The US Ambassador's political Ferrero Rocher to the EU

If France really is America's best friend in the world then it seems that the US Ambassador's words to the European Parliament should be taken as a symptom of their chumminess.

"I want to stress that the UK needs to remain in the EU.

"The US does not want to see Britain's role in the EU diminished in any way.

"The message I want to convey today is that we want to see a stronger EU, but also a stronger British participation within the EU.

Susman, who took up his current post a year ago, added, "This is crucial if, together, we are going to meet all the global challenges facing us, including climate change and security.

"But let's be clear: all key issues must run through Europe."

Perhaps this style of shooting from the lip should be taken as a post Wikileaks diplomatic approach. Get those things that might be leaked out in the open.

I would say however that this former Democratic fundraiser must be doing his master's bidding and this is the official view of the State Department. So be it. But it shows yet again how the Obama Whitehouse is losing its way on foreign policy. It ill behoves the US to tell us from a public platform what is, and what isn't good for us.

A diplomat's job is of course to make friends, and by saying this sort of stuff in Brussels rather makes the point. He wants to curry favour with the assembled throng in the European Parliament, and there is nothing that the EU likes to hear, (and federasts in the UK like to hear) more than hearing the siren voices of global compacts and nascent one world government.

But His Excellency forgets that little thing, that small fly in the ointment, democracy and the will of the people. He also forgets another basic thing. If the EU is such a good partner (remember the way that the bid countries of Europe running to the US's side during the war, and the anti-American rhetoric that takes up so much domestic political discourse in Germany and France) then it will remain a good partner with or without the UK.

The UK will reck its own rede and rightly so. If we believe that the US is doing what is right we should support it, if not then we should not.

Likewise your Excellency, and cordially, we understand that sycophancy to your hosts is part of diplomatic discourse, but cordially you really ought to mind your own business.

Lizard joins Lazards

Guido is confirming that Baron Mandelson of Foy, the great lizard of New Labour is joining Lazards.

“London, 21 January 2011 – Lazard Ltd (NYSE: LAZ) announced today that Lord Mandelson, former Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulation, effective immediately. As a Senior Adviser, he will provide independent strategic counsel to the firm and its clients.”

What is interesting is the timing. He has just this month stopped recieving the payments from Brussels that are designed to tide him over while he looks for a new job, what is called the 'transitional allowance'. An allowance that has been netting him about £8,000 a month.

As Nigel Farage said back in September,

Nigel Farage, the European leader of Ukip, said: "Lord Mandelson sits on his sleek backside and continues to sponge up over £100,000 in euro dole. Why doesn't he do something useful for once and get a real job?"

Now there are arguements that suggest that if you reduce people's benefits they are more likely to find themselves gainful employment.

Point proven I would say. It seems that Lord Mandelson is Britain's biggest benefits scrounger.

Here's an idea, cut spending...reduce debt

Dan Mitchell has spotted the extraodinary idea that even the European Central Bank gets it,

I’m not a big fan of central banks, and I definitely don’t like multilateral bureaucracies, so I almost feel guilty about publicizing two recent studies published by the European Central Bank. But when such an institution puts out research that unambiguously makes the case for smaller government, it’s time to sit up and take notice.

He highlights the key points, specifically this one,

…this paper estimates several specifications of a logistic probability model to assess which factors determine the probability of a major debt reduction in the EU-15 during the period 1985-2009. Our results are three-fold. First, major debt reductions are mainly driven by decisive and lasting (rather than timid and short-lived) fiscal consolidation efforts focused on reducing government expenditure, in particular, cuts in social benefits and public wages. Revenue-based consolidations seem to have a tendency to be less successful. Second, robust real GDP growth also increases the likelihood of a major debt reduction because it helps countries to “grow their way out” of indebtedness. Here, the literature also points to a positive feedback effect with decisive expenditure-based fiscal consolidation because this type of consolidation appears to foster growth, in particular in times of severe fiscal imbalances.

