Today we found out who is to be the next President of Austria. His name is Alexander Van der Bellen, a Green party politician.
Perhaps more significant is who it will not be. The next Austrian President will not be Norbert Hofer, of the Freedom Party of Austria. Hofer was widely tipped to be the first far-right politician to become a head of state in Europe since the end of the Second World War. He topped the poll in the first round of voting, and when the votes were counted yesterday he appeared to be ahead. His campaign had tried to rally the Austrian people against the migrants who have been arriving over recent years. He had targetted Muslims as the root of Austria's ills. And it looked as if it had worked.
But today, the arrival of the postal ballots has enabled his opponent to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. By a mere 0.6% of the vote, the Green has prevailed.
So what? Why should we care what happens in some far-away country between people of whom we know nothing?
This matters because it means that, for now, the cordon sanitaire has been preserved. Since European democracies rose from the ashes of the Second World War, there has been a consensus that the far-right is beyond the pale. It is something to be resisted with all resources and powers at our disposal. The Belgians introduced a concept known as the cordon sanitaire, which means that all political parties will work together to lock out far-right parties. This was best seen in France in 2002, when the Front National reached the second round of the presidential election. The French Parti Socialist urged its supporters to back their ideological opponent, Jacques Chirac, under the slogan 'vote the crook, not the fascist.' When the BNP got two MEPs elected in 2009, they were shunned by other MEPs, and the British government would only give the assistance legally required of them. The BNP and National Front are excluded from local council structures when they do manage to gain the odd seat through defection or election. And most dramatically of all, the EU imposed sanctions on the Austrian government in 1999, when they invited the Freedom Party into government.
Luckily, we have been spared that sight again today. But mainstream politicians need to act, and act fast. They need to address the genuine grievances that the far-right play on. Offering real reassurances in a fast changing world is essential, otherwise populist demagogues will continue to fill the vacuum. The combination of economic dislocation and mass migration has been a gift to the far-right, and they are challenges that more mainstream politicians have seemed reluctant to confront.
Had the Freedom Party won in Austria today, it would have been a sign that this old world was over. It would have leant legitimacy to those across Europe who say our problems are caused by the 'other,' and that by closing ourselves in, and not tolerating the 'other,' we can somehow solve these challenges. We have tried that road before. And it ended in the fields of Srebrenica and the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
Once again, the cordon has held. But we are living on borrowed time, and action is needed now to keep the monster at bay.
Monday, 23 May 2016
Monday, 16 May 2016
Britain and the EU: The Economic Case for Leaving
[Read this to get an idea of what this series is about, if you haven't yet!]
When we joined the EEC in 1973, virtually no one called it that. It was popularly known as the Common Market. This is what even went on the ballot papers for the 1975 referendum. For Britain, being a member of the EU has always been about the money.
This means that it is on the economic front that much of the battle has been fought.
I'm going to take many common economic claims about leaving the EU, and try and tackle them.
We'll be x amount better off. If we leave, we can spend more of our own money on what we want
Firstly, the number x is always spectacularly vague, wildly inconsistent, and always beyond comprehension. According to Vote Leave, we send £350 million a week to Brussels. Leave.EU reckon it is £15.7 billion a year, which amounts to £301 millionish a week. Either way, that is a heck of a lot of money.
Actually, it is approximately 2% of total British government spending. In 2015-16, the UK governments spent £772 billion. Now, that is a hell of a lot. But even if we take the number of around £300 million a week at face value, it isn't that much. Modern states are expensive to run. If we leave the EU in June, on the surface we will have a bit more cash to spend on ourselves. But not enough to simultaneously fix the NHS, fund science and technology projects, reequip the army, end unemployment and homelessness, or whatever else the Leave people claim we could do with it.
It is also a spectacular mis-representation of the way the EU's money operates. The EU is not hoarding all that money in Brussels. It spends it to try and make the Union better. We get approximately £5 billion a year spent on us. Yes, we are sending more out than we get back. But that money we do get back gets spent on helping people in the UK. Every region of the UK, in every avenue imaginable: industry, business, agriculture, media, the arts, sport. All have benefited from EU regional development cash.
