but refuses to admit it. When do I hear the demands for Israel to let the IAEA inspect ? "Ah", reply the Western politicians, "but Iran threatens its neighbours. An Iranian nuclear weapon would destabilise the region". So the Israeli nukes don't threaten anyone ??? After all, Israel would never invade other people's land, would it ?

The British position is not merely inconsistent. It is hypocritical. The last Labour government and the Conservatives in this government are determined that whatever else we cut, we must spend billions renewing Trident. We live in one of the most peaceful parts of the world. Nobody's nuclear weapons are pointed at us. Our neighbours in France were not recently invaded by the most powerful country in the world with our help, as Iran's neighbours in Iraq were. We are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the bargain that says non-nuclear powers will not develop nukes if nuclear powers will junk theirs. Yet we say Iran is the problem.

When the Sun goes down...

Today's lesson is taken from Exodus Chapter 16 beginning to read at verse 21.

"And they gathered it every morning, every man according to his eating: and when the sun waxed hot, it melted."

Murdoch, take note !

That's another fine mess you've got us into (2) !

Thanks to John Leston and Nigel Amor.

For Another Fine Mess no.1 see here.

Why is it so difficult to federate Europe ?

The following article written for a seminar in 2008 compares American and European experience in framing constitutions.

This seminar asks if there is a new model for a federal Europe but, as Prof Coombes has pointed out, we have the models; what we need is the strategy. When Douglas Hurd was British Foreign Secretary, he used to argue that the British didn’t like big visions, they preferred small steps. The problem with small steps is that if you don’t have a destination and a direction you go around in circles.

In Europe we have been taking both big and small steps for over fifty years. Our latest attempt to agree on a constitution was seven years in the drafting and two more years before ratification ran into a barrier in Ireland. By comparison it would appear that the eighteenth century Americans were more effective. The Philadelphia Convention met in the summer of 1787 and the constitution was ratified by 9 states by the following summer and by all 13 in 1790. This is a little misleading. Plans for an American Union go back to the Albany Plan of 1754. After the Declaration of Independence in 1776 it took five years to agree the Articles of Confederation and only when they proved inadequate was the famous constitution adopted in 1788. The drafting process was easier. In Philadelphia there were 54 delegates (of whom 30 regularly attended) representing a population of 3.5 million from 13 states. The European Convention and the Intergovernmental Conference involved hundreds of people representing a population one hundred times bigger than that, from 27 states. Also of course 2008 is not 1788.

Consider the differences between the two situations. The Americans were united by their common opposition to British rule and the war they fought to win independence. In 1787 they still faced the general threat of intervention by powerful European nations including the danger of war with Spain or renewed fighting with Britain. In 2008 Europe has forgotten the horror and destruction of the Second World War and the current threat of terrorism does not provoke a desire to unite. Look also at trade. The American states were still imposing tariffs on inter-state trade. Inland states paid customs duties to coastal states in order to export their goods to Europe. In Europe we have already achieved the single Market. Financially there are marked differences too. The American Confederation was saddled with unpaid war debts which nobody seemed inclined to repay. The European Union’s budgetary system does not allow it to have debts. The American Confederation had no taxes. Even when the Continental Congress agreed to impose fiscal demands on the states, there was no sanction if a state failed to pay as they usually did. Although there is continual argument about the European Union’s income from member-states, the “own resources” system is well-established.

Nevertheless, Europeans today confront the same problem as the newly independent Americans, the weakness of their union and its inability to respond to urgent needs of economy and security. The same confusion arises over identity and sovereignty. During the War of Independence, George Washington asked his soldiers to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confederation. At least one group refused, declaring “New Jersey is our country!”. At the end of the war, the state of Virginia signed the Treaty of Paris separately. In Philadelphia the credentials of the delegates from Georgia began “Georgia, by the Grace of God free, sovereign and independent...” The whole business of drafting and adopting constitutions was as familiar an activity to the Americans as it is to us today. Each American state had necessarily adopted a constitution since 1776. The former states of the Soviet Bloc have also adopted new constitutions since 1989. Spain, Portugal and Greece have new ones since the 1970s. Even France and Germany and other member-states have remodelled their constitutions since 1945. The Philadelphia delegates and the European member-state governments in their Intergovernmental Conferences have both felt the business of constitution-making to be so politically sensitive that it must be done in secret. The European Convention was an unusual and not altogether successful exception.

