Osborne Refuse to Dole Out €31bn to Eurozone

Paul Donovan of UBS on Jeff Randall Live this evening stated that the EU needed to end its isolation from the UK. Sounds like a good idea to me and one which the likes of Germany would agree with since the German Foreign Minister spoke today of the need for his country to be part of a european project that we were a part of in order to cope with its past. I can understand that and would be happy to be part of a european project so long as that project was about free trade rather than the protectionism encapsulated in the CAP and the common fisheries policy. The first makes food expensive and the second destroys our fish stocks. We should say 'no' more often since after the orgy of abuse against us and attempts to make us the scapegoat for the failure of the eurozone members to solve the euro crisis the other EU members have never been so nice to us - apart of course from France. We have now said we will not contribute €31bn to the euro bail out fund which for dodgy legal reasons has to be paid to the IMF which will then pass it on to the eurozone countries which need it. Again the language against us is intemperate but we had made it clