Useful links

No, I have not done my analysis of the European elections and what they might mean for the future of this country's or the EU's politics (precious little in most cases). The reasons are: laziness, stultifying boredom with the subject and too much time wasted in arguing with people that not all anti-EU parties, even if they are right-wing, are fascist even if you assume that fascist means right-wing.

We live in an age of endless and freely available information or so we are told by people who either like the idea or hate it. There is much talk about information overload. Yeah, right. My own experience is that the number of people who ignore information, stick to about two sources and repeat well known mantras may well have grown in this age of information. Perhaps, they are scared of having to think for themselves.

In the meantime, here are two links to very useful articles dealing with necessary issues and making it unnecessary for me to do so.

First up is the Boss of EURef who gives a very cogent analysis of Peter Kellner's article in the Grauniad about UKIP and its polling.

Secondly, The Boiling Frog has done us all a favour by analyzing and debunking the latest canard that is making its round in eurosceptic or quasi-eurosceptic circles: that the new rules on QMV about to come into force will allow the EU to disallow either an IN/OUT referendum or Brexit. Take your pick. It really depends on which eurosceptic or quasi-eurosceptic you are listening to.

It’s true that from the 1st November many areas are changing to “Lisbon Treaty QMV rules”. The main effect of this is to change to QMV those clauses which required unanimity according to the Nice Treaty. Yet, and what is often overlooked, is this doesn't apply to withdrawal because crucially Article 50 wasn't in the Nice Treaty. Instead it is an innovation of Lisbon and is listed as a "new item". As such it began life already under QMV rules, alongside other "new items" such as the election of the President of the European Council. This is made clear by Article 50 (2) (my emphasis):

In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

Article 50 therefore has never been under a unanimity decision, it has always been subjected to QMV rules. All that happens is that Article 50 will change from “Nice QMV rules” to “Lisbon QMV Rules” "in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union."

And so on. Read the whole piece. Undoubtedly, however, I shall have to produce my own opinions on that very small, barely noticeable earthquake that took place last month.

Are we there yet?

The day of the most hysterically hyped unimportant election in living memory has dawned. It is all nearly over. We shall have the local election results tonight or tomorrow morning and the Euro results on Sunday evening when this blog will be open for business (as will EURef be, I expect).

The Boss and I have spoken this morning and agreed on many things (which is not, by any means, a given in the history of our working relationship). Above all, we are both pleased that this frenetic farce is coming to an end and serious work can be resumed. We also agree, unsurprisingly for those who read both blogs even casually, that UKIP and the media have managed to set back the eurosceptic cause by several years.

After years of hard work we managed to bring the discussion to a serious political level to lose it all in the space of a couple of month - thanks to UKIP and its allies in the media we are back to euroscepticism being equated with anti-immigration, xenophobia and racism. All else has disappeared. How the europhiliacs and the higher echelon of the political establishment must be laughing.

Blowing one's own trumpet

Well sort of. This first link merely mentions me: the Boss remembered as I, shamefully, did not that EUReferendum is now 10 years old. Happy Birthday to you, EURef. He is also kind enough to mention that the blog, one of the more important political ones at the moment, was started by the two of us. Ah those halcyon days when blogging seemed such a good idea. The Boss, as he explains, has gone on to various other projects and has one or two in hand now. Meanwhile, I am still deliberating.

As my last posting indicated (a few days ago, ahem) I am reading, among other books, David Satter's It Was A Long Time Ago And It Never Happened Anyway, whose theme is the reluctance with which Russia, its state and its people, face up to the Soviet past. Those who try to break through the official and popular wall are accused of re-writing history and of besmirching the good and great name of the Russian people and of the heroes who died for the country and for the world in general. These heroes, obviously, do not include the millions murdered by the Soviet state or the Soviet soldiers who died from the hail of bullets from SMERSH agents as they tried to retreat or the Soviet POWs who, having suffered intense privations in German camps, survived to return (often very reluctantly under prodding from Western allies) and were promptly thrown into Soviet camps. Well, some people have to be left out.

The point here is that "re-writing history" is not only not a bad thing but is often a necessary thing. I raised this argument in a discussion on another forum (just get off those forums and get on with your own writing, OK) about yet another attempt to teach in an American educational district that the Holocaust was really a hoax. There is re-writing history, which is a necessary progression, and then there is blatant lying in order to avoid difficult arguments and to appease certain sections of society. In fact, the Holocaust is one of the best documented series of acts and events in modern history.

It did, however, remind me that some years ago I wrote two postings with which I was rather pleased, on the subject of Holocaust denial, freedom of speech, Communist crimes and anti-Semitism. Here is the first one that deals with David Irving, Professor Eric Hobsbawm and related matters.

Here is the second one, which deals with McCarthyism (accusations thereof) and the anti-Semitism that lurks behind a good deal of the Holocaust talk.

All in all, I'd say a nice and easy way of writing a blog and blowing one's own trumpet at the same time. Somehow I don't think I can keep doing this.

That Brexit Prize

The IEA has announced the six finalists in the Brexit Prize and, sad to say, neither of the two for whom I was rooting is on it. The two were, naturally, the Boss and Jim Bennett, the godfather of Anglospherism, which, presumably, does not figure in the chosen short list, Rory Broomfield being more interested in the Commonwealth though his partner in crime, Iain Murray, is, so far as I know, an Anglospherist.

We need not despair: the Boss has blogged on the subject and here is his (and EUReferendum's) full submission. I have read it: it is now your turn. Enjoy yourselves.

As soon as I know where I can find Jim Bennett's submission, I shall post a link to that, too.

