Nosemonkey's EUtopia

In search of a European identity

March 10, 2007
by Nosemonkey
5 Comments

Ten (or so) bits of weekend reading

1) A handy short explanation of why I’ve been writing about the EU constitution here a lot recently.

2) A new bilingual blog aggregator type thing from new(ish) French news channel France 24, designed to provide an insight into the increasingly fascinating French elections. Ignore the fact that they asked to republish some recent posts of mine (oddly dropping all the links in the process), it could be handy over the next couple of months.

3) The funniest news story of the week – Slobbo the Vampire.

4) A triple bill from the Economist: Europe is united only by its contradictions ; How much does the European Union really encourage competition? ; and a handy overview of the economies of Eastern Europe

5) Talking economics, an introduction to economics even I can understand

6) Talking things I don’t understand being helpfully explained, a guide to Finnish politics in three parts (one, two, three), with more on the aftermath of the recent elections (and, elsewhere, a similar analysis of the results of Estonia’s elections a week ago)

7) Newsweek on the future of Europe – “Europe, it seems, is increasingly split—not along class or racial lines, but between its young and its old” (counter with an hysterical and hyperbolic Christopher Hitchens reviewing a seemingly even more hysterical Mark Steyn – assuming you like a bit of borderline racist froth)

8) Speaking of highly contentious (generally) right-wing assertions, a review I’d missed on a book exploring “Europe’s anti-Americanism” (and another take)

9) Being a journalist in Russia is a dangerous game – so much so, the only way to cope is to laugh in despair. And two recent examples of dead Russian journalists…

10) Finally, evidence is increasingly beginning to build that Britain is not quite so separate from the rest of Europe as many would like to believe – thanks to the beauty of science, the evidence is apparently building that we may have more DNA in common with Basques than with Saxons…

March 8, 2007
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

Margaret Beckett, the future of Europe, and rampanty hypocrisy

You thought David Cameron’s EU vision was full of platitudes and meaningless phrases? Check out those of Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett – oddly published in a Romanian newspaper, far out of sight of the British public… (via)

Lots of guff about climate change and “building the world’s first competitive, energy secure, low carbon economy” – and precisely tit-all on the more important, short-term problem of, erm… precisely what is the UK’s current position on the much-needed reform of the EU and the constitution?

And then, of course, there’s the (by now all too familiar) hypocrisy of the whole thing:

an analysis showed that [Beckett] had taken 134 flights on ministerial business between 2002 and March 2005, clocking up 102,673 miles and 191.08 tons in CO2 emissions.

The latest figures produced from a careful study of all flights by Mrs Beckett include long-haul flights on scheduled airline services, not included in the list of trips she made using the Queen’s Flight, which caused an outcry yesterday. She has used the Queen’s Flight for short hops from London to East Midlands airport, near her constituency, and also for one-day return trips to Brussels for EU ministerial meetings.

And that, please note, from BEFORE she was Foreign Secretary and actually had the occasional genuine reason to jet off all round the world…

Nice one, Marge. Ever heard of “practice what you preach”?

March 8, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Cameron and the EU Constitution

Looks like Dave’s finally making vague moves to lay out his approach to the EU in somewhat more clear terms than “we don’t like the EU much, but we won’t tell you quite how much” and “We’ll quit the biggest centre-right group in the European Parliament – in the face of opposition from almost all the Tory MEPs due to the inevitable loss of influence that will bring – but we won’t tell you when, exactly”.

But has he actually clarified anything, or just taken a line out of Sarkozy’s book and learned how to say nothing much at all while rattling on for quite a while? Hard to say, sadly…

In any case, this week’s EU week in Toryland.

Today we get Camoron (I’ll leave that in as a Freudian typing slip) telling Blair to “come clean” on the EU, by which he seems to mean “destroy Britain’s diplomatic bargaining position by outright rejecting any sort of constitution in any shape or form”.

This follows his article earlier in the week, co-written with Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, “Building an EU that we can all be proud of“, and his speech in Brussels, which purportedly set out the Cameron Tories’ approach to the EU. (That approach being “cautiously, because we don’t really understand it”, from initial glances…)

Elaib at England Expects has fisked Camon’s speech fairly nicely (albeit from a rather different ideological standpoint from mine), but still, let’s not be unfair. Sooner or later the Tories are going to come up with a workable and sensible EU policy – why not now?