Drafting and agreeing constitutions is indeed difficult and always arouses deep-seated opposition. Comments from the American experience have an amazing resonance to our modern debates in Europe. Then as now much opposition arose from ignorance of the proposals. As Mr Davis of North Carolina noted at the time, “It is much easier to alarm people than to inform them.” Opponents would always appeal to fears of dominance and loss of freedom. The Virginian Patrick Henry warned that under the new constitution the President would enslave the United States. He likened the “tyranny of Philadelphia” to the tyranny of George III. The editors of the Pennsylvania Sentinel asked, “Were Pennsylvania freemen to let themselves be subject to the supremacy of the lordly and profligate few ?”. Farmer Amos Singleby of Massachusetts expressed his fears in biblical terms: “Lawyers and moneymen will rule and will swallow up us little fellows, yes, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah.” There was also the generalised apprehension of distance and difference. Virginians argued that the New Hampshire Congressmen would not understand Virginia. Less noble motives were adduced. As Joe Wilson of Pennsylvania observed, “Every person who either enjoys or expects to enjoy a place of profit under the present establishment will object to the proposed innovation – not in truth, because it is injurious to the liberties of his country, but because it affects his schemes of wealth and consequence.” On the other side of the debate were familiar suggestions that union would provide a “gravy train” or perhaps as it was later called a “pork barrel”. Francis Hopkinson employed a different metaphor, “No sooner will the chicken be hatched but everyone will be for plucking a feather.”

Although the proponents of the American Constitution faced similar arguments to us in their search for union, they had or adopted a number of procedural advantages. Above all, they abandoned the requirement of unanimity. The Articles of Confederation required unanimity for amendment but the Philadelphia Convention decided that the new constitution would come into force when 9 out of the 13 states had ratified it. This was a revolution or as President Martin Van Buren later put it, “an heroic and lawless act.” The state of Rhode Island was so opposed to altering the Articles of Confederation let alone adopting a new constitution that it did not even send delegates to Philadelphia. Nathaniel Graham of Massachusetts demanded, “Were all states to suffer themselves to be ruined if Rhode Island should persist in her opposition ?” The answer was no and because unanimity was not required, it was eventually achieved. In the end, isolated and not wanting to be left out, even Rhode Island ratified the constitution in 1790. When the European Parliament adopted the Draft Treaty of Union under the leadership of Altiero Spinelli, it also wisely recommended that the Union should come into force when over half of member-states representing at least two-thirds of the population had ratified.

The American federalists also managed to avoid a damaging or delaying debate in the Continental Congress, which was not asked to approve the draft but merely to receive and transmit it to the states. The federalists who drove forward the new constitution built a “staircase of agreement” ensuring that sympathetic states ratified early, making it harder for the slower and more doubtful states to say no. There was moreover one other fundamental difference in the process of ratification which we do not enjoy today.

In any dispute, conflict or negotiation one psychological element is crucial to success. If any party to the question is to accept its resolution, they must feel that their views have been expressed, listened to and taken into account. No-one can expect that the outcome will represent 100% of their opinions but, if they want agreement at all, they will accept it if they have their place in the discussion. With a constitution, this means the opportunity to amend. Many of the ratifying conventions in the American states attached amendments to their votes of approval. At the Convention, Edmund Randolph had suggested that there should be a second general convention to consider all such amendments. Massachusetts offered amendments first, then Maryland suggested 13; Virginia wanted a Bill of Rights and 20 amendments, New York 32. Crucially, their ratifications were not conditional on the acceptance of their amendments, although some were subsequently agreed without the need for a second Convention. Contrast the absurd procedure of adopting a new constitution for the European Union, which like the Latin num presupposes a question expecting the answer “No”.