An anniversary

Saddam Hussein was executed after a long and open trial on January December 30, 2006. This is not a particularly important anniversary but people seem to be talking about it so I thought I'd link to the pieces we wrote at the time on EUReferendum. This is the Boss, writing on the day, this is one of mine a couple of days later and another one just over a week later. I still think we were right.

That Brexit Prize

The shortlist has been announced by the IEA and I am delighted to note that the Boss, who has done more work on the subject than anyone else is on it. Go Team EUReferendum though I am not, personally, a great fan of crowd-sourcing: it leads to a great deal of self-satisfaction and mutual back-slapping.

The other name I am very pleased to see on the list is that of James Bennett, who has been described by no less a person than Andrew Roberts as the "godfather of Anglospherism". Jim (another friend), I know, submitted a paper that saw the UK's future in the Anglosphere, an idea I strongly support, as readers of this blog (both of them) might recall.

My submission? Well, it went in at the last minute, having been written in the last couple of hours. So, no, it did not deserve to be shortlisted, whatever the other submissions on that list might be like. There is, however, an advantage to that: I am not constrained by the rules any more and shall be able to post my submission on this blog later on. That is, assuming I can find it in my folders.

In the meantime, one or two curious aspects can be noted and I have already discussed them with the Boss, when I called to congratulate him. There were only 149 submissions and only 100 of them, conveniently, from the UK. Does this mean that there really is so very little interest in the subject in this country? Or that too many people have accepted the ridiculous notion that all we need is a referendum and all our problems will be solved? If so, the work of the various referendum campaigns has been done. Or does the problem lie in the lack of publicity? We, in the echo chamber of euroscepticism knew all about the Brexit Prize but did anybody else pay attention, despite several media outlets mentioning it at the time?

So far as I can make it out the publication of the shortlist has been noted in CityAM and nowhere else, not even in the outlets that had publicized the launch in July.

Another curious fact is that instead of the promised twenty only seventeen were shortlisted. Is it really possible that the panel could not find another three entries of a similar calibre?

Nothing on the horse meat scandal?

Attentive readers would have noticed that I have not posted anything on the all-engrossing horse-meat scandal. The reason is very clear: the Boss on EU Referendum has been covering the subject in great detail and there is absolutely nothing I can add to it. As a friend who lives and works in America said on another thread: EUReferendum is the go-to site for anyone who wants to understand what is going on.

However, I should like to call attention to one important posting, entitled, slightly misleadingly EU politics: the silence of the media. The media, on the Boss's own showing has not been silent exactly, more completely and utterly wrong.

Astonishingly enough, this posting shows that at least one journalist, Charles Moore, seems to have woken up to the importance of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, one I recall well from my days of working as the Director of the Honest Food campaign in the Countryside Alliance. (Alas, the campaign no longer exists.)

However, I do want to pick up another point in the posting. The Boss, rightly, considers that all other arguments about the FSA and politicians but, I think, does not pay enough attention to the big issue of a large proportion of the British public's insistence on cheap food.

I am not sure I can understand this obsession entirely, since it does not come from poverty of which there is very little in this country. Rather, there is a widespread feeling, which has existed for a couple of centuries as one realizes reading cookery books of the period, that food should take up a very small proportion of one's income.

Admittedly, a society in which a very large proportion of people's income goes on basic food is a poor society; but many rich societies spend relatively more on food than, by and large, do the British and even so there is a desire for yet cheaper food, presumably because a bigger proportion should be left on drink, holidays and computer games.

This obsession affects eurosceptic attitudes. The Boss fires off a few more rockets towards UKIP whose appearance in the horse meat scandal has been non-existent, despite the obvious EU connection. Instead, they and other eurosceptics concentrate on the one link between food production and the EU they can grasp, the CAP, and the argument (when it does not concentrate on rich farmers, especially the Prince of Wales, getting subsidies) remains monotonously the same: we must get out of the CAP in order to pay less for our food. As a matter of fact, we pay less than most countries, as a proportion of our income. How much less do these people want to pay and what kind of food do they think they will have?

Oh, and should they not have a look at Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 instead of bleating about cheap food?

A parallel universe

Just recently I complained on another forum that eurosceptic pronouncements (by the self-styled hard core members of that group) show that they live in a parallel universe. What is the point of starting from a point of view that is right (membership and, indeed, the existence of the EU is economically, politically and socially a bad thing) and then proceed in a direction that can only be described as demented in its refusal to acknowledge reality.

The Boss on EURef agrees with me and goes further: a number of hard-core eurosceptics, he thinks, are determined to fail. Why that might be so one can argue with many a reference to displacement activity and other such terms; at times as with the various campaigns for an IN/OUT referendum we might consider that they are being manipulated to somebody else's advantage.

Anyway, the Boss attacks them all, laying about him in his usual inimitable fashion. Read it if you have not done so yet.

Nothing else needs to be said

EUReferendum says it all. (And we have come to the same conclusion about the referendum campaign quite independently.)

Nailed

On the whole, I am not a great fan of Peter Oborne, though he can be extremely good company at times. I have never been able to understand people's easy acceptance of his pretensions to being a profound political thinker as well as a particularly astute hack. He is neither but he is an entertaining writer and performer; there are not many of those around.

What with that and not having a TV set and not liking Newsnight, anyway, I did not watch Mr Oborne's performance the other day though all accounts made me think that he was probably somewhat intoxicated, not an unusual event in a real hack's life.

However the erstwhile Boss did and commented on it. His view, as is to be expected, differs sharply from the drooling most eurosceptics have produced. Experience of Mr Oborne, Newsnight (a long time ago) and eurosceptic logical fallacies make me inclined to accept what EUReferendum says.