Money Can't Buy Them Love

The victories of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in, respectively, the Democratic and Republican caucuses in the state of Iowa yesterday deserve attention not just for having overthrown the front-runners comprehensively but also for destroying the received wisdom that you can buy elections in a genuinely democratic process. There may in this be a lesson for British politics.

There is, of course, instant gratification that the lumbering juggernaut that is the Hillary Clinton campaign has been derailed. She is a poisonous woman who routinely makes claims about herself and her experience that would have you believe that it was she, not Al Gore, who was actually US Vice President between 1992 and 2000.

In fact her only real foray into the administration of her unfaithful husband Bill was her disastrous effort on health care. For the rest she is chiefly notable as being so ambitious that she was prepared to suck on a whole basketful of lemons rather than cast herself adrift from her husband’s coattails upon which she depended to realise her own overweening ambition to become President, notwithstanding her lengthy public humiliation in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair.

But it is as a high-spending candidate for the Democratic nomination, alongside Mitt Romney as the highest spending Republican candidate, that I wish to advert to her. Her campaign has been marked by her ability, often on the back of her husband’s reputation and political contacts, to raise oceans of money to finance her campaign. The slickness of her organisation and the perpetual blizzard of advertising are a testament to the extent to which she has been able to raise cash to fund her burning ambition.

And where did it get her? Third and looking as though she had sucked a whole lot more lemons.

Mitt Romney has been spending his own money, he being a seriously wealthy individual. He has outspent everyone in sight by a long way and where did that get him? Second in Iowa behind Mike Huckabee, a former Governor of Arkansas and a Southern Baptist who has run his campaign on a complete shoe string. In New Hampshire next week he may well be beaten by Senator John McCain who a few months ago was dead in the water and whose campaign was all but broke. Huckabee’s website today opines that he was ‘outspent 15 to 1’ and that the voters cannot be bought.

All of this suggests that the US Electorate is actually thoroughly sophisticated and is well able to cut through the bull and make up its own mind about the character and policies of the candidates and that no matter by how much you outspend your rival, it is no guarantee of success.

The British electorate, one suspects, is also well able to see through the spin and the lies and make its mind up about the character and policies of Labour and the Conservatives, largely untrammelled by the billboards and the party political broadcasts.

There is a struggle at present over how and to what extent political parties may fund their activities. One wonders if, in reality, it matters a jot.

If, as may be the case with our present dishonest and gutless Prime Minister, the electorate decides that you have fatal character flaws, then no amount of money will restore that character. If it decides, as may well be the case, that our present Prime Minister presides over a cabinet of hapless nincompoops who could not organise one of those unmentionable events in a brewery, then no amount of money will buy confidence back. And if they just do not like your policies, likewise no amount of high spending will change people’s views.

Labour may well be strapped for cash just now but you may be sure that, in return for a whole raft of promises on policy sweeteners, the Trades Unions will bail them out, as they always do, and will front up barrow-loads of cash for labour to fight the next election. What may be missing is the moolah from very wealthy businessmen who have mysteriously discovered the virtues of Socialism in recent years and who have been frightened off by the sight of Knacker of the Yard feeling collars in the ‘cash for peerages’ enquiry.

The Tories, on the other hand, seem to be less constrained by cash problems and are carefully targeting the marginal seats they have to win under the auspices of Lord Ashcroft.

Does it matter at all? I have a suspicion that if, as may well be the case, the British public has decided to have done with you, that will be that. After all, if there had been no limits to election spending in 1997, who would be so unwise as to suggest that the Tories could have won that election if it had spent ten or twenty times as much as Labour?

Meanwhile I sit and hope for Obama to overhaul Hillary Clinton on New Hampshire, if only to see her permanent rictus grin wiped comprehensively from her face. She can then go back to her day job as a Senator for New York. Thre we shall see just how dedicated she is long-term to the people of that great state or whether she quickly packs it in and reveals what we have always suspected, that the office of US Senator was only ever a large and expensive public convenience for her and her ambitions.

COMMENT THREAD

Cave! The Head is on the Prowl!

President Sarkozy, whose romantic rather than political activities have lately been to the fore (he still has a keen eye for the ladies) has instituted a new form of terror: each cabinet and junior minister is to be issued with a report card detailing his or her achievement of key performance indicators – that’s targets to you and me.

