Welcome to my club

How easy it is to jump onto the bandwagon of popular opinion.

For years, UKIP have been labelled everything from fanatically anti-European to xenophobic for holding the view that the European Union was bad for Britain. As recently as a couple of years ago, throughout the early months of my tenure as an MEP, I received accusations of scaremongering if ever I suggested the Eurozone was doomed. Those critics have fallen strangely silent of late.

Now politicians from across the political spectrum are championing a British exit from the EU, warning of the dire economic consequences of prolonging the single currency without fiscal unanimity and bandying about suggestions of an in-out referendum. All of a sudden our party line is trendy.

One thing is for certain. For the single currency to survive member states must forge closer economic bonds, to the extent of becoming a single federal entity (the argument is that the EU has borders, a flag, an anthem, a Parliament, an army, foreign policy, a currency and laws, so the only thing separating it from a federal state is the lack of tax raising powers). If this does not happen, the Eurozone will, eventually, implode, and in doing so, force the UK into a decade of depression.

Of course, the UK would resolutely not wish to be part of a federalised super-state. It raises the question of what sort of relationship we could have with a new Europe. UKIP has always championed a relationship akin to the current Swiss model, where free trade and continental cooperation remain priorities, despite not being a member. This is now being mooted by politicians who but a few months ago championed a more integrated European Union, only to find their subject today ridiculed by fate.

Either way the tapestry that has been woven by Brussels over the last five decades is unravelling at an alarming rate. Spain requires a £100 billion bank bail out to save her finances. The incomprehensible nexus that has formed between the Spanish state and the banking sector means the Government can no longer sensibly bail out the very banks that have been bailing out the Government. The Spanish Finance Minister has resolutely denied needing a bail out, but we’ve heard this before. Greece, Portugal and Ireland all said the same thing. In the UK, the Government recapitalised British banks to the tune of £1 trillion, a measure that was widely criticised on the continent as too closely bound to Anglo-Saxon capitalism. But it saved us from the economic disaster we are now seeing affect banks in the Eurozone’s largest economies – even in Germany. It’s estimated at least £200 billion must be injected into Eurozone banks to stimulate borrowing capacity, but in order for this to happen Germany must essentially underwrite all single currency loans.

It’s understandable that Germany doesn’t like the idea of so-called “Eurobonds”. Why would they? Holding them culpable of the debts of their neighbouring countries is hardly going to seem fair to the majority of Germans. Meanwhile Spain wants a bail out with no strings attached. Of course they would. They can see what has happened in Greece, where desperately ill people are queuing outside pharmacies for life saving medicines as stocks run dangerously low. Germany does not want Spain to get a free handout without agreeing to fairly stringent conditions. And thus we are left trapped in an ever revolving circle of national self-interest that is leading critics to cry out for the greatest seismic shift in political power ever seen by Europe – the move to federalise the Eurozone before the clock ticks down, despite such a schismatic resolution flying in the face of democracy.

What about the UK? What do we want? We need Eurozone banks to be protected. Barclays is exposed to Spanish banks to the tune of £26.5 billion. RBS is liable to £14.6 billion if they do collapse, while Santander, one of the high street’s biggest financial retailers, is actually Spanish owned. Then there’s our economy. In many respects inextricably intertwined with European markets, not just through EU membership but as the result of simple geographic positioning.

The most sensible answer would be the UKIP option. Leave the EU, enhance trade with traditional partners in the Commonwealth and demonstrate neighbourly cooperation and free trade with Europe as is the modus operandi of Switzerland and Norway.

As part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, a lunch with Commonwealth leaders was hosted at Buckingham Palace. We were reminded that our Queen is not just the head of state in the UK. She is Queen of Antigua, Barbados, Bahamas and Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica and New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts, St Lucia, The Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Australia, as well as being head of the 54 countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations, including India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa and Kenya. These are long established natural allies of Britain, countries with a diverse diaspora, different geographical landscapes and as a result, present true international trade opportunities.

This year Commonwealth GDP will soar past the Eurozone’s. While the Eurozone will grow by only 2.7% if it manages to avert fiscal disaster, the Commonwealth will be boosted by 7.3% growth.

I’m not bitter that my views are now being championed when for so long they have been slated. I would be a poor politician were my pride more important than my conviction. I just hope the newest recruits to Eurosceptic ideology have strength enough to hold as steadfast to their beliefs. For what Britain and Europe needs more than anything right now is a steady hand on the tiller.

Faulty Implants due to EU Boob

The debate about whether people should or should not get implants removed on the taxpayer has conveniently taken the heat away from asking serious questions about HOW the PIP implant that potentially poses a major health risk, entered mainstream circulation in the first place.

