English
friends ask me if Spain is over the worst of its long recession yet.
At the macro level, I reply, things look good. With a growth rate of
1-2%, Spain is now one of the fastest growing economies in Europe.
According to President Rajoy - ahead of imminent elections - it's the
apple of Mrs Merkel's eye and an 'austerity 'model' for the rest of
Europe. But the unemployment rate is still 22 or 23% - or 50% for the
young - and there's no feel-good factor down at the street level. In
Pontevedra, I add, the retail scene still looks devastated, even if
estate agents again seem to be taking over a few of the empty places.
One good example is a short street going down from the main square to
Vegetables Square, where 6 of the 10 shops have closed. And where,
perhaps, the sole survivor will be this place selling religious
knick-knacks:-
HT
to Lenox of Business over Tapas for the news that Spain's police now
have the right to place trojans on our computers so as to obtain any
information they might need from the servers. Lenox quotes a
specialist lawyer as saying: "Between
this new law, the Law of Intellectual Property, the latest reforms in
the Penal Law and the (so-called) Gag Law, there's been a brutal
reverse in internet rights and liberties. At a stroke, we losing all
our privacy". To counteract this, recommends Lenox, you might
like to consider using a foreign hosting company, never having an .es
address and keeping your emails in code. Not being a crook, I've no
idea how the last one works.
The EU can
survive only if it splits in two, says one British newspaper
columnist. One part being a true superstate lead by Germany and(?)
France and the other being a looser trading bloc. Britain, of course,
should stay out of the former and lead the latter. The full article
can be found at the end of this post. And it's not as dry as it
sounds. It may even be accurate. It certainly has the ring of truth
for me.
Listening
to Labour's new Deputy Leader yesterday, I was
reminded of, The Galician National Block, or the BNG. This is a
'far-left' party, representing the so-called Galician nationalists
who'd like more local power, or even secession from Spain. Calling
itself a 'Patriotic Front', the party has strong ties with the
industrial trade unions, student unions, environmentalists, agrarian
trade unionists, feminists and 'Galician language organisations'.
Plus 2 or 3 other small political parties. So, a broad church. Just
like the New/Old Labour party. Sadly, not many people vote for it in
Galicia. Less than 15%, in fact. Partly, I suspect, because of the
endless in-fighting in which it inevitably indulges. A harbinger of
things to come in the UK? At least on the (far) left of the political
spectrum.
Possibly
millions of words have been written on why the new Labour leader will
never be Prime Minister of the UK. But they've all missed the main
reason. He has a beard. And not since 1066 have the British trusted a
man with one of these. The last Prime Minister to sport one was the
Marquess of Salisbury, way back in the 19th century. The minute JC
shaves off his beard, we'll know he's betrayed his principles for a
mess of potage and become a real politician. Ironically, this
will be when all his current acolytes will desert him for doing
exactly that. As they say, he can't win - Damned if he has a beard,
damned if he doesn't.
Finally .
. . A reader pointed out that the beasts seen on one of my Feira
Franca fotos were not oxen but cows. Well . . . I looked it up and
found that there is an-udder view: Oxen are commonly castrated adult
male cattle; Cows (adult females) or bulls (intact males) may also be
used in some areas. I rest my case.
Europe
can survive only if it splits in two: David Cameron must push for
the troubled Eurozone to become a superstate and for the UK to be
part of a looser trading bloc.
A lot of
people hated Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson hated a lot of
people. But I think it is safe to say that there are few he hated as
much as John Marshall.
Except
perhaps for John Adams. Or Alexander Hamilton. Aaron burr he could
take or leave. Mainly leave. And he wasn’t that fond of George
Washington, come to think of it.
The United
States was not created by its constitution alone. It was created by
the collision of the constitution with reality, and the collision of
the founding fathers with each other. In retrospect all looks smooth
and obvious — the founders at one. At the time it, and they, were
anything but.
The
constitution, for instance, was almost silent on the role of the us
supreme court. Its powers were effectively seized by Marshall, the
fourth chief justice, responding to events and his own political
interests.
We are
sometimes inclined to see the European Union as solid and immutable,
something we either live with or do not live with. The early history
of America should tell us that this is not so. For a long time the
rules will remain fluid. The battle over what the EU will become
isn’t over.