The Telegraph brings us this piece of intelligence:

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has enrolled a private audit firm to help assess his ministers’ individual performance and to hand them out “end of term reports cards.

Under the scheme - unique in Europe - marks are to be issued by Prime Minister François Fillon over the coming weeks to each of the 15 ministers in the eight month-old government. Every term, cabinet ministers will receive grades based on 30 indicators specific to their portfolio, while junior ministers will be marked for their results in 15 areas.

This is, of course, the target culture driven to its minimalist extreme. It will not work, of course, as we have discovered in this country with a Labour Government that lives (and will surely die) by its Five Year Plans and its targets for every facet of government delivery.

From the business of booking GP appointments (with which Blair was neatly ambushed during the last election) to the police picking on easily detected crimes to fulfill quotas, the cult of the target has swept British administration since New Labour came to power. The people for whom the targets have been set have largely discovered that they are a lot smarter than the dummies Blair and Brown have appointed as ministers and their civil servants and can find an infinite number of ways of fulfilling their quotas without actually doing a thing. The whole process is by turns subverted and turned into a meaningless farrago of statistics and lies.

So it will be with a string of hapless French ministers who will now find themselves being summoned to headmaster Sarkozy’s study with their report cards where they will doubtless have their backsides caned for failing to ensure that an adequate number of miscreants from the banlieux have been deported this month or for failing to thwart the import of British beef once more, or whatever ludicrous measure of performance is set.

Soon Monsieur le ministre will be seen scuttling down the corridors of the Elysée Palace stuffing blotting paper down his trousers. Each day he will sit in his office quivering with fear, turned into a piece of jelly by the prospect of a visit from the Prefects who have come to check that he has been doing his prep on time.

Those who do not measure up can then be made to write 1000 lines: “I must not louse up le patron’s chances of re-election”.

Just watch Brown pick this one up. Then he can have the pleasure of putting young Ruth Kelly over his knee and giving her a taste of the Scottish tawse when she comes up with a string of β minus reports. That ought to put colour in the cheeks.

COMMENT THREAD

Tory Wriggling On Europe (again)

Parties holding 617 out of its 646 seats in parliament promised in their manifestos to let us have our say on the EU Constitution in a referendum. Now both Labour and the Liberal ‘Democrats’ have ratted on their promises, it falls to Parliament to decide if there should be a vote or not by the British people.

In this affair both the governing party and their lickspittles, the Lib ‘Dems’, have opted to perform an act of political cowardice of the most despicable kind that perhaps ranks only with Chamberlain’s craven surrender of Czechoslovakia to German control for dishonour.

The latter have done so because they have found, as they see it, a way to commit us to a Federal Europe without running the risk that the British people will refuse to have any truck with it and that with a bit of blarney about the nature of the Treaty of Lisbon and its allegedly being somehow different from the EU Constitution (an absurd proposition that has been definitively nailed time and time again by various of the Euro Nabobery who are rather proud of the trick they have pulled), they can pull the wool over the eyes of the British People. That it might compromise British independence troubles them not a jot.

Labour are just plain gutless. They do not want to have any sort of vote that they might lose if they can avoid it and this one they reckon they can avoid. This is typical of Labour whose love of democracy is but skin deep. Happily they have already reaped considerable opprobrium for this particularly dishonourable breach of promise and the British people may yet punish them at the polls for their shameful conduct. Concerning one such opportunity, more in a moment.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, have stuck to their guns and continue to promise that, if possible, a referendum will be held pre-ratification. In so doing they have armed themselves with a potent weapon with which to wound an already damaged Labour and the ongoing ratification progress of the Bill to ratify the treaty going through both House of Parliament will give opportunity after opportunity to do so again and again.

The question is, though, how far the Tories are prepared to take this. Recently Mr. David Cameron has said that, if the Treaty is ratified without a referendum, he and his party would not leave matters there. Quite what this means is unclear and it leaves wiggle room to drive a bus through. Suspicions abount that, to appease Ken Clarke, Patten, Heseltine and Hurd, adeal has been done whereby no real challenge to the EU will be made by the Tories in opposition or in power.

James McConalogue, Editor of the European Journal, reckons that this is all a lot of eyewash. Many Eurosceptics, many of them otherwise loyal Conservatives, are also just as suspicious about the true intentions of the Tories.

