Nosemonkey's EUtopia

In search of a European identity

April 20, 2006
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

The EU, UK and ID redux

Is the EU going to save us from the database state after all? The European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx, who has been consistently vocal in his opposition to new (Blair/UK-proposed) EU data retention regulations, has warned in his annual report (.pdf) that he’s going to give the EU until next year – a year before the UK’s ID database scheme will start coming into effect – before he starts clamping down on privacy abuses.

Although his remit only applies to EU bodies and institutions, if we’re lucky and he succeeds in his quest to get privacy regulations effectively imposed throughout the central parts of the European Union, Brussels may start to take notice, and use its powers to impose similar restrictions on national governments.

A lot of “ifs”, perhaps, but it’s the best we’ve got at the moment, as the EU is the only body capable of forcing our delightful govenment from backing down on its ridiculous database and ID card plans.

In any case, considering that identity theft, organised crime and terrorism (still the main bogeymen used as justification for Labour’s ID card white elephant) traverse borders – and especially considering that Irish nationals’ right to enter the UK freely will still stand, and that foreign visitors of less than three months will be exempt from the scheme – trying to deal with the supposed threats on a national level is simply pointless. Only if Blair and Co’s ID scheme applied to every single EU citizen and every single visitor to the EU would they have any cause to claim us to be safer than we currently are – and even then there would be ways around it.

Either way, I can’t see the EU – containing as it does so many nations which have experienced fascist/communist police states within living memory – agreeing to the kinds of intrusive measures that Blair’s planning for us Brits. And though I’m no lawyer, unless the ID scheme expands to cover the EU, if the EU starts clamping down on unnecessary and intrusive data retention I’m fairly certain that us Brits will be able to use European Courts to challenge the usurped right of the British state to force us to hand over so many unnecessary details to our government.

After all, why should there be such restrictions on EU institutions without similar safeguards placed on our national governments? When was the last time a supranational organisation instituted widescale civil rights abuses? These have always come from nation states.

We’ve lost the ID fight in the UK. We’ve yet to lose it in the EU. And Peter Hustinx will, for the next few years, be our key ally.

April 19, 2006
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

Journalism

Journalists “finding it easier to write a load of nonsense about something vaguely similar to their dayjobs than to go out and uncovering genuine news stories” shocker! Or, in other words, a study has found that

“blogging has received disproportionate media coverage and the whole idea of citizen journalism is overhyped”

Next month, more shock new findings about the way the media operates: Journalists “less likely to check facts or make much effort near to deadline”; Comment pieces “far easier to write than proper news, and infinitely better paid”; and Newspapers “desperate to fill space with any old pap that might get a few suckers to buy the sodding things and keep their ABC figures high enough to charge advertisers rates that’ll allow a profit”.

April 19, 2006
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

Denial

Why do I get the feeling that today’s PMQs could prove significant in a couple of years’ time when we get a few more leaks of classified documents? Oh, I know – it’s this explicit denial from the Prime Minister:

“Nobody is talking about a military invasion against Iran or military action against Iran. We are taking diplomatic action through the UN security council.”

One single bit of evidence of planning meetings discussing strategic missile strikes or the like against Iran prior to 19th April 2006 – Blair has lied to parliament. (And, please note, if they haven’t had some talks of this kind they’d be – from a strategic point of view at least – almost as insane as they would be to try and invade the place…)

April 18, 2006
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

A quickie on multiculturalism

Sunny’s post on the BNP at Comment is Free – which I’d missed earlier – is interesting stuff, but it was the comments that sparked a semi-related thought. Sunny was talking about the BNP’s appeal to alienated working class voters, and soon the usual “multiculturalism” buzzword cropped up in the comments.