On the surface – as so often seems to be the case with Cameron – all seems well, with much of the rhetoric being stuff I can fully support: First from the article:

“Fifty years after the Treaty of Rome, we have a new Europe, facing new challenges and with a new generation of leaders. But we have the same EU, still too attached to the tenets of centralisation and regulation and still too interested in itself, rather than worldwide challenges… A new, positive agenda for Europe means reconnecting it to these urgent priorities. It means moving towards a new flexibility and dynamism.”

Then from the speech:

“People in Europe have an ever-increasing feeling that something is going wrong, that an untransparent, complex, intricate, mammoth institution has evolved… grabbing ever greater competences and areas of power; that the democratic control mechanisms are failing: in brief, that it cannot go on like this”

So, nothing radical there, but acknowledging the need for serious reform. Good stuff. But what sort of reform, exactly? Cameron again relies heavily on his “3G Europe” buzzwords “globalisation, global warming and global poverty”, but it’s unclear precisely what his solutions to any of these are – or indeed whether at least one of them even exists. Is the “green Tory” thing he seems so keen on really so much of a potential vote winner that he’s going to apply it to the EU as well? I can’t see it myself, and here it seems little more than a distraction from the key issues.

Still, back to what he actually says. He says his plan is to “work to create a flexible Europe by building alliances with those who share our interests and our ideas”. Which means precisely nothing.

What is Cameron’s vision of “a flexible Europe”? Sounds good, certainly, but does this mean a “multi-tier” Europe, a “two-speed” Europe, a “core” Europe or something else as yet unproposed? As Nanne at DJ Nozem explained at the weekend, there’s all sorts of different options, and nothing that anyone’s worked out sufficiently for it to be plausible to implement.

Nonetheless, journalist and Tory MEP Daniel Hannan was surprisingly impressed with this passage from Cameron’s speech in particular:

Just as member states have in the past agreed to transfer competences to the EU, so it should be possible to move in the opposite direction. How can we enshrine the principle that powers can be returned to member states — not as a vague aspiration, but as a central element of the legal architecture of the Union? What are the tasks that we can return to national or local governments?

Reading between the lines, this does indeed seem to be suggesting a multi-tier Europe, where the UK (for example) can pull back a bit while more enthusiastic member states can press on. It’s certainly not clear, however – and does, as Hannan points out, go against the founding Treaty of Rome’s specific commitment to “an ever-closer union”.

Hannan, it would seem, is quite happy with his leader’s new approach:

David Cameron is not simply drawing up a wish-list. He is proposing a structural overhaul, so that powers could, in future, pass up and down between Brussels and the national capitals as the states decide…

The core, Carolingian nations would doubtless want to continue with their palaeo-federalism: a European Army, a European police force, a European president, a European constitution. But the trading, maritime peoples on Europe’s periphery might begin to loose their bonds: to remain in a free trade area, but withdraw from the accompanying political structures. They might, indeed, link up with the EFTA countries, which already have such a deal and which, largely in consequence, enjoy the highest GDP per capita in Europe…

David Cameron spoke with the air of a man who had given his words considerable thought. The text itself bore the tell-tale spoor of reworking by several hands. And, most important, the words came accompanied by action: an international commission on the repatriation of power, and a new group in the European Parliament to act as its delivery vehicle.”

It is this international commission – the Movement for European Reform which will decide if this new drive succeeds or fails – because it looks like it is the commission which will come up with the actual policies and proposals (which, as so often with Cameron, don’t yet appear to have been formulated…)

Cameron, to be fair to him, has identified the majority of the EU’s biggest problems. If Hannan’s reading of the new Tory approach is correct, Cameron is also pushing towards a version of the multi-tier Europe that I personally favour as a (very complex and potentially disastrous, admittedly) solution to the current EU deadlock. The fact that he makes noises supporting future Turkish, Ukrainian and former Yugoslavian applications for membership is likewise welcome. Whether his odd initial alliance with the Czechs will last, let alone expand into a genuinely continent-wide reform movement, is unclear. But he seems to be full of good intentions – and shush about that “road to hell” business…

