Helen

Humming and ha-ing

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There will be another, more serious attempt to launch a British tea party movement in Brighton today. Not only, being British, tea will be served (and cucumber sandwiches, I hope) but the whole event is promising to be rather tame and controlled unlike that anarchic, grass-roots colonial movement.

The tea party is being imported into Brighton by The Freedom Association, a national organization, first set up by the McWhirter twins back in the seventies to fight trade union power. It is a fringe event at the Conservatives’ Spring Conference and will be addressed by the ubiquitous Daniel Hannan MEP. Almost certainly, most of the attendees will be Conservatives who are in Brighton for the conference.

All of which makes me hum and ha but I shall go anyway. There has to be somebody there who has not been co-opted by the political establishment. More on this on Your Freedom and Ours.

There is no such thing as Europe

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How many times does one have to keep repeating that? All right, let me clarify that statement. Of course, there is a Europe as a geographical concept it is a subcontinent of the huge Eurasian continent. There is also such a concept, though it is hard to define, as European culture, which melds into European history and European thought. One gets into serious difficulties with it as European culture and European thought are so varied in themselves.

What there is not and never has been is a Europe as a political concept. There is no such thing as European politics, though there is, obviously EU politics, a completely different concept, often alien to European history and traditions. Therefore, there can be no such thing as a European Tea Party Movement. Not if ever so many people join the group on Facebook; not if Real Clear Politics or Glenn Reynolds write about it.

It would be pointless to talk about tea parties as a political concept in Europe even if such a thing as Europe existed politically speaking. No-one would understand it. In Britain tea party (as in vicarage, for instance) means something quite different; on the Continent it means nothing at all. In fact, history tells us that on the Continent tax or bread riots tend to have further reaching consequences than the American tea parties have done so far.

The biggest problem, however, more or less understood by David Ignatius on Real Clear Politics is that each country’s problems are separate and different, even though they all share the understanding that the government’s role is to spend, spend, spend, an understanding they share with most other countries in the world. One suspects that, like Henry Kissinger, David Ignatius would feel happier if there were one European fiscal authority easier to draw parallels.

What would a European tea party movement oppose? The European Union? Maybe, but it is hardly the biggest spender; its role in the destruction of the economies of European countries is a little more subtle: it used control and regulation to further integration.

Individual governments? Why would a European movement care about individual European governments? I see no point in going on a demonstration that would demand fiscal conservatism from the French or Greek governments. Let the people of those countries worry about that, as long as we do not have to pay.

All this talk of European this, that and the other or European elites, as Glenn Reynolds writes, comes to the same conclusion: we need some kind of a European political entity, a concept many of us radically disagree with. But the truth is that we cannot have a European tea party movement unless we have a European state, a European government and a European polity. People who support or call for a European tea party go along with the notion of a European state.

Cross-posted from Your Freedom and Ours

Happy New Year

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I missed out on the Christmas and Hannukah wishes but ought to be in time with the new year ones. It will be our turn to have an election next year (May, I am still saying despite the media hoopla around the word March). It is likely to be an interesting one: we have a government that is more disliked than any I can recall and yet we also have an opposition that just cannot get the support. We also have an electorate that has been seriously angered by all main-stream politicians and has realized, if somewhat hazily, that as long as we are in the EU it makes precious little difference who one wants for. In the last three elections turn-out was extremely low. We do not know what will happen next year. Another low turn-out? Rising vote for the smaller parties like UKIP? It can happen.

The Conservatives are still likely to come back with more seats than any other party but not necessarily with an overall majority. And so what if they do get into government. Remember what Hilaire Belloc wrote about another election?

The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge)
Broke – and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).

Happy New Year to all.

Happy Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving to all from this side of the Pond. We are having a Thanksgiving Teaparty by Lincoln’s statue in Parliament Square tomorrow afternoon. Any reader of this posting who will be in or near London is welcome. It will start at 4 and go on till 8 so there will be plenty of time to go on to other events though there will be food.

That Irish referendum

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It occurred to me that what with one thing and another the significance of today’s referendum in Ireland may be lost on many readers of Chicagoboyz. Somehow Ireland, both North and South, have become less important on the other side of the Pond, now that Sinn Fein has been safely installed in the Ulster Assembly. There are, however, other issues at stake.

Let me recap. The Lisbon Treaty is a regurgitated version of the Constitution for Europe, the previous treaty agreed on by the previous Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) of the European Union. The Constitution, a whacking document of several hundred pages that laid down rules for just about everything though, to be fair, many of them had already existed in other treaties, was rejected in two referendums in 2005. The two were in core members of the European Union: France and Netherlands.

There followed a period of flurried activity, led by the Commission, specifically by the ditzy Margot Wallstrom, who is in charge of communications, that is, propaganda. She even set up a blog, which was so dull that even the eurosceptics who kept posting responses to her fluffy pieces, gave up after a while.

The idea was that the EUrocracy would have a dialogue with the people of Europe and find out their opinion. The fact that the opinion had already been given in two countries seemed to be irrelevant. In the fullness of time there was another IGC and another treaty, the Lisbon one, which was, apart from a few unimportant details, exactly the same as the Constitution. Because it was laid out differently, all EU member states were told that this was different and, therefore, there will be no referendums, even though serious constitutional changes were being proposed.

The Irish Supreme Court decided that, according to the Irish constitution, there will have to be a referendum and one duly took place. Well, blow me down. The people voted the wrong way and were told to vote again. The second referendum is taking place today and, naturally, we are all hoping that the Irish will prove to be as recalcitrant as they have been throughout their history.

In the meantime, all but two other member states have ratified. In Germany the parliament had to pass a number of laws to bring the German Constitution in line with the Lisbon Treaty as instructed by the country’s Constitutional Court. In the Czech Republic the treaty has been returned to the Constitutional Court by a number of Senators and the President is waiting for the decision. He is reluctant to sign but will probably have to if the legal decision goes the wrong way. Following that Poland will sign. This, of course, depends on an yes vote today in Ireland. If, on the other hand, the Irish vote no again, we shall have an interesting situation. Will the EU demand a third referendum or will they, as is much more likely, take this treaty off the table, push through as much of it as possible on the quiet and call another IGC to produce another document in a couple of years’ time.

Either way, the whole process has been incredibly painful for the European Union, its bureaucracy and supporters. The gloss has gone completely, the process is no longer inevitable and the nasty bits – lies, bullying and cheating to get their way – are showing.

For any glutton for punishment, I have more on Your Freedom and Ours.