Also, some benefits are hard to find on a balance sheet. Does reduced cost at airports thanks to fewer border controls feature? No, but you can be sure it is in there somewhere as an advantage of paying to be a member.
So, before you look at the £300 million a week, panic and vote to Leave, just stop and think. Millions of the poorest in Britain have benefited from EU spending. If we suddenly got that money back, it represents a drop in the ocean of government spending. And there are major benefits from paying to be a member which are hard to pin down.
After all, our annual contribution to the UN is (very!) roughly £10 million. I've never benefited from a UN peacekeeping mission. But you can be sure as hell I think the money is well spent.
We will get our own seat at the World Trade Organisation
What, to go with the one that we've already got? We've been members of the WTO since it was set up. In fact, we're quite lucky. The UK is one of 28 countries that has two membership slots at the World Trade Organisation. All EU member states are represented twice; once as themselves, and once as part of the EU. We would be changing a double weighted voice for a single weighted one.
Anyway, I'm not sure the World Trade Organisation is a good thing to be getting more involved with. To all intents and purposes, the WTO is moribund. The WTO works by getting member states to engage in 'rounds' of talks, which aim to reduce trade barriers, regulations, and generally reduce obstacles to global trade. The last successful round was conducted between 1988 and 1994, under the WTO's predecessor organisation. That means it began before I was born, and finished 22 years ago. That is a long time ago.
The current round of negotiations, the Doha round, began in 2001. The aim was to have it all wrapped up by 2005. Here we are, eleven years after that deadline, with no end to the negotiations in sight. Compared to the WTO, even the EU looks efficient.
To all intents and purposes, the WTO is a moribund organisation. There'd be no point in placing faith in our economic future in an institution which has failed to finish a piece of work it began when I was just starting high school.
We will make trade deals with other countries
Now we know that doing this through the World Trade Organisation is a waste of everybody's time and effort, this becomes much more problematic. The sheer scale of trying to negotiate open market access to every country on Earth is daunting. As part of the EU, we are already stuck into negotiains, many of which will take years to complete. If we leave, we would be starting again.
When we joined the EEC in 1973, virtually no one called it that. It was popularly known as the Common Market. This is what even went on the ballot papers for the 1975 referendum. For Britain, being a member of the EU has always been about the money.
This means that it is on the economic front that much of the battle has been fought.
I'm going to take many common economic claims about leaving the EU, and try and tackle them.
We'll be x amount better off. If we leave, we can spend more of our own money on what we want
Actually, it is approximately 2% of total British government spending. In 2015-16, the UK governments spent £772 billion. Now, that is a hell of a lot. But even if we take the number of around £300 million a week at face value, it isn't that much. Modern states are expensive to run. If we leave the EU in June, on the surface we will have a bit more cash to spend on ourselves. But not enough to simultaneously fix the NHS, fund science and technology projects, reequip the army, end unemployment and homelessness, or whatever else the Leave people claim we could do with it.
It is also a spectacular mis-representation of the way the EU's money operates. The EU is not hoarding all that money in Brussels. It spends it to try and make the Union better. We get approximately £5 billion a year spent on us. Yes, we are sending more out than we get back. But that money we do get back gets spent on helping people in the UK. Every region of the UK, in every avenue imaginable: industry, business, agriculture, media, the arts, sport. All have benefited from EU regional development cash.
Also, some benefits are hard to find on a balance sheet. Does reduced cost at airports thanks to fewer border controls feature? No, but you can be sure it is in there somewhere as an advantage of paying to be a member.
So, before you look at the £300 million a week, panic and vote to Leave, just stop and think. Millions of the poorest in Britain have benefited from EU spending. If we suddenly got that money back, it represents a drop in the ocean of government spending. And there are major benefits from paying to be a member which are hard to pin down.
After all, our annual contribution to the UN is (very!) roughly £10 million. I've never benefited from a UN peacekeeping mission. But you can be sure as hell I think the money is well spent.