Mr. McConalogue wrote on ConservativeHome on New Year’s Day of his concerns and makes these points about their behaviour:

• The Frontbench have, he says, been ‘actively dissuaded’ from discussing the Treaty in any meaningful way.

• The party has done nothing to explain to the public what impact the treaty will have.

• When an opportunity arose demonstrably to oppose the Treaty in Parliament (and thus demonstrate consistency), the Tories flunked it.

As to the latter, the following will come as a surprise given the Tories’ stated intention to oppose ratification:

when it came to the crucial vote two days prior to the signing of the Treaty (on the night of 11th. December) for Conservatives to vote on whether David Miliband had properly addressed a debate on European affairs, the Conservative Whips demanded that the Party to abstain. Only 16 rebel Conservative MPs voted against it. (Does anybody know why?) If the future of our British national interest rests with 16 rebel Conservative backbenchers – as effective as this fierce gaggle of British parliamentarians are – then I am, at this present moment, not convinced that the Conservatives are really intending to honour a critical line on Europe.

The day before ConHome had an editorial piece expressing the similar fears.

Labour’s position on the Treaty has exposed it to the prospect of a huge running sore for a sizeable part of this Parliamentary year which, if exploited with tactical and strategic skill and using to their fullest extent all the procedures and process of Parliament, could be made into something with which to do almost endless damage to Labour.

But if at the end of it all, the Tories fail to follow through with their opposition consistently and eventually evince no stomach for taking on the EU, it will prove, I believe, to be just as damaging to them as it has been to Labour and will open them up to the accusation of dishonourable conduct and of using labour’s position cynically for short-term party advantage in an unprincipled and purely partisan way. Indeed the damage to them could be all the greater as some, even many Eurosceptics will finally be persuaded that the Tories are all talk and no delivery, upon which they will march off to UKIP. That could even lose Cameron the election.

On another topic, there is one pan-European event coming up, the Elections for the European ‘Parliament’ in June 2009, when the people of Europe can have their say, if they wish, about the Constitution, which may well, by then, be in force.

Its timing is intriguing in the UK context. I cannot speak for other countries or how it might fit into their political cycles which I should have to leave to others to assess from their own point of view.

In the UK, however, there is scope for turning these elections in to a de facto vote on the Treaty.

There are a number of scenarios. If Gordon Brown continues to do badly and is badly down in the polls, he could lawfully wait until May 2010 before holding a general election. In those circumstances both the Conservative party and UKIP could, without much complication, both campaign on the basis of turning the elections into a de facto vote on the issue of the Treaty.

Last time, on a poor turnout, Conservatives and UKIP votes combined took 42% of the vote. Blair was then still at the height of his powers and the Tories still in the doldrums. Now, with a highly unpopular Labour party and equally unloved Gordon Brown, the Tories and UKIP might push that figure above 50%. That would be a devastating verdict on the parties which have reneged on their commitments to give us a referendum and would be condign punishment for that dishonourable course.

It becomes more complicated, however, for the Tories if they are either in power by June 2009, having won a may 2009 election, or if the election is held on the same day as the European elections (which Brown might do in the hope of shoring up his party’s position in the EU Parliament).

In the former case, Cameron might well be in power by June 2009 and therefore he may, if the earlier part of this post’s fears prove to be true, be looking at ways of wriggling around any commitments on the Treaty when faced with the reality of his first EU summit.

In the case of contemporaneous elections, the issue of Europe will be shoved far down the list of electoral priorities and any campaign to make the European elections a referendum on the referendum will be lost in the background as the noise of other battles predominates. UKIP may well find its vote being distributed tactically to the Tories to get labour out and its voice too may well be diminished.

Much as I want to be rid of Labour at an early date, it may be that the most satisfactory use of the European elections can only be had by so damaging Labour that Brown clings to power until the last minute, thus leaving the European Elections to stand in clear relief so that Eurosceptic parties can take fullest advantage of them to send a precise message about the Treaty of Lisbon.

That is, if the Tories are genuinely serious about it after all.

COMMENT THREAD

Some Thinkable Ideas

Further evidence, if such were needed, that one of the most interesting and genuinely radical MPs in the House of Commons is Frank Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead. Today he writes in the Daily Telegraph of some ideas that chime well with the sort of small state that any Tory might think of as achievable and realistic.

