The EU's courtiers can't see the truth - their project is rotten to its core

The greatest of political scientists, S. E. Finer, wrote about how all polities have a court. And that those courts featured those closest to the king, those aspiring to get close to the king and those who formed a rival court. The threats to these courts are of two different types - ones that determine who is king and who are the courtiers closest to the king and ones that create a different order, that replace the king with a different king.

So when we analyse the European Union - important right now because we have to decide whether to be part of it - we should remember that it is a political thing not an economic thing and that many of the people seeking to influence your decision are, in one way or another, courtiers. We should also remember that those courtiers have no interest in there being a change of king because their career trajectory clings to the current rulers. To be more precise the courtiers adhere to the current system rather than to the specific people who form the central court of the European Union.

Tim Worstall describes the outlook in a comment on Visegrad 4 ( or rather some sort of conference thing in Prague recently under the aegis of the Visegrad 4 grouping):

The interesting bit was how scary it was in fact. The groupthink is strong in this arena. There is no questioning of the goal, even if it’s not clearly delineated. That ever closer union is just assumed: how to bring it about being the only difference anyone has. I was the only truly eurosceptic person there and I wasn’t on the panel discussing eurosceptics for example (Frances is reasonable on this subject where I am not).

At one stage I pointed out that fiscal union simply was not going to happen. Europeans just are not going to allow 15-20% of GDP to be distributed through Brussels, which is what would be needed for the automatic stabilisers to operate properly so that the eurozone comes even close to being an optimal currency area. To do that really does mean German taxes paying Greek pensions.

It. Will. Not. Happen.

Not this century at least.

Everyone was shocked: how could you say such a thing? And anyway, we need to work out how to make this happen not think of why it cannot.

What’s scary about this is that these are the people (the varied policy wonks, political aides and so on who made up the audience) who are actually deciding policy within that EU bureaucracy. and they’re simply off with the fairies.

Now Tim is an economist of sorts rather than a political scientist. This isn't to say that he doesn't understand how political systems work but rather that his answer (in this case about the Euro) is couched in terms of the economic consequences of one or other choice. Yet Tim has noticed that the European Union's court - the body round which these policy wonks, aides, advisors and so forth are clustered - is not making decisions based on the economic rightness or otherwise of that decision. Even were the careful deconstruction of the Eurozone to be the right policy, there is no way in which these courtiers could countenance that policy choice being pursued. This would be politically unacceptable.

The reason for this situation - why, in Tim's terms, the assorted folk at this summit are 'away with the fairies' - is that their personal interest, career and future income is tied to the interests of the EU's central court. To challenge the fundamental policy premise of that polity - to point out that Brussels is naked - would be to threaten those interests, that career and the good income to be gained from clustering round the EU's court. So what the courtiers offer is the classic response of such people when faced with an existential threat - reform. We're told that the EU can be reformed, which means that a different set of courtiers sit at the centre of a slightly reconfigured court (with the gamble from the courtiers proposing 'reform' that they will be closer to that centre - and a little richer, a tad more powerful - than at present).

Everything that these courtiers do is Laputan in its distance from the real world of the people who those courtiers like to pretend are the real drivers of their world. For all the talk of elections, voting and democracy, the world of our courtiers is - for the most part - unchanging. This goes some way, perhaps to explaining why there is so much fret about neo-reactionary trends in European politics - it's not just that the Free Democrats, National Front, AfD or UKIP are right wing but rather that they position themselves away from the comfort of the EU's court. This trend is a threat to the EU and therefore incomprehensible, frightening and to be stopped at all costs.

So when those courtiers tell us we're 'blind' or wave their arms and exclaim in exasperation 'wake up, wake up', what they're doing is telling us we should come in from the cold, join their cosy world. We should accept the core ideology of the EU court - 'ever closer union' and so forth - and work with them on 'reform'. At one time I'd have been inclined to take this offer - the EU was a positive force in the world (or so we thought) - but having been close enough to what it does, I know differently. Far from buying the old lie about economic benefit, I now realise it is a political project that seeks the end of those things I value as important. It is only superficially democratic, specifically supranational and founded in List's old ideas of state directed, corporate capitalism (the same ideas borrowed by Mussolini in trying to hammer some sort of intellectual structure onto Fascism).

In one respect it is quite sweet that so many very clever people cluster around the EU's court. Like every other bunch of courtiers throughout history, these people mostly believe (when they've finished chasing consultancy contracts, speaking engagements, advisor positions and policy jobs) that there really is no alternative to the world in which they live, they develop a sort of strabimus with one eye gazing into their narrow little world while the other swivels frantically searching for ever grander ideas of union, collaboration and co-operation. We're told these people are the bright ones, the 'experts', yet they are - quite literally - ignorant of the lives, loves, aspirations and hopes of the people who are supposed to be their bosses.

