Archive for category Britain and the EU

Is absent Ashton a part-timer?

Posted by Bruno Waterfield in Britain and the EU, Democracy, EU foreign policy on January 10, 2011

Last week I wrote an article about Baroness Ashton’s poor track record of attendance at European Commission meetings. It stirred up debate so I thought it worth coming back to.

It’s all matter of record, along with the rest of the “college”, see here. To recap: for the last 42 meetings of the European Commission college, Jan 6 2010 to Jan 4 2011, she was totally absent for 17, 40 per cent. She was not present for the entire meeting on 11 occasions (26 per cent) but managed to make it for 14 (34 per cent).

Gratuitously cruel photo is courtesy of European Commission, she's the one on the left

These figures are, in fact, a charitable estimate for, as one official told me, my count is for the full year and not since February 9 2010 when the new commission was formed. In that case her non-attendance rate rises to 44 per cent.

Before writing the article, I sent the figures to various EU contacts I have both within and without the commission to ask whether the record was a bad one. The answer, unanimously, was “it’s bad”. I also emailed the results to her office, to confirm the particulars and to give her people over 24 hours to respond.

Even so, and typically, in a letter to the Telegraph (published) James Morrison, Lady Ashton’s prickly chef de cabinet, disputed the figures. “A new year but the same distortion in your story about Catherine Ashton’s attendance record at European Commission meetings. An attendance record of more than 60 per cent at Commission meetings is astonishing,” he wrote.

The “astonishing” record is less than 60 per cent as the figures show – but never mind, EU rebuttals never let the facts get in the way of a good denunciation. Morrison, rightly defending Lady Ashton’s punishing schedule as a “double-hatted” High Rep and commission VP (of which more later), went on to make a frankly incredible statement.

“Catherine Ashton is well known as one of the hardest working people in Brussels,” he fibbed, squinting through rose tinted spectacles and crossing his fingers behind his back.

Lady Ashton, who has never been elected to public office, is known for but a few things and being “one of the hardest working people in Brussels” is not one of them. In fact, her contempt for working in Brussels, and disdain for commission meetings is as well known as her track record of NOT being in the right place at the right time.

Ronny Patz, over on Ideas on Europe, dissects both Morrison’s claims and my article – read it here, while not a natural ally (as I’m sure he would be the first to admit) he draws similar conclusions, using a slightly different counting methodology.

Lady Ashton has a difficult job juggling the demands of her foreign policy role – which is tough enough – as well as a position as a commission vice-president and Britain’s commissioner. Half of the problem is with her but the other half is with EU institutions.

EU foreign policy has an inbuilt tension: it demands both visibility and invisibility; being seen in places like post-earthquake Haiti and being involved in the tortuous behind closed doors, the nitty gritty, of diplomatic negotiations. With the launch of the EEAS, some of Lady Ashton’s problems may get easier. Pierre Vimont, for example, the EEAS’s secretary general, took the strain on the Cote d’Ivoire crisis – although some still believe that she was too slow off the mark allowing France, the ex-colonial power, to dominate proceedings.

Her structural problem is the Lisbon Treaty’s absurd “double hat” arrangement where she is both EU High Representative and commission VP. Despite being in a unique position, unlike any other commissioner, Jose Manuel Barroso, the EC president has refused to allow any rule changes to allow Lady Ashton to deputise or video conference for meetings.

The Council of the EU, an equally august institution, allows ministers to deputise, even for votes – why can’t the commission? When Lady Ashton cannot attend one of her officials takes her chair (usually a pretty junior one, who cannot speak regardless of seniority). Votes under the Soviet-style “Hebdo” system almost never occur but if she is not there the CFSP does not have an authoritative voice in the commission, negating the whole idea of the “double hat” in the first place. If the presence of commissioners at the “college” is irrelevant under the Hebdo system (a weekly meeting of chefs de cabinet), then what are they for?

One of the most enduring euro-fantasies, both from phobes and philes, is the myth that commissioners (as per their oath) do not “take instructions” from national states or governments. Of course, as everyone knows, from the outrageously chauvinist Antonio Tajani to the urbanely discreet Michel Barnier, all commissioners are also national politicians and often speak in meetings to reflect the concerns of “the country they know best”. Lady Ashton’s difficulties in engaging with her commission job are universally recognised as something of a problem for Britain by all parties, officials, MEPs, MPs, and national diplomats, that I have spoken to.

