2009 Daily Politics poll on the EU

Through Norman Tebbit's blog, I discovered a poll by the BBC's Daily Politics programme from 18 March 2009:

Full Results:

1. The current economic crisis has made me more likely to support Britain joining the Euro

Agree- 31%

Disagree- 64%

2. Britain benefits overall from membership of the European Union in terms of jobs and trade

Agree- 44%

Disagree- 51%

3. Britain should leave the EU but maintain close trading links

Agree- 55%

Disagree- 41%

4. The British people should decide in a vote before Britain transfers any further power to the European Union

Agree- 84%

Disagree- 13%

The poll was undertaken by ComRes on behalf of BBC2's Daily Politics programme

It would be interesting to know what the results would be if the poll were repeated today.

Roy Newman and the slow-burn bonfire of liberties

Via Daniel Hannan, I discovered an article by Mark Steyn for Canada's Macleans magazine, which is well worth reading.

Steyn comes across as a bit of a Canadian Melanie Phillips, but she's not always wrong, and in this article, Steyn isn't either. He highlights a story that escaped my notice, as well as Hannan's:

The official “defining moment” of the campaign was Gordon Brown’s unguarded post-photo-op dismissal of Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted woman.” ... The other “defining moment” got less coverage. Another “pensioner,” 74-year-old Roy Newman, got sick of the various party hacks knocking on his door and put a sign up in his front window: “GET THE LOT OUT.” Ninety minutes later, two police officers arrived at his home to arrest him for “racism.”

Racism? Why, yes. His sign was a piece of white card with red and blue lettering. Red-white-and-blue, geddit? The colours of the Union Jack. If using the same colour scheme as the national flag isn’t coded racism, I don’t know what is. Mr. Newman was prevailed upon to alter some of the letters to yellow, thereby diminishing the racist subtext.

It's the sort of story we see in The Daily Mail, and get accustomed to dismissing. Indeed, Google reveals that the Mail did pick up on this one, but the story first appeared in The Telegraph:

Mr Newman, a former Samaritan who is chairman of a local history society said: "Three years ago vandals put a brick through my window and when I called the police all they offered me was a crime reference number.

"Put up a poster and a police car and two uniformed officers arrive as quick as a flash. It's unbelievable."

Steyn lists a range of similar incidents. They form a pattern, and it's not pretty.

The other day, upholding the sacking of a black Christian for declining to provide “sex therapy lessons” to gay couples, Lord Justice Laws ruled that “law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds is irrational, divisive, capricious, arbitrary.” Actually it’s the law of Lord Justice Laws that is increasingly “irrational, divisive, capricious, arbitrary.” Or as George Orwell, in Animal Farm, formulated it: all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. In the land of Laws, a gay is more equal than a Christian. A Muslim is more equal than anybody. A black man is more equal than a white man, unless the white man is gay and the black man a Christian. An eco-zealot is more equal than an Anglican. Not long before Lord Justice Laws’ decision on the “irrationality” of legal protection for Christianity, Tim Nicholson, a “Head of Sustainability” fired for questioning his property management group’s environmental policies, sued for wrongful dismissal under “Employment Equality (Religion And Beliefs) Regulations.” He wound up with the best part of one hundred thousand pounds after Mr. Justice Burton ruled that Mr. Nicholson’s faith in anthropogenic global warming was a “philosophical belief” on a par with religion. So the Employment Equality (Religion And Beliefs) Law protects belief in apocalyptic “climate change” but not in Jesus.

Now, you can't help but feel that Steyn himself is a Christian, but whatever that makes him wrong about, his analysis of the card rankings in victimhood poker seems fairly accurate.

As for Muslims, in December Tohseef Shah sprayed the words “KILL GORDON BROWN,” “OSAMA IS ON HIS WAY” and “ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD” on the war memorial at Burton-upon-Trent. But the Crown Prosecution Service decided his words were not “religiously motivated.” Phew! Thank goodness for that, eh? So a week or so back he walked out of court a free man, except for £500 in compensation to the municipal council for cleaning off his non-religiously motivated “ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD” graffito.

Steyn considers a question from Christopher McCrudden, professor of human rights law at Oxford: “What are the appropriate limits to freedom of expression in societies that wish to be democratic, multicultural, and committed to the human rights of all?”

He observes that the question "is very adroitly formulated":

in today’s advanced Western society, there are no absolute rights—for all individual freedoms must be “balanced” against the state’s commitment to “multiculturalism” or “equality” or whatever other modish conceit tickles its fancy.

Steyn's own view of rights is the same as mine:

Real “rights” are restraints upon the state—“negative” rights, as constitutionalists have it; they delineate the limits of the sovereign’s power. But in the modern era “rights” are baubles in the state’s gift, and the sovereign confers them at the expense of individual liberty. Truly, this is an Orwellian assault on the very foundations of freedom.