But will the Cameron-backed Movement for European Reform be able to come up with any concrete, workable proposals – or is this yet another, albeit slightly fancier-looking stage in the ongoing Tory approach to the EU – never do today what can be put off until, preferably, you’re no longer in a position to have to make a decision on it. Is Cameron serious with this attempt to build a consensus on radical reform for the EU – which should only be welcomed – or is he simply prevaricating once again? Unfortunately, it seems we’ve also got little choice but – to borrow a phrase from John Major that seems strangely appropriate once again – to wait and see…

Stranger things have happened than the Conservative party shaking off its internal divisions over the EU and coming up with workable alternatives. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, it must be said, but still…

Update: More takes I’d missed:

1) Pro-EU Jon Worth (Critical)
2) Anti-EU Chris (Critical)
3) Comparatively unbiased Transatlantic Assembly (Critical)

You can’t please all of the people all of the time, it’d seem. Cameron appears not to have pleased many people at all… I’ll continue to withhold judgement until I can tell what, if anything, it is he’s intending.

March 7, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

Jean Baudrillard and the place of the modern intellectual

It’s ironic, really, that Baudrillard – doubtless like Chomsky when he finally pops off – is most likely destined to be remembered more for his commentary on 9/11 and The War Against Terror than his contributions to academia. It all fits rather neatly into his object value system – the symbolic value placed on his work by a world (unsurprisingly) uninterested in the niceties of postmodernist poststructural semiotics is, it would seem, that of critic of America. Even though his perceived criticism of the US actually existed largely only in the minds of a misunderstanding readership.

The BBC’s item reporting his death yesterday notes that “He gained notoriety for his 1991 book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place and again a decade later for describing the 9/11 attacks as a ‘dark fantasy’.” The New York Times, meanwhile, feels that it has to introduce him as, effectively, the guy who inspired The Matrix.

Now I don’t doubt for a second that this sort of thing has to go on, and has gone on for decades to explain to an unfamiliar public just why some recently-deceased academic is somehow more interesting/important than any number of other anonymous, tweed-jacketed research types, surrounded by musty books in deserted libraries. But I’m pretty certain that Pierre Bourdieu was not so glibly summed up when he popped off five years ago.

Possibly it’s just my own misplaced perception, but I had a similar thought when Conrad Russell died a couple of years back, and was introduced in the Guardian’s obituary not as probably the most influential historian of the post-war period for the massive impact of his revisionist work on the English Civil War, but as “the great-grandson of Lord John Russell and son of Bertrand Russell”. Please note also that in Russell’s Wikipedia page, the section on his (relatively short) political career is considerably longer than that on his infinitely more important career as an historian.

There was a similar dumbing down when Edward Said died, added to by the convenience of his death occurring in the early months of the Iraq war, a conflict in which his theories of western perceptions of the Middle East were all too relevant. In other words, it seems to be an increasing trend in the last few years to either dumb down the contributions of intellectuals to an easy to understand soundbyte, or to focus on just one small, often faintly controversial aspect of their lives.

At the risk of being in very poor taste in predicting obituaries for the a few of the increasingly small number of other surviving important European intellectuals (at least, some of those who spring immediately to mind), Hobsbawm (like Christopher Hill before him) was doomed to have a sensationalist obit from the moment he joined the communist party. Likewise, Umberto Eco‘s contributions to semiotics were always going to take second place in any overviews of his career ever since he penned The Name of the Rose. Jurgen Habermas has been critical of the Iraq war, and supportive of the idea of an EU constitution (not necessarily the one currently on the table, though) – will his easier to understand forays into politics overtake his more complex theoretical works in the obituaries?

Of course, obituaries hardly matter with such people, as their work will live on long after the short summaries of their lives are sent off for recycling. Indeed, half the time I wouldn’t be surprised if most people’s reactions on hearing they have died (assuming they’ve ever heard of them) would be along the lines of “oh, I didn’t realise he was still alive” (much my thoughts last month when I heard that Frankie Laine, Maurice Papon, Lord Jellicoe and Arthur Schlesinger Jr had died).

And there is, of course, also no way that you’re ever going to get a full-page “idiot’s guide to poststructural semiotics” in tribute to a leading intellectual – partially because few journalists would be capable of knocking one out, but mostly because 99.99% of the population aren’t in the slightest bit interested.