Though he eschews the notion that we might be able to return to the sort of small state that the Victorians might have recognised (and nice though that might be, even a Luddite, in terms of government that is, such as I would acknowledge that modern society is a tad too complex for that) but he does have some excellent ideas for how the activities of government might be moved closer to the control of those actually consuming the services.

One has a strong sense that here is a man who has spent all his political life in opposition and as a result remains bursting with fresh ideas he has never had a chance of developing. Elected in 1979 he had a year as a spokesman on education under Michael Foot (which must have been a depressing experience), a year as spokesman on health and social security under Neil Kinnock. From 1987 he was Chairman of the Social Services Select Committee (which became the Social Security Select Committee) where he remained until 1997 when Blair made him a Junior Minister.

Following Labour’s win in the 1997 election, Field joined the government of Tony Blair as the Minister of Welfare Reform at the Department of Social Security with the rank of Minister of State. Field viewed his task as 'thinking the unthinkable' in terms of social security reform.

It appears that the Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted some simpler vote-winning policy ideas and not the unthinkable which might have involved the slaying of a whole herd of sacred Socialist cows. It will surprise no one that Blair wanted something to garner votes rather than something that was actually in the national interest. To someone of Field’s intellectual integrity, this must have been deeply frustrating.

There were clashes with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, and the Secretary of State for Social Security, Harriet Harman, which does not make him a bad boy. He resigned his ministerial position in 1998 rather than accept a move from the Department of Social Security offered by Tony Blair in a reshuffle. It was reported that Mr. Field argued for Tony Blair to promote him to Secretary of State for Social Security.

Though his article is ostensibly directed to Gordon Brown, his ideas will resonate most with Tories. The ideas he has come up with are all ones that Tories would feel comfortable with if adopted by David Cameron. I particularly like the idea of electing local Police Chief Superintendents:

Chief constables are too remote for local people to hold to account - a damning statement in itself. Chief superintendents are responsible for local police services. Their posts should be put up for re-election. It wouldn't take many elections to see a revolution in the way the police employ their record number of staff - in a way voters approve. Anti-social behaviour would begin to be curbed for a start.

The whole article reads almost like an application for membership of the Tory Party and one cannot help but think that he must be a candidate for some serious wooing by the Cameron machine as a defector. What a coup that would be! It would only work if he was given a serious post in Cabinet with a solid promise that he would be given his head. He is, one suspects, not an easy man with whom to deal and one whose principles are important and in that sense he will take some careful handling, but Labour will find it difficult to attack a man such as he.

In those circumstances he might not only think the unthinkable but do the unthinkable. Then we might see a field full of dead (and long redundant) Socialist cows, slaughtered at last by a government prepared to tackle the system of social support that has for too long been nurtured the Labour vote-getting machine. Removing it from the armoury of the Labour Gerrymander would be a prize worth having for the nation and for the Tories.

Here are some realistic ideas for smaller government which might make for the start of a revolution in the way in which our people regard the services provided by the state and how they might become more closely involved in their delivery. Now that would be a blow for democracy - and hated by the Left who would see their over-arching control disappear for ever.

It would be worth doing just to hear their squeals of anguish at the mere thought.

COMMENT THREAD

Appeasers at Work

In an extraordinary incident, 200 British soldiers who were on their way back from serving their country in Afghanistan were diverted from RAF Brize Norton to Birmingham International because of the weather. At someone’s instance they were forced to change on the tarmac apron from their desert camouflage into civilian dress before being allowed into the airport buildings.

So reports The Herald today:

The soldiers at Birmingham were told by the pilot that their baggage was being unloaded on to the runway and that they must reclaim it, dig out their own clothes and remove their desert combat kit before they could proceed into the airport building.

It beggars belief that anyone should be allowed to treat our soldiers, who daily risk their lives on our behalf whilst on active service, in this way. It is fervently to be hoped that the person responsible for this demeaning and humiliating order is hunted down at once and given a very hard time for his actions, preferably involving some meaningful sanctions.

Many will suspect that this order came from the Airport management who will have doubtless been cowering under their desks in fear at the reaction of some of their customers at the sight of an Army Unit in full kit emerging, happy and relaxed into their midst.

