SOME daydreams never go away. One of them is that if only Britain were to become fully committed to the European Union (Community, as was), then it would be able to influence the development of this institution in a way more amenable not only to British interests (which anyway are quite often merely the interests of a section of British society) but the British way of doings things.
Allied to this piece of wishful thinking is another, which is that the EU’s institutions are sufficiently chastened by recent events to have resolved henceforth to ‘do less, and do it better’. These ‘recent events’ have ranged from Denmark’s 1992 rejection of the Maastricht Treaty through other treaty ‘no’ votes to the current eurozone crisis.
Well, during the last 40 years Britain has had some governments that are keen on our EU membership and some that are less so. But it has made no difference whichever sort has been in office because the EU has continued to develop in ways that, if the opinion polls are to be believed, British people find less and less amenable.
As for doing less and doing it better, how has this fared during what should have been a textbook opportunity, the ‘existential crisis’ facing the EU thanks to three years’-worth of turbulence engulfing the single currency?
Let’s find out by looking at the agenda for the latest six-monthly presidency of the EU. It happens that Ireland holds the presidency, but these agendas tend to look pretty similar.
By my count, the EU has more than 60 ‘priorities’. These include sport, taking in ‘the issue of dual careers for sportspeople’, youth, including a ‘structured dialogue process with young people’ (lucky them), equality, including trying to get more women on the boards of major companies, and space, as in Dan Dare, Captain Kirk and so forth.
If this is the EU’s slimmed-down agenda after three years of crisis, we must be thankful that the euro was not a roaring success.
1) The best of British…for all the good it will do
ONE illusion about the European Union has not, however, survived the woes of the euro, and for this we should be grateful. This was the official line from British Europhiles (I am not sure how often it was heard from their opposite numbers in other member-states) that politics was essentially a branch of administration and that some things were best ‘done’ at a European level, others at a national level, others still at the regional or local level.
Allied to this was the notion that there was no way the EU was supplanting member-states; it was simply doing different things from them.
Now it is pretty much accepted that the eurozone is going to have to become a genuine political union, with its own treasury to sit alongside its existing central bank. The parliament is going to have to become a proper parliament, and a real president will be needed in place of the current five, none of whom is really a president (for the record, they are the president of the bank, of the parliament, of the council of ministers, of the rotating presidency - currently Ireland, as noted above - and, of course, of the European Commission).
Some of us have always insisted that there needs to be an ultimate locus of authority in any set of political arrangements, and to that extent we can take some satisfaction from the recognition in Brussels that this is indeed the case.
Britain, of course, will not be part of this new country (which is what it amounts to), hence David Cameron’s speech, when we eventually hear it. But just how easy will it be to put the new union together? It has been a commonplace during the euro crisis to describe France as a wild card in the pack, in that it has one foot in the ‘northern’ camp of fiscally rigorous eurozone members (Germany, the Netherlands, Finland) and one in the more easy-going, deficit prone ‘southern’ camp.
With the looming construction of political union, however, other French peculiarities become more obvious: the large defence force, the bases round the world, the strategic nuclear weapons, the centralised political structure. It is hard to see the French knuckling down as a municipality in the new eurozone federation.
Indeed, the whole ‘political union’ project looks shaky. I have a horrible feeling we will cheer the new entity from the sidelines rather in the manner of 50 years ago, when we fervently wished former colonies all the best as independent states and declared that they had a bright future, while secretly fearing it would all go badly wrong as, too often, it did.
2) Funny, that…
OUTGOING US defence secretary Leon Panetta was on the Today programme Saturday morning, where he was pressed a couple of times, in effect, to repeat recent Washington admonitions (gratefully received by us British, I’m sure) as to the importance of remaining an engaged member of the EU. Mr Panetta declined, preferring instead to stress the importance of British membership of NATO, which is not a matter of domestic controversy. He said also that the question of EU membership was a matter for the British people.
Come the 9am news, and there was no room for Mr Panetta’s remarks. Doubtless he would have been similarly absent had he urged us all to stay at the ‘heart of Europe’.
3) Not the shipping forecast: Viking good becoming stormy
HERE is a prediction of the most unscientific kind. A big financial or economic (or both) crisis is set to engulf one or more of our Nordic neighbours and you’d be wise to liquidate any investments you may be holding in that part of the world.