Cutting spending results in reducred debt, raising taxes is nowhere near as effective.

Got that Dave and your 50% tax rates? Stop buggering peopole around, let them keep their own money, stop splashing their money about the place and the deficit will slowly sort itself out.

Why is the EU "both attractive, and irrelevant in international politics"?

Interesting post by Nicu Popescu, on whether the EU's soft power is merely freeloading, on the European Council on Foriegn Relations website.

The EU is proud that it is a ‘soft power’ (when you make others what you want through attraction, rather than coercion). It also thinks this is the most sophisticated and benefic way to exercise power (‘post-modern’ in other words). It might be true, but seen from the outside the logic of soft power might not be that appealing for others. In fact if you sit in Dushanbe, Caracas or Karachi why would you care for someone’s soft power?

The answer is, you don't really. No matter how nice you are and attractive you are the dreams of  The European Elite are still meaningless. Of course the author thinks that the answer is for the EU to furnish itself otherwise,

In other words, a state or a union of states, can have some soft power, but not be a soft power. Consequently soft power can and will only work on the margins and in support of other types of power – hard, military or economic. It is an enabling factor for the effective use of other types of foreign policy tools, but not a replacement for them

But really the point is made, Europe is freeloading and has been for one hell of a long time. What is interesting is that in the seven or so years since Robert Kagan wrote "Of Paradise and Power" there seems to be very little change. Europe is still from Venus.

Oh Herman.. Will you sign this for me

I mentioned yesterday about Herman van Rompuy calling Nigel Farage ridiculous.

I have now learned a little bit more about what was going on.

Herman has a number of journalists around to write a puff piece about the release of his new book.

"What I did on my holidays in 2010"

"Dear Members of the Btruusels Press corpse.." he starts, and how right he is. I am told that there was a scrum of journalists around him trying to get signed copies of the tome.

They are dead, from the gut up.

Is it time for Michael Mann to step down

I just wonder, because as Andy Coulson says,

"When a press officer needs a press officer then it is time to leave".

Thank God nobody in Labour listens to Cruddas

John Cruddas has co-authored a piece in the Telegraph today with Prof Jonathan Rutherford  derived from an article in Progress Magazine.

Together with Billy Bragg, and oddly at times Polly Toynbee he articulates an aspect of Labour that could, even should have resonance across the country. He is talking about England, but the lessons are as valuable in the other nations that make up our land.

In Dover the port is up for sale and the people are campaigning to buy it and create a community asset. They don't want a foreign-owned port, they want a people's port that is ‘forever England'. Football supporters are building community-based organisations by share purchase - in Liverpool, for example - to save our clubs from foreign corporate power. In the Forest of Dean, thousands are rallying in protest at the plans by the government to sell England's forests which are England's ‘green beating heart'. In London, porters at Billingsgate fish market campaigned to stop the City of London abolishing their ancient English role and making them redundant. Where is Labour in the fight for an England which belongs to the English just as they belong to the land?

Labour is no longer sure who it represents. It champions humanity in general but no-one in particular. It favours multiculturalism but suspects the symbols and iconography of Englishness.

Of course he is quite right, andthe territory that Labour has vacated in the last 50 years has been taken up in part by the Tory party. But they too fail to trust the people. They have their Big Society, but it is instructive that it is ill defined. Because though they play lip service to the idea, they canot let go of central power.

Cruddas has articulated in part something that UKIP would do well to encapsulate.

Labour's future in England is conservative. England's radical traditions are rooted in the political struggle for the liberty that Edmund Burke describes as ‘social freedom'. There is a powerful strain of rebellious individualism in English socialism which helped to create a politics of liberty, virtue and democracy and a vast popular movement of voluntary collectivism, cooperativism and mutual self-improvement. English socialism shares antecedents with Toryism but it differs from it in one significant way. It was a militant defence of a common life, and of individual labour and creativity against the unaccountable power of capital and against the usurpation of the state. Its desire to conserve the integrity of the individual placed it in conflict with the class structure of property rights and power. Capitalism unbound was the enemy of the people and of individual self-realisation. The struggle for liberty was a struggle for democracy, not for paternalism and an organic society where each knew his place

He is wrong to think that local communities, the self-help of the Friendly Societies and Working Man's Institutes are antipathetic to ideas of economic freedom, they should be part of it, two sides of the same coin.