As Birmingham International serves a cachement area with a sizeable Muslim Minority, you can bet your boots (size twelve, hob-nailed) that some Jobsworth did much pursing of his lips as he contemplated the inflaming or appeasing of this small portion of the public using the place before reaching instantly for the ‘appease’ button. Why upset the paying public when you can shove around some compliant squaddies instead?

The Herald also dug out an airport spokesman:

"There are no restrictions relating to clothing or appearance for those using the airport for public flights. However, the airport company has been advised that certain airlines may refuse to accept personnel in military uniform."

There is, of course, a quite simple remedy for this: no uniforms, no charter for the airline.

This story exemplifies the mealy-mouthed appeasement by some gutless elements in our society of a small portion of our population, some of whom have only been here five minutes and who do not exactly hold dear British Values and British Institutions. We should stop doing this and tell them to like it or lump it, preferably somewhere else.

Even better we should hold monthly parades of returning units, colours flying and drums a-beating. The routes should be carefully selected to march through areas where these disaffected people live, just so that they might understand whose country this still is.

And meanwhile the Jobsworth whose daft and unpleasant idea this was should join the MoD Civil Servants whose booting up and down Whitehall I advocated yesterday.

COMMENT THREAD

A Nutty Policy

As an aside to my observations yesterday about the problem of the interloping Grey Squirrel comes news of how preposterous governments can become in their desperation to appease the bunny-hugger tendency when the only responsible course would be to get on with the business of culling this non-native species which does so much economic and ecological harm.

By all accounts there is a scheme to deal with greys found and captured in areas where the red squirrels are to be protected and encouraged. So far so good: it is in the execution (literally) that the Government gets it entirely wrong. Instead of sending the captured greys forthwith and painlessly to Squirrel Valhalla (a nutty sort of a place they say), daft government do-gooders take them back to England where they are released, there to wreak havoc on England’s forests, forest birds and potentially to spread the squirrelpox to areas where it is not yet endemic.

Quite why we seem unable to take hard-nosed decisions that favour our economy and ecology is a mystery, but it does reflect on the courage of our politicians who seem these days unable or unwilling to take any decision which is in the national interest but unpopular.

Well, at the risk of having to deploy columnar troops to defend the realm, I reckon we should all be better off without this interloper and all the better for the restoration of our native red squirrel to its place in our nature’s pantheon. And a very valuable industry would be rid of one of its most serious enemies.

COMMENT THREAD

MoD Wastrels At Work

Incoming Government ministers have a chance to decorate their office with paintings and other objet d’art from the huge government art collection which reposes somewhere in the Whitehall cellars. By all accounts the collection is more than able to meet most tastes, even that of the most iconoclastic socialist bent on wearing his heart on the wall.

This then makes all decent people wonder why it is that the Ministry of Defence feels the need, in an era of belt-tightening all round and at a time when they are struggling to equip our young men and women engaged in the business of war with the requisite equipment with which to have the best chance of coming home to kith and kin, to buy yet more works of art, an example of which worth £ 18,000 ex. VAT appears at the beginning of this post. It looks like a piece of tat to me, but then I have conservative tastes in art.

Not only works of art seem to have caught the MoD’s fancy: the 3,150 chairs that cost £1,000 a throw (that is an eye-watering £3,150,000 of taxpayer’s money!) One wonders what sort of chairs they were that cost a thousand pounds: the mind boggles at the sort of luxury that is involved here.

One is also astounded that the Taxpayer is expected to fork out £348,000 to buy no less than 134 Widescreen Plasma TVs for the use of these little piggies who seem to have their noses so far down in the trough that they may yet disappear inside. Just for those of you who do not have a calculator at hand, these TVs cost on average £2,597.02 which rather suggests they were at the top end of the top of the range models.

Quite why these Pampered Poodles need these items at all is beyond me. I daresay that they would tell you that they are kept permanently on BBC World News or SKY News and are never, ever used to watch the Golf or the Racing or the Cricket and are thus indispensable tools for keeping themselves informed.

I for one do not believe that for a moment and find myself curiously impelled to have every last one of them dragged from their boudoirs in the MoD and booted up and down Whitehall until they get the message. And if they need to ask what the message is, then they shall be booted up and down a few times more.

At the same time one might also enquire of our Minister of Defence, one Des Browne, what his explanation for this profligacy is. If he is there, of course, and not doing his other job as Secretary Of State for a Devolved Scotland. And upon receiving the usual mendacious reply, he too shall be booted up and down Whitehall.

