Three reasons why Blair should not be sent to Brussels

There are three reasons why Tony Blair should not be appointed as president of the European Union's Council of Ministers, a position that is incorrectly but probably irreversibly being dubbed "President of Europe". The most important has to do with Britain's place in Europe.

The other two have to do with Blair himself.

First, his scoffing at international law and cuddling up to George Bush -- clearly a man with no love of internationalism -- should disqualify him for any prestigious position representing a group of countries. Indeed, a case could be made that he should be sent to The Hague to face war crime charges rather than Brussels to be feted. The war in Iraq was unwanted in Europe (including Britain), probably illegal and fought based on lies. He should not be rewarded for this.

Second, Blair the European was always a con. He promised much but delivered next to nothing. We are no closer -- indeed, may be further away -- from joining the euro than we were when he took office. Our role as a "third" power with France and Germany is laughable. Given the chance to lead Britain into Europe, he caved in and promised a referendum on the ill-fated EU constitution, knowing that Britons would have rejected it out of hand.

In short, he is not qualified for the job.

Now comes the main reason. The British people only need a small push to send the country out of the EU, a disastrous prospect for our economy, society and place in the world. It is not their fault -- they have been subject to decades of lies from newspapers and politicians stirring up false notions of nationalism. No one -- least of all supposedly pro-European politicians like Blair -- ever defends it. They tend, rather, to blame their own shortcomings on it.

So here is the prospect of an intensely divisive and in some areas despised man being touted for a leading position that is being created by a treaty that rightly or wrongly most Britons are suspicious of. The disgust is already palpable.

It would do untold damage to Briton's already shaky relationship with Europe and play directly into the hands of eurosceptic politicians ready to drum up the (false) spectre of Brussels undemocratically running British lives.

For the sake of Britain in Europe if nothing else, this should not be allowed to happen.

Poor Britannia

Voters often complain that they like none of the candidates presented to them. It is a luxury enjoyed by those of us who live in democracies. At least we get to whinge about it.

Having said that, Britain has a major problem at the moment as a general election next year gets closer. We have three choices outside regional or fringe parties - tired authoritarians, untrustworthy anti-Europeans or ineffective outsiders. Here is the problem:

Labour: First, This is the party that blew its chances for greatness when Tony Blair sacrificed it to George Bush's wars. Second, Gordon Brown has proven incapable of transferring years of wanting to be the leader into actually being one. Probably a decent man -- and certainly not given enough credit for encouraging a global response to the financial crisis -- he has become intensely unpopular and probably reached the point of no return.

More importantly, Labour is arrogantly authoritarian. It is often assumed that left-of-centre parties are liberal, but this is not the case. Old socialist tendencies along with years of being in power have created a party of control freaks. All they can talk about is cracking down on this or that, or forcing society to move in one direction or another that it may not want to go.

Time they were gone.

Tories: Anyone watching David Cameron on today's Andrew Marr show can see the problem. They want to be new and improved but they don't have it in their DNA. Cameron couldn't answer the simplest questions for fear of stirring up either rage within his own party (Europe) or among voters (public service cuts).

Europe is their poisoned chalice. They have already begun swaggering around telling other EU leaders how things should be done and the scepticism within their ranks is dangerously close to separatism from the EU. Even Cameron knows what a disaster that would be for Britain's role in the world and its economy. He just can't say it.

A key element of their Europe policy is to get Britain out of some of the EU's social agenda. These are things such as retirement age, maternity leave, health and safety, job security -- in short the best things that Europe has to offer its citizens. All the Tories want is a free trade zone.

If the Tories get in -- and it does seem likely -- we have years ahead of us of clashing with our EU partners, laws aimed at making life easier for the richer among us, and a nod and a wink to business to keep doing what it has been doing.

They don't deserve a chance.

Liberal Democrats: Almost not worth mentioning because they cannot and will not win. Too many things are stacked against them, mainly in terms of the voting system, but also in their choice of leader. Nick Clegg is decent enough, but essentially a poor man's Cameron.

The LibDem policies appeal to me. They are pro-Europe, green, not averse to a modest bit of wealth distribution, anti-war, and good on compassion. But so was Gandhi and he has as much of a chance of being next prime minister as Clegg, even if he is dead.

Worth supporting, but its like kissing your grandmother.

So, poor Britannia. But at least we are allowed to whinge.

Should the BNP be invited to speak on the BBC?

The BBC has invited the British National Party, a far-right, racist group, to have a panellist on the public affairs programme Question Time. The rationale is that the BNP had two members elected to the European Parliament at the last election. Here is your chance to vote on the situation:

Should the BBC invite the BNP on Question Time?

• Yes
• Yes, but I won't watch
• No

Created on Sep 6, 2009

View Results

poll by twiigs.com

American healthcare is not medical Nirvana

You can tell a lot about a country's aspirations and view of itself from soap television. Consider the working class struggle and booze-fest depicted in Britain's Eastenders against the middle-class consumerist angst in something like America's Bold and the Beautiful.

So when it comes to healthcare, a noisy American debate that has suddenly dragged Britain's poor old National Health Service into the transatlantic limelight, you can compare the underfunded, scruffiness of Britain's Holby City with the pristine efficiency of America's Private Practice. (Is no one ugly in American healthcare?).

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Private Practice is what America thinks its healthcare is all about. But it isn't. Most Americans who are lucky enough to have health insurance do not generally get anything like the top-notch treatment as touted by the medical profession, free-market right and drug companies.

