UKIP bats for Britain once again

The MEP and former leader of UKIP (now led by an even madder Lord Pearson - europhobe, homophobe, climate change denier, xenophobe, religious bigot, expenses fiddling millionaire) Nigel Farage has reminded Europeans of British charm and good manners with a tirade of personal insults ('the charisma of a damp rag'; the appearance of 'a low-grade bank clerk' amongst other things), attached to a description of Belgium as a 'non-country'. He accused van Rompuy of being unheard of because 'I've never heard of you', which only displays his insularity - van Rompuy was Prime Minister of Belgium.

All rather cheeky from a man with all the charm of bird flu from an artificial country rammed together via conquest and bribery.

Here's the great leader - clearly a man of taste. Well done Nigel, diplomatic as ever.

Hello Herman

According to my stat porn, I now have a reader from the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. I am going to assume that it's the new EU president, Herman van Rompuy, and he's looking for political advice. Advice I am only too happy to provide.

We're at the mercy of Luxembourg now

David Cameron has listed the stuff he plans to demand from Europe should he become PM. Amongst them - withdrawing from the 'charter of fundamental rights' and the 'social chapter', because he obviously believes that British citizens and residents should be free from pesky restrictions such as safe employment conditions and human rights.

Luckily, these things need a unanimous vote of EU nations. So let's pick a small one, such as Luxembourg, and beg them to vote no. Alternatively, let's all NOT VOTE TORY. Just an idea…

Headlines to gladden the heart

'Blair Hopes for EU Presidency Sinking Fast'.

Good. He'd be bad for Britain and bad for Europe. Asserting that a UK citizen would be automatically good for the UK is imperialistic and chauvinistic.

Meanwhile, if you think you're an elf, this is the place to go: Otherkin.net. No, really. Thanks to Steve.

L'Union Européene, c'est moi

George Monbiot has an intriguing line on Blair's government-supported plot to get himself appointed (no elections in the new, more-democratic EU) President of the European Union. George reckons that Blair's guilty of war crimes (unprovoked invasion of Iraq without the justification of self-defence) and won't be prosecuted in the UK, whereas several Eu countries do have laws on their books which would do the job - and he couldn't refuse to visit them if he were EU president.

I've got some sympathy for this, but I'm seriously concerned about a Blair presidency. I listened to a Radio 4 discussion on the matter yesterday, in which both the Tory and Labour guests argued solely about 'the British interest' and were obsessed by the 'patriotic' need to have a UK citizen as president.

This worries me. It suggests that the British are fundamentally incapable of understanding the point of the EU - that large collectives work together for mutual interests, rather than scoring points and engaging in oneupmanship of this petty, nationalistic type.

Which is the Blair problem. As far as I can see, the motorcades Miliband mentioned are his prime motivation. He isn't a democrat (he always seemed to view actual voters and Parliament as an embarrassing roadblock) and he certainly isn't a European. He couldn't manage to get Britain into the Schengen Agreement on open borders, he refused to promote the idea that Britain join the Euro, most shamefully he removed Britain from every form of worker and employment protection he could, and he became the US's messenger boy, openly antagonising our European allies. This man is an enemy of the European ideal.

Why on earth would other nations respect an EU president who, while he ran his own country, blocked European initiatives and openly expressed his contempt for many Europeans? An EU president who, in power, blocked EU decisions at home and abroad! Won't they - and European governments - view him as simply a stooge for US and corporate interests? Could you see him defending and advocating the fair taxation regimes of the Scandinavians, or the employment legislation of the French? I just can't - he'd instigate a race to the bottom, whether we're talking about banking, taxation, employment, military action or the environment.

The arguments for Blair are that he's a 'big beast' - familiar with world leaders and able to knock heads together. It's overplayed. The British always think they're more important on the world stage than they are, rather than embracing a future more like the moral authority of Norway, Denmark or Sweden, comparable countries. The Americans use the UK as cover for unilateral policies. Blair's personal style is arrogant and evasive and his slavish devotion to Bush's illegal wars has closed as many doors to him internationally as it's opened.

The resistance starts here. Let's leave him to his millions and his weirdo religious obsessions. If he wants to represent anyone else, he can stand for election.

Question Time - how was it for you?

Frankly, I was a little bored. Griffin occasionally let his tightly-controlled facade slip with some very silly comments (indigenous 'British' = those descended from the ice age inhabitants! I'm not sure when the Celts turned up, but the Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans, Dutch etc. all fit Griffin's preferred racial characteristics and arrived a lot more recently than that) and defended his meetings with David Duke of the KKK with the words 'almost entirely non-violent'.

