Daily Mail - When will the Empress of Europe and her French poodle ever learn?

Last updated at 10:24 PM on 4th November 201166666666

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There can be no doubt now about how brutally the European Union does its business, or how it treats the accepted norms of democracy as a tiresome obstacle to its rule. 

The humiliation of Greece in the past few days, with its prime minister George Papandreou ordered to scrap his plans for a referendum on Greece’s latest bail-out, reminded me how another  fading empire, of recent memory, conducted its affairs.

When I heard Europe’s paymaster, Chancellor Merkel of Germany, and her lickspittle, President Sarkozy of France, issue their ultimatum to Mr Papandreou — ‘do as you’re told or we’ll cut off your money!’ — it brought back memories of how the late and unlamented Leonid Brezhnev used to run his satellite states when dictator of the Soviet Union.

Bullying tactics: Chancellor Merkel of Germany and President Sarkozy of France have forcibly issued an ultimatum to Mr Papandreou

Whereas Brezhnev threatened tanks, Mrs Merkel threatens penury. It is an equally potent weapon in an EU where we are now witnessing the historic continuation of the German conquest of Europe, albeit by other means. 

Not surprisingly, Mr Papandreou quickly came to heel. Whether his  fellow-countrymen, steeped in a culture of idleness financed by foreign tax- payers, will obediently follow suit remains to be seen. I doubt it.

It is a consolation to those of us who are sceptical about — or, in my case, downright hostile to — the EU that the aggressive measures taken by Mrs Merkel and loudly endorsed by her French poodle were signs of panic and desperation. 

For the truth is that the EU and its crippled currency are in grave trouble, and its politburo knows this.

That much has been clear since Mr Sarkozy’s offensive and petulant remarks to David Cameron last month, when he told him to keep his nose out of the eurozone’s business.

With the International Monetary Fund now requiring yet more of British  taxpayers’ money to bail out the inadequates of Europe, it is increasingly clear that the eurozone’s failure is our business.

Aggressive EU tactics have brought Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to heel

Meanwhile, the Franco-German bullies insist that everyone continues to buy into the mad fantasy that both the euro and the EU can survive. 

When they saw Greece departing from the script, they launched the diplomatic equivalent of a coup d’état against Mr Papandreou.

The question now is how long before the deal to hold together the eurozone will be exposed as a sham and how long it will be before the next corrupt, profligate, economically incontinent country threatens to wreck the whole show. 

Only nine days ago we were assured, not least by the euro-maniacs of the BBC and the Left-wing Press, that the Greek bail-out had secured the future of the euro and of the EU. Yet the deal collapsed within a week — as some of us predicted.

The truth is that there is no hope of salvation. Even if the Greeks succeed in implementing their  austerity policy, the chances are that Greece is in for a winter not merely of discontent, but of serious civil and industrial unrest.

This, I am afraid, will set the  pattern which a number of eurozone countries will follow over the coming months. However much they try, the commissars in  Brussels won’t be able to silence public disquiet.
Portugal is already in trouble and has intimated it may seek further help to keep it in the euro. 

But the real nightmare is Italy,  a country whose debt is funded like one of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi schemes, and for which a hideously expensive reckoning is fast approaching.

Italy, under Silvio Berlusconi, is funded like a Ponzi scheme

Of course, this weakness will be quickly exploited by Merkel and Sarkozy as they continue to order other countries around — and with breathtaking arrogance saying who should, or should not, be that nation’s prime minister.

Admittedly, the moral tone of international politics would be raised by the removal of Silvio Berlusconi. But he should be removed only by Italian voters — not via a Führergram from Berlin.

Meanwhile, the financial markets will soon tire of repeated failed attempts to save a currency that cannot, in its present form, be saved.

Having concluded that Greece will inevitably default on its debts and that it will probably depart from the eurozone, other weak countries are now the centre of attention.

However, what happens in the financial markets is not the only serious worry on the horizon. 

The political class that has got Europe into this mess — and which has proved itself more out of touch with its electorates than at any time since World War II — faces  retribution at the ballot box.

Mr Sarkozy is expected to lose the presidential election in France next spring. Mrs Merkel has nearly two years to wait before facing her electors, but opinion polls show that most oppose her policies.

The irony is that, in defiance of this EU juggernaut, Germany’s bestselling newspaper Bild this week called for the Germans to be given a referendum on the future of their relationship with the EU. 