Needless to say, from inside the High Rep’s bubble, where all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, Morrison sees it otherwise. “Even when Catherine Ashton is not able to attend the European Commission’s weekly meeting, the process in Brussels ensures that her voice is heard and that her views are fully reflected in Commission decisions,” he hallucinates.

Lady Ashton has a very difficult job and her difficulties have been compounded by the commission’s vindictive refusal to make life easier for her, a resented institutional rival who has taken DGs, staff and power away from the Berlaymont/Charlemagne HQ to create a new EU foreign service.

But – and it’s a very big BUT – the defining question is one of political character.

As a Labour peer, appointed as an act of political cronyism to Britain’s undemocratic House of Lords, Lady Ashton does not possess the political nous or commitment of an elected politician. Apart from one or two months last year, she has shown herself to be unwilling to travel or work over weekends. Working Monday to Friday might be fine for a jobsworth public official or serial quango/Lords appointee but it’s not good enough for an EU foreign minister. People who want to change the world have to give up prosaic ideas like the work/life balance.

Let’s be brutal. Lady Ashton, outside her commendable past in CND, has never fought for politics. Her career (note the word) has been a conveyor belt of appointments. Her place in the current job is based on an unlikely sequence of events akin to someone winning the lottery rather than any political contest or test of merit.

The lack of public persona is evidenced by her extreme aversion to the media, which she dislikes intensely for having criticised her. Lady Ashton prefers closed meetings to public question and answer.

One of my colleagues was told security guards would throw her out of  a press briefing with Lady Ashton if she asked forbidden questions. Another, investigating an EEAS mission in Africa was threatened with the police unless she desisted, a real threat in that part of the world. A new spin doctor – see here – was to be chosen from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to try and patch up the damage but, as the rumour has it, his salary costs are too high, even for the EU.

She has also failed to relocate to Brussels, choosing to juggle her life on London’s chatterati circuit, where her husband Peter Kellner is a big player, with her EU job. An elected politico, perhaps such as David Miliband who was the first person lined up for the job, would realise that political life takes more commitment. Being a national foreign minister, let alone the EU’s, is a seven day operation. Politics has no room for part-timers and nor should it.

Political respect is earned. It is not conferred by office. Lady Ashton hasn’t earned it – not yet.

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Happy new year to all

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Free trade and backward Britain

Posted by Bruno Waterfield in Britain and the EU, Economic crisis, EU, Migration on October 11, 2010

Is Britain becoming a protectionist country? Sadly, the answer seems to be Yes.

Of course, the British political class likes to talk a good game on free trade but as Britain slips ever more inexorably into decline other issues are coming to the fore.

Anti-immigration prejudice and scaremongering – not economic growth – are a growing priority for all Britain’s political parties. I covered the story of the forthcoming EU-India trade agreement here.

A country that puts fears over a few thousand migrants before the economic opportunity of the century is going nowhere.

Britain’s government is deeply split over the EU-India “Free Trade Agreement” because it clashes with a moronic pledge to limit or “cap” non-European immigration.

Britain’s newly emerging status as a protectionist country is making ripples.

The EU-India trade deal negotiations are still ongoing with the aim of having an agreement to be signed off at a December 10 summit with the Indians.

The European Commission has asked for comments from EU governments on a negotiating position hammered out with the Indians over the summer by the end of October – the British Cabinet begins talks this week.

Britain, which likes to flatter itself that it is on the free trade wing of the EU, has balked at Indian demands for increased mobility for its skilled workers.

It’s all about something called “Inter-Corporate Transferees”, or ICTs in the jargon, people who are allowed to work in the subsidiaries of their companies in the countries that have signed up to the deal.

In the context of the EU India deal, European companies will be the main beneficiaries. This “mode 4” part of the deal comes from the GATS and has been inserted into all trade deals since January 2000.

But India wanted something more in return for reducing its tariffs on European products and for lifting restrictions on businesses providing services or bidding for public procurement contracts.

Under the current negotiating position, individual Indians, skilled professionals only, who have a contract in the EU will be able to come and work in European countries.