But even so, I can’t help feeling that in recent years there has been a renewed shift towards the kind of hostile anti-intellectualism which, in Britain at least, we always used to keep under the surface – even if largely by trying to pretend that our intellectuals didn’t really exist. And that’s even before you take in the hard to shake feeling that there simply aren’t that many great thinkers around these days…

(For a better overview of Baudrillard’s life and works, head – as so often – to the International Herald Tribune or – in French – Le Figaro.)

March 5, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

France and the pro-EU attitude problem

Alternative headline: Contentious issue on which no presidential candidate has any answers is largely ignored in presidential election debates shocker!

Yep, it’s not just me who’s noticed the lack of any concrete EU policies from any of the French presidential candidates so far. Now France’s EU Commissioner, Jacques Barrot (who just so happens to have a book to sell on the future of France’s EU relations), has got all upset, apparently because:

“he claims the candidates – principally Nicolas Sarkozy from the right and Ségolène Royal on the left – have either played down European issues or used the EU as a scapegoat for France’s problems.

“He has been dismayed by criticisms of the European Central Bank and of the euro – whose strong exchange rate has been blamed for French industrial problems – and portrayal of EU competition policies as bad for ordinary people…

“He says French citizens’ alienation with the EU stems from fear about the modern world. ‘It’s a problem with globalisation and with themselves,'”

And here we once again see the problem that us pro-EU lot have: the people we’ve got to make the case for the Union are idiots – because what Barrot’s effectively saying here is

“Stop saying nasty things! They’re all lies! (Even though I won’t present you with any evidence to prove this.) And in case I forget, the electorate are STUPIDHEADS!”

Of course, the real reason EU apparatchiks are getting a bit tetchy about the French elections is because it’s currently looking very, very tight and unpredictable (even if Royal has fallen behind again, the second round could see everything change) – and when they’re finally over, there will only be a month of the German EU presidency left in which to gain an agreement on the way forward with the constitution / EU institutional reform. Fools that they are, having prevaricated for the last 18 months they’ve all placed far, far too much hope on Germany being able to sort out the constitutional crisis before handing over the presidency to Portugal on 1st July. And they’ve only just, in the last couple of weeks, begun to realise that this is never going to happen.

If only they’d been reading this blog and accepting my pessimistic predictions for the accurate and dispassionate assessment that they were, perhaps they could have come up with a more realistic timetable.

Sadly, however, realism seems to be playing an ever-decreasing role in high-level discussions of EU reform. Rather than the sort of pro-EU types who blindly support “the European project” without bothering to analyse or criticise it in any way, we need a new generation of people at the top who are cautiously, critically pro-EU. Because how the hell can you possibly hope to reform anything if you’re blind to its faults?

Yes, Royal and Sarkozy COULD kick off that kind of debate during the presidential elections, as they both seem to be aware that the EU isn’t perfect – but the inevitable superficiality of such debates within the context of an electoral news cycle would only ensure that the negative assessments of the EU, and not the positive proposals for change, would be the only things to get reported. Bad news sells far better than positive visions. This is why, in any member state where there’s even the slightest doubt about the EU amongst the electorate, politicians are increasingly desperate to avoid talking about the EU in the context of an election campaign.

The EU’s not going to be an issue in the UK, and it’s not going to be an issue in France either – and, let’s face it, why should it? Until the people – those “citizens of the European Union” that keep being referred to as some kind of abstract mass of loyally pro-EU faceless drones – are actively involved, through greater democratisation, through greater input into the broad vision (rather than merely being allowed a rough choice in the selection of an MEP whose names they’ll never know and who are largely powerless in any case), and through the top dogs at the EU acknowledging that maybe – just maybe – the views of French and Dutch voters should be respected, until that happens there is no hope of the EU either being reformed effectively or of really prompting the active enthusiasm of the average person on the street. And although it is possible to rule without support from below, surely we don’t want to give the eurosceptics yet more ammunition by wilfully ignoring the people and further underscoring their impression that it’s some kind of bureaucratic dictatorship?

Gah… Why can’t we – just for once – have a spokesman for the EU cause who isn’t a patronising idiot? “It’s a problem with globalisation and with themselves”? No, mate, it’s a problem with you and your mates not being able to understand that one of the joys and frustrations of democracy is that not everyone agrees with you all the time. Get used to it, because without greater democratic participation, resentment of the EU is only going to increase – especially when fools like you come along and insult the electorate for not being clever enough to understand.