What scares these courtiers is that a unruly rabble of people they've been told to dislike (and, as with all revolutions, some will actually be dislikeable) will pull down their comfortable castle and expose it to the light of truth and reality. There is a world beyond the EU. We can have a different king. There is - as there always is, whatever Maggie said - an alternative.

The argument for the EU is presented to us as an economic one - we'll be better off as a member, as art of a process of papering over genuine differences with euro-pap. What you should remember is that this is a political project. As Michael Portillo put it:

It has created hardship, unemployment and division on a dangerous scale. It is the result of an ideology; and the ideologues who pursue the goal of union do not count the cost in human misery. Why should they, since it is paid by others? Europe’s political elite is so self-satisfied with its self-proclaimed virtue in uniting Europe that it never doubts itself nor tolerates those who point out the damage that it does and its sheer incompetence.

The EU's courtiers don't see the truth - their project is rotten, dying and it it risks, as we've seen in Greece, pulling down the lives of ordinary people to satisfy its hubris.

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An idiot's guide to why we should leave the EU (Pt 3) - The Euro

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"But that's the Euro not the EU, we're not in the Euro."

So goes the mantra from EU fans as they argue against Brexit criticisms of the EU's economic performance. And it's true that the UK isn't a member of the Euro. It's also true that the Euro is absolutely central to the future of the EU project.

But first let's remind ourselves just how bad the Euro has been for many Europeans - here's youth unemployment:





The price of Euro membership for Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and Cypriots is that their children have no job nor much prospect of a job. And remember that, as we noted above, the Euro is absolutely central to the entire EU project, it is the tool used to force integration and those young people dumped on the scrapheap are the human cost of 'ever closer union'.

So why does all this matter to the UK? After all we're not a member of the Euro and us joining is dependent on a referendum (assuming some future government doesn't amend the law mandating a poll in the case of treaty changes). It matters because, so long as we are not members of the Euro, the UK will be detached from the main EU project - we will be just as removed from critical economic decisions as we would be were we outside the EU. This isn't just about specific decisions relating to the currency itself but a host of other economic decisions - including, as we saw with Italy, the imposition of an unelected technocratic government.

You cannot separate decisions made to ensure that the Euro doesn't implode from decisions made to promote the EU project. The main economic decisions affecting the future of the EU are not being made through the cumbersome EU bureaucracy but through discussions between Euro participants (in particular Germany and France) and inside the European Central Bank. Unless advocates of remaining in the EU are saying we should join the Euro they are, in effect, arguing for a UK position just as detached from decision-making as that of Norway, Iceland and Switzerland. But without the flexibility and choices that those countries have.

So when EU fans argue that we won't have to join the Euro they are, in effect, trying to tell us we can have our cake and eat it (although it's a pretty foul tasting cake). We'll be at the 'top table' but outside the main driver of Europe's economic strategy, the Euro. Now I think this is great as the Euro is a disaster but I can't see there's any substantial difference between the situation of nations outside the EU but within Europe's free trade zone and nations inside the EU but outside the Euro. Except, of course, that the first group of nations aren't pretending they're influencing the EU when they aren't. The certain outcome of Brexit is to shift the UK from the latter group of countries to the former - instead of being inside the EU but outside the group of nations deciding the EU's economic direction, we'll be outside the EU and still sidelined from economic decision-making. Even better the UK will be in a position to make its own decisions about industrial support and infrastructure and to conduct its own negotiations about international trade.

Brexit frees the UK from the straitjacket of EU decisions designed just to shore up the Euro. Brexit allows us to make our own choices about economic policy. And Brexit allows for greater flexibility in trade and investment. Put simply, unless the intention is to join the Euro, there is no advantage at all (if you consider joining that train crash of a currency any sort of sensible idea) to remaining a member of the EU. Brexit is good for Britain's economy.

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Red Gold and the curse of EU conformity

In a telling article about Greece, Nick Cohen say this about the European 'project':

The EU cannot take responsibility for what it has done and be magnanimous for reasons British readers may not grasp. Raised in a Eurosceptic country, we do not understand how an absolute commitment to the European project was a mark of respectability on the continent. Like going to church and saying your prayers for previous generations, a public demonstration of commitment to the EU ensured that the world saw you as a worthy citizen. If you wanted to advance in Europe's governing parties, judiciaries, bureaucracies and culture industries, you had to subscribe to the belief that ever-greater union was self-evidently worthwhile.

And this is true. But Nick Cohen needs to look closely into the UK's public sector and corporatist business sector where being anti-EU is the badge of the sinner. I recall my election campaign of 2001 in Keighley where we were handing out those much sneered at 'Save the Pound' leaflet. A senior local Labour politician was aghast that I - what he patronisingly called 'the decent sort of Tory' - could possibly oppose the single currency.

