Mostly I despair

Mostly but not always. Mostly I despair of the eurosceptic movement and all who sail in it, particularly when questions outside their tiny little world come up. Or, in other words, I do not think the overwhelming proportion of eurosceptics can or want to understand what is going on in various parts of the world. It is all too difficult and, therefore, they relate everything to what they think they know (but actually rarely do as nothing happens in isolation). So, just as the left has to relate everything to the evil American empire so a large proportion of eurosceptics has to relate everything to the EU, whether that benighted organization is of any relevance or not. As a consequence, the insanely anti-American left and right (a smidgeon more insane than the left), a number of Conservative politicians who have learnt nothing from the second half of the twentieth century and a very large proportion of self-accredited eurosceptics have been cheering for President Putin and his jolly Chekists as they invaded Ukraine, took away a part of it, Crimea and sent in more troops in funny clothes to link up with local separatists in order to destabilize parts of eastern Ukraine.

You'd think that people who are in favour of national sovereignty, especially based on an agreement that was created when a forcibly united multi-national state based on ideology fell apart, would actually support one of them when it is under attack. Well, you'd be wrong. A curious misreading of what happened in Ukraine has led a number of eurosceptics helter-skelter into the ranks of the Putinistas who appear to be in favour of the recreation of a new Soviet Union in the shape of the Eurasian Union. (Fortunately for many of us, not to mention the people of the former Soviet Union, Russia as led and destroyed by Vlad and his mates is not in a fit state to impose its rule on the others though it is quite capable of the aforementioned territorial invasion and destabilization.)

Why am I not in total despair? Well, it always cheers me when I read an article that clearly understand the issues and does not mince its language. Such an article is in July/August's issue of Standpoint and it is by my good friend (full disclosure) Michael Mosbacher.

He lambasts the insane and Stalinist left and insane right in equal measure but what is particularly painful from my point of view is his well-argued and fully justified attack on the Bruges Group that, in my absence from its counsels, seems to have gone slightly mad.

Whether intentionally or not, the Eurosceptic Bruges Group has become an apologist for Putin. The group was established in 1989 to support the views expounded by Margaret Thatcher in her Bruges speech of the previous year calling for an end to the federalist project and a more decentralised Europe. It has now produced Someone Had Blunder'd, a 30-minute film attacking UK and EU policy on Ukraine for provoking Russia, indeed for being the cause of the current crisis. It is fronted by Bruges Group director Robert Oulds and features Conservative MPs Peter Bone, Bernard Jenkin and John Redwood, twice a leadership candidate, as well as erstwhile party chairman Lord Tebbit. They are now exploring a follow-up film with Sir Bill Cash MP.

The argument of these critics is that, in the phrase of Bernard Jenkin, the Euro-neocons — surely as mythical a beast as any yet imagined — running the EU have pursued an aggressive policy of eastward expansion which has encroached on Russia's sphere of influence and thus made it feel threatened. In their view it is the EU's rather than Russia's expansionism which has provoked conflict. Jenkin argues that the EU has been "fomenting divisions in order to bring Ukraine into the European orbit". Redwood says: "It was EU action seeking to expand their empire to the West [sic] which first started the reaction of Russia."

To be honest none of the participants of the film are people to whom I would turn for elucidation of any question of foreign affairs, let alone those to do with the former Soviet Union. What the egregious John Redwood might have meant by his comment is anybody's guess as is Bernard Jenkin's invention of the mythical and meaningless Euro-neocons.

Mr Mosbacher explanation of what happened and what role the EU played at the very beginning of the crisis (after which it became irrelevant as I have mentioned a few times before) is accurate:

It is true that the demonstrations against Yanukovych began last November when he announced that he would not be signing an Association Agreement with the EU but would instead throw in his lot with Putin's Eurasian Customs Union.

The critics are right that the Association Agreement is much more than a free-trade agreement. In Article Seven it commits Ukraine to "promote gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy". Article Ten of the agreement provides for "increasing the participation of Ukraine in EU-led civilian and military crisis management operations" and exploring the potential of military-technological cooperation.