How so? It stands to reason. With the current mania for Scandinavian television thrillers at a peak, the only way is down. Our admiration for all things Norse-like is clearly riding for a fall.
I’m reminded of two previous similar episodes (no pun intended).
In the late Eighties, the United States was similarly a focus of popular-cultural fascination. The new satellite broadcasting services beamed American sports and films into British homes round the clock. City traders would make a point of watching CNN or live baseball in Square Mile wine bars. Mark Lawson wrote a very funny short story at this time of a middle-class Londoner who manages to live an American life in the Smoke, thanks to cable TV, burger restaurants and a studied grasp of trans-Atlantic argot.
This was the era of the baseball cap, of the fad for calling crisps ‘chips’ and chips ‘fries’, of claimed fan-dom of a team called the Something Dolphins or the Somewhere Meatpackers, who as far the rest of us were concerned, could be engaged in any of two or three sports, none of which interested us in any way.
Shortly thereafter, the American economy went badly awry, unemployment soared, the debt and deficit – which have become even more enormous problems more than 20 years later – came to the fore and the incumbent President, George HW Bush, lost office.
The second fall from a great height was that of the Republic of Ireland, the ‘Celtic Tiger’ of ten years ago, with a booming economy, great cultural scene, ‘positive attitude to Europe’ (naturally), bright young people and go-getting business leaders. Then the tiger’s teeth fell out.
Sell Scandinavia!
4) A fond and very sad farewell
ONE man who saw Ireland’s follies at first hand was Dennis O’Driscoll, the senior Dublin civil servant who, in the manner of PD James’s Commander Adam Dalgliesh, published many highly-regarded volumes of poetry to the delight of readers everywhere. He died on Christmas Eve at the absurdly young age of 58 and among those at the funeral were his friend Seamus Heaney and the President of Ireland, Michael Higgins.
I became pen (and phone) pals with Dennis like this. In the summer of 1996, I was covering for the regular diarist at The Guardian and among the ton of stuff that came in was the latest edition of London Magazine, containing a piece by Dennis entitled ’Toad Hull: Philip Larkin and work’. For the uninitiated, Larkin’s career in librarianship reached its pinnacle at Hull University, and the poet referred to the whole business of paid employment as a ‘toad’.
As a Larkin fan since my teens, this was the first time I had read a succinct account of how the great man fitted into his day job and how it, in turn, shaped him and provided a second outlet for his creativity alongside his poetry.
Through the magazine I made contact with Dennis (my copy still has the scrawled noted I made of his office address: Room 514, Castle House, South St George’s Street, Dublin 2) and the result of our chat made a nice item for the diary.
We stayed in touch by letter and phone and sent copies of each other’s books (a grossly unfair trade, as Dennis was far more prolific than I am). In Dublin for my wife’s 40th birthday, I thought we would actually meet, but it was not to be.
In 1999, years before the Irish renaissance all went wrong, he published a collection that include The Celtic Tiger, the opening lines of which are stiff with (entirely justified) scepticism:
Ireland’s boom is in full swing.
Rows of numbers set in a cloudless blue
Computer background, prove the point.
Nor was he always sparing of poetry in general. Writing in the Spring 1997 edition of Thumbscrew magazine, he poured scorn on those poets who are in search of state or corporate handouts, residencies, fellowships and prizes:
‘Ask not what you can do for poetry but what poetry can do for you. Forget the sentimental idea of poetry as a higher calling, a vocation, the obligations of which transcend expectations of recognition or reward. You pat my back and I’ll pat yours. You scratch my eye and I’ll scratch out yours. Tell me who the judge is and I’ll tell you who the winner will be.’
A desperately sad loss.
5) Finally, an unexpected thank you
SOUTHERN Railway, not always my favourite organisation, did a great job getting me and my fellow commuters home on Friday evening as nightfall descended on the Arctic tundra that used to be the county of Sussex. Delays (which even someone as unreasonable as I am can accept were inevitable) seemed to be held on most routes to about 20 minutes or so.
I many never say this again, but thank you.
Thanks again for reading and enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Going South: Why Britain Will Have A Third World Economy By 2014, by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson is published by Palgrave Macmillan