Crash Bang Wallace
Libertarian political blog from Mark Wallace; political opinion, breaking news and exclusivesCCHQ’s yellowish EU briefing
Posted on October 20, 2011CCHQ have just issued this briefing to MPs to explain why the people don’t deserve a referendum on our relationship with the EU, and would probably find a vote too “confusing”. It hasn’t gone down well with Conservative backbenchers at all, some of whom are suggesting the document has more than a few Lib Dem fingerprints on it.
That may or may not be true, but if the Conservative Party wanted to avoid those suspicions they probably shouldn’t have titled the paper “Britain in Europe” – which also happens to be the name of the pro-EU and pro-Euro pressure group run at one time by Danny Alexander…
Exclusive interview with Slovakian Euro bailout rebel Juraj Droba MP
Posted on October 13, 2011
The attention of the global media has been fixed – unusually – on Slovakia this week. With 16 of the 17 Eurozone nations already having committed their taxpayers to supporting a vastly increased bailout of Greece, Slovakia was the only one left standing. On Tuesday, their Parliament voted to reject the EU’s bailout plan, thanks in large part to an insurgency led by the Freedom and Solidarity Party – commonly known in Slovakia as the SaS – which led to the collapse of the governing coalition.
The SaS are a true classical liberal party, combining free market economics with civil libertarian principles such as drug legalisation. What is it that led them to bring down the coalition government of Slovakia rather than vote for the Greek bailout? What will happen next? To find out, I conducted a brief interview with my friend Juraj Droba, one of the 21 SaS MP sitting in the Slovakian Parliament and Vice-Chairman of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Square brackets denote my own explanatory notes.
Q. Can you sum up for British readers why you and your parliamentary colleagues have voted to reject the bailout motion?
Many reasons – the moral hazard, the fallacy of trying to solve indebtedness with more debt which will only prolong the agony, the principle that poorer people in responsible countries must not pay for irresponsibility of politicians in richer countries. This money would not go to people, but to the shareholders of the French and German banks – these profited heavily over decades from high-interest risky loans guaranteed by the governments.
Q. Why do you think it was you and your colleagues in Slovakia who said No when all the other Eurozone countries said yes to the bailout?
We are a new party, composed of people who were previously successful in the commercial sphere. Our bottoms are not glued to the political chairs, we are ready to leave anytime and even sacrifice our mere political existence for a principle as noble as pointing out the main trobules with EFSF and ESM [the Euro bailouts].
Q. Is there any polling evidence of what the Slovakian voters think about the issue? Will this have an impact on the next general election in your country?
Over 50 percent majority did not want Slovakia to participate in the bailout. The impact on the early elections in March 2012 is questionable, several other issues are more salient than a somewhat remote and complicated EFSF.
Q. The EU is famous for making people vote again if they come out with the “wrong” answer. Will the parliament have a second vote on the issue – and if so, how soon will it be and what do you think the result will be?
Unfortunately, yes. It will happen this Friday and it will be carried with the votes of the opposition. The price we pay is early elections, because our Liberal party was removed from the government coalition.
Q. If the rest of the Eurozone goes for bailouts and further fiscal integration, can you foresee a day when Slovakia would want to leave the EU to go its own way?
No. Slovaks as people are rather euro-optimistic, as evidenced in polls. We still believe that euro is a good project. We are not against the common currency, we are against irresponsibility of governments and constant breaking of the basic rules…
Q. Have you or your colleagues been pressured from outside Slovakia to change your position and vote for the bailout – either from EU institutions, businesses or foreign politicians?
All of these combined. SaS leader Richard Sulik had a private meeting with Guido Westerwelle [German Minister for Foreign Affairs], the Prime Minister was harshly pushed by Merkel and Sarkozy, we as Liberals received a decent and polite letter from our partners from the ELDR [the European Liberal Democrats, who both the SaS and the UK Lib Dems belong to], foreign diplomats mentioned the issue at every possible meeting occassion with any of us, etc. The pressure even increased after this week’s No vote.
Direct democracy is on the way – and Brussels should shake in its boots
Posted on July 29, 2011The Government has taken the first step towards implementing the Direct Democracy agenda by launching the new e-petitions site, which is a vast improvement on the old Number 10 petition portal. It’s still a relatively small step – 100,000 signatures gets your petition considered for a Parliamentary debate – but it’s the thin end of a positive wedge.
Would the Commons authorities really dare to turn down a petition and tell 100,000 actively engaged voters that their concern doesn’t count? If they do it once it would generate so much anger and bad publicity that I doubt they’d repeat it in a hurry.