Perhaps I was unfair to liken Steyn to Phillips. By the end of the article, he's sounding positively libertarian:

The statists justify this on the grounds of what Lord Justice Laws calls “public tranquility”—a phrase that rings very hollow in contemporary Britain. In his last years of office, Tony Blair used to fret about “social disintegration.” You can see what he means in the Hogarthian depravity of not just decayed urban centres but leafy villages and prosperous suburbs. His response, of course, was the effete smack of socially progressive authoritarianism: ever more government micro-regulation of public discourse, until we reach the surreal point where the gay outreach officer arrests the Christian for causing distress to the gay outreach officer. In truth, the Big Blairite Brother, like Nanny Lynch in Canada, incentivizes identity-group grievance, frivolous victimhood, and social atomization. Meanwhile, aggressive, confident identities can drive a coach-and-horses through the PC flower beds: the remorseless feasting of Islamic polygamy on the Eurowelfare gravy train is only one example of how feeble “rational” secular statism proves in the face of a minority that has its number.

He concludes:

The more you haul nobodies off to the cells for putting up a poster or quoting the Bible, the more a timid conformist populace will keep its head down, mind its own business, and avoid broader social engagement—or at any rate non-alcohol-fuelled engagement. Big Government is dismantling civic identity, and the slow-burn bonfire of liberties in Europe and North America will eventually consume us all.

Let us hope that things change under Cameron and Clegg. It will be a long, hard climb out of the hole that New Labour has dug.

Warner on fixed term parliaments

Gerald Warner has nicely expressed some of my concerns about fixed-term parliaments:

Politicians are invariably at their most self-interested and devious when promoting schemes allegedly in “the national interest”. This scam is a classic example. First of all, what does the public gain by having the parliamentary term set at five years? That was already defined as its maximum length 99 years ago in the Parliament Act, so this measure does nothing to limit the time a parliament may sit. On the contrary, by preventing an administration from going to the country after four years, as has been the custom recently, it will in fact extend the length of parliaments.

Then there is the proposal to raise the bar for voting down a failing government on a vote of no-confidence to 55 per cent of MPs. At present, 50 per cent plus one is sufficient. This measure would preserve in power governments that had lost the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons as large as 54 per cent. Since the first vote of no confidence brought down Lord North, on account of certain little local difficulties in the American colonies in 1782, a total of 11 Prime Ministers have been ejected from office in this way.

The most recent was James Callaghan, defeated by one vote in 1979. If the new rules being proposed by Cameron and Clegg had applied, his rotten government could have staggered on for nearly six months more, delaying the advent of Margaret Thatcher and inflicting further damage on the economy. What is democratic about a government commanding the confidence of only a minority, say a fraction over 45 per cent, of MPs remaining in office? This is an outrageous proposal, designed to featherbed failing governments and protect them from the electorate. As such, it is the very reverse of the kind of reform that, post-expenses scandal, the public is demanding.

I've never been much of a believer in the authority of the majority, but the move from 50% to 55% does seem like a step in the wrong direction. Majorities in excess of 50% should be required only to overturn fundamental principles (such as you might find in a written constitution). They are not justified as means to keep an ailing government like Callaghan's in power.

Fixed-term parliaments will avoid some of the tedious and distracting speculation about when elections will be called, but they will usher in the even greater and more costly distraction of protracted election campaigns. To see where it might lead, we need only look across the pond.

Of course, if a politician ever sought to radically transform this country on libertarian lines, they would doubtless go through a period of unpopularity (before the rewards of freedom became clear). It is possible that a 55% rule might keep such a government in power at a crucial juncture. On this reasoning, we might wonder whether 67% or 75% would be preferable.

The trouble is that the same rule could keep an authoritarian government power, despite infringements of civil liberties to rival or surpass New Labour. Since this eventuality seems more likely, we must consider the move to 55% to be a Bad Thing.

Warner sees this as a specific example of a dangerous tendency inherent in coalitions:

coalition governments take greater liberties than single-party ones. Because, at least initially, they command a larger segment of electoral support, are presumed to be less partisan and more devoted to the public interest, and have the confidence that the blame for their actions will be shared by their erstwhile opponents, they reckon they can get away with measures that would otherwise be too provocative.

It is not necessarily the case that coalitions are less powerful. Only on issues where their policies are diametrically opposed does deadlock restrain them. On matters involving the power and privileges of the political tribe versus the mug punters of the electorate, however, coalition politicians will move shamelessly to protect their interests.

I have written previously that the blame-sharing feature of the coalition should make it much easier for unpopular but vital cuts to public spending to be pursued, but Warner is right to suggest that such insulation from criticism can allow unfettered progress in a more malevolent direction.

Much will rest on the true character of Cameron and Clegg, which has yet to be revealed.