COMMENT THREAD

Squirrel Nutkin For The Chop?

If you have a bird-feeder in your garden, it may well be that you have a problem ensuring that it is just the birds which benefit from your largesse, a problem in the form of a master robber known as the grey squirrel. Introduced to the UK from the Eastern USA in the nineteenth century, the grey is in fact an ecological disaster.

Not all introductions are a disaster. The Little Owl was first introduced into the wild by the fourth Lord Lilford at his Lilford Hall estate near Oundle in Northamptonshire in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is, as its name suggests, a diminutive fellow, perhaps ten inches in length and specialises in small reptiles and amphibians, insects, beetles and earthworms.

I first saw them perhaps 2¼ miles from Lilford Hall nearly forty years ago: a family of four just about to fly the nest that I like to think were the direct descendants of some of Lord Lilford’s initial releases. The Little Owl does absolutely no harm to anyone and is a perfectly acceptable addition to our countryside.

Other introductions are not so happy. The Japanese Knotweed is one such, having proved to be deeply damaging to the environment and extremely difficult to eradicate. The Giant Hogweed gives off a substance which can cause serious skin problems and is also highly invasive. So problematic is it that criminal sanctions attach to its planting or release as they do for Japanese Knotweed.

The Grey Squirrel is attracting quite a bit of attention at present and rightly so. Introduced, as were so many rogue species, in the mid-nineteenth century, it has become a menace. The Indictment against it is a long one.

It is often found in people’s gardens. Some people think it a cute cuddly thing and it is routinely anthropomorphised in literature and nature programmes of the bunny-hugger tendency. But even in the garden it is a menace. It is an aggressive pirate of the bird-feeding table and will cheerfully accept every last grain of food intended for more deserving garden birds.

But it is out in the country that it really causes problems. In woodland it causes enormous economic damage through its habit of stripping the bark of small and mature trees (see left) which either kills the tree or seriously stunts their growth rendering them unfit for economic harvesting. As a result the Forestry Commission and others are developing extensive management programmes. This inevitably involves a degree of culling, though given the proclivity of bunny-huggers to froth at the mouth if anything small and fury is to be exterminated, they keep a pretty low profile on the subject.

Secondly the Grey is believed to be responsible in part for the decline of many of our forest-dwelling birds whose nests it is wont to raid in the breeding season. Given the decline in such populations, which may have other causes as well, this is also a matter which the reduction of the grey’s population would help reverse.

The Grey Squirrel is also doing another grave disservice to our native flora and fauna. It has the pox. Or more specifically it has the squirrelpox virus which may once have been lethal to them but to which it is now plainly immune. But the native red squirrel is not immune to it and where populations of the grey come up against the range of the red, the reds succumb and the greys move swiftly on into the territory formerly the domain of the red. The result has been the complete demise from England of the native red squirrel (which is smaller and infinitely cuter than the grey, if one has to see it in such terms) save for a population in the Lake District which is now sorely pressed by the relentless advance of the greys.

Although the Forestry Commission and DEFRA have a management policy for the grey squirrel, it is, in the face of the bunny-hugger tendency, far too timid.

Two possible schemes suggest themselves. One is to offer a bounty on the grey by which a sum of money would be paid for each one trapped, shot or otherwise brought to book. This scheme would be extremely easy to set up as it would require fairly minimal management. Some might jib at the cost involved but when set against the economic cost of the damage caused (see picture left) to our managed forestry, it would pay for itself handsomely in a few years.

The second scheme which has been suggested involves a spin-off benefit which would have the effect of restoring the population of another of our native mammals at the same time. This is the Pine Marten which in the nineteenth and twentieth century suffered grievous persecution at the hands of gamekeepers on shooting estates. Now experts believe it could be worthwhile reintroducing the Pine Marten to areas from which it has been driven by such persecution so that it too can play its part in reducing the greys.

At the moment this is just an idea, but if it were carried through it would be worth making this a nationwide exercise. All true countrymen would welcome the return of a native species such as the Pine Marten, even if the latter does also have a partiality to the odd pheasant or partridge: shooting, of course, is just as much an economic activity as forestry, but those of us who shoot and are genuinely committed to the idea of shooting playing its part in conservation will hardly begrudge a few birds if this brought back the Pine marten in due course and in its wake enable the red squirrel to recover its former ranges in England. Gamekeepers, one is sure, may see it otherwise.