And at the
centre of this battle will be, of course, the single currency. In a
new edition, published today, of his book, "Europe Restructured", David Owen talks about the night when, to use the phrase of the former German
foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, “something fundamental to the
European Union cracked”.
During the
negotiations over the Greek bailout on July 12 it became obvious that
the tacit understandings about who should pay for the cohesion of the
union could not remain tacit for much longer. Rules will have to be
established that ensure power and responsibility within the Eurozone
are properly aligned. Voters cannot be expected to pay bills incurred
by others without having some control over the things they are being
asked to pay for.
And this
can only mean one thing. The Eurozone, as predicted when the single
currency was established, will have to become a much more tightly
integrated unit. A country, perhaps in name, more probably in all but
name.
Delaying
this can only result in increasing tension and crisis, damaging all
european countries, including the UK. The negotiations on which
Britain is engaged are not — or at least should not be — just
about this country. They are about reshaping an EU that is in
profound crisis because its rules cannot cope with the tasks it has
set itself.
Own argues
— surely correctly — that David Cameron’s idea of removing
ourselves from a commitment to “ever closer union” should be a
much more ambitious proposal. The prime minister should argue for a
community restructured into two parts: the Eurozone and the single
market. Or to put it another way, the union and the community.
The
Eurozone — the union — would acquire, in addition to the powers
the EU already has, much greater fiscal control. And it would
gradually develop the democratic institutions necessary to exercise
that control with consent.
Owen's
idea of a community would bring together EU members outside the
Eurozone, including the UK, with countries such as Norway, Iceland
and, he argues, Turkey, in a looser free trade area clearly based on
independent nation states. He proposes that this area would not
involve agreement to the Common Agricultural Policy, common foreign
and security policy, justice or home affairs. He also argues that the
community need not have free movement of labour.
It would
also have different governance, with power residing with the states
rather than with a parliament and the court. It is not necessary to
agree that these powers are exactly the right ones, or ultimately can
be negotiated in full, in order to believe that Lord Owen is right
about the basic structure.
The
Eurozone is in crisis. In order for it to work properly it will need
strong democratic institutions. Angela Merkel, as Owen notes, has
joined many european leaders in supporting the idea of a directly
elected european president. The parliament is gaining power. To
oppose these developments is to oppose european democracy. Yet to
accept them is to accept a european state.
While the
EU remains a single whole, the democratic supranational institutions
necessary to support the Eurozone will have to be accepted by the UK,
even though we remain outside the single currency. A restructured
Europe doesn’t pose this problem. Owen’s argument leaves two big
questions for David Cameron. The first is this: is the idea remotely
negotiable? The second: is it negotiable in time, given the need to
have a referendum by 2017?
The first
is much easier to answer than the second. Ultimately, the Eurozone
countries will need treaty change and the UK’s agreement to it.
Owen argues that a lot of the law necessary to create a two-part
Europe already exists and the rest can be created as part of the deal
to allow further integration.
To argue
that such big change is not possible, and would never be agreed to,
is to underestimate how much trouble the EU is already in and the
extent to which everyone realises that reform is essential. Yet
Cameron may still feel he should not propose anything too ambitious
in case he doesn’t finish negotiations in time. This would be a
mistake.
These
negotiations are the big opportunity for eurosceptics who want to be
in Europe but not run by Europe. It is vital that the prime minister
be bold in his proposals and realistic about what the future holds
for Britain in an EU dominated by the Eurozone and its needs. If the
prime minister is able to establish the principle of a restructured
Europe, he would not need to complete every detail nor insist that
every detail of the Eurozone be agreed.
He would
be better off fighting the referendum having already established
broad agreement for an ambitious change than fighting it having
completed a negotiation of only mild reform. And if he really
discovers that other countries will not accept a clear line between
Eurozone rules and those outside then perhaps he will need to
reconsider his position in the EU altogether.
It is
certainly striking that David Owen, a lifelong supporter of community
membership, is strongly inclined to vote No if presented in a
referendum with an EU that has not been restructured. The risks to Mr
Cameron of an apparently cautious approach to negotiations may be
greater than they look at first.
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