People must have a high level of qualifications, an existing contract in the bag and the length of stay will be limited to year, according to EU sources.

“The numbers of Indian professionals that may enter as contractual service suppliers and independent professionals are still under discussion and any limits we set will be matched by Indian restrictions on EU business access to their markets,” said a source close to talks.

“The more forward Britain is will be vital in the negotiations as it is an issue of great interest to India. The more forward we are, the more we can India to move on tariffs and restrictions on European companies. There are difficult political decisions ahead.”

Not much to ask for a deal worth €4.4 billion a year to the EU’s flagging economy – but too much it seems for backward Britain and others.

One diplomat told me: “Developing countries want freedom for their people to work here in Europe in return for allowing European companies to come in and clean up in their domestic markets. That’s what free trade means.”

It is an indicator of how inward-looking, backward and protectionist the British elite has become that caps on immigration are now the policy of all political parties in the country.

The economic benefits of free trade are huge but they are outweighed by an increasingly fearful elite that uses immigration as an excuse for its own decline, its failure to provide basic infrastructure and absence of a future orientated narrative from Britain.

Immigration, all British politicians agree, is a big problem. It is blamed for public dissatisfaction with the state, under resourced public services, low wages and a loss of national identity.

The British public has good cause not to be satisfied. The political class has let people down, not least by taking a “not in front of the children” attitude to having an immigration debate in public.  Immigration is never properly discussed and the issue is a spectre to be rolled on in a “something must be done” bidding war at election time.

Voters, we are told, (Gordon Brown expressed this publicly during the last election) are bigots. Immigration must be kept out of their hands, anti–free speech laws and migration limits are needed to stop mobs of bigoted voters lynching immigrants – or that’s the misanthropic fantasy. Today’s anti-immigration policy is as much about further insulating decision-making from voters and mobilising the middle class to sneer at the oiks as it is about scapegoating foreigners.

Also pernicious, is the claim that immigration, leading to alleged overcrowding in cities or towns, is responsible for overburdened and creaking infrastructure. What a lie this is. The failings of Britain’s infrastructure are clearly those of the state and the failure of the political class to invest in, plan or to be accountable for services.

As for low wages… Britain’s historical defeat of the organised working class is largely responsible for pushing wages down. The minimum wage has also tended (in catering, care, retail and agriculture) to equalise pay downwards over time. If anyone is to blame for wages decline, where it exists, then it is British employers.

Constructing a new British identity around blaming immigration for decline will confirm Britain as backward, inward place that, like its elite, dodges the real issues and hides from the world.

A country that puts fears over a few thousand migrants before the economic opportunity of the century is going nowhere fast.

The EU-India deal offers a choice for Britain and other European countries. They can look outwards and build something for the future out of new economic dynamics, including flows of people. Or, they can turn inwards while hiding their loss of nerve and purpose behind an unpleasant, pathetic, culture of blame.

It is make your mind up time.

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Cameron+Clegg = bad for democracy

Posted by Bruno Waterfield in Britain and the EU, Democracy on May 13, 2010

In many ways the new Con-Dem coalition spells the end of British politics, the final breakdown and exhaustion of the fiction that the mainstream political parties represent competing alternatives.

The bland leading the bland (Photo: number10.gov.uk)

Britain’s new prime minister and deputy prime minister are almost identical, both in their Tory boy physical type and in background. But what really makes the repellent pair real identical twins is their non-political past.

Neither of them has any attachment to a discernible idea, both are careerists whose privileged background has been a conveyor belt to the top rather than a struggle to lead in politics.

They are both empty anti-politicians and their first act has been an attempt to damage Britain’s democracy to safeguard their coalition of convenience against any dangers posed by any remaining Tories or Liberal Democrats who might hold residual political principles.

As Iain Martin has noted on his excellent Wall Street Journal blog (an issue picked up first by Dr Richard North and taken up on ConservativeHome) that tucked away in the pair’s coalition agreement is “a startling little paragraph” in a section headed “Political Reform”.

“Legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed-term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55 per cent or more of the House (of Commons) votes in favour,” the small print has declared.