One MP who is behind this is none other than David Maclean, former Tory chief whip and MP for Penrith and the Border, who has featured more than once on this blog (not least for his attempt to have Parliament conceal details of MPs expenses). Clearly he is making an effort to get back into our good books. Backing the Red Squirrel and the Pine Marten in one go is no bad way to go about it.

COMMENT THREAD

France Proposes, France Disposes

EU Referendum helpfully brings despatches from our great capital which, for six months only, is a little place called Ljubljana (population 276,000, smaller than Stockport’s) in the mountain Republic of Slovenia. From here the affairs of the EU presidency will be run for the next six months. Actually, that is not entirely true.

Slovenia, you may recall, was the first of the Socialist Federal Republics of Yugoslavia to flee the nest. There being only a minute Serbian population there the Serbs put up only a token resistance to its departure which resulting in some ten days of fighting after the declaration of independence in June 1991.

Since then it has made great strides towards being a normal democratic state and putting behind it its Communist past. Despite emerging as an independent entity for the first time in perhaps eight hundred years, the habit of being the subject of this or that Empire dies hard and in 2004 Slovenia allowed herself to be swallowed up by the European Union.

Having no tradition of or recent history of nationhood of its own, it is unsurprising, therefore, to discover that its diplomatic service is somewhat rudimentary. In the context of the EU, it probably only consists of a messenger boy with arms strong enough to bring the latest box of EU Laws from Brussels to Ljubljana as quick as he may.

Notwithstanding this, the rules are the rules and Buggins’ Turn being what it is Slovenia has the helm from today until the end of June when France, an altogether different kettle of fish, takes over.

And therein lies the rub. Having a diplomatic service and an international presence of negligible proportions (just the ticket for fronting up an empire of 490 million people), Slovenia has been forced to turn to one of the larger members of the EU to act as its mentor during the important period up to the coming into force, provided they can suppress all last resistance, of the EU Constitution, otherwise known as the Treaty of Lisbon.

And who better to choose than France, whose own presidency begins right after that of Slovenia? You really could not make it up.

Of course, for the sake of face, Slovenia insists it will be in the driving seat throughout. Dimitrij Rupel, the Foreign Minister, said that France and Slovenia were co-operating well:

“We have promised each other all the help we can offer.”

I’ll bet they have.

The reality is that when some Slovenian functionary asks “What do we do next?”, the smooth but haughty French official at his elbow is unlikely to say “Let’s ask the British”. Thus France will be able to dominate the EU’s agenda for a whole year instead of the usual six months and is in the position of being able to propose its very own pet projects as the ones which Slovenia might care to advance. France proposes, France disposes.

In return Slovenia will get every assistance in trying to bring to a resolution the thorny problem of Kosovo, one of the last bits of business arising out of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, success with which would add considerable lustre to the tiny Slovenian crown and lots of influence in the Balkans for its new big chum France.

As to the thorny problem of the EU Constitution, Mr. Rupel (who is an alumnus of the UK’s University of Essex and is a sociologist) says that his country wants to ratify it as soon as possible and do everything it can to help others do so, something which would go down really well in the UK if his little statelet were to be found trying to help the process of ramming this Treaty through our Parliament without a referendum.

But it is his expressed aim of striving “for this treaty to enter into force as soon as possible” which will come as no surprise to anyone: the various Maharajahs, Nawabs, Rajas of the Euro Nabobery cannot wait to get their hands on the levers of power, real, raw power, for the first time, for that is what the new Constitution promises to give them: a large dose of unfettered and unaccountable power with which to shape the whole of Europe in their own image.

And who is it who will see themselves as primus inter pares in this cosy stitch up? The French, who have been handed on a plate the chance to run the EU de facto for a whole year in the run up to the Treaty coming into force. With a dynamic and feisty new President in Nicholas Sarkozy, France will want to ensure that when the time comes it is best placed to take advantage of the new dispensation. And for half that time it can do so without having to take any of the blame.

Meanwhile the Town Rat Catcher and his fellow council operatives will be striving as hard as they can to push the British neck under the EU Yoke as it rams the Treaty Ratification Bill through Parliament without your say-so or mine. Quite why they would vote themselves out of an effective job is not clear, save, of course for the handsome salary, lavish expenses and generous pension arrangements which attach to the sinecure of ‘Member of Parliament’ which are some of the best for any such anywhere in the world.