Ferdinand Mount got somewhere near it in 'Mind the Gap' and it is territory that UKIP should nmake its own.

Labour is no longer able to follow this thinking,

It must, in a literal sense, go out to the people and once again find its place as an organising force in the life of our country, from the cities to the market towns and the villages. England is being sold by the pound and in places like Dover, the Forest of Dean, Liverpool and Billingsgate Market people from all walks of life are organising together to reclaim it for the common good.

But UKIP can.

Sometimes the Flemmings are touched with genius

Via Simon Blackley

Richard Barnbrook joins English Democrats

Odd news via Toque

Following an invitation by Derek Hilling the National Party Secretary of the English Democrats, Richard Barnbrook - London Assembly Member, attended the English Democrats National Council meeting on Saturday 15 January 2011 in Coventry to explain why, he would like to join the English Democrats party.

Following discussion, and debate, the English Democrats National Council voted to allow Richard Barnbrook to join the English Democrats party in the Capacity as London Assembly Member, subject to further discussions/agreement with the English Democrats London Area Council.

BOTH

Robin Tilbrook (National Party Chairman)
&
Steven Uncles (National Communications Director)

announced their intention to abstain from the vote, for reasons given at the time to the National Council Meeting, before the vote took place.

Not sure if that is a good thing the ED are doing there.

Denver Police are surely going to get their man

Priceless headline via James Taranto

Police search for Moron

Oh the irony

This in Pravda,

Hungarian prime minister criticized for new media laws

Van Rompuy has a go at Farage

He also again rubbished the verbal attack on him by UK Independence Party MEP Nigel Farage who famously likened him to a "damp rag" when Van Rompuy gave his maiden speech in parliament at the start of his term in office.

Van Rompuy said he believed his record to date had proved the UKIP leader wrong, adding, "You know, in every society there are ridiculous people."

So according to Herman Van R, Farage is ridiculous. All depends on your perspective I suppose.

After all hiding your misuse of official vehicles is a tad ridiculous, particularly when you know that, in the end the truth will come out.

UKIP's polling improves, but should be better

The PM's long term strategy team should be having a few concerns. According to Anthony Wells, and pinged around the 'tinterweb via Tim Montgomery he is commenting that UKIP are now beggining to see a significant and lasting benefits from the shambles that is outr government. Interestingly the latest YouGov figures on Lib Dem to UKIP switchers seems to mirror what Smithson highlighted yesterday to some incredulity. According to YouGove the switchers Tory  - UKIP and Lib Dem - UKIP are about the same which tallies with Ashcroft's Old and Sad post election poll.

Now tie this in with the energetic debate going on on Con Home relating to the new(ish) research about the sort of people who vote UKIP, and the predictions being made by the reports authors, Dr Robert Ford of the University of Manchester and and Dr Matthew Goodwin of the University of Nottingham, viz.

UKIP has now emerged as a potent competitor on two very different fronts. On the one hand, UKIP is tapping into widespread Conservative scepticism about Europe to win over large numbers of Tory voters at European Parliament elections. But in Westminster elections, UKIP is also attracting a very different following. The party is becoming an outlet for the frustrations of voters who are angry about rising immigration, anxious over the presence of ‘threatening’ Muslim communities, and cynical about mainstream politics, but repelled by the BNP’s reputation for racism and fascism.

Now, if all this is the case, and we are as far away from an election as we suspect, then the likelihood of UKIP topping 8% across the country in the next Westminster poll is high. We have after all never been anywhere near this level at this stage of the electoral cycle. What this means for the European elections is even more moot. It appears that Nigel Farage's stated belief mentioned to Alex Singletion isn't as some would wish, hot air.