In some respects, I support the private health clinics who say they are not the ones to blame for the health scare, after all, they were told that the implants used in the procedures were safe so why would they imagine otherwise?

In fact the buck stops not with the clinics, or British regulators MHRA but in France where the implants were deigned and manufactured, and with the EU, who allows national regulatory authorities to grant their companies and products a CE (European Conformity) mark as guarantee of quality, but then forbids the MHRA from conducting further checks in order to protect British patients. The MHRA is forced, under EU law, to permit the import and marketing of anything with a CE mark, disabling regulatory bodies here from having any jurisdiction over EU manufacturers.

French authorities only shut down PIP after a staggering 40,000 British women had been fitted with the faulty implants, suggesting that in fact covering the cost of removing the implants should come from our Gallic neighbours. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and a British designed and manufactured product was putting French health at risk. Can you imagine Sarkozy NOT demanding that the UK government shoulders the bill? Exactly.

From this boob one should hope that in the future British authorities be allowed to make quality control checks on imported CE marked products. It is another example of where broadreaching, homogenised legislation is damaging to the UK, and until we are fully out of the EU, there will be more stories like this to come.

Comparing stuff with Downton - well, it's the current trend

Did you see the series finale of Downton Abbey? More happened in one hour of television than in decades of popular soap operas.

Finally there was "the kiss" leaving many of us to wonder what the no-doubt feel-good Christmas Special will be about now Matthew and Mary have hooked up (and regretted it miserably all in one episode) AND Mr Bates and Anna married and spent a romatnic conjugal night in a secret suite kindly decorated by the soon-to-quit Cora look-alike who's been snogging old Lord Grantham in side rooms, before old Bates was carted off by police. With the speed in which the plot line moves on, one imagines Matthew and Mary will have a Christmas wedding and spend most of series three tackling marital issues in the changing post war society of the swinging twenties while trying to secure the Grantham lineage in a few steamy scenes.

It was lucky that flu was so voracious though. It worked well to move various narratives and sub-plots along. Although did anybody else think it had the epidemic alacrity of the Ebola virus? One minute Lavinia was wandering down stars to see her betrothed tonsil-deep in Miss Mary, the next she was spluttering her last breaths as Lady Grantham's profuse sweating and nose bleeds persisted over the course of two gripping will-she-or-wont-she nights.

Apparently the actual Spanish Flu lasted from June 1918 to December 1920 spreading to the Arctic and remote Pacific Islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, or more than 3% of the world's population, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. The virus preyed upon the young and strong, turning a healthy immune system into a corporal civil war where the strongest fighters were cuaght up in a battle that turned against their own bodies.

Ok, so how was I planning to draw parallels between this and the EU?

Where there's a will there's a way.

The first cases of influenza were registered in the U.S., just a the collapse of Lehman brothers signalled the start of the global recession. The flu then spread around Europe before getting to Spain. The pandemic received it's nickname "Spanish Flu" because of the severity. Germany, Britain and France all had media blackouts on news of the flu that might be seen to lower morale and did not want to disclose information about disease and the number of deaths to their enemies.

The Euro crisis, first striking Greece, and spreading virulently from Ireland to Portgual has now reached Italy, deemed to large to bail out. Meanwhile Germany and France continue to insist that the Eurozone will be alright in the end, despite the fact that the latter's economy could well be next in line. Huge efforts have been made to cover up the extent of deficit in these major economies, to calm the world's markets and silence the enemies of the Eurozone who hage already called time on the stricken common currency project.

The Greek crisis is small fry compared to what is now looming in the wings and is preparing to sweep over the cast of Europe with the same narrative upheavals as Spanish Flu in Downton. Greece makes up just two per cent of the EU economy compared to Italy who was the eighth largest economy in the world last year, or the fourth largest in Europe.

Indeed so ferocious is the contagion that France and Spain could be the next to suffer. Some might argue that Spain's economic fate was written since Portugal contracted the debt disease bringing it to Iberia.The borrowing costs to France have soared to over 3%, almost half way to the dreaded 7% hypothesised doom that Italy has recently achieved.Perhaps just like the Spanish Flu, by the time contagion hits Spain it will have reached it's most virulent and deadly.

German experts have slammed the European Central Bank for buying Spanish and Italian debt, putting Germany precariously at the head of the pack when it comes to calling the shots and starting to revert to self interest, something which when adopted by a nation with as much economic might as Germany, could be quite hard to counter.It is interesting then to remember the founding goal of the European Union was to prevent another German war with her neighbours after 100 years of devastating conflicts. Even today it would seem the unenviable task of the EU is to again diminish the power of a reunified Germany.