March 3, 2007
by Nosemonkey
5 Comments

Eclipse

Lunar eclipse, 3rd March 2007, London

Ain’t that pretty? (Testing out my funky new camera – albeit with a dodgy tripod…)

March 3, 2007
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

The Swiss aggressor

Oh yes… Switzerland… Neutral, aren’t they? Never did anyone any harm, did they? The worst Switzerland’s ever got up to is hoarding Nazi gold (and they probably only did that because they were too polite to say “sorry Adolf, old chum, we reckon that’s a bit off”). Nice little iddy-biddy country in the heart of Europe, minding its own business. Safe to ignore the buggers, isn’t it?

All anyone ever thinks about Switzerland was pretty much succinctly summed up by Orson Welles’ Harry Lime in The Third Man:

“in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Well, it looks like they’ve finally twigged and realised where they went wrong: so have invaded Liechtenstein.

Those Swiss devils! Curse them – I for one will not stand idly by and watch the mighty Liechtenstein be so cruelly abused by the mountain folk to the west – it’s time to follow in the great tradition of the anti-fascist volunteers of the Spanish Civil War like Hemmingway and Orwell and head over there to do our bit for the brave Liechtensteinese. We will fight them on the ski slopes, we will fight them on the beaches of Lake Geneva – we shall never surrender!

Zurich or bust! Who’s with me?

(Via)

March 2, 2007
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments

“The independence of France and the future of Europe”

Centre-right French presidential candidate Nicholas Sarkozy (currently the front-runner) has been doing a bit more to set out his attitude towards the EU. He’s already announced the that he thinks (fairly sensibly) that the existing EU constitution should be heavily revised, proposing a “mini” constitution to pass essential reforms this year, with further deliberation to follow.

Now he’s going into what looks like a bit more detail, with a speech attempting to shake off those suggestions of anti-Americanism (that were pretty much inevitable for any candidate coming from the same party as Chirac – or, indeed, any candidate who happens to be French…) as well as promising a new French approach to the EU.

He’s pretty good, this chap, as proved by the fact that he somehow manages to get in phrases that would normally seem utterly contradictory – some appealing to pro-EU types, some to the antis. (For my eurosceptic friends, check out his analysis of the current state of the EU in the third paragraph… You’ll doubtless take it as proof of everything you’ve been claiming about how wide-ranging the EU’s influence now is – but remember, that’s just, like, his opinion, man…)

I have two priorities, the independence of France and the future of Europe…

Our most urgent foreign policy priority is to resolve the institutional crisis opened by the French and Dutch ‘no’ votes…

After half a century of European construction, we are united enough for none of our members to be able to act independently, but not enough to be able to act together. Europe has a common space but no common power…

The friendship between Europe and the United States is vital for the world’s balance. The friendship between France and the United States is deep, sincere, I would even say indestructible.

But friendship means respect… it does not mean submission. I want a free France, I want a free Europe. I therefore ask our American friends to let us be free, free to be their friends.

In other words:

Meaningless soundbite platitude

Something needs to be done (but I don’t know what)

The EU’s lost its way (but I don’t know how to help it back on track)

I really like America, except for the bits I don’t (and yes, yes I have been watching Hugh Grant’s closing speech to Billy Bob Thornton’s American President in Love, Actually)

With another couple of months until the elections, will Sarkozy be able to keep up this superficially impressive sounding rhetoric that actually means precisely nothing? Can he continue to avoid committing to any definite policies when it comes to the EU?

Foreign policy has played a fairly major part in the election campaign so far – if Royal or Bayrou can hit on something that resonates with the voters, Sarkozy’s continued platitude-heavy prevarication could end up looking like indecisiveness rather than the cunning “all options are open and I just want to do the best for the country” approach he’s trying to present at the moment. He may be in the lead now, but anything could happen.

Ah – a tight election… It’s been such a long time since we had one of those in the UK that I’d almost forgotten what they were like.

March 1, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Prodi and the EU’s “one size fits all” approach

After his little upset Italian PM Romano Prodi’s managed to get through the vote of no confidence (winning by five votes – which considering how close in numbers the two main coalitions are is actually not quite as tight as it sounds).

In fact, so orderly has been his reinstatement that some have even raised (entirely plausible) suspicions that the whole thing was a stage-managed scam to get him more secure.