The agreement may indeed undermine Ukrainian sovereignty, but surely is nothing compared to the Russian-dominated Eurasian Customs Union. While the latter may on paper be nothing more than a customs union does anyone seriously believe that it will remain as such? Has Putin's aggression in Ukraine not rather proven the point that Ukrainian sovereignty is not high on his list of priorities?

Clearly, it is not high on the average eurosceptic's list of priorities either (that is, assuming, they know where Ukraine is, something I am doubtful of).

There is also a well deserved attack on the Conservatives and their allies in the Council of Europe and its preposterous Parliamentary Assembly.  Read the whole piece.  The title? Putin Has His Useful Idiots on the Left and the Right.

Kenneth Minogue RIP

It was actually late on Friday evening when an American friend put up the news on Facebook: he had heard from another friend and colleague that Ken Minogue had died on the way home from the Mont Pelerin Society meeting at the Galapagos. Why has it taken me so long to write about a man I liked and admired as a thinker, a great force in politics and as a dear friend? Somehow, I feel it is appropriate to write about him on July 4, American Independence Day, when many English and, as some of us say, Anglospheric ideas were codified on the other side of the Pond, even if it meant a break with the mother country. (And a nasty war between American colonists as well as between some of them and British forces. Then again, America's loss of the Loyalists was Canada's gain after the war.)

Minogue, as John O'Sullivan pointed out in his piece on the CPS website

was born in New Zealand, brought up in Australia, and adopted by Britain when he arrived here in the 1950s. He never lost contact with the Antipodes which he visited regularly and to whose intellectual life he contributed through lectures and articles in such influential outlets as “Quadrant” magazine. He was a proud holder of the Order of Australia. In later life he visited the United States regularly to write, lecture, and research. All in all he was a citizen of what Goldwin Smith called “the moral federation of the English-speaking world” - though this did not prevent his playing a lively part in European debates, most recently in lectures to the Instituto Bruno Leoni in Milan.

Being a man of the English-speaking world but also one who loved European culture and knew European history and ideas he was, naturally, an opponent of the European Union. He was also an opponent of the growing bureaucratization of politics, of the managerial tendencies shown in the various unaccountable organizations, whether national or transnational and of the subsequent destruction of genuine liberalism and individual liberty.

His last book (apparently he was working on another one but that, alas, we shall never see) was The Servile Mind, which was subtitled How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life. Here is the publisher's summary:

One of the grim comedies of the twentieth century was the fate of miserable victims of communist regimes who climbed walls, swam rivers, dodged bullets, and found other desperate ways to achieve liberty in the West at the same time as intellectuals in the West sentimentally proclaimed that these very regimes were the wave of the future. A similar tragicomedy is being played out in our century: as the victims of despotism and backwardness from third world nations pour into Western states, the same ivory tower intellectuals assert that Western life is a nightmare of inequality and oppression.

In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how that idealistic dream is destroying exactly what has made the inventive Western world irresistible to the peoples of foreign lands. The Servile Mind looks at how Western morality has evolved into mere “politico-moral” posturing about admired ethical causes—from solving world poverty and creating peace to curing climate change. Today, merely making the correct noises and parading one’s essential decency by having the correct opinions has become a substitute for individual moral actions.

Instead, Minogue posits, we ask that our government carry the burden of solving our social—and especially moral—problems for us. The sad and frightening irony is that as we allow the state to determine our moral order and inner convictions, the more we need to be told how to behave and what to think.

One cannot help admiring the courage of any modern writer on political philosophy who casts doubts on the concept of democracy - the holy of holies - in the name of moral and liberal ideas.

There really is no need for me to go through Ken Minogue's many academic achievements as the obituaries have done that but before I move on to my own personal views and memories, I'd like to quote Roger Kimball, another of Ken's close friends and publisher of The Servile Mind.

Ken was one of the merriest, most gentle, and most philosophically acute people I have ever known. He was also one of the most hospitable. He and his late wife, Beverly Cohen, presided over countless dinner parties at their London house, where the wine and comestibles were as delightful as the conversation was wide-ranging and tonic. (I should also record that Beverly made the best steak and kidney pie I have ever had.)