Why is “multiculturalism” used almost exclusively in reference to a perceived culture clash with recent immigrants? It has become almost a synonym for “multiracial”, yet the difference in cultural background between a university-educated member of the middle classes and that of an undereducated single mother living on benefit on a sink estate is arguably almost as vast as that between a white Englishman and a first generation Pakistani immigrant… Being pretty solidly middle-class and decently-educated myself, I’ll generally have far more in common with a fellow middle-class black or Asian Brit than with any number of unemployed and impoverished white Brits with one GCSE, no matter how much more our genetic makeup may be simliar.

At the risk of sounding like a Marxian, these economic and education-based manifestations of the multiple cultures within the UK have generally struck me as being at the heart of many of the problems so often blamed on the racially-tinged “multiculturalism” shorthand. This lazy conflation of culture and race (hand in hand with religion and race) has also made it far harder for moderate voices to try and sensibly point out that there are indeed aspects of certain cultures which are unpleasant without instantly being shouted down as racist by well-meaning (but often not so well-thinking) liberal voices.

This is a debate that could help clarify much fuzzy thinking from all corners of the political divides, yet is currently one that many shy clear of for fear of the racist brand… (And, of course, if you come from a middle class background and raise the issue of sections of the unemployed and benefit-dependent population being a problem, you’ll often find yourself dismissed as a Daily Mail reading classist from the self-same well-meaning quarters…)

April 18, 2006
by Nosemonkey
7 Comments

A false fascist fear

With local elections coming up, it seems that once again we are facing the spectre of a boom in the BNP vote. But you know what, as much as I dislike the buggers, it’s really nothing to worry about. In fact, it could well be a good thing if the BNP do well on May 4th.

This time around they’re putting up the most candidates they’ve ever managed – 356, out of 4,360 possible seats up for grabs, or just 8%. At last year’s General Election they managed to attract around 0.7% of the national vote – a record for them – while at the 2004 European Elections, always an event to spark low turnout amongst almost all but the nationalist and eurosceptic extremes as no one else cares – they claimed 4.9% of the vote in England. During the same year, their annual accounts (.pdf from the Electoral Commission) claim an increase in membership from 5,737 to 7,916. (Which is around the number of readers this site attracted every week up until a few months back.) During 2004, despite their major European Elections push, they managed to raise just £228,000. Hardly stunning – and not even enough to buy yourself a knighthood, let alone a peerage…

So worst case scenario – assuming they attract almost double the number of voters they managed in the European Elections – we’d be left with a total of 380-odd BNP councillors (combined with the 20 or so they’ve got now). They’d finally be a bit of a force in local politics, rather than merely a scattered and isolated presence. You can understand how some people might find this worrying.

But no one need be concerned about the research suggesting that “25% of people have thought about voting for the far-right party”. We’re nine years into an increasingly unpopular, largely centrist government that’s still facing no real opposition from its two main rivals, both of whom are also struggling for the centre ground.

It’s only natural at this stage in the government’s life cycle that people are pondering protest votes, and that the parties on the extreme political wings – be it the BNP, UKIP or Respect – are going to be the ones proportionately to benefit the most. If anything, a boom in support for the BNP would be a sign that our democracy’s rather healthier than many have feared, and that people still care – even if they care primarily about not having a dark-skinned neighbour.

Yet the racial issue is not prime for many who are attracted to the BNP. You only need look at the harshness of Labour’s approach to immigration over the last few years (backed up by the Tories’ General Election “It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration” campaign), with dawn raid deportations and the like, to see that the BNP’s major policy of harsh immigration controls has been claimed quite effectively by the major parties.

It is instead the desire for a viable right-wing alternative to the rather ineffectual Tories or comically divided UKIP that is gaining the BNP support. Since the Tories collapsed in on themselves from the mid-90s onwards, and following nine years of constant leadership crises in a vain attempt to deal with Labour’s lurch towards the right, the full-on right-wingers have had nowhere to turn. (And please note, my lefty chums, that “right-wing” and “racist” do not necessarily go hand in hand, as it would apear that many on the left appear to think…)

Meanwhile, the BNP have constantly been trying to shift the perception that they’re a single-issue, largely racist party in an attempt to appeal – especially – to the working-class Tories who have abandoned their old party in the last decade. (The idea that the Conservatives are made up exclusively of ex-public school middle class middle-Englanders is a nice one for right-on centre-lefties with a vague memory of something called “the class struggle”, but a complete myth.)