So what for series three of Downton? We all know how history plays out from now, and considering series one started with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and has hurtled in 14 episodes to the Spanish Flu reaching UK shores in 1920 it is conceivable that a new head to head with Germany could be on the cards for the already battered and beleagured cast of the Abbey. And this time, the war really could be brought to the Grantham estate as World War II brought bombing attacks onto UK soil.

As for us? Well it looks as though Germany are getting rather wearied at playing the coy and well meaning big brother role. At the recent crisis summit in Brussels, hoping to secure the one trillion euro rescue package to save her embattled currency, Angela Merkel warned "No one should believe that another half century of peace in Europe is a given - it's not. So I say again; if the euro collapses, Europe collapses"

I would rather take this comment as scaremongering. After all, it's more than likely now that the Euro will collapse, and hopefully the EU along with it. However whether we will all start turning arms on eachother seems to me a rather far fetched concept used to scare member states into jumping to attention.

But then, after all, who knows? If there's one thing we have learned from history, and from Downton Abbey, it's that however predictable the majority of the narrative it, there will always be the unexpected twist in the plot that takes us all by surprise.

Franco-Saxon Fiscal Union?

The phrase two-speed Europe has been bandied about in recent weeks, and it seems even the most optimistic commentators have started to pluck their heads from the sand and brandish claims that fiscal and federal union is the only thing that could save the Euro.

For a long time, people like me have claimed that you simply cannot have a common currency without the homogenisation of economies, harmonising taxation and spending and thus surrendering a great deal of sovereignty. That is why it is vital the UK never joined the Euro, and it is why the currency has suffered so significantly in the global financial crisis. Yet when we were saying this even just a year ago, we were labelled doom mongers, trying to scare the public that the EU was more ambitious than it really was, that no one was trying to undermine domestic power and there is no need to force the Eurozone to club together and become more than just an economic bloc, but in all respects other than name, a federal superstate. Now everyone is proclaiming how it is essential these moves are made, as if they too had been stating the obvious for years and were also jeering at the Commission everytime another bail out was awarded which would have as much efficacy as trying to bail out a sinking ship with a thimble.

Now, all of a sudden, the two Eurozone powerhouses, France and Germany, in the wake of the portent of economic federalisation, called an urgent meeting to establish a Eurozone government.

This new government would be made up of heads of state that will meet when necessary and will elect a stable president for two and a half years. The man they have in mind is (somewhat laughably) that famous European figurehead Herman Van Rompuy. Who? Oh, you've forgotten him already! You know, that chap who was elected President of the EU...

The establishment of this government to oversee national budgets and taxation and so forth will require changes to domestic constitutions over the coming years, and it will be interesting to see whether voters are consulted. One imagines if they were few would lean favourably towards the proposition of further intrusion upon national powers, so as is often the case with the EU when it comes to unfavourable voxus populai, one imagines there will be no recourse to public opinion. Not really democratic, but afterall, when it comes to the EU, what truly is?

It will also be interesting to see how other Eurozone countries respond. After all, the proposals amount to them handing a large amount of budgetary power over to France and Germany.
Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy are optimistic that they can persuade all the eurozone nations to pass these domestic amendments by summer 2012, which is highly unlikely.
Yet also these agreements have failed to solve the problem. International markets are wondering what will happen if Italy requires a bail out. The EFSF currently contains 440bn euros which would be a long way off enough to save Spain and Italy if there economies deteriorate. Yet actually growth in Germany has slowed to a painstaking place and actually stagnated in France, so where they could seek additional funds in the Eurozone is unclear. For the same reason the German and French leaders also refused to issue eurobonds, meaning underwriting European debt using their own taxpayers' money, by acting as guarantors. Eurobonds would have allowed weaker economis to borrow at the same costs as France and Germany, but would ultimately have led to huge public outcry by French and German citizens who do not see it as their responsibility to rescue the economies of their common currency neighbours.

The negotiations therefore are looknig at long term solutions of establishnig a tighter knit Eurozone but does not resolve the real problem today. This is surely to be expected. Since the outbreak of the recession the Commission has sought opportunities to push for deeper integration, often championed by France and Germany.

Casting my eyes back over speeches last year and in 2009 it's interesting to see how words I said over 12 months ago that were shouted down are now being echoed by the IMF to the ECB to the BBC. Take for example this speech:

"What is the future of the Euro in the light of the problems in Greece, and for that matter, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland? It must be of some reassurance to the UK that we never joined the Euro. It seems promises of strength through solidarity couldn’t be further from the truth.

The problem for the 16 nations in the eurozone is who pulls the purse strings. With little fiscal coordination, and no treasury, membership to the Euro is by no means an elixir for good economic health.