After all, having just passed a vote of no confidence he has effectively just been reassured that he has support for his proposed electoral reforms (largely designed to scrap the horrendous mess Berlusconi made of the Italian electoral system), as well as for his efforts to lead the way in reforming the EU.

But still, this is Italy. Nothing is certain in its politics, and it’s also entirely possible to take a very different view. And in any case, even if Prodi did plan this all from the start, the likelihood of him staying in office more than another year or so is pretty much minute based on the past terms of Italian PMs (not to mention the on-going contentious issues of gay rights and Afghanistan).

Which all means that if this former European Commission President wants to use his time as Prime Minister to help the EU get a version of the constitution through, he needs to move fast, because various other leading EU types are beginning to realise even more precisely why they wanted to scrap the current ways of working. It was bad enough every member state having a veto when there were just 15 – but now there are 27 it’s well nigh impossible to get anything significant through.

As such, the likes of Spain, Germany and Italy can moan as much as they like about other EU member states not being as enthusiastic as they are about the constitution, but it’s never going to get them anywhere, because it’s pretty damned obvious that several countries are less than keen on the existing text, and so are going to carry on vetoing it.

Of course, quite why Germany, Spain, Italy and the other countries that have ratified the constitution should be prevented from pressing ahead just because some other countries aren’t happy is one of the idiocies of the way the EU is still being maintained as a “one size fits all” organisation.

What the constitutional enthusiasts SHOULD be doing, if they had any sense, was proposing an alternative text that allows some countries to sign up to having an EU president, foreign minister and qualified majority voting (the key contentious issues in the current text), and others to opt out of those parts they see fit. With a bit of cunning, the details could be worked out to ensure this system works well for all – just as the Eurozone countries can operate alongside the non-Eurozone countries, all under the EU umbrella.

It’s not going to be easy, that’s for sure – but until something like this is adopted, any attempts to ratify the existing constitutional treaty are not only doomed to failure, but are also doomed to increase intra-EU resentments and tensions – perhaps to an unsustainable level. After all, why should Britain or the Czech Republic prevent Spain or Luxembourg from moving towards closer political integration? And why should Spain or Luxembourg force Britain or the Czech Republic to integrate more than they are comfortable with?

Back to the drawing board, Romano. The time you’ve got left as Prime Minister isn’t going to be long enough to get the existing treaty ratified. It is, however, long enough for you to come up with a workable proposal for a multi-tier EU that could – just could – keep everyone happy.

It would take a well-known EU-enthusiast like Prodi to get his fellow EU types to accept what would be, for the more fervent amongst them, a long-overdue public acknowledgement that the dream/bogeyman of an “ever-closer union” – the federal, political Europe that europhiles adore and europhobes detest – was not a dream, but a pipedream. Not in their lifetimes, nor yours, nor mine, nor our grandchildren’s is that ever likely to happen – and it’s about time they realised that and started acting acordingly.

February 27, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

Blair and the EU constitution, part 2

On Sunday, the News of the World claimed that Tony Blair has already decided to ratify the EU constitution – with or without the support of either the public or his party (let alone his heir, Gordon Brown).

Today, the News of the World’s weekday sister paper, The Sun – despite being owned by the same company, and despite usually adopting whatever political line big boss Rupert Murdoch wants – had precisely the opposite story:

TONY BLAIR and Gordon Brown have vowed not to let in the hated EU Constitution through the back door.

The Prime Minister and his expected successor plan to stop Euro fanatics resurrecting a bid to give Brussels more power…

Next month EU leaders will discuss a new “declaration” to celebrate the union.

But its precise contents are unknown — causing worry among UK politicians who fear a further EU power grab.

And privately EU leaders will also talk about a new constitution at the summit.

Number 10 insists they will not agree to including elements of the old constitution

That pretty much refutes every single claim that the News of the World made on Sunday, from the contents of the declaration through to Blair’s enthusiasm for the existing text.

Which means, of course, that you can probably trust this report just as much as you could trust Sunday’s. They’re most likely both nonsense.

Were I the sort for conspiracy theories, I might suggest that the two utterly opposed stories were run in such quick succession because dear Mr Murdoch – notoriously anti-EU throughout his time as a newspaper magnate in the UK – wants to demonstrate through the reaction of his readers precisely which course of action should be taken. And in case you can’t tell which one that is:

The Sun Says…

The Sun instinctively mistrusts edicts from Brussels. They are almost never in our nation’s interests. This will be no exception.