We will get our own seat at the World Trade Organisation
What, to go with the one that we've already got? We've been members of the WTO since it was set up. In fact, we're quite lucky. The UK is one of 28 countries that has two membership slots at the World Trade Organisation. All EU member states are represented twice; once as themselves, and once as part of the EU. We would be changing a double weighted voice for a single weighted one.
Anyway, I'm not sure the World Trade Organisation is a good thing to be getting more involved with. To all intents and purposes, the WTO is moribund. The WTO works by getting member states to engage in 'rounds' of talks, which aim to reduce trade barriers, regulations, and generally reduce obstacles to global trade. The last successful round was conducted between 1988 and 1994, under the WTO's predecessor organisation. That means it began before I was born, and finished 22 years ago. That is a long time ago.
The current round of negotiations, the Doha round, began in 2001. The aim was to have it all wrapped up by 2005. Here we are, eleven years after that deadline, with no end to the negotiations in sight. Compared to the WTO, even the EU looks efficient.
To all intents and purposes, the WTO is a moribund organisation. There'd be no point in placing faith in our economic future in an institution which has failed to finish a piece of work it began when I was just starting high school.
We will make trade deals with other countries
Now we know that doing this through the World Trade Organisation is a waste of everybody's time and effort, this becomes much more problematic. The sheer scale of trying to negotiate open market access to every country on Earth is daunting. As part of the EU, we are already stuck into negotiains, many of which will take years to complete. If we leave, we would be starting again.
Imagine how annoyed the other countries will be, to suddenly have the UK team appear and ask them to open more talks. They're probably bored stiff with the first set, and I can't imagine they'll be happy to start more. President Obama may have caused offence when he said we would be at the back of the queue in a transAtlantic trade deal. The thing is, he is right. The truth hurts.
If we can't do it en masse, we will have to do it individually. What an absolute bloody mess that would be.
We will trade more with the Commonwealth
We will trade more with the Commonwealth
Obviously, we trade with everyone and anyone that will buy British. However, with the loss of our easy access to the EU, we'd need to find something to replace this market with. But fear not, for waiting in the wings, there is the Commonwealth, ready to jump in and become our new number one trading partner.
This seems to be an attractive offer that makes perfect sense. After all, when Britain entered the EEC in 1973, it was forced to surrender a very lucrative trading arrangement with the Commonwealth. Although we were able to extract some concessions from the EEC, overall we were forced by our terms of entry to orientate our markets towards the Continent.
1973 was a very long time ago. Using some rough guesstimates from the population pyramid, only about half of the current UK population was alive at the time. If you discount anyone under the age of 16, the then school leaving age, that leaves 23% of the UK's current population with working experience of the world before we joined the Common Market.
That will also hold broadly true in many Commonwealth countries. In fact, many are developing countries, which have experienced massive population growth in the late 20th century, so theirs will be even lower. Less than a quarter of the workforce has any experience of operating in the pre-Europe days.
This means that there aren't really any residual ties to our former markets left. Had we left the EEC in 1975, as we could have done, then re-establishing those relationships would have been much easier. But they will have faded into the distant past, like the Sunningdale Agreement, the Cod Wars, the Lonrho affair, and Rick Wakeman's Six Wives of Henry VIII (All also from 1973). There aren't any companies waiting by the phones to resume trading. Times have moved on.
Britain enjoyed a close relationship with these places because it had been, until very recently, their lord and master, or at least first amongst equals with respect to the former Dominions. Much of this trade had taken place on terms which had been disastrous for the colonies. Empires are rarely benign to their subjects, and Britain was no exception. I can't see that they will want to resume a relationship which represents the darkest period in their histories.
The notion is that the former colonials will jump at the chance to make the mother country the 'most favoured nation' for trading again. This is laughable, and also flies very close to the line in terms of imperialistic racism. The Leave campaign can't really think that these places have spent four and a half decades pining after Britain. They've moved on. Perhaps we should too.