In my perambulations around public funding both as a councillor and also as someone working in the voluntary sector, I have encountered the unquestioning commitment to the EU project, to the funding it provides and to the opportunities for pleasant junkets to nice European cities that come with the EU game. To conform to the mindset of the public sector - especially in my field of regeneration - you have to do just what Cohen describes, to have that "absolute commitment to the European project".

To borrow from David Eddings, the EU has spread its red gold across the continent - funding this project and that scheme, supporting international exchanges and generally making people feel that the project is a great big cuddly Father Christmas sort spreading joy and happiness. Very different from the stern and questioning national and local governments.

Greece - and soon Spain, Italy and France - are reaping the full cost of this red gold. Suckered into its spell they hooked their fortune to the fortune of Germany believing that this magical union of currencies would lead them to that better, richer, more Germanic world. As Nick Cohen concludes:

Europe does not seem pleasant, prosperous or peaceful today. When historians write about the end of its postmodern utopia, they will note that it was not destroyed by invading armies anxious to plunder Europe's wealth or totalitarian ideologues determined to install a dictatorship, but by politicians and bureaucrats, who appeared to be pillars of respectability, but turned out to be fanatics after all.

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"Pay your taxes..." Or how to annoy a Greek.

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As ever, I start with the caveat that I'm not an expert on Greece's economy or how it might resolve its current problems. But I am pretty sure - no absolutely sure - that the solution to Greece's economic problems does not lie in getting the populace to cough up more taxes. That might make a small dent in that suffering country's problems with government finances but it won't deal with the consequences of the 'big lie' visited on Greece by its politicians - that the Drachma was equal to the Mark.

Yet - in a great campaign slogan for the Greek worshippers of the Mystic Money Tree (usually referred to as Syriza) - this is precisely what Christine Lagarde, boss of the IMF has done:

"As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.

"I think of them equally. And I think they should also help themselves collectively [by] paying their tax"

If anyone out there really believes that getting people to pay more taxes is a route to economic salvation they should be gently removed from any positions of decision-making (and probably kept away from sharp instruments). The resolution is always - absolutely and every time - in the private sector, in economic activity rather than the legerdemain of public financial manipulation, currency fiddling and regulation. These are the things that created the problem and we aren't going to resolve the problem through more self-important central banking.

In the end, the solution lies in the real economy - in the decisions of consumers, in the promotion of economic activity. And the drivers of that economic activity in Greece are the folk who dodged the taxes - take more money off them and, as sure as eggs is eggs, there will be less economic activity. Meaning that next time, there's less money to take off folk in taxes...

As ever, in this matter, government is most of the problem and very little of the solution.

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Fiddling while the economy collapses...the EU propaganda continues

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So the whole thing begins to resemble a rather sarcastic pantomime, a celebration of mutual incomprehension mixed with self-interest but the EU panjandrums continue with their spending of our money on promoting their myth of Europe:

The European Commission is proposing to set aside €229 million for projects that help citizens to understand the functioning of the European Union, its values and its history. On 14 December, the Commission proposed renewing the current ‘Europe for citizens’ programme, which ends on 31 December 2013, and to increase the budget by €14 million for the 2014-2020 period.

That's a lot of money on promoting the "idea of Europe" especially at a time when frankly there isn't a great deal of money around (or so we're told0 to spend on such frivolity. Yet this propaganda is vital:

“The financial crisis has made Europe more important than ever before for the daily lives of citizens and for public debate. It is therefore more important than ever to support projects that allow citizens and civil society at large to become involved in EU affairs,” said Viviane Reding, the commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship.

These people really do inhabit a different world from the rest of us. They really are so wrapped up in their ghastly mythopoeisis that they believe this nonsense. Sadly, the target audience for this funding will cheer as they rush gleefully towards the honey pot that is other people's money.

If you fancy a shot at this cash, the proposals can be found here , you'll have to remember:

The programme is one of the instruments to link the democratic principles of Articles 10 and 11 TEU with a broad range of sectoral Union policies without replacing the specific dialogues with citizens, stakeholders and interest groups that the European Commission maintains. The next generation of the “Europe for Citizens” programme empowers citizens to exchange views on all areas of Union action and at all stages of the formal decision making process.

Clear?

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On Dave's veto...

Initial reaction:

"He didn't, did he? Where's the catch?"

Followed by:

"I don't believe it! Seriously, I never thought he'd do it. Wow!"

And then:

"YES!!!! Absolutely YES!!!"

Today the fall out (I've been listening to the BBC which unlike almost every other media outlet of note seems to take the view that being "isolated" is a bad thing, so bad we should just screw over the economy so as some jumped up little Frenchman still shakes our hands).

Mr Clegg is "very disappointed". Mr Cable might resign. And the BBC reports on unnamed "leading business people" who aren't happy.

I remain of the opinion that the proper response remains:

"YES!!! Absolutely YES!!!"

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