Tony Blair has pledged to fight tooth and nail to prevent the rejected constitution being sneaked in by the back door.

We will hold him to that — as we will any future Prime Minister.

By “we”, read Rupert Murdoch – the owner of the top-selling Sunday broadsheet the Sunday Times, top-selling Sunday tabloid the News of the World, top-selling daily broadsheet the Times, top-selling daily tabloid the Sun, plus dominant satellite/digital television broadcaster Sky.

This is Rupert Murdoch using his power to ensure that “Europe” is not an issue at the next general election, by blackmailing both Labour and the Tories into doing what he wants – rejecting the constitution completely and utterly.

It couldn’t be clearer – the News of the World article was a teaser trailer to get up a bit of reaction. Two days later, with the reaction in, the Sun comes up with the real story.

There may be no facts in the Sun’s story either – but what it does have is detailed instructions for Blair, Brown and the rest of the Labour party, letting them know precisely what their next course of action had better be if they don’t want the single most powerful media group in the country to smash them with all its might.

Update: Just realised this was actually yesterday’s Sun. Murdoch works faster than I thought…

Update 2: Murdoch is definitely up to something…

February 27, 2007
by Nosemonkey
7 Comments

Some new EU blogs (and a new one from me)

A smattering of promising new EU blogs have crossed the radar in the last couple of days, all of which are worth a gander. In no particular order:

The Telegraph have now got around to replacing David Rennie, whose Brussels blog was just getting into gear when he left the paper back in December. The choice of new blogger is a very good one indeed – Daniel Hannan, long-time Telegraph journalist, Conservative MEP, author of several books on the EU, and a member of the European parliament’s constitutional affairs committee.

Another newly blogging journalist is the Financial Times’ EU correspondent Wolfgang Munchau. Despite the spartan, one-line entry look of the thing, click “more” and he’s actually got good, lengthy analysis on there. Unfortunately, though, his RSS feed doesn’t seem to be working…

Then there’s Shift Mag, an online version of a new print magazine that pitches itself as “Europe talks to Brussels – a platform for original, diverse and challenging views on Europe”. It is, however, done in a blog format, and with some promising articles up from the first edition.

Not quite a blog but almost, that new news channel France 24 have got in touch as they’re after non-French types to give opinions on the French presidential elections. Being a TV channel, they ideally want talking heads style video pieces, from what I can tell, but written, blog-style submissions are also welcome.

Then a proper, nicely zero-budget blog, Re: Europa, only started this month, so perhaps needs some encouragement to keep going (get through the pain/tedium barrier, it gets easier to stick with it). A good run-down of the EU Constitution situation shows much promise, at any rate.

And another proper blog, this time with a load more content: Cyrill Vatomsky – which has actually been going a while, from what I can tell, but is new to me. Focus appears to be the former USSR with a bit of EU affairs thrown in.

Oh, and it looks like long-running Swedish EU-blog Euroblog – a northern perspective is being updated more frequently again these days after a bit of a lull for the last year or so. Again, no working RSS (other than in Swedish) that I could find. Still, good news.

Add that to this roundup from a month ago (plus the blogroll, of course), that’s it covered EU-blogs wise, as far as I know.

My new blog project, by the by, isn’t really new – it’s the film blog I’ve been doing for the BBC for the last few months. It does, however, now have a proper design and a proper domain, so has officially come out of beta today. It is also (hopefully) going to start shifting direction and becoming rather more interesting/entertaining over the next month or so. You can find it here – and if you want to blogroll it as Pocket Films Blog, then ta muchly.

February 26, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on Blog survey

Blog survey

Some lass from the University of Hamburg has asked nicely, so here’s a link to her survey about continent-wide participation in “Euroblogs”, which apparently should only take about 15 minutes or so to fill out (I’m going to give it a bash in a mo). Go on – it’s for science. Or anthropology. Or sociology. Or politics. Or, considering the department that’s hosting the thing, social psychology. Might be interesting though, you never know…

I may have something more substantive later, but am feeling a bit meh… In terms of proper content, check out GlobaLab’s latest weekly roundup – they’re always rather good.