Ken’s jovial temperament — it was rare indeed to find him without a smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes — was disarming. A student of the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, and for many years a beneficent presence at the London School of Economics, Ken was deeply respected by a profession he regarded with, shall we say, a certain ironical distance. Nevertheless, despite the high regard he commanded, it was my impression that many people tended to underestimate Ken. His coruscating intelligence was too obvious to overlook, so people took refuge in the idea that his character lacked steel. Ken was clearly a conservative, but could anyone possessing his calm demeanor and emollient personality really be counted a staunch conservative? If a body wasn’t that, how could he be a reliable ally?

Such people were wrong about Ken. He was the staunchest of allies, it’s just that he didn’t like bruiting it about. Ken’s was a deeply interrogative temperament. The world, and the people in it, puzzled him. I remember the occasion, fairly early in our friendship, when we were lunching at the Garrick Club in London. We somehow got round to the subject of utilitarianism, whose basic axiom is that the test of value is whether a given policy affords the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. If that were true, Ken mused, then imagine someone invented a machine that could eliminate highway fatalities, those tens of thousands of deaths per annum, only it needed to be fed 6 people at random to work. Most of us would recoil from such a solution, but why? We spent a tonic hour over the wine and the ice cream with crystallized ginger (a Minogue favorite) teasing out the answer.

First of all, let me put it on record that Beverley Minogue who, sadly, died three years ago not only made the best steak and kidney pie but was the only person in my experience who made the most marvellous steak and kidney pudding.

Secondly, nobody who knew the Minogues could forget their joint warmth and hospitality; nor could anyone remember with anything but a smile the sight of Ken in some public forum and the sudden grin that would split his face as he greeted his many friends or just made some comment that seemed nothing but jolly until one analyzed it at leisure.

Although Ken Minogue wrote for the fabled Encounter magazine at the time my father did as well, my own friendship with him is much more recent. Ken was one of the founders of the Bruges Group, chaired it for some years and retained a close interest in its doings. It was through that and other eurosceptic organizations that I knew him and through other friends became friends with him and Beverley. There are few things in my life I am more pleased and proud of than this friendship and few things I shall recall with greater pleasure than the various lunches, dinners, outings to the theatre (once to see the wonderful production of Guys and Dolls with Adam Cooper as Sky Masterson) and the cinema, and the many talks about subjects that ranged from musicals and Hollywood films to serious political ideas.

I was not surprised to hear that he delivered the best paper at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting at the Galapagos. All Ken's papers were highly lucid, informative and entertaining. Some years ago I ran a programme of informal talks in the Red Lion Pub in Parliament Street, called, unsurprisingly, the Red Lion Talks. Many of them of high quality but the one that packed out the room and the stairs outside with people hanging on to the banisters was, inevitably, Ken Minogue's in which he dissected the whole concept of European state building.

We shall all miss Ken Minogue as a person and as a thinker and writer. It is sad to know that there will be no more books, articles, talks, witty discussions or comments. But it is good to know that his achievement will live with us and it is good to know that his last few days and hours were happy and successful, spent among friends and colleagues. RIP Ken.

So where are we? - 1

President Vaclav Klaus possesses many admirable qualities. The one I admire most is the continuous smoothness of his presentations that includes answers to difficult or, as is the case with many eurosceptic audiences, downright stupid questions.

This afternoon he gave a habitually clear and convincing explanation of all the many things that have gone wrong with the European Union - its centralizing and bureaucratizing tendencies - in the rush towards greater though ultimately unachievable integration. More specifically, he explained very clearly why the eurozone was not optimal either in its extent or its membership while asserting firmly (and, in my humble opinion, correctly) that the political investment in the project was so great that talk of its collapse was akin to a discussion of what kind of pie ought to be flying across the sky.

So where do we go from here, given that the European Union is going the wrong way, given that we know, roughly speaking, what the right way ought to be, and given that the leadership of Europe and to a great extent its people are persisting in following the wrong path? To that President Klaus apparently has no answer, no matter how often he repeats his cogent analysis. (It is, of course, possible that there is an answer in his latest book, Europe: The Shattering of Illusions, which he was launching, but I have not yet read it.)

At the same time, there is something admirable in President Klaus's refusal to pander to his audience, be they EU grandees or a collection of eurosceptics of varying degree, who usually want to hear their own views confirmed and their own prejudices reasserted.