We will be the number one export market for the rest of the EU
If we will struggle to trade with the rest of the world, or the Commonwealth, then that leaves us with one last great hope. As part of the EU, we conduct a lot of trade with Europe. And I mean a lot. It accounts for 48% of our exports, according to HMRC. In March 2016, we exported £12 billion to the EU, and imported £20.2 billion in return. Both our imports to and our exports from Europe have risen in recent years.
This is a reason the Leave campaign give for us being in a good position to barter with the EU if we leave. They need us, and we need them. In fact, they need us more than we need them. So we are bound to get a good deal in negotiating access to the EU's trade area. Otherwise the EU will be cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Perhaps. But what troubles me is that, if we do leave, the EU are not going to be very charitable. Leaving will probably deliver a profound shock to the European and global economies. If nothing else, the uncertainty around how exactly we leave, and on what terms, will inject a nice shot of uncertainty. Economies hate uncertainty. It causes them to slow, and sometimes contract. The EU's economic model barely weathered the storm of the Euro crisis. The chaos of the second largest EU economy trying to pull out would be severe.
Also, the UK is not the only country to have its Eurosceptics. A vote to leave would embolden these movements all over Europe. What would the EU's last weapon against them be? To show that leaving the EU is not an easy move. We can expect them to fight us every inch of the way. Yes, it is bitter and nasty. But from their point of view, it would be a mess of our own making.
So, if we do vote to leave in June, I wouldn't be expecting our spurned European neighbours to be rushing to welcome us back. Depressingly, this does seem to be the Leave campaigns view of affairs.
Summary
So, there you have my take on it. I'm sure you can find plenty to dispute in this. I have tried my best on figures and statistics, and am happy to provide references for those sad enough to want to check.
Overall, have the Leave side made the economic case for leaving convincing? I'm not convinced.
1973 was a very long time ago. Using some rough guesstimates from the population pyramid, only about half of the current UK population was alive at the time. If you discount anyone under the age of 16, the then school leaving age, that leaves 23% of the UK's current population with working experience of the world before we joined the Common Market.
That will also hold broadly true in many Commonwealth countries. In fact, many are developing countries, which have experienced massive population growth in the late 20th century, so theirs will be even lower. Less than a quarter of the workforce has any experience of operating in the pre-Europe days.
This means that there aren't really any residual ties to our former markets left. Had we left the EEC in 1975, as we could have done, then re-establishing those relationships would have been much easier. But they will have faded into the distant past, like the Sunningdale Agreement, the Cod Wars, the Lonrho affair, and Rick Wakeman's Six Wives of Henry VIII (All also from 1973). There aren't any companies waiting by the phones to resume trading. Times have moved on.
Britain enjoyed a close relationship with these places because it had been, until very recently, their lord and master, or at least first amongst equals with respect to the former Dominions. Much of this trade had taken place on terms which had been disastrous for the colonies. Empires are rarely benign to their subjects, and Britain was no exception. I can't see that they will want to resume a relationship which represents the darkest period in their histories.
The notion is that the former colonials will jump at the chance to make the mother country the 'most favoured nation' for trading again. This is laughable, and also flies very close to the line in terms of imperialistic racism. The Leave campaign can't really think that these places have spent four and a half decades pining after Britain. They've moved on. Perhaps we should too.
We will be the number one export market for the rest of the EU
If we will struggle to trade with the rest of the world, or the Commonwealth, then that leaves us with one last great hope. As part of the EU, we conduct a lot of trade with Europe. And I mean a lot. It accounts for 48% of our exports, according to HMRC. In March 2016, we exported £12 billion to the EU, and imported £20.2 billion in return. Both our imports to and our exports from Europe have risen in recent years.
This is a reason the Leave campaign give for us being in a good position to barter with the EU if we leave. They need us, and we need them. In fact, they need us more than we need them. So we are bound to get a good deal in negotiating access to the EU's trade area. Otherwise the EU will be cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Perhaps. But what troubles me is that, if we do leave, the EU are not going to be very charitable. Leaving will probably deliver a profound shock to the European and global economies. If nothing else, the uncertainty around how exactly we leave, and on what terms, will inject a nice shot of uncertainty. Economies hate uncertainty. It causes them to slow, and sometimes contract. The EU's economic model barely weathered the storm of the Euro crisis. The chaos of the second largest EU economy trying to pull out would be severe.
