The Wardman Wire

An interesting article about how the Conservatives should react to the Reform “Treaty” over at the University of Birmingham Conservative Future Blog:

Having wiggled out of a referendum, Labour’s majority will ensure easy pass through Parliament. The Conservatives are too small in numbers to affect the outcome. So, privately, we admit defeat. Publically, our argument should be confined to the treaty itself, and only expressed when necessary. Our opposition should be put on record and made known so that people can have their say at the next election.

Gordon Brown, very generously, has given Parliament twenty weeks to debate the treaty. He might be hoping that a prolonged debate will give the Tory right the opportunity to sound off, and to question the UK’s whole membership of the EU.

They should shut-up. While some might be content with the party remaining a pressure group, the Lisbon Treaty is a glaring example of how, in the end, it’s a majority that counts.

It is also an example of how Governments can attempt to get away with straightforward deception, and how politicians wanting a particular outcome manipulate the political process - in this case by seeking to minimise the number of countries holding referenda.

I have no idea how the Tories will play it, but I hope it continues to point up the fin de siecle nature of the Brown administration.

James Laurenson made an even more interesting comment on the post:

Oh please. Firstly, the treaty doesn’t create the post of EU President, it merely transforms it from a 6 month rotating post to a two and a half year appointed post. So the person in charge actually gets picked based on merit and not on who’s turn it is, and has enough time to set more than fleeting agenda.

Anyone who imagines that political posts are picked purely (or even mainly) on merit must have had their head in a bucket for the last 50 years. They are picked - especially in a multi-national body such as the EU - by horse trading between power blocks. Period. The only way you guarantee a good one is when the leading candidates for each faction are all good.

In the EU in particular, the smaller states are over-represented so we get a preponderance of people exercising power who have never had to face responsibility on the same level.

Secondly, much in the same vein, the representative for foreign affairs is not a new post but really an amalgamation of two existing ones with overlapping duties. Because God forbid the EU actually gets more efficient.

My impression is that the “existing” arrangements have worked reasonably well - the EU is definitely continuing to function. However, in my view, the EU (or it’s associated politicians) does not - in general - do efficient. It is usually just too difficult.

Why do we still have a European Parliamentary calvacade traipsing between three countries like the Court of King Caractacus? The answer is simple: the triumph of sectional politics over efficiency.

Consider, for example, the situation with International Aid highlighted by Clare Short (this is back in 1998) when she ran the Department for International Development:

Clare Short has condemned the way the European Union distributes its overseas aid.

The UK international development secretary told a House of Commons committee the process was “inefficient” and “appalling”.

Ms Short said money that had previously gone to the poorest countries in the world, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, was increasingly being targeted towards relatively affluent Mediterranean states.

This meant aid had become “skewed quite dreadfully against the poorest countries”, she said.

In the past decade, the proportion of aid spent on sub-Saharan African has dropped from almost two-thirds to only slightly more than a third.

And it was a result of politics:

She added: “This wasn’t done as a conspiracy against the poor. It came about as a series of political decisions. Money is thrown in to express political concern and it’s often used ineffectively.

“This happens so much in development. The rhetoric of development is always about the poor but a lot of the spending is about other purposes - political, self-interest of individual countries.

“The net effect is this very unprincipled allocation.”

Thridly, your problem with qualified majority voting is… what?

In a sentence, that it can override national interest without national consent. Not acceptable in many areas of policy.

Fourthly, we can tolerate a ratchet clause as long as it never gets used. And if it does get used, we always have the option of refusing to recognise the change. Such is the voluntary nature of international (albeit the special character of EU) law.

And the guarantee that it will never be used? Ockham’s razor would suggest eliminating the unnecessary. That clause is a retrospective elephant trap.

My basic take with the EU is that the pro-European position is to be sceptical about institutions that attempt to dissolve real diversity.

[tags]reform treaty, eu constitution, conservative future, gordon brown[/tags]