Vaclav Klaus absolutely refused to discuss internal British politics, slyly turning every question to his own experiences with Czechoslovakia and its disintegration into the two component parts. He did, however, remind people with great firmness that the Conservative Party had expected him to hold out against all pressure and against his country's constitutional rules over the signing of the Lisbon Treaty in order to help them to win the 2010 election though they, themselves, had given up any semblance of a fight. (I wrote about that on this blog and, before that, on EU Referendum, my erstwhile blogging home.)

He also said that while he could see that the UK might, for its selfish reasons, want to be out of the EU, the Czech Republic's selfish reasons wanted the UK to stay in. He was challenged on this by Lord Stoddart of Swindon.

Briefly, the two arguments ran thus: President Klaus appears to think (and who knows what he really thinks on the subject) that the more countries there are in the EU, the less likely is it to integrate. That is our old friend, the widening versus deepening debate, which has been settled some time ago by the inevitability of every new widening being used as an excuse for further deepening. But, more importantly, said Klaus, we must have countries like Britain, countries that have genuine democratic traditions and notions, inside the EU as that will help to reverse the pernicious process of centralizing and bureaucratizing.

Lord Stoddart, on the other hand, thinks that Britain's exit from the EU would be of great benefit not only to this country  but also to others like the Czech Republic who could then follow the British example and find a way out. Maybe it could even join the Commonwealth, suggested the noble peer with a smile. (I can't quite imagine the Czech Republic wanting to be in an organization with such luminaries of democracy as Nigeria or Rwanda but the obsession with the Commonwealth is one that needs a separate set of arguments.)

Once again President Klaus refused to pander to his audience, reminding us all, instead, that Britain actually had the choice of a different kind of European "integration" through EFTA, which it abandoned, preferring to join the EEC. (Lord Stoddart loudly pointed out that he did not prefer it and how true that is. He has been an opponent of Britain's participation in the European project from the beginning.)

I find it hard to believe that President Klaus really believes that Britain's continued membership of the EU would have the desired effect of turning the process of ever greater integration back towards the creation of a low government intervention free market agreement. A swift look at the history of Britain's membership should disabuse him of such a notion. Nor is he under any illusion about the Party Formerly Known As Conservative or the present government. He knows full well that he can hope for nothing from that quarter. Then again, he also knows that his position is very lonely and there is no help anywhere at the moment. One can only admire him for his tenacity (as well as the smoothness of his presentation).

Brian Hindley 1935 - 2012

Last Monday I went to the funeral of a very good friend who also happened to be one of the leading intellectual lights of the eurosceptic movement, Brian Hindley, who died a month short of his 77th birthday. Brian's achievement as an economist, particularly in the field of international trade, his extensive knowledge in his field coupled with an ability to write spare and very accessible prose is described well by Martin Wolf in the obituary published last Friday by the Financial Times.

The salient characteristic of his scholarly writing was an ability to bring economics to bear on the institutional details of policy. Hindley applied the forensic style he had learned at the University of Chicago from Milton Friedman, whose monetarism he embraced, and George Stigler, supervisor of his thesis on the separation of corporate ownership and control.

Although he took no intellectual prisoners, he was unfailingly courteous. Such was his integrity that many of those with whom he disagreed respected him personally. Those who knew him as a friend delighted in his tough-mindedness, decency and robust sense of humour.

How very true. Brian was capable of having an argument about practically anything but whatever the subject was, the debate was always conducted with good humour and usually ended with a big grin and, if appropriate, the offer of another glass of wine.

My own friendship with Brian was born and grew through our involvement with the Bruges Group. His was much longer. In fact, he was one of the founding members and this is what Mr Wolf has to say on that subject:

Hindley was also a founder member of the Bruges Group, created in response to Margaret Thatcher’s speech in the Flemish city in 1988 in which she declared that “we have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level”. He became involved out of concern at the encroachment of the EU on the UK’s economic liberties, rather than on its sovereignty. He wanted the group to provide a civilised forum in which those concerned about the consequences of Britain’s EU membership could engage, irrespective of party allegiance.