At the same time, BNP ventures into trade unionism and the former industrial heartlands of the midlands and north have been stirring up local resentments amongst former Labour voters who feel that their party, with its shift to the middle-ground and leadership by the Islingtonian cocktail party set, has likewise abandoned them.

But despite this encroachment onto the territory of the two major parties, the BNP are best left ignored. They are as tiny and insignificant as they are at heart unpleasant. For the Tories or Labour to do any more than dismiss them with a curt put-down – in much the way David Cameron recently brushed off UKIP – would be far more effort than they are worth.

To regain the votes of those who have been lulled to the extremes, it would be insane for Labour to shift back left or the Tories to venture back right. They know full well that they’ll alienate more voters than they’d regain – and that despite the power of the likes of Respect, UKIP and the BNP to cause some localised upsets, the votes they attract are not significant enough in number to make any major difference. (A case can be made for UKIP having affected the last General Election, but only if you assume that every UKIP voter would otherwise have voted Tory – and even then only around 30 seats would have been affected, not enough to swing parliament back to the Conservatives.)

In dealing with the BNP, the three major parties should learn from the mistakes the Tories made with UKIP. By treating them as if they are a threat or an issue, big parties end up giving the smaller, fringe groups far more publicity than they could otherwise afford on their tiny budgets and with their tiny numbers of volunteers. When the Tories were battling UKIP for the small number of voters who actually care about the perceived negative impact of the EU, UKIP began to boom under the new oxygen of publicity. And it was this very success that has begun to cause that party’s downfall.

Since UKIP actually gained some seats in the European Parliament, their support has fractured – with Kilroy-Silk’s short-lived Veritas ego trip being only the most obvious example that the party’s anti-EU supporters have been rather less than impressed with their performance since they managed to gain positions of influence, rather than their traditional shouting from the sidelines role. UKIP has achieved little to nothing in the European Parliament, and stories have continually emerged about their various MEPs’ failures to attend votes that have, if you’re being cynical, shown them just as happy to sit about the Brussels gravy-train as any of the “Europhile federalists” they spent so long attacking.

The same is true of the BNP. The few councillors they have managed to get elected have been at worst imbroiled in scandal and crises (from arrests for drug dealing to official accusations of negligence and misconduct), at best found to have poor voting and attendance records. With fewer than 8,000 members from which to select candidates, and with a core of activists who sprung out of the National Front and Combat 18 culture of thuggery, they have fewer still who are cabable of fulfilling the duties of an elected representative.

In other words, the best way to prove that a vote for the BNP is a wasted one is to sit back and wait for them to balls it up once they’ve gained a few more seats. With just twenty or so councillors, the cock-ups and corruption can be dismissed as an unfortunate abberation. With a hundred, it will be far harder to ignore, and voters who have been tempted by them will soon come to see their mistake. Equally, once they are elected councillors, the BNP’s lackeys will be bound by innumerable bits of red tape and regulation, ensuring that the slightest breach can quickly lead to disciplinary action – along with all the local negative publicity that will cause for the party.

It is very easy to criticise parties when they’re in power and have records you can point to – it is much harder to demonstrate a party’s poor record if their lack of any political office means they simply don’t have a record to attack.

At the same time, if a professional politician from one of the major parties starts lecturing already disillusioned voters on why a vote for the BNP is a stupid one, they are more likely to consolidate protest vote support for the far-right nutters than convince anyone to return to the mainstream fold. For once I find myself agreeing with Home Office minister Andy Burnham – “I am worried that if we give them too much coverage, it can back up the notion that they are a potent protest vote.”