Elsewhere, people in other EU states are fast realising that the balance of power has shifted dramatically towards Germany — making Mrs Merkel effectively the Empress of Europe and able to  dictate to other EU nations.

Current EU tactics are similar to those Leonid Brezhnev used to run his satellite states when dictator of the Soviet Union

The tragedy is that this European dictatorship is not just deeply destructive of democracy, but supremely irrelevant in a world  facing huge dangers other than the eurozone crisis.

Iran is said to be on a war footing as it seeks to protect its growing nuclear capability from possible U.S./Israeli intervention.
Indeed, never has there been a better time since the 1930s for an aggressor to challenge the supposedly civilised world.

The truth is that the EU is becoming increasingly irrelevant as China and India rapidly grow in power and wealth. For its part, America is swamped by debt and is led by a man whose main concern is to be re-elected next year.

Regardless of Barack Obama, America’s moral credit in the world is overdrawn after the foreign policy blunders of the Bush years in Iraq and elsewhere. 

Nato’s European powers, notably Britain, have been forced to run down their armed forces out of  economic necessity.

All this makes the Western world frighteningly vulnerable. And yet, its leading 27 nations are paralysed with anxiety about their own crisis — which, in truth, is a self-inflicted wound that will never heal.

After this week’s events, a fiscal union of some sort — in which nations have common tax and spending policies — starts to seem inevitable. Jose Manuel Barroso, the EU’s president, admitted as much yesterday.

Any fiscal union would comprise only a few countries — those whose economies are strong enough to withstand Germany having to tell them how to run their own affairs — unless joined by other maso-chistic nations that relish the  occasional kick from the jackboot.
Such a Europe will be dramatically different from the one we have today. 

A fiscal union that can  support its own currency would be unlikely to include the economic basket-cases that currently are part of the EU.
Meanwhile, the panic and recriminations of the past few days signal that the undertakers have been sent for the euro as we know  it in its present form. All that remains to be settled is the date of the funeral.

 

It will be an outrage if public sector unions strike over changes to their gold-plated pensions when millions in the private sector have no pension provision at all.

  

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How stupid can union leaders be in this  current economic climate to oppose a  government deal that offers them £50 billion? Their members would be mad to strike.

I hope that when and if a walk-out happens, millions of them will continue to work as normal.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2057791/When-Empress-Europe-French-poodle-learn.html#ixzz1cq2BYOHy

Nigel Farage: Who will defend the City?

When Cameron claims he’ll defend London from Brussels’ power grab he’s lying, says UKIP’s furious leader Nigel Farage

The UK’s biggest industry, financial services, is facing the biggest threat in its history from a new regulatory regime in Brussels that is opposed to “Anglo-Saxon” practices.

This matters because hundreds of thousands of people work in what we still call the City, even though many now are in Canary Wharf and the West End. It matters because 20 per cent of our tax revenues come from the sector.

And it matters to me because my grandfather and father were both stockbrokers and I spent 20 years on the London Metal Exchange. Indeed both of my sons are now in the City, and I want to fight to defend it.

City people generally donʼt do politics. They are too busy trying to make money. In the 1990s I was regarded as pretty eccentric by my colleagues for worrying about the future impact Brussels would have on the industry. When the prospect of a single market in financial services came on to the EU agenda, I was even told that I was wrong, as the City would benefit from better market access.

• Read: 10 reasons to fear Europe’s new super quango

Tory MEP Theresa Villiers was appointed as the European Parliament sponsor of the new model. I argued vigorously that the resulting costs of this brave new world would outweigh any benefits. But, she assured me, the City was in favour. So began a blizzard of EU regulations that led to a massive growth in the compliance culture. Everyone moaned about it but no-one worried too much. All that has changed.

In the wake of the 2008 banking crisis, a culprit was needed, and the hedge fund industry ticked all the right boxes. When the European Parliament voted for legislation to be introduced, the Lib Dems and Labour were enthusiastic. What was not discussed was that the Tories also voted for this on a three-line-whip.

When Boris Johnson came to Brussels to defend the hedge funds, he was unaware of the duplicity of his own party, and deeply embarrassed when he was told the truth. Boris lost for words is quite a sight.

As a result of the Alternative Investment Funds directive, one in four hedge funds left London in 2010. This example shows just how serious the threat is - businesses can quickly move to more inviting locations. The English schools in Zurich are now heavily over-subscribed.