As Martin observes: “It is rather stretching things to try and present this piece of proposed gerrymandering as ‘Political Reform.’ It is actually designed to ensure that even a walk-out of the whole Lib Dem parliamentary group couldn’t actually bring down this government. This would weaken parliament and strengthen the hand of the executive considerably – when it is only weeks since both parties were talking of doing the opposite.”

Of course, this gerrymandering cuts both ways. It is also aimed at rank and file Conservative MPs who are also prevented from sinking a coalition that will also violate the political platform on which they were elected.

Under this set-up, the Lib Dem MPs could not even combine with Labour to get rid of the government. The only sure way would be for large group of Tory MPs to unite with all Labour and Lib Dems, an extremely unlikely scenario.

It is a stitch up and a serious attack on parliamentary democracy (such as it is). In their first act as a duo premiership (God help my country), Cameron-Clegg have sought to insulate themselves from democratic accountability to protect their shiny, bright, telegenic skins.

Stephen Glover, a Conservative writing in the Daily Mail (Hat tip EU referendum), makes some points with a much wider resonance.

He writes: “We have a new cadre of elite manager-politcians. There are exceptions, like that old warhorse Kenneth Clarke who answers to nobody, but the point stands. And it doesn’t at all surprise me that such politicians should have found it so easy to betray their parties – the grass roots to whom they pay regular but empty obeisance – in forming a new coalition government largely made up of like-minded men… My fear is not that the coalition will break up, though I hope it will, but that it will endure because its members relish power so much.”

Clegg, who flirted with becoming a Conservative while working as the favourite “wunderkind” of Leon Brittan in the European Commission, has had an effortless glide to the top. From public school, to the College of Europe, to the commission, to becoming an MEP, an MP and leader of the Lib Dems, Clegg has left no political footprint because he has no ideas.

The times I met him, I was struck by his apparent lack of any political commitment, in terms of holding an opinion. There was only the slick, trained charm and tutored ability of a careerist whose posh but personable youth and smartness were carrying him a long way in the managerial politics of today.

Cameron, who I have met only once, is largely the same type who, outside a PR job that was a serious underachievement for an old Etonian, has always been a politico who has risen to his position through careerism, evading or managing political choices or battles rather than confronting them.

His leadership is nothing more than an exercise in mutual opportunism between right-wing and really right-wing Tories who are prepared to swallow their political reservations to support him because he is regarded as more electable than any other Conservative.

Cameron and Clegg could be interchanged, they are identikit managers for a cut-and-paste age without politics. But remember, this anti-political age does not mean the end of choices, such as the Iraq war, bank bailouts or austerity. It represents the expulsion of alternative points of view, and the public, from the arena.

This new British government shows us (yet again) that the starting point for those of us with ideals, those of us who want politics to be contests between alternative ideas, must work outside unrepresentative political parties, parliaments, state institutions and, Clegg’s training ground, the EU.

These are all now institutions that have clearly become about evading or actually removing political choice rather than being an expression of it.

Over on Spiked, Brendan O’Neill makes the case for something new.

“For those of us who are not particularly sorry to see the old politics walking off into the horizon, and who are not convinced that the new government represents a ‘new politics’, the aim now should be to harness people’s desire for change and purpose and to come up with new political ideas and solutions. We don’t have to wait to see what is scribbled on Nick Clegg’s notepad when he emerges from his first Cabinet meeting – we can start writing our own agendas and programmes, our own treatises for freedom, progress and a new politics, right now.”

Now is the time for alternatives.

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David Cameron’s EU problems

Posted by Bruno Waterfield in Britain and the EU, EU on May 4, 2010

A new Conservative government would come under intense pressure to give Britain a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty following an amendment to the EU’s legal framework this summer.

Will the EU allow Cameron to avoid the issue? (Photo: Ewan McIntosh)

If the Tories win Thursday’s election, a Conservative government, probably nursing a small parliamentary majority, will want to leave the divisive issue of the EU well alone.

But David Cameron’s problem is that EU will not let him alone. A number of highly sensitive, even explosive, European issues are queued up to give him a headache should he enter Number 10, Downing Street.

First on the list is the return of that old political zombie the Lisbon Treaty.

The decision has already been taken by the EU to amend it in time to be signed off by a June summit, a gathering that could well be a new Tory PM’s first appearance in Brussels.