Letting people find out for themselves that the likes of the BNP are fringe loons is by far the most effective way of tackling them. It is for the same reason that their leader, Nick Griffin, should not have been taken to court for stirring up racial hatred – it merely gave them free publicity and made him look like the persecuted little man silent majority he so often claims to be speaking up for.

They should be allowed to spout their nonsense as much as they can – for the more they do, the more obvious it becomes that nonsense is all that it is. If the BNP can gain a few more council seats, it can only be good for the major parties who have so often mistaken them for a threat.

The BNP are regarded by those tempted to vote for them as potential saviours after years of political isolation. So were the Labour party after 18 years of Tory rule – and just look how they’ve turned out… I believe the phrase I’m looking for is “give them enough rope to hang themselves…”

More takes: Paul at Great Britain, Not Little England seems to agree with my take, while Chris at Qwghlm expands on some of the issues I’ve only briefly covered. At The Devil’s Kitchen, the G-Gnome reckons the Tories should act and also tackles the “working class” problem, Sunny at Pickled Politics also looks at the issue (though irritatingly I don’t seem to be able to access the site at the moment), and Pigdogfucker has the most succinct response. That’ll learn me for staying prety much offline for four days – I missed a load of stuff and came in late again…

April 12, 2006
by Nosemonkey
11 Comments

Moral equivalence?

Still don’t quite get that particular phrase, but I was loosely accused of it back in July when suggesting that the US might have to bear some responsibility for the 7/7 bombings if it were true that the Bush administration had screwed up a joint British/Pakistani investigation by announcing the name of an al Qaeda defector, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was helping the British/Pakistani team by supplying information about a plot to bomb the London Underground. (You may remember Tim Ireland, Robin Grant and Juan Cole on the same subject.)

In short, I suggested that by failing to do something (i.e. keep their mouths shut), the Bush administration could be considered at least partially responsible for any deaths that resulted from the British/Pakistani operation being brought to a premature end.

Now, of course, we have US prosecutors arguing that Zacarias Moussaoui should get the death penalty because HE failed to do something, and arguing that by keeping his mouth shut about the 9/11 plot he should be treated as harshly as if he had actually hijacked a plane and flown it into a building. In other words, he’s being treated as a murderer, not the accessory to murder he actually is.

So, if (still an if, please note) a link could be found between Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, his information of a plot to bomb the tube or his associates, and those involved in the 7/7 London terrorist attacks, could we then, by pretty much the same logic as Moussaoui’s prosecutors are using, hold the US accountable for the 7/7 bombs?

All in all, it’s just as well that the official whitewash “narrative of events” has apparently concluded that the 7/7 bombers were not part of some grand conspiracy after all (in fact, they seem to be echoing my sentiments from the fortnight immediately following the bombings).

Because if this official history HAD uncovered links to the al Qaeda bogeyman, especially to the plotters surrounding Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, then at the very least there would have to be some awkward questions asked of the US’s decision to ruin that UK/Pakistan investigation. As it is, they simply have to explain away how this country could have so massively failed in its pastoral care and education of four young(ish) citizens that they would choose to go on an indiscriminate killing rampage in the heart of our capital city. And do so, of course, without using the word “Iraq”…

At the risk of sounding like a raving conspiracy theorist, it’s all rather convenient, really… Especially the whole “no one else knew, no one else was involved, there are no possible other lines of enquiry, move along – nothing to see here” tone of the thing… Go on, sign the petition for a full public inquiry.

(Here endeth a rare terrorism post from Nosemonkey. Now let the batty comments commence…)

April 12, 2006
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on Italian insight idiocy

Italian insight idiocy

You know how us bloggers are useless compared to “proper” journalists because we don’t have editors, our use of facts can be suspect, and we usually don’t know what we’re talking about? Well, it has to be said that over the last few days of Italian electoral confusion, I’ve seen hardly any remotely decent coverage or analysis from any of the big names of the English-language media world, with far more knowledgable and convincing comment coming from the world of blogs. Paul at Make My Vote Count provides a handy run-down of some of the worst offenders for ill-informed Italian insight idiocy. Have a gander at his other recent Italy posts and all – damn good job.