Similarly, now that this principle is established I suspect the road to initiatives for referenda will become a lot smoother, and in an few years we may well see the right to get a referendum in return for 1 million signature or something similar. (To say nothing of the right to recall and sack MPs between elections, which would prove extremely popular).
What are the practical implications of this? In essence, direct democracy will break the barriers between the political class and the public, and smash the Westminster system by which some issues are a matter for a “consensus” which is at total odds with the voters. Politicians will have to start agreeing with the people, or face being replaced by others who are more in touch with real concerns in the real world.
These petitions will undoubtedly cover a myriad of issues but the main victim of this will be the EU. Of course we can expect a petition for a debate on leaving the EU – the polls show how popular that is becoming and the clout of the Express should make it quite easy to secure the necessary signature. More effective, though, will be the large petitions on issues in which the EU has a hand.
Votes for prisoners? The Greek bailout? The death penalty for kid killers (which is being championed by Guido)? Bin taxes? Green taxes that freeze grannies to death? Post office closures? The right to deport Philip Lawrence’s killer? On all these and more the opinion of the public is clear, and a petition on the topic would rock not just Westminster’s system of cosy taboos but also the EU, the authority which dictates that Britain must obey such bad and unpopular policies. The fundamental truth that the people never asked for the European Union would be undeniably clear on headline issue after headline issue.
The revolutionaries are at the gate – and the first, small gap has just been opened to let us in.
BBC gives phone hacking 7 times more exposure than the Euro crisis
Posted on July 20, 2011The BBC are obviously smarting from the growing number of allegations that they have covered the phone hacking scandal so much that crucial issues like the increasingly likely collapse of the Euro have been neglected.
Of course many of those allegations are made by people who are themselves uncomfortable politically with the embarrassment being caused by the hacking issue, and of course the phone hacking scandal is absolutely rightly big news. However, if the Euro was to fall over next week with catastrophic economic consequences I suspect much of the public would be wondering how it all happened so suddenly, when in reality this crisis has been brewing for months and years.
The BBC’s Foreign Editor Jon Williams (who is, by the way, well worth following if you’re on Twitter) just said:
Surprised at claim #BBC covered #hacking to exclusion of other stories. Arab Spring, Italian Euro crisis & #eastafrica drought all prominent
It may be an exaggeration to say that other stories have been excluded entirely, but if you look at the evidence it’s pretty clear they’ve been eclipsed by the hacking coverage. Here are the results of searching the BBC News site for references to “hacking”, “euro” and “libya” over the last week:
Libya: 23 mentions
Euro: 32 mentions
Hacking: 246 mentions
As I say, hacking is a huge story and it does deserve large amounts of attention – but it’s hard to claim the BBC hasn’t taken its eye off other major issues while it’s been going on.
Unlike others I don’t necessarily think that’s solely because the BBC is threatened by Murdoch; it’s also because hacking is a media-village story taking place within the world most journalists inhabit. However the BBC in particular has a Charter responsibility to consider the public interest. That isn’t served by neglecting to cover the Euro crisis properly.
Even the Lib Dems have abandoned the EU
Posted on July 12, 2011ConservativeHome has already drawn attention to the boom in anti-EU feeling among Conservative voters in the new Angus Reid survey – a poll which also shows support for leaving the EU outright is now at 49% against a mere 25% who want to stay in. It’s clear those of us who have been arguing for a long time that the EU is, in Dan Hannan’s words, making us “poorer, less democratic and less free” are making serious headway.
Looking at the tables, there’s an interesting message for the main party on the pro-EU side of the divide, too. The Lib Dems have traditionally been cheerleaders for the EU, ever closer union and Euro membership – but now those are small minority opinions among even their own voters.
Asked “If a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should adopt the euro as its currency were held tomorrow, how would you vote?”, Lib Dems voted 80% No to 10% Yes.(It was 92% to 4% among Tories and 79% to 11% among Labour, interestingly making Labour the most pro-Euro party).
The answer to the question “If a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union (EU) were held tomorrow, how would you vote?” was even more surprising. Lib Dem voters would vote in favour of leaving at a rate of 39% to 34%. (Conservatives support leaving by 66% to 16%, and Labour by a margin of 42% to 32%.)
This is another confirmation of how out of touch Westminster has become with the voters, but also of how even the Lib Dems have lost their pro-EU and pro-Euro base. Surely it’s time for them to ditch this out of touch, vote-losing article of faith?