It gets worse.

The Spanish EU presidency wants to open a special “Inter-Governmental Conference” to appoint an extra 18 MEPs (who were not elected last June due to the Irish referendum No) on May 10.

But that Monday will be the first Brussels outing for a new British Foreign Secretary, quite possibly William Hague.

The British Foreign Office is worried and diplomats are lobbying hard to push an IGC back into late May in order to spare Conservative blushes.

The IGC/Lisbon Treaty issue is tricky for the Conservatives on two fronts.

Firstly, the Conservatives have promised to ask for powers to be “repatriated” back to London from Brussels. Not taking up this political pledge during an IGC, a forum where the EU treaty is opened for discussion, might look strange for Hague or Cameron at the moment they take power.

Secondly and most importantly, the amended treaty will also have to be voted on in a new House of Commons in the autumn leading to fresh calls for a British referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and opening up rifts over Europe in the Tory ranks. This is really difficult. Cameron has promised a popular vote on any new EU text, a high profile manifesto pledge that will be tested to the limits by the return of an amended Lisbon Treaty.

The Tories will use “tidying up” language to say that an amended treaty need not be put to a referendum. Here is an example from a Conservative spokesman: “The test for a referendum on a new treaty is whether it hands over an area of power from Britain to the EU. Adjusting the number of MEPs clearly wouldn’t, so no referendum would be required on this point.”

But is this argument, identical to that which would be used by either a Labour or Lib Dem government in the same circumstances, likely to convince a new intake of eurosceptic MPs in the House of Commons?

Rhetorical euroscepticism is one of the few comforting totems Conservatives have been allowed to keep. Is it really conceivable that eurosceptic Tory MPs will forget all those promises of referendums and all that Conservative leadership rhetoric against the Lisbon Treaty while voting an amended version through the parliament?

Cameron’s European policy, set out last November, is designed to retain some traditionalist eurosceptic cover while making sure, in reality, that the EU does not become an issue in the next term of the British parliament.

Conservative policy on Europe has always been dishonest.

It has always worn two faces: a pragmatic, more private one for the closed EU conclaves of leaders and officials in Brussels or Whitehall; a different public aspect for its eurosceptic supporters.

Conservative inconsistencies, evasions and internal tensions over the EU are quickly going to emerge.

It is not just the Lisbon Treaty, the rest of 2010 offers a host of difficult EU decisions to come:

  • Regulation of hedge funds, delayed during the elections but it will be political dynamite this summer for the City – and their natural Tory friends.
  • “2020 agenda” economic targets are to be set in Brussels on education and poverty, these are social affairs areas where the Tories have vowed to bring powers back to Britain.
  • Herman Van Rompuy’s taskforce on economic governance – more targets, more EU surveillance and a possible new treaty – has its first meeting on May 20.
  • A number of justice opt-in/opt-out decisions, which must be debated and agreed by the House of Commons within an eight week period.
  • A fiercely contested Brussels budget for 2011 has proposed recession and austerity proof spending increases for the EU at a time when a British government will be cutting back.
  • To make it worse, the EU will be kicking off a wider spending debate late this year and the future of that iconic Thatcher rebate will be up for grabs again.

It is not really a question of what impact the Conservatives will have on Europe. It is rather a question of how politically destructive the EU will be to the Tories.

UPDATE:

A Conservative row is already beginning.

“The Lisbon Treaty is going to have to be ratified by Parliament yet again after the General Election. David Cameron has always been explicit that had he been Prime Minister when the Treaty came forward for ratification, he would have held a referendum. Until now that has simply been a hypothetical situation – but now it is set to become a reality,” notes the CentreRight blog on Conservative Home.  “As well as being the right thing to do, a referendum pledge now could be dynamite in the last few days of the election. Clegg and Brown would be put on the spot, challenged to make such a pledge themselves. If they did, then it would be good for Britain, we’d get the Lisbon referendum we were all promised and Cameron would have shown himself to be a leader. If they did not, then Cameron would be able to head into the election as only man willing to trust the people by holding the long-desired referendum. This is a golden opportunity for the Conservatives to do the right thing by Britain and to do themselves a favour. David Cameron should grab it with both hands.”

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