Also, the UK is not the only country to have its Eurosceptics. A vote to leave would embolden these movements all over Europe. What would the EU's last weapon against them be? To show that leaving the EU is not an easy move. We can expect them to fight us every inch of the way. Yes, it is bitter and nasty. But from their point of view, it would be a mess of our own making.
So, if we do vote to leave in June, I wouldn't be expecting our spurned European neighbours to be rushing to welcome us back. Depressingly, this does seem to be the Leave campaigns view of affairs.
Summary
So, there you have my take on it. I'm sure you can find plenty to dispute in this. I have tried my best on figures and statistics, and am happy to provide references for those sad enough to want to check.
Overall, have the Leave side made the economic case for leaving convincing? I'm not convinced.
Monday, 9 May 2016
Britain and the EU: Countdown to Decision Day
In seven weeks time, we are all faced with a choice. Every single one of us who can vote will be asked whether the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Union.
As decisions go, this is pretty big. As a society, we have become used to having unlimited choice. The degree of choice over how we live our lives, what we buy, what we eat, who we see, is unparalleled in human history. Much of this has been fuelled by advances in technology unthinkable even twenty years ago.
This extends to politics too, albeit on a slower scale. If we vote for a government we come to dislike, we can throw them out again after five years. Councillors, after four years. Even if it takes time, we can always change our political decisions.
Yet if we vote to leave the EU on June 23rd, that will essentially be final. We will have crossed a point of no return. Leaving will be definitive. We can't join and leave every few years just because our politicians and public opinion keep shifting.
So this means that the ball is very much in the Out campaigners court. We have a reasonable idea of what life inside the EU is like. Since 1973 we have been members of the EU and the EEC. If I want to know what life outside is like, however, the only examples are from pre-1973, and are therefore harder to map onto modern Britain.
The burden of proof is therefore on the Leave campaign. How will quitting the EU improve our way of life in the 21st century?
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to analyse the different cases for leaving the EU, as put out by the media, the various Leave campaigns, and various voices on the internet. I see them as being:
- The economic case for leaving
- The diplomatic case for leaving
- The political case for leaving
- The 'gut feeling' case for leaving
As leaving is the greater break, the bigger departure from the status quo, it seems only fair to analyse their claims first. If I get time, I may look at the arguments for remaining. But they are essentially the reverse.
Obviously I come at this with my own set of prejudices, many of which will be known, but hopefully some are still a surprise to some of you. I hope this helps those who are confused by the arguments being hurled around at the moment.
If nothing else, I hope it persuades at least one person who wouldn't otherwise to go and vote on June 23rd. Even if their only reason is to stop me writing another blog post, I feel I will have achieved something.
A symbol of just how topsy turvy EU campaigns can be... From the 1975 referendum. Britain voted 2:1 to stay in the EEC.
Thursday, 5 May 2016
Ghosts from the past
Yesterday I met a man who was, essentially, a ghost from the past.
He was born in Berlin in the early 1930s, a year or so before the Nazis came to power. He briefly lived in London in the mid 1930s, before settling in the Netherlands. When the Netherlands fell during the summer of 1940, he moved to Amsterdam. He is Jewish, and as a result settled in the Jewish area of that city.
He told of how he used to play in the park up the road, all the boys at one end, all the girls at the other. One of those girls went on to become the most recognisable face and voice of the greatest horror of the twentieth century. He said that, had he realised she would become so famous, he would have gone over and said hello.
Eventually, he was taken to Bergen Belsen, a name which sends fear into any person with knowledge of history. Somehow, he survived there for nearly a year. As the war was coming to an end, and the Nazi regime was collapsing, he was taken from the camp, and moved around Germany, to be used as a bargaining chip by the Nazis in a last desperate bid to make peace with the Western Allies.