April 12, 2006
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Detention without trial

Hang on – detaining someone without trial is illegal? Well who’d have thought it?

Article 11
1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which, the last time I checked, the UK remains a signatory)

Alternatively (.pdf),

Article 6 – Right to Liberty and Security
3. Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1.c of this article shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial.

(The Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, to which the UK was also, last time I checked, a signatory)

April 11, 2006
by Nosemonkey
16 Comments

So long, Silvio?

God damn, this has been tight. Looks like a margin of less than 0.1% of the popular vote on an 83% turnout (via the Italy Magazine blog). Which only prompts the question, “what Italian in their right mind would want to see Berlusconi back in power?” I mean yes, he’s great entertainment value (from a distance), but really…

In any case, it may still not be over, despite excitement in the early hours of this morning – even after Romano Prodi has claimed victory for the centre-left coalition, Tobias Schwarz at Fistful notes that with a margin of (apparently) just 25,000 votes, Berlusconi could demand a recount, which could well take the rest of the week…

Meanwhile, full-on lefty Lenin (the name’s a clue, you see?) analyses what a centre-left Prodi victory could mean for Italy (he’s not overly optimistic), while Italian in London Davide Simonetti looks at the wider implications.

More later, if I get a chance and things get finalised…

Update: Good stuff on the possible implications from Paul Davies at Make My Vote Count, and also over at Crooked Timber.

Wednesday update: Another good post-match analysis, plus a very handy statistical overview and explanation of the insanely complex Italian electoral system, complete with maps and diagrams (via).

April 10, 2006
by Nosemonkey
5 Comments

Berlusconi

Were I not so busy, I’d be biting my nails to ragged stumps:

“Mr Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition may narrowly retain control of both houses of parliament, according to projections from the Nexus pollsters.”Earlier, exit polls pointed to a narrow lead for his centre-left challenger, Romano Prodi…

“The Nexus projections, carried on the state broadcaster Rai, gave Mr Berlusconi’s forces 49.9% in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house), and Mr Prodi’s bloc 49.6%”

And that’s on a trunout of an estimate 85%. EIGHTY-FIVE… Of course, in this country, if Labour had a 0.3% lead they’d probably still end up with a majority of about 50 seats – based on those figures, Berlusconi would have a majority of about seven.

Still – he could still lose. Fingers crossed, eh?

Update: Damn. Forgot about Berlusconi’s recent reforms. See Phil in the comments for more likely possible majorities…

April 8, 2006
by Nosemonkey
6 Comments

Italian election cut’n’paste special

Just in time for tomorrow’s Italian elections (which will hopefully see Berlusconi booted out on his corrupt backside), Tobias Jones in the Guardian provides one of the best brief summaries of the complex madness that is the Italian political system I’ve seen in a fair while. Read the whole thing, but if you don’t have time, an expigated version (more traditionally known as wholesale plagiarism and copyright infringement, but at least I’m giving him credit…):

“There are 174 officially registered symbols in this election… That astonishing number of symbols is part of the reason why political debate is so rare. Much of the electoral discussion in the last few months has been about coalitions. The central element of debate is partitica, not politica: it’s about party politics… there are 33 parties represented in Romano Prodi’s coalition, 35 in that of Berlusconi…”Unlike Britain, the politicians are all older and more established than their parties. Of all the major parties, only the Partito Radicale was founded before the 1990s… In the previous parliament, a staggering 158 politicians changed party or coalition. Above all, it means politics appears characterised by old-fashioned patronage, in which reciprocal favours are more important than ideals and policies…