That, I suppose, might just do it.

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Absent Messages

There is a remarkable, nay a most singular fact about the Messages of the leaders of the two main parties issued in anticipation of 2008. How has each avoided mentioning the United Kingdom’s principal source of law and the Treaty which will complete the process of turning us into a mere Suzerainty of the EU?

We now receive 80% of our law from the hands of unelected and unaccountable officials in Brussels. This year Brown plans, without your say-so or mine, to hand over to those same unelected officials Britain’s power of veto in another huge tranche of nearly sixty areas of policy and law making. MPs and the public are becoming increasingly aware that when things go wrong, as for example with Brown’s aspirations to deport foreigners who have been convicted of crime, we are unable to remedy the problem ourselves because the law in question emanates from a Brussels’ Directive (does not that last word convey so much of the nature of the process?) which we are incapable of changing unilaterally.

Given those strictures, the remarkable fact is that neither Brown nor Cameron troubles themselves to mention the EU, Europe or the Treaty of Lisbon.

Cameron, at least, has made up for that somewhat, in that he has apparently spoken to The Telegraph on the thorny subject of the Treaty of Lisbon and his attitude to it should it come be ratified or come into force without the British people being allowed a chance to give or to withhold their whole-hearted consent to it:

David Cameron has given the strongest signal yet that the Conservatives would consider holding a post-ratification referendum on the controversial EU Reform Treaty.

The Conservative leader said that the treaty - which critics claim is a revamped version of the defunct EU Constitution - is "wrong" and that his party would "address the issue".

Hmm. To describe the Treaty as ‘wrong’ and to say that the party would ‘address the issue’ rather belies the Telegraph headline:

David Cameron in strong signal on EU Treaty

Some might think that a genuinely ‘strong message’ would be along the lines of ‘this treaty is inimical to the interests of the UK and we will fight it either before or after ratification’.

Still, one is pleased to see that Cameron is being inched, snail-like, along the path to a position of consistency without which his policy can be neither honest nor coherent nor, most importantly, credible.

Cameron goes on:

"While this Treaty is still being debated and other countries are having referendums or whatever, it is still open for Britain to have a referendum.

"If we reach circumstances where the whole Treaty has been not only ratified but implemented, that is not a situation we would be content with. We wouldn't let matters rest there."

This seems to suggest that he thinks that a referendum is only possible pre-ratification. Nonetheless he seems to be promising that the Conservative Party will not simply roll over and die if they come to power faced with a Treaty that is in force. That is a very modest improvement but an improvement nonetheless. The problem is that he does not spell out precisely what his party’s attitude would be in such circumstances.

The position of the Treaty as it now stands seems to be that the Tories would offer us a referendum on it and campaign for a rejection of it.

If, however, he will not spell out what “that is not a situation we would be content with. We wouldn't let matters rest there” actually means, it is impossible for us properly to evaluate what his policy is if he comes to power post-ratification.

On the face of it, once the Treaty is in force he has four options

• To do nothing, which would be politically suicidal and is unthinkable;
• To renegotiate the treaty;
• To proclaim our derogation from some of its terms; or
• To make a complete denunciation of the Treaty.

As to the last three, none, surely, would be possible to bring to fruition unless a referendum had been held on the result of negotiations with the EU.

Thus the only logical position is that, one way or another, a referendum must be promised as the result of his commitment that “We wouldn't let matters rest there”. So why not spell it out? There would, at the very least be clarity and brownie points for a consistent and logical position being adopted early on and policy not therefore being seen to be the product of devious party political manoeuvring at the last minute.

Surely the issue is important enough to merit the former approach? This would also have the merit of placing the Tories on the high moral ground on the matter and helping to emphasise both the difficulties that Brown is creating for Britain by not having a referendum now and the latter’s clear abandonment of the high moral ground.

One grumble: why does the Telegraph see fit to spoil this piece with a regurgitation of the views of the maverick, has-been and isolated backbencher Kenneth Clarke whose opposition to the party’s policy on a referendum is well-known but surely insignificant? His is the view of a totally tiny minority in the party and hardly worth rehearsing, not least because it simply allows Labour and its propaganda arm, The BBC, to repeat it at every turn.

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