And finally, he was found by some Soviet soldiers. The horror was over. He still had the rest of his life ahead of him. And now, in his twilight years, he has decided to tell his story, so those of us cosy in our existence realise that this could happen again, and it must not be allowed to.
Yesterday, I met a man who survived the Holocaust, the horror of horrors from the last century.
Yesterday, I met a man who had essentially met Anne Frank.
Yesterday, I saw a bunch of twelve and thirteen year olds sit and listen animatedly for over an hour to this guy and his story.
Yesterday, I had a reminder of why I love history, and why I love teaching it.
The past is, as LP Hartley told us, a foreign country. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to meet a traveller from it.
He was born in Berlin in the early 1930s, a year or so before the Nazis came to power. He briefly lived in London in the mid 1930s, before settling in the Netherlands. When the Netherlands fell during the summer of 1940, he moved to Amsterdam. He is Jewish, and as a result settled in the Jewish area of that city.
He told of how he used to play in the park up the road, all the boys at one end, all the girls at the other. One of those girls went on to become the most recognisable face and voice of the greatest horror of the twentieth century. He said that, had he realised she would become so famous, he would have gone over and said hello.
Eventually, he was taken to Bergen Belsen, a name which sends fear into any person with knowledge of history. Somehow, he survived there for nearly a year. As the war was coming to an end, and the Nazi regime was collapsing, he was taken from the camp, and moved around Germany, to be used as a bargaining chip by the Nazis in a last desperate bid to make peace with the Western Allies.
And finally, he was found by some Soviet soldiers. The horror was over. He still had the rest of his life ahead of him. And now, in his twilight years, he has decided to tell his story, so those of us cosy in our existence realise that this could happen again, and it must not be allowed to.
Yesterday, I met a man who survived the Holocaust, the horror of horrors from the last century.
Yesterday, I met a man who had essentially met Anne Frank.
Yesterday, I saw a bunch of twelve and thirteen year olds sit and listen animatedly for over an hour to this guy and his story.
Yesterday, I had a reminder of why I love history, and why I love teaching it.
The past is, as LP Hartley told us, a foreign country. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to meet a traveller from it.
Wednesday, 4 May 2016
The (Republican) Carnival Is Over
So, they've done it. Back in the distant of summer of 2015, I was one of many who thought that Donald Trump's entry into the US presidential race was nothing but a hilarious sideshow. The Donald had massively unfavourable opinion poll ratings, he was a shambolic campaigner, he was good at alienating many of the key segments of American society. I just couldn't see what the Republican Party would gain from nominating him. And I will admit, I laughed.
Today, I am still laughing.
This may seem odd. Trump's win in Indiana has resulted in his two final opponents exiting the Republican nomination race. Barring some sort of divine intervention, or critical scandal, Trump will be the GOP's candidate for the presidency.
And what a candidate. Trump is not a conservative. He holds a wide range of bizarre views, some of which change by the hour. He is not the man his supporters think he is. He is insulting, confrontational, and basically insulting. He is also extremely unpopular. No one has become their party's nomination with such a small percentage of the primary vote since the introduction of the modern primary system in the early 1970s.
For the Republican Party, this is nothing short of a catastrophe. And I have no sympathy for them. Their opposition to Obama helped to create the conditions which facilitated Trump's run. They failed to stand up to Trump until it was too late. They allowed his outrageous behaviour to continue unchecked, his ridiculous claims to go unchallenged.
If they were serious about stopping Trump, the GOP should have fought every step of the way. Cruz and Kasich should have fought in the last ditch for a contested convention. The mechanisms to stop him were there all along.
Instead, they have abdicated their responsibility, and let the monster in. And given him the wheel too. Some analysts even question whether the Republicans will survive the electoral whirlwind that Trump will bring down on them. Many governors, senators and congressmen are looking nervously at their races.
The Republicans failed to stop Trump. That role now lies in the hands of Hillary Clinton, and the voters. He is screwed. As are many in the party he has hijacked.
For the Republican Party, the carnival is well and truly over.
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