“The First Republic (1945 to 1993) was the archetypal PR system. It meant the Italian equivalent of the 1997 “Twigging” of Portillo was simply inconceivable. Proportional representation “lists” guaranteed that the mighty never need fall… At the birth of the Second Republic, 90% of Italians voted to adopt a first-past-the-post method. But what emerged was 75% first past the post and 25% still PR. It was a system so complicated that at every election, large newspaper graphics were dedicated to explaining something called the scorporo. The next time you’re idling in Italy, try asking someone to explain it. You’ll need a calculator, a lot of coffee and at least a couple of hours…

“To top it all, the process is hostage to outside influences. No one knows how influential they are, but various mafias certainly make their presence felt during elections. Read what you like into the fact that Berlusconi, in 2001, won 100% of the parliamentary seats in Sicily. Organised crime also means politics is affected by the bullet as well as the ballot box… More strangely, this election sees 12 seats in the Camera and six in the Senate decided by the worldwide diaspora of Italian descendants in four electoral colleges (North and Central America, South America, Europe and the Rest of the World)…

“Yet such are the contradictions of the country that its democracy is envied throughout the west. Voter turnout at the last general election, in 2001, was 82.7%. Compare that with 61.3% in Britain in 2005… everyone understands the responsibility of casting their vote. And that despite the fact that proxy and postal votes are unheard of. As you read this, Italian trains will be overloaded with electors returning to their home town to vote. Casting your vote is still seen as of such importance that, for instance, Parma town council offers to pay the train fare for foreign-based Parmigiani to return on election day…

“everyday life is extraordinarily politicised. You can tell someone’s politics by the strangest things: which football team they support; which coffee they drink (the Illy brand has leftwing connotations as its owner, the president of the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region, Riccardo Illy, is part of the centre-left alliance); which books they read (Tolkien was, during the 1970s, an unlikely icon of the fascist movement); even which shoes they wear (Tods shoes are made by Diego Della Valle, the owner of Fiorentina football team and vociferous critic of Berlusconi). In a country in which politics is so often conducted through symbolism and gesture, there’s a kind of livery that allows you to recognise, almost on first acquaintance, someone’s political sympathies.

“But the democratic engagement goes deeper than symbolism. There’s a quality of debate that is rarely seen in Britain. There are frequently referendums on topics that are politically soft but morally hard, like stem cell research; the debates regarding such subjects are impressively profound…

“In any democracy there’s a simple equation that suggests that voters get the politicians they deserve. For more than a century it’s been one of the greatest enigmas about Italy. How did a country with such intelligent, inventive and generous constituents end up with such uninspiring politicians? The generous reply is that the democratic equation is invalidated because Italian democracy is skew-wiff. The harsher reply is that the iconic politicians of postwar Italy – Giulio Andreotti, Bettino Craxi and Silvio Berlusconi – really are representative of the Italian majority. The greatest hope for tomorrow’s election is that, for once, the result may reflect the idealism, and not the cynicism, of the voting public.”

For more, check out a nice overview of the campaigns from di Gondi at European Tribune, and Beppe Grillo getting angry:

“The world press… continues to give the image of an Italy that is like a poverty-stricken ruffian… They are right. They say things that we would be aware of, if it weren�t for the media control here. When will we be free of it? I feel that I�m carrying a weight on my back. I feel a leaden atmosphere around, it�s sickly, it imprisons thoughts, it�s oppressive. Basta! Enough!”

April 8, 2006
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

UKIP: loonies and fruitcakes

UKIP prove they aren’t loonies and fruitcakes by, erm… turning up to the Tory conference with an armoured car and shouting at people. According to the BBC,

“UKIP has withdrawn its threat to sue the Conservatives for defamation, but says it will bankrupt itself out of existence fight every Tory marginal seat in the next election.”

And so the right continues to be divided – and the obvious source of opposition to the current government continues to fail to do its job – thanks to a bunch of idiots failing to see that the REAL threat to this country’s independence and traditions of liberty comes not from Brussels, but from Blair.