He authored pamphlets on the topic, including “Europe, Fortress or Freedom?” in 1989. Becoming co-chairman along with Barry Legg, a campaigner on tax and former Conservative MP, he viewed his task as one of maintaining high intellectual and editorial standards. But a clash between the two prompted Hindley to quit.

In 1996, he co-wrote (with Martin Howe QC) “Better Off Out: The benefits or costs of EU membership”, for the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The pamphlet was updated and reprinted several times and was probably responsible for that political formula, now used by various people, including the odd Conservative or so.

Brian was first co-chairman with Martin Holmes and the two of them managed to revive the Bruges Group after a period of doldrums and make it into a dynamic intellectual forum. Martin sent this appreciation:

It was my privilege to work with Brian for almost nine years as Co-Chairman, 1993 - 2001. During that time we never had a single disagreement or cross word worthy of the name and I came to respect and admire Brian as a man of academic integrity and personal probity who was deeply troubled by the EU’s extending tentacles.

Brian was a first rate economist who resolutely opposed the CAP and European Monetary Union but he was no dry-as-dust economist. At one annual conference at King’s College I asked Brian what aspect of economic integration he would be speaking about that day. He replied that he intended to speak about the growing threat of political integration as that was even more significant.

Brian was a true servant of the cause of economic and political freedom and he and the Bruges Group were made for each other. He will be greatly missed.

It was not just on economics that Brian contributed expertise to the Bruges Group, as Martin Holmes points out, but on such matters as the growth of the ECJ's power and the threat imposed by the Constitution (now Lisbon Treaty) on freedom in general.

It is very unfortunate, that Brian's involvement with the Bruges Group ended on a slightly sour note when he, characteristically, objected to a particular publication because of its intellectual standard.

My memories of Brian revolve round exuberant lunches or the odd glass of wine after a meeting in his house when we would discuss and often argue about many things though not about free trade (I am basically a supporter but my knowledge could not come anywhere near Brian's) or about Britain's membership of the EU. Interestingly, Brian did not think that the UK needs to look to an alternative grouping outside the EU and was not a great supporter of EFTA or the EEA or, for that matter, of NAFTA. Why not go it alone, he would say, and create free-trade agreements.

We disagreed on some political matters: Brian was a staunch republican while I am an equally staunch monarchist; he tended to lean more left-wards in American politics than I do and one of our strongest arguments was about Sarah Palin, whom he judged entirely on the basis of what the New York Times said about her. I may add that another cause of disagreement was our respective views on the MSM and the blogosphere. Brian was cautious about the blogosphere while I tended to be all too dismissive of the MSM. As far as the British blogosphere is concerned, he was probably right - it does not seem to be going anywhere far.

What else did we talk about? Our families and our travels, literary explorations and our shared love of detective stories and thrillers though, once again, our opinions varied with me liking the more traditional detective story more and Brian preferring thrillers. However, these divergence did not result in arguments. After all, there is plenty of room in the world for both genres.

Brian's death is a personal loss to me and to his many friends (all of whom have happy memories of jolly and noisy arguments) though more so to his family who were, separately and collectively, the lynchpin of his existence. Beyond that, the economic and the eurosceptic community will miss a strong-minded, enormously talented and intellectually courageous member.

Peter Hitchens had it right

I must admit I did not think I would agree with Peter Hitchens for all sorts of reasons, not least because I was told that he supported a referendum and was convinced that the OUT side would win. Nothing of the kind. He was very eloquent on the subject of why a referendum now with the forces standing as they are and no strategy on our side we are bound to lose.

Mr Hitchens does not think much of UKIP (and who can blame him?) but thinks that a new party and realignment is needed. The Labour Party, he said rightly, did not just emerge fully formed as the second major party. There was a long period of overlap with the Liberals. At the moment there is nothing that can overlap with the Conservatives. His idea is that the new party should be started by people who split away from the Conservative Party but that, I fear, is a forlorn hope. Maybe some more bullying from the Boy-King will give them a backbone.

Above all, Mr Hitchens thinks, the Conservative Party that has long ago ceased to be conservative has to go. It has to be destroyed. He urged all its supporters to give up on it and feel the liberation of not supporting the No-Longer-Conservative Party any more.

Delenda est Toria Partia he repeated in what can only be described as dog Latin.