I was having a beer with Nigel Farage recently when he came out with a most remarkable statement. “UKIP,” he declared, “will win the next European election.”

If UKIP are looking at these polling numbers, what does that do in a FPTP election when the parties are squabbling over reduced majorities? What indeed. And what, while he remains committed to the coalition can Cameron do about it?

Is Warsi using Islam as a protective cloak

Today's speech by Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi about how ghastly it is that people conflate Islam with terrorism seems to put herself out on an even greater limb than she was before.

But I wonder if this speech today in Leicester is a calculated move to make it very difficult for Dave to sack her.

He postion was pretty precarious after she launched into the Tory right and claimed, with an apparent straight face that the Conservatives had fought hard in Oldham.

As James Forsyth pointed out after her excerable performance last week on the Today program,

What to do about Warsi is quite a problem for the Tory high command. She does visibly show how the party has changed but she’s also not very competent. Cameron has already split her role, giving Cameron’s university friend Andrew Feldman a whole bunch of the financial and administrative responsibilities. But as one Tory press adviser said to me just now, ‘you can’t put her on the radio. She’s just a disaster waiting to happen.’

So what does she do to glue herself to her job. Accuse the majority of the British that they are Islamaphobic for even thinking  that there are degrees of extremism, and 'good' or 'bad' Muslims.

She even suggests in some bizzare way that terrorism comitted abroad is broadly acceptable, just terrorism committed here should be dealt with,

“Those who commit criminal acts of terrorism in our country need to be dealt with not just by the full force of the law,” she will say.

She is, in this speech redefining Islamaphobia. After this, if I suggest that there is a material difference between Mr Assad down the road and some chap waving a poster saying 'Death to Democracy, We will cut off your heads" then I am now guilty of the thought crime she abhors.

Tebbitt offers some no doubt unwanted, but sage advice,

Had Baroness Warsi sought my advice, I would have counselled her not to make the speech which has been trailed in The Daily Telegraph today.

I would have told her that the Muslim faith was not discussed over the dinner tables of England, nor in the saloon bars, before large numbers of Muslims came here to our country. Then I would have told her to go to our Christian churches and listen to what was said about her religion and those who practise it, then to the Mosques to hear what is said in some of them about the Christian faith and those who practise it (or about Buddhists, Jews, or even those who have no faith at all).

After that, I would say, she might consider who is in need of her homilies on prejudice.

Until then a period of silence from the Baroness might not come amiss.

The thing is My Lord, that this is her using attack as a means of defence.

Now what does Dave do? She has painted him into a corner. If he sacks her, she can now come out saying that it is an Islamaphobic act, and Dave doesn't want to be seen to be nasty. If he doesn't sack her, more and more people will feel that he endorses her attack on the vast majority of normal reasonable people in this country.

Update
Doesn't look like Dave likes the position she has put him in. The gap between thines in this short statement is cavernous. (from PA - no link)

Asked whether the Prime Minister agreed with Lady Warsi that prejudice against Muslims was becoming more widespread, David Cameron's official spokesman said: "She is expressing her view. He agrees that this is an important debate."

Is UKIP starting to benefit from the coalition?

Is the interesting statement from Mike Smithson,

The Tory peer and benefactor, Michael Ashcroft, funded a call-back poll in Oldham E and Saddleworth and the key voter churn figures are featured in the table.

This showed the proportion of Lib Dem general elections voters switching to Labour at 29% of the total - a figure that is almost exactly in line with recent national polls. The 7% of yellows going to UKIP seems quite high.

The Tory vote did fall sharply but not all because of blue-yellow switching. UKIP picked up nearly one on ten of Tory general election voters. A third of all Tory voters from last May moved to the Lib Dem.

This would tie in with what we are finding up and down the country.

Defend the City

Just to let you know about an event next week in London,

It is taking place on

Thursday, January 27th, 6.30pm

London Capital Club

15 Abchurch Lane, London EC4N 7BW

 

Come along for what promises to be a fascinating evening