It turns out that when all turns sour, they take the opportunity to seize greater control while you’re on your knees. We must wait to see how Greece will react to becoming an economic protectorate of the European Union and whether it will bring civil unrest. Is this really the European Dream? Who is next ? Spain? Portugal? Italy? Or Ireland?"

Evidentally, all the countries above slipped into economic turmoil.

Similarly I said last year that

"Ideological clinging to the euro will see monetary problems resurface in boom time and bust.

A single currency only works in tight knit federal environments. Perhaps, with this being the Commission’s ultimate intentions, they have put the cart before the horse."

I hope now people will begin to see that Eurosceptics are not extremists, right wing lunatics, heretics, scaremongers or ill intentioned. Perhaps we simply have common sense, which clearly means no common currency!

A Face Off over The Burqa

The reason I am dragging this subject back into the blog is because I was asked about the matter for a radio show just recently. Click here to listen to Eye on Wales in which I contributed.

Should we, could we and would we ban the burqa?
The French have of course brought up the issue, and I stumbled across this fascinating article on the Time Online which really spells out where Britain has gone with it's overdose of political correctness.

Written by French journalist Agnès Poirier, it reveals why on this occasion, we should be following their lead.

"The burka is not a religious problem, it's a question of liberty and women's dignity. It's not a religious symbol, but a sign of subservience and debasement. I want to say solemnly, the burka is not welcome in France. In our country, we can't accept women prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That is not our idea of freedom.”


So spoke Nicolas Sarkozy in Versailles during his first state of the nation address to France's two chambers, the National Assembly and the Senate. He won rapturous applause and there is little doubt that an overwhelming majority of the French agreed with his every word. I say an overwhelming majority because this issue crosses all party lines in France. Republican principles of equality and secularism are so deeply grounded in the French mind that they belong as much to the Left as to the Right.

For someone like me, firmly on the Left, the defence of secularism is the only way to guarantee cultural diversity and national cohesion. One cannot go without the other. However, when I get on Eurostar to London, I feel totally alien. To my horror, my liberal-left British friends find such a position closer to that of the hard Right."

This point of view struck me as such an interesting truism I felt I had to cite it here. But interestingly the situation in France and the UK is not comparable. Across the Channel, the Burqa has been banned in state-run schools since 2004 and cannot be worn in hospitals or municipal offices or for that matter "anywhere where people interact as equal citizens"

Poirier goes on to say (and I am starting to like this woman more and more) that such a ban could never happen in the UK.

"When Jack Straw dared to state the obvious in 2006 by saying that the burka and the niqab were “visible statements of separation and of difference” before asking politely that women visiting his constituency surgery consider removing them, it provoked angry protests from Islamic associations and the British liberal- Left, always inclined, it seems, to defend the rights of liberty's enemies.

Seen from France, Britain's tolerance of extremist views looks at best naive, at worse dangerous: a recipe for trouble, division and painful soul-searching....If Britain's tolerance of political and religious extremism is often bewildering to the French, it also fascinates them. This tolerance does appeal to some French because of its sheer exoticism. French tourists visiting Britain for the first time, London in particular, are struck by what they perceive as a kaleidoscope of different ethnic minorities going about their day in their religious and cultural attire, cohabitating seemingly peacefully with punks and the half-naked: being free to differ.

What those visitors may discover later is that the price of this peaceful cohabitation lies in a constant bargaining of specific rights for specific communities in the name of cultural difference - the opposite of equality as understood in France. In France, public swimming pools would never allow women-only sessions to satisfy the demands of a minority. A public space is constructed for citizens to interact freely, and legislation written to remove the barriers of difference that separate them.

Seen from Britain, French principles of equality and secularism are often misinterpreted, and dismissed as authoritarian or prejudiced. But critics of the French approach don't seem to understand that secularism is neutral - the State doesn't recognise any religion in particular but protects them all, guaranteeing cultural and religious diversity by ensuring that one faith does not get the upper hand.

Can our two countries learn from each other? France could certainly try that very British tolerance and Britain could be more rigorous in arbitrating between the common good and the demands of communities. But our two systems are anchored in such different traditions and histories that we can only keep marvelling and staring in bewilderment at each other's approaches to social harmony; both of which are struggling to keep pace with the growing confidence of minorities who, once ignored, are now at the centre stage."

The fact that Poirier draws a conclusion that the British seem to pander somewhat to those minorities that impact upon the very concept of Britishness is interesting, and leads me to make this final point...

You never see women in the dictatorial, tyrannical, misogynistic cultures that promote the veil asking for the right to not wear it, for fear that stoning or flogging or domestic violence would ensue. The fact that Muslims in support of the ban hold it up as the right of that particular woman is as incongruous and hypocritical as people who suggest in some way that lapdancing, pole dancing, porn and the resultant objectification of women is in fact female empowerment. I think not.