They may be like my family was, limited to HMOs who tell you who you can see and for what, yelling at you for taking a sick child to the "wrong" hospital. Or they may be like a dear, now-departed old man I knew who was bounced from one expensive specialist to another for years being misdiagnosed while Medicare picked up his bills.

If they live in a small, poor town in rural America, they will be lucky if they get more than a local pill-pusher and county hospital with limited facilities. But that can even happen in cities too.

So don't buy the argument that a new America healthcare system will somehow destroy medical Nirvana. It is already a mess for most people.

Now none of this is to say that Britain's NHS is perfect. It is just as scruffy, overworked and understaffed as Holby City portrays. It also makes plenty of mistakes and can be an incompetent bureaucratic nightmare.

But it has one thing going for it that American healthcare does not. It is there and anyone can use it. There are no fears in Britain of growing old and not having medical coverage. Health insurance is not even an afterthought if you get laid off or your business goes under.

Like publicly funded schools it is there to serve you. Like the publicly funded military it is there to protect you.

Give me Holby City over Private Practice any time -- although I wouldn't mind the odd Addison Montgomery wondering around NHS the wards.

Reaching across generations

This week has brought with it three events that have dragged my brain into the past, allowing me to muse on history and life (my abiding pleasure).

-- The 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 taking off for the moon. I was a teenager in England. My father and I dragged mattresses into the the "television room" and sat up all night watching Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the surface and forget about poor old Collins circling around above. It was a great family moment. The evening involved TV telling us how astronauts peed and pooed. The BBC was splendid.

It dawned on me this week that we watched the event on a black and white television with rabbit ears. Looking around at current technology around me only made me realise what a feat it was. There were no VCRs or touch tone phones, let alone DVDs, laptops or iPhones. How did they do it?

-- The death of Walter Cronkite. He meant more to my American friends than to me. But his passing away brought back memories of Watergate, the Vietnam War and the demise of Richard Nixon, all of which he presided over as a God of Journalism.

I am not entirely sure that the America that emerged from those years of turmoil is headed in any more of a right direction than it was at the time. But I do know that instead of a Cronkite telling it like it is, poor Americans are now plagued with biased, misleading and self-serving news reporters. It would have been great to really know what Walter thought of the evil crazies on Fox and the trash talk shows that surrounded his final years and pollute the minds of a nation that deserves and needs better.

-- The passing of Henry Allingham, aged 113. It surprised me how sad I felt when I heard that the "twice teenager" had gone. I guess it was because I liked the idea of someone going on and on participating in a war that so few remember.

The death of Mr Allingham (at his age, the "Mr" is obligatory) reminded me of once meeting a Boer War veteran. He was a Chelsea Pensioner and I was about eight. I have always liked the idea of reaching across generations by chance meetings. The same idea goes, for example, with shaking the hands of someone who once shook hands with Churchill etc.

Soggy with nostalgia, this week. Silly, really. But then life is, isn't it.

How EU worked for Britain over Iran

No one in Britain ever points out the benefits being in the European Union. So I will. Just one small example more or less ignored by the country.

When Iran started arresting employees of the British Embassy in Tehran, the EU acted with one voice and called in all the Iranian ambassadors, country by country, to complain. It is what partners do.

It may be stretching it a bit to say that this turned the Iranians around on its own. But they cannot afford to alienate all of Europe. Britain, the not-quite-great Satan, yes. But not 27 countries representing almost 500 million people. 

As of this post, only one is still being held out of the estimated nine who were originally taken. Thank you, EU.

Telling the truth about Euroscepticism

It is one of the irritations of being a pro-European Briton that no one ever stands up for the EU in this country. The nearest you get is some barely known Liberal Democrat on a television programme like Question Time arguing that without it the UK would be in worse shape. Other than that it is Eurocrats this, crazy regulations that, we won the war etc. 

So it is with a degree of pleasure that I recently came upon a paper from Simon Tilford, chief economist at the rather thoughtful British think tank, the Centre for European Reform. Tilford does not exactly defend the EU, but he does attack those who attack it, saying they are not telling the truth. British Eurosceptics, he says, are not being honest about what retreat from full membership of the European Union would mean. 

A newly 'emancipated' Britain would not remain part of the EU's single market, at least not on the terms the Eurosceptics claim. It would not reduce the regulatory and compliance costs facing UK business and it would end our ability to shape the EU's single market.

Essentially, Tilford argues that Britain's anti-EUers -- who range from idiots who talk about independence, to tabloid nationalists and Tories who yearn for an England long gone -- would give up any say in their own affairs in exchange for being able to say that they were not actually in the EU.

Britain needs to step up its involvement in the EU, not leave the playing field in a huff. It needs to strive to ensure that EU financial regulation is -- as far as possible -- proportionate and reconcilable with the UK approach. More generally, it needs to make common cause with other economically liberal member-states to ensure that the EU evolves in a direction that serves British interests.

Tilford unfortunately thinks in terms of what Britain can get out of the EU rather than what the EU can achieve as a body. He also focuses too much on financial matters (but, then again, he is the CER's chief economist).

But at least there is someone with a bit of intellect out there trying to tell Britons that the EU is more than just a faceless body that demands that all bananas be straight and that it would be a unmitigated disaster for Britain to disengage.

We need more of this kind of argument. Britons must not be allowed to slide out of the EU in a state of blissful ignorance created by lazy journalists and ignorant politicians.