The other guests were pretty weak. They'd all looked up Griffin's past comments and turned every single question towards the BNP's racial policy - to which Griffin had similarly well-planned responses. If the BNP want to be a serious party, they need to have policies on everything, from water metering to agricultural run-off levels - an opportunity was lost to expose how narrow and limited the BNP is. Because they all went over the same ground repeatedly, it became a sterile debate.

I was a bit annoyed about the Churchill debate though - surely someone could have pointed out that he wouldn't have joined the BNP, Tories OR Labour, because he fully supported a United States of Europe (his words), founded the European Movement and received the Charlemagne Prize for his efforts in that direction.

The only person on the show to come out of it well was the playwright and British Museum director Bonnie Greer, somewhat predictably: she was calm, witty, authoritative and didn't hector. Churchill was half-American and got to be PM: let's get Bonnie Greer into Parliament!

I watched the programme while eating a curry, which seemed appropriate. Then this morning I went to the pool and shared the water with immigrants! To whom I then chatted! What a race traitor I am…

After that, I had the immense satisfaction of shouting 'scab' at some postmen. Griffin and his jackbooted fantasists belong in the lowest circle of hell, but scabs will be sitting close by. I should have stuck a stick through the spokes of the one on a bike. I've very few principles (obviously), but one is to never cross a picket line, and it's served me well.

Euro-pudding or mean Little England

Amidst all this disgust about political sleaze, there's an election going on, for the European parliament. I'm a hardline socialist, but unlike most on the proper left, I'm in favour of a United States of Europe - as long as it's a United Socialist States of Europe.

Despite its structural weaknesses, corruption, inefficiency and inevitable political fudging, the EU is currently a better state to be a part of than Britain. In some ways, the EU is a capitalist plot, as my comrades on the left say - but Britain under the Tories and New Labour is a capitalist concentration camp, in which de-unionised workers labour for longer hours, lower pay, less protection and fewer rights than our European cousins. So I'm happy to trade a little bit of British state power for egalitarianism and a better deal for the worker.

Will Hutton, a centrist whom I respect greatly, says that only a shock will remind us of how brilliant EU membership is:

Along with the BNP, the opinion polls suggest that more than 50% of the vote will go to anti-EU parties. I'm not sure the British know the consequence of their vote, but a dynamic is in train that will lead to our exit from the EU.

As a pro-European, I don't want this to happen, but I've begun to wonder whether it wouldn't be better for Europe. Only living outside the EU as the sceptics want - creating a politically diminished Britain fit for hedge funds, tax-avoiders and asset-strippers - is likely to convince the British majority that the option is a disaster.

Meanwhile, the Europeans can deepen the EU, along the way empowering the European Parliament. When a Tory government leads an impoverished, embittered Britain back into the EU in 25 years' time, reality will have imposed political maturity.

His point is that Europeans are beginning to question the benefit of being the targets of constant, bitter carping from Britain - yes, the UK is a net donor to the EU, but its diplomatic and political efforts are so selfish (and sometimes so slavishly pro-American), its financial policies so wholly devoted to beggar-thy-neighbour quick-buck capitalism, that the continental Europeans are starting to wonder whether an amicabledivorce might be better for them too.

Sorry about the margins and italics - this bloody interface won't let me put them back and it's driving me crazy.

Cheating dishonest UKIP scum

You may have seen this billboard for UKIP (BNP for the Mail-reading accountancy classes), the United Kingdom Independence Party, recruiting Winston Churchill to their anti-European cause. (As an aside, how do they manage to oppose the European Union while defending the United Kingdom Union?). The accompanying election poster declares, amidst a load of largely inaccurate bullshit, that Winston wouldn't let it happen. 

Er… let's see what Churchill (largely a bad man with the necessary skills needed to save Britain in its darkest hour) had to say about a United Europe shall we?

"I wish to speak to you today about the tragedy of Europe. (...) Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene, and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland is today. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to recreate the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. (...) The first step in the recreation of the European Family must be a partnership between France and Germany."

Winston ChurchillSpeech at Zurich University 19th September 1946

(http://www.historiasiglo20.org/europe/anteceden2.htm)

Now UKIP might claim that Winston wanted an EU to keep France and Germany peaceful without Britain necessarily being a member, but there's no denying that he was a fan, and the Franco-German union is merely 'the first step'. Even better than this, fact fans, is his plan presented to Parliament in 1940 for a united British-French nation. Eat that, a-historical little Englander bigots. 

(I'm an itchy, intolerant leftwinger. Traditionally the left sees the EU as a capitalist plot, whereas the right sees it as a socialist plot). In many ways, they're both right - but I'd rather have a reformed united Europe than the centre-right government we have now).