All eyes on the Eurozone crisis
Posted on July 11, 2011While all eyes have been on the News of the World, the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis has deepened severely over the last few days. Italy’s stock market has taken a hammering, Chinese ratings agencies are warning of a potential credit downgrade, and a new corruption scandal has emerged which may potentially threaten the Finance Minister’s position at a crucial time.
EU President Herman van Rompuy has called an emergency meeting to discuss how to prevent the contagion worsening.
The problem the EU is discovering is that no matter how many times you say things are fine, you can’t buck the basic reality of the markets. If you don’t have the cash, then eventually you’re bound to come unstuck.
It’s remarkable that this story isn’t getting more attention in the UK. If you doubt that it’s a big one, try this quote from the embattled Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti for size:
If I fall, then Italy falls. If Italy falls, then so falls the euro. It is a chain.
Can it get much bigger than that?
David Campbell Bannerman Likes, er…
Posted on May 25, 2011.. “UK Independence Party”, apparently. Possibly time for someone to do a bit of Facebook profile updating, given recent news?
EU cracks open in Westminster and Fleet Street
Posted on February 28, 2011For those interested in eurosceptic politics, there are some serious rumblings under way in the Westminster jungle. The tectonic plates of Westminster perception are starting to shift – almost imperceptibly, but it’s still happening and it’s not unreasonable to read into their movement some hope for the future.
Politics is as much about perception as about reality. There have been polls for ages showing the public dislike of Brussels, and the true harm being done to the economy and our legal system is well-documented. Despite that, the feeling has persisted in the Westminster Village that no-one is interested, or worse that discussing the issue marks one out as toxic. That’s due to all sorts of factors, not least the feedback loop of people who think that telling their friends that it is so, who then reinforce their own assumption and so on ad infinitum.
But now cracks are starting to appear in those assumptions. When The Freedom Association launched the Better Off Out campaign in 2006, its aim was not to convert every MP overnight but to demonstrate that the doomsayers were mistaken.
By proving that the sky did not fall in on the heads of Philip Davies, Philip Hollobone or Douglas Carswell, they started a process of erosion that has seen many other MPs feel free to speak out on the topic. There are now 21 MPs as well as numerous MEPs, councillors and Members of the Northern Irish Assembly who are signed up.
Davies, Hollobone and Carswell turned marginal seats at 2005 into hefty majorities in 2010 despite or because of their EU views – they drank from a supposedly poisoned chalice and they are in hearty health.
Others in Parliament are yet to come out against the whole project but now feel more free to speak out and act against the EU more generally – a trend most notable in the recent snub to the European Court of Human Rights over votes for prisoners.
Things are changing on the pro-EU side, too. It’s long been the case that those opposed to Brussels want a referendum, while those in favour of the EU either oppose one entirely or promise it and then dodge around their commitment later.
That situation, too, seems to be changing. Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society recently came out in favour of an In/Out referendum, whilst reporting that the Shadow Europe Minister Wayne David has said it’s on the table for Labour’s policy review. David and Katwala have been joined by Keith Vaz, another of the EU’s prominent cheerleaders.
On the other side of the debate, James Forsyth has reported that Coalition Ministers (even Liberal Democrats) have started realising to their horror quite how much the EU binds their hands in Government. If you’d asked me a few months ago whether Oliver Letwin would ever be reported to be thinking that maybe Britain should leave the European project, I’d have laughed you out of town – nevertheless, Forsyth reports exactly that.
There is a third leg to the policy tripod, though. If MPs’ assumptions in the Commons change, and Ministers start to want the same thing, they are still unlikely to act unless public opinion will be on their side. They need to see that voters will not just not mind but actually reward them for taking a particular step.
This is already being tested by the Daily Express’ adoption of a Better Off Out position, which serves a similar role to Better Off Out MPs in breaking open the market of ideas on Fleet Street. For those that may scoff at the Express’s influence, don’t forget that they were early adopters in helping the TaxPayers’ Alliance break into the market and eventually establish a level of profile that distinctly irks the TPA’s critics. In the old story, the boy who pointed out that the Emperor was naked was just a kid, and yet he still managed to smash a farcical illusion held by the entire Royal Court.
The question is whether other papers or commentators will follow the Express’s lead. The first hint of that possibility appeared this weekend on the Twitter feed of the Express’s Patrick O’Flynn, where he said that on days where they go big on the EU “definitely put sales up” for the paper.
To change the politics of the EU debate, we need to sweep away a deeply entrenched system of perception and assumption. The cracks are showing in Parliament, the stubborn obstructionism of our opponents is starting to break down, Fleet Street’s unanimity is broken and – crucially – there are signs that there may be sales and votes in the issue.
Make no mistake about it, the plates are shifting.