Since David Cameron became the Tory leader over half of the money raised for his party came from the City. The donors have always been told that the industry would be supported. They are being lied to.

Every week senior Tory figures are in City boardrooms telling the executives how they are standing up to Brussels, working for the best deal for Britain. Yet it was the Tories who voted, once again on a three-line-whip, for the transference of all regulatory power to three new EU agencies. The FSA is now no more than a branch office of the European Commission.

Worse still there is nothing that we, the electorate, can do to change any of this in a future general election. The latest Brussels wheeze is a financial transactions tax, or Tobin Tax. This would cost the City nearly £40bn a year. Even if George Osborne has the courage to veto it, the message should be that we are embroiled in an organisation that wishes us harm.

The City is under attack from Brussels and from others desperate to damage the financial services sector. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is the latest to voice his support for a Tobin Tax in what appears to be little more than a cynical PR exercise to get the campers off the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.  

• Read: Is it the Archbishop of Canterbury’s place to comment on financial issues?

As the Tory Party descended into civil war last week over the proposed EU referendum, Cameron sought to cheer up the troops. He declared that the City faced a threat and that he would stand up for them. This is political dishonesty on a level that makes me furious.

He cannot be allowed to get away with it. We need to take back control of our biggest industry and pursue a global future. I will make these arguments and, I suspect, few people will think me eccentric. 

Reuters - UKIP leader reaches out to Tory eurosceptics

By Keith Weir

LONDON | Fri Nov 4, 2011 8:53pm GMT

(Reuters) - Conservatives who are unhappy with the party line on European Union membership should throw in their lot with the avowedly anti-EU UK Independence Party, its leader Nigel Farage said on Friday.

Farage dismissed Prime Minister David Cameron's claim to be a eurosceptic, calling him the most pro-Europe Conservative leader since Edward Heath who led Britain into the then Common Market in 1973.

"The reality is the rebels lost last week. The anti-EU cause within the Conservative party under this leadership is dead," Farage told Reuters in an interview.

"My argument to those MPs is 'if this is how you feel...you better come and join us because you are wasting your time where you are,'" he added.

Around 80 Conservative MPs defied Cameron last week and backed a call for a referendum on EU membership.

Cameron would like to claw back powers from the EU, but says the priority is to resolve the financial crisis that is raging through the single currency zone at the heart of the EU.

Ironically, for an anti-EU party, UKIP had its best ever result at the 2009 European election when it won more than 16 percent of the vote, beating then ruling Labour into third place.

Farage said the party had drawn support not only from disaffected Conservatives, but also in traditional Labour strongholds in northeast England.

He sees plenty of scope for the party to build on this base now Europe has risen back up the political agenda.

"Across the country, we are in conversations with a lot of district councillors, county councillors: people who are making up their minds and saying is it time now for us to jump ship?"

Farage, a member of the European parliament, broke a number of bones in an accident on general election day last year when a plane carrying a UKIP banner crashed into a field. He says that he still suffers back pain from the accident and notices how a short walk now can tire him out.

TRADE ARGUMENT

Not surprisingly, Cameron's claims that withdrawal from the EU would be a disaster for British business cut little ice with the dapper Farage, a 47-year-old former commodities trader.

"He (Cameron) is stuck with this same dreary line that (Tony) Blair and (Gordon) Brown and all of them pumped out. That unless you are a member of a political union, you can't do business with Europe," he said.

Farage argues that any threat of reducing trade would be counter-productive to Britain's continental neighbours.

"Trade isn't done by governments. The idea is that there will be some sort of trade retaliation, well they would be stuffing themselves, so that wouldn't happen," he said, puffing on a cigarette in an interview over coffee outside a Westminster pub.

He envisages Britain remaining part of the European Economic Area, like Norway, and enjoying a strong working relationship with the rest of Europe while being freed of what he regards as burdensome regulation and an undemocratic structure.

Farage, married to a German, says he is fearful for the future of Europe, with the optimism brought on by the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago giving way to something much darker.

"I see Europe now as being split - when we were all growing up it was east-west, now it's north-south," he said.

"There is a democratic revolution going on in some of the northern European countries, starting with Finland, and the prospects of civil unrest in some of the Mediterranean countries."