Go on UKIP, you morons – keep tilting at the Brussels windmill in a vain effort to “save” this country. Meanwhile the real danger, The Rt. Hon. A.C.L. Blair, MP, is busy looting, raping and pillaging the constitution while your backs are turned. Were UKIP to reunite with the Tories rather than engage in these pathetic public spats, Labour would be in genuine trouble. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so damned pathetic.

April 6, 2006
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Mandelson and the art of selective quotation

Mandelson in “words distorted” shocker. Yep, Mandy’s said something vaguely sensible about the scrapped EU constitution only to find himself selectively quoted to make it look like he’s a delusional nutjob. (Which he normally is, it must be admitted…)

Blair’s dodgy buddy (who at least had the decency to resign after organising suspect loans from wealthy friends), the EU’s Commissioner for Trade, has admitted that

“the present constitutional treaty in the eyes of many does not provide a solution. It was a very good basis and in many respects it has ideas proposed that we should not lose sight of.”But I don’t think people are ready to adopt, let alone rush to embrace, at this stage.”

Unfortunately, Mandy also had a bit of a poor choice of words when attempting to explain that a union of 25 states necessitates a reworking of the (in any case outdated) rules and regulations that govered the EU of 15. (Which, as I’ve said many times, should all have been sorted out a decade ago, as the possibility of expansion started to become more of a reality – but everyone was still smarting from Maastricht and the ERM debacle, so rational debate about the future of the EU was hardly on the agenda. And that’s hardly Mandy’s fault – it wasn’t his watch back then.)

Anyway, sadly, Mandelson got a bit muddled, stating “we have to create rules, we have to create institutions that accommodate a growing population and a growing number of member states” in a rather blunt manner without, apparently, offering any wider explanation or contextualisation.

Unsurprisingly, the “rules” bit has been jumped on by a Tory MEP from the East Midlands, desperately trying to stave off the heavy UKIP threat in his region, where euroscepticism is so rife they even elected Robert Kilroy-Silk. (There are some local elections coming up, you see, and the Tories are a bit worried about the ex-Conservative lunatic fringe – hence the recent spat between David Cameron and the UKIP lot. Who aren’t at all racist, oh no…)

So we have our faithful Tory trying to regain the eurosceptic vote by launching an attack on Mandy (a fairly easy target, it must be said), asking

“‘What part of “no” does Peter Mandelson not understand? Mr Mandelson’s calls for more rules, regulations and expensive institutions just goes to show how much more out of touch he has become since moving to Brussels…”‘Most people in Britain want the European Union to be doing less, not more.'”

Which rather ignores the fact that Mandelson was acknowledging that the constitution has been rejected, but pointing out that aspects of it are still worth keeping (very true – a lot of it was rubbish, but there were some genuine, democratic improvements in there which it would be foolish to jettison entirely).

It also misses the point that it’s not necessarily MORE rules, regulations and institutions that Mandy’s calling for, merely new ones. Which considering the immense changes that have affected the EU over the last few years is really only sensible – and as Mandy doesn’t specify what these new rules and institutions would do, it’s a bit silly to reject such hypotheticals before even listening to what’s being proposed. Hell, it may even be a reduction and rationalisation of the current bureaucracy and red tape that is the cause of so much eurosceptic anger…

No one in the EU hierarchy knows what the hell’s going on, and even if a few of them have plans, these plans are nowhere near finalised – because they have to make sure that whatever they propose will be acceptable to all 25 member states. As two member states rejected the thing (for whatever reasons), and there remains a good chance that at least a couple of others would have followed suit had they gone down the referendum route, they need to at the very least rework the constitution before trying to progress with the much-needed reforms of the EU that Mandy was rightly saying will have to happen at some point (relatively) soon.

In other words, let’s not leap to conclusions, even if the person speaking IS an erstwhile Labour stooge.