What can we learn from the experience of the extraordinary men of 1787 ? Jefferson wrote of Washington and Franklin “They lent their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves.” Firstly, the project of a federal Europe, which has to overcome the ingrained opposition born of fear, ignorance and love of office, needs a vanguard of committed federalists. Of course it helps if some of those federalists already hold national office themselves. Secondly, federalists must seize the agenda as they did in Philadelphia. Thirdly, as the Andrews Sisters sang, we have to “accentuate the positive”. Our present procedure for making treaties between member-states accentuates the negative. Ministers and officials meet in secret and produce a draft which neither parliaments nor people can amend, only ratify or not. National governments have the obligation to present the draft to their national parliaments or to popular referendums which can only vote yes or no. Is it any surprise that so many choose the latter ? Our procedure forces anyone who objects to one article in a document of hundreds of pages to vote no. We push those who are merely critical or have some small difficulty with the text into the same camp as those who want no agreement at all. Thus where there may be support for over 90% of a treaty, those who object to 10% can defeat it. They don’t even have to object to the same 10% ! If the European Union would adopt a suggestion like Edmund Randolph’s, the Intergovernmental Conference could transmit the draft to national parliaments to discuss AND amend. The results of these debates could then be considered by the Intergovernmental Conference before a final text is agreed. This approach would stimulate popular debate and end secrecy. We would have a clear record of how much is agreed and how little disliked and by how many. In this way we could show how small the level of dissent is and separate those who want no agreement at all from those who merely want amendments. Governments may object that they already hold these debates in their closed meetings with each other, but how different is an open debate in each country ! We could explore the grounds of dissent and meet them with argument and compromise and avoid the inevitable veto of the dissatisfied few. The American constitution expressly forbids referendums on constitutional amendments. Some European countries would still insist on referendums but in a different climate and with more chance of success.

Finally perhaps we could take the advice of Benjamin Franklin writing to friends in Europe in 1788, “I send you the proposed new federal constitution for these states. I was engaged four months of the last summer in the Convention that formed it. If it succeeds, I do not see why you might not in Europe carry the project of good King Henry IV into execution, by forming a Federal Union and one grand republic of all its different states and kingdoms; by means of a like Convention; for we had many interests to reconcile.”

Daniel Hannan praises a federal system

Lev Eakins has drawn my attention to a speech by the eurosceptic Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, speaking to the gathering of American Conservatives known as CPAC.

Hannan's thesis is that the American Constitution is wonderful and he warns Americans not to follow what he regards as the European example of centralisation and too much government. The speech is a tour-de-force which flatters his audience and plays to their deepest prejudices. It is also disingenuous and dishonest. This man is not stupid. He's wrong.

Everyday of his political life he has resisted a federal Europe but here he is praising the federal system of the United States, which is one of the main sources of inspiration for European federalists. This sleight of hand is accomplished by never describing the American constitution as federal, only as republican. The magic is concealed by rhetorical misdirection. In one sentence he applauds the institutions created by the Philadelphia Convention and in the next he warns against the European example of "more government". When the American founding fathers set up a Presidency and a Congress and a Supreme Court, it was an example to mankind, "which would work everywhere". When the European Union's founding fathers set up the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Court of Justice, it's just "more government".

Hannan compared the ratification of the US Constitution favourably to the rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty in referendums in three countries. No surprise of course that he failed to mention that the American founding fathers wisely specified that the new constitution would come into effect when 9 out of 13 states had ratified. The EU was saddled with the need for unanimity. (I have written elsewhere about this and will copy the full text in a separate post).

Hannan proceeded to quote Jefferson's criticisms of George III as apposite to his view of the EU, talking of far away government. Never mind that the American colonies were held by force whereas EU Member-States have all chosen freely to belong. The EU is NOT an empire, it is a union of separate states like....erm...oh yes, the USA !

Hannan also contrasted the famous text of the Declaration of Independence, "These truths we hold to be self-evident..."etc with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which he did not quote, being content to refer contemptuously to the right to strike. I'll grant that eighteenth century prose was better, not being filtered through fifteen or more foreign offices, but he could have cited the preamble thus:
"The peoples of Europe, in creating an ever closer union among them, are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values. Conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage, the Union is founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; it is based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law. It places the individual at the heart of its activities, by establishing the citizenship of the Union and by creating an area of freedom, security and justice."

He repeatedly warned against moving power to Washington, saying this was the European example. "We are at the end of the road you are set upon", he told his American audience. Hannan is not stupid. Presumably he knows that the US Federal Government already accounts for something like 60% of all US government spending and over 20% of GDP whereas the EU's expenditure is a tiny fraction of public spending across the 27 member-states and between 1 and 2% GDP.(More figures here). The EU has limited power in defined sectors whereas Washington has enormous power. His warning is nonsensical.

Hannan said the US was suffering from "Europeanisation" mentioning health-care and carbon taxes particularly. This went down well with his conservative audience who must be oblivious to the fact that US spending on health-care has outstripped Europe's as a proportion of national income yet fails unlike most European systems to provide health-care for all citizens. I suppose to an audience of climate-change-deniers carbon taxes sound unnecessary.

Hannan is a lively and engaging speaker. So was Hitler. In his own pernicious way Hannan is dangerous too, he distorts truth with a mix of humour and flattery for his audience. We should not admire his rhetorical skill when it conceals the lies he peddles.