Hannan on the coalition agreement

Yesterday evening Daniel Hannan shared some of his thoughts on the Lib-Con coalition agreement, and provided an amusing juxtaposition:

10. The parties agree to implement… a new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

11. The parties agree to implement… measures to make the import or possession of illegal timber a criminal offence.

Overall, though, he seems happy with the compromise, and hopes that more good news will emerge over time, especially with regard to citizen-initiated referenda. I haven't read Hannan's proposals in The Plan, but a quick search of the Conservative manifesto suggests that they were only ever intending to grant such referenda for local issues:

we will give residents the power to instigate local referendums on any local issue if 5 per cent of the local population sign up

Letting us trigger a referendum on EU membership would be far too dangerous!

Hannan's biggest criticism of the agreement is the discrepancy between its treatment of electoral reform, and its approach to the EU. The agreement confirms that "both parties will whip their Parliamentary Parties in both Houses to support a simple majority referendum on the Alternative Vote", but it only provides for a referendum on "any proposed future Treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences" to the EU. Any prospect of an In/Out referendum has been dismissed.

As Hannan explains,

Neither the Conservatives nor the Lib Dems fought the election offering a referendum on AV. If we are now to have a referendum on something that neither party promised, why not have a referendum on something that they did recently promise, namely European integration?

It hardly needs saying that I disagree with the section on the EU. I think Britain would be much better off with a Swiss-style free trade agreement. But what I think isn’t really the point. Europe, like electoral reform, is an issue that cuts laterally across the parties, and which can best be settled by a referendum. It qualifies, after all, on every constitutional criterion.

I agree. There seems little point worrying about how our MPs in Westminster are elected, when they are powerless to stop harmful Brussels directives, such as the proposed restrictions on hedge funds, which can increasingly be passed by 'qualified majority voting'.

As noted previously, the best argument for delaying an In/Out referendum on the EU is that our government mustn't be distracted while our economy is in such dire straits: the cuts must begin now.

But if a referendum on the EU can wait, then a referendum on AV certainly can. The latter won't matter until the next election anyway, wheras the former may prove crucial to our recovery as well as our sovereignty.

The democratic deficit here should have people up in arms. As Hannan concludes,

No one under the age of 55 has had the chance to vote on whether European law should have primacy over our own. It’s time to let the country decide.

Hannan: envy, anti-capitalism and anti-Britishness

From Daniel Hannan:

The most interesting headline this morning was in European Voice: “EU seeks more power over national finances”. Understandably, perhaps, the London newspapers paid little attention to yesterday’s summit of EU finance ministers, at which the Chancellor congratulated himself for reducing the UK’s liability in the event of another bail-out to “only” eight billion pounds. But they won’t be able to ignore Brusels for much longer.

Eurocrats see fiscal federalism as the logical response to the collapse of Greece. They want a larger budget, EU “own resources”, tax harmonisation, financial supervision.

The first test of the new British government will come at the Brussels summit next month with the vote on the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive – deferred as a pre-election favour to Gordon Brown. The proposed law will have a disproportionate and deleterious impact on London, where most of the equity in the EU is managed. It is not a solution to any identified problem, hedge funds having played no part in the credit crunch; it is the product, rather, of an unedifying mixture of envy, anti-capitalism and anti-Britishness.

There's no pleasing the Eurocrats

You might expect some gratitude from the Eurozone that Britain has agreed to give some support to the Greek bailout.

The Financial Times reports that the reaction in Europe has been quite the opposite:

There were signs of a backlash on Tuesday against Britain for refusing to take part in the eurozone’s €750bn rescue plan with a senior French policymaker suggesting Europe would think hard about coming to the UK’s help in a sterling crisis.
...
Mr Jouyet, a former Europe minister who is close to President Nicolas Sarkozy, indicated that Britain could expect no guaranteed assistance from the eurozone.

“The British are most definitely going to be targeted given the political difficulties they have,” he told Europe1 radio.

According to the FT,

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said there was increasing anti-British feeling across the EU, fuelled by the belief that Britain had allowed its currency to depreciate to gain a competitive advantage.

“People are fed up with the British; we are deeply unpopular,” Mr Grant said, warning that it would not be easy for the UK to find allies to help it on issues such as trying to revise an EU directive on hedge funds.

“Nobody will owe us any favours,” he said.

Mr Jouyet added there was now a three-speed Europe: the eurozone; Poland, Sweden and other countries sympathetic to the euro; and Britain.

And why, exactly, should we be 'sympathetic to the euro'? Why should we need to curry favour?

The sooner we can extricate ourselves from this diabolical club, the better.

Big Government = Big Problems

This morning David Cameron wakes up as Prime Minister. My optimism has not yet waned. Here's a selection of my favourite Conservative election posters.






The Big Society is the least attractive of these. It is tainted by association with Saul Alinsky, and by the ridiculous suggestion that community activists be funded by wealth confiscated from 'dormant' bank accounts.

Let us hope that Cameron will see the light, and allow the Big Society to emerge organically, with minimal government involvement.