Farage provoked outrage in the European parliament last year when he attacked EU President Herman Van Rompuy as having the "charisma of a damp rag" and saying the Belgian came from a "non-country."

For once, he takes on a slightly sheepish air when asked whether he regretted the episode.

"I'm an unscripted speaker. Sometimes you might get the pitch a little wrong," he said.

"My intention was to have some fun but I think it looked a little bit too personal."

(Editing by Steve Addison)

The Telegraph - As the landscape starts to shift, Ukip can create political havoc

By Peter Oborne Politics Last updated: November 2nd, 2011

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The main parties’ cosy alliance is about to be blown apart by Nigel Farage’s Eurosceptics

Nigel Farage's Ukip are riding high in the polls

The modern history of the Conservative Party has been poorly understood, mainly because it has been written by the winner – the modernising faction that undermined the leadership of William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith before seizing control after the 2005 election defeat.

These modernisers like to portray recent Tory history as a victory for change, pragmatism, progress and sanity. But this relentlessly optimistic account ignores the central truth: the Conservative Party formally split in the decade that followed the political assassination of Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

The first manifestation of this split was the creation of the Anti-Federalist League by the distinguished historian Alan Sked in 1991, at just the time that the Maastricht Treaty was signed. The decision to deprive eight Conservative MPs of the whip in the mid-1990s was another significant moment. Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party took the disintegration process one stage further.

Sir James was far more successful than is widely appreciated, and forced the Conservative government to pledge a referendum on future European treaty changes. He also sucked away many Tory activists. When the Referendum Party folded after his death the following year, these activists tended not to return to the Conservatives. Many of them gave their loyalty to Ukip, the protest party led by Nigel Farage which now campaigns for Britain to leave the European Union.

In contrast to the racist BNP, which tends to attract former Labour supporters, Ukip is in reality the Conservative Party in exile. Many of its senior members wear covert coats and trilbies, making them look like off-duty cavalry officers. They are fiercely patriotic and independent.

Farage himself is a very jolly chap who smokes, drinks and occasionally gets into minor trouble. He is instantly recognisable as the kind of man who would have served loyally in the post-war Conservative Party and would have been popular with opposition parties. He is one of the relatively few politicians I actually look forward to meeting. Indeed, Mr Farage, who abandoned the Tories on the day that Margaret Thatcher quit as party leader, is entirely representative of his membership, many of whom are small businessmen, or served in the Armed Forces, and are extremely public-spirited.

It was widely noted that party activists were heavily outnumbered by lobbyists at this year’s Conservative conference. One of the reasons was that so many Tory activists have gone off to join Ukip. Practically all of its supporters were instinctively at home in the party of Margaret Thatcher. A steady trickle of former Tory grandees have defected to Mr Farage’s party: Alexander Hesketh, the former treasurer and chief whip in the House of Lords, is the most recent.

If a Left-wing party had reached Ukip’s size and consequence, the media would be fascinated. But, because of its old-fashioned and decidedly provincial approach, it has been practically ignored. In the 2004 European elections, the party gained a sensational 16 per cent of the vote. Had it been the Greens or the Communists that had pulled off this feat, the BBC would have gone crazy. Instead it chose not to mention this event, coolly classifying Ukip as “other”.

For the metropolitan elite, the party scarcely exists. This is why last Sunday’s YouGov poll showing that support for Farage’s party had crept up to 7 per cent – just one point fewer than the Liberal Democrats – gained no coverage. But the significance of this is very great. I believe that Ukip is about to take over from the Lib Dems as Britain’s third largest political party.

The Lib Dems are finished for the foreseeable future – the invariable fate of the smaller party in a coalition government. They will be fortunate to retain a dozen seats at the next general election. Meanwhile, Ukip will probably overtake them in the polls over the coming months, most likely pulling well ahead as the general election approaches. The European elections, due in two and a half years’ time, will provide an important test: my guess is that Ukip will perform very strongly, while the Lib Dems will be all but wiped out.

It is becoming painfully apparent that Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy made a historic mistake at the end of the last century. Had the Lib Dems then made the decision to reflect popular opinion and challenge the European Union, they could have been a genuinely radical party, capable of confronting head-on and overtaking their two main rivals. Instead (to the despair of several of their MPs), they timidly chose to become a voice of the European machine in Brussels, meaning they became part of the consensus and were never able to make the breakthrough they wanted.

As a result of this failure of nerve and vision, Britain’s political architecture is about to be transformed. Since the Second World War, our third national party has been on the Left. This has meant that Conservative governments have often been pulled towards the centre, while Labour governments have had crucial cover. We are now moving towards a new era, in which the most significant third force may be on the Right.

The consequences of this are, at this stage, hard to predict. It is possible that Ukip may develop into a rebellious third party, like Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National in France, but this is unlikely: Le Pen’s party was semi-fascist, and Ukip seems too fundamentally British, conservative and decent to go down that frightening route. Furthermore, our electoral system holds back Ukip, just as it does the Lib Dems. Though it is easier now to imagine the former surging to victory in a by-election, with the latter extinguished as a vehicle for protest votes, it is virtually inconceivable that Mr Farage’s party can win parliamentary seats at the next general election.

But Ukip can still exercise a determining influence. The strength of its national support means that it holds the future of scores of Tory MPs in its hands. By running a candidate in a marginal seat, it can deprive the Tories of a few thousand votes, more than enough to cause him or her to lose – indeed, one Tory, David Heathcoat-Amory, ironically himself a Eurosceptic, blames Ukip for his loss in the 2010 election.

Meanwhile, the party can throw its weight behind Tory candidates fighting for their lives against Lib Dem or Labour rivals. But in return, of course, it is entitled to demand a price and insist that those candidates pursue strong anti-European policies. This ability to determine or affect the result in individual constituencies means that Ukip can intervene dramatically in the Tory civil war over Europe which broke out after last week’s Commons vote. It can terminate the careers of ministers and loyal backbenchers, while throwing a lifeline to rebels.

Ukip’s strength is very easy to explain. The leadership of the three mainstream parties have made an error. They are determined to cleave to the centre ground. Ukip alone has the courage to stand outside this cosy alliance and to cause havoc. Meanwhile, it goes without saying that a Tory leader can never win an election so long as the broader Conservative movement is so painfully split.

Tags: Conservative Party, Conservatives, europe, Euroscepticism, maastricht,Tories, Tory Party, UKIP

Daily Express - EUROZONE CRISIS: BOTTOMLESS PIT SHOULD NOT GET A PENNY MORE

David Cameron and George Osborne at the G20 summit in Cannes

Friday November 4,2011

By Patrick O’Flynn, Chief Political Commentator

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TWO weeks ago the Chancellor George Osborne got up in the House of Commons and told MPs: “Let me be clear, whatever the European Commission President says, British taxpayers will not be contributing to the eurozone’s bail-out of Greece. Full stop.”

Yesterday, David Cameron told reporters at the G20 in Cannes: “Let’s be clear, when the world is in crisis, it’s right that you consider boosting the IMF.”

Let’s be clear shall we? Well it all sounds about as clear as mud.

The truth is that in spite of what Mr Osborne told Parliament, billions of pounds more of British taxpayers’ money is now very likely to go towards propping up Greece and other insolvent eurozone member states.

The IMF now has access to almost $1,000billion to support bankrupt countries. Mr Cameron is among those world leaders who believe this is not enough given the challenges facing the world economy and, principally, the eurozone.

Britain’s share of IMF funding is currently £29.5billion. But if IMF resources were to be doubled to $2,000billion then we would need to send another £29.5billion to its coffers.

More and more of us can see that the Greek crisis will only be resolved when Greece leaves the eurozone and defaults on its debts.

“No Government ever lost money by lending money to the IMF, which supports countries right around the world. There is no risk to the British taxpayer of seeing the IMF play its proper role,” claimed Mr Cameron yesterday.

Well, the second part is not quite correct. There has never before been a teetering financial behemoth like the eurozone so lending to its most impecunious nations does carry a significant element of risk.

Yet again this Government’s ability to drum up giant sums to send abroad – whether in foreign aid, direct EU subscriptions or funding for the eurozone via the IMF – has eclipsed its ability to fund Britain’s national priorities such as defence or higher education.

Such priorities are only likely to inflame the opposition to the EU among British voters.

More and more of us can see that the Greek crisis will only be resolved when Greece leaves the eurozone and defaults on its debts. The Government policy amounts to throwing good money after bad.

The eurozone is broken. Not another penny should be spent trying to deny that basic fact.

“No Government ever lost money by lending money to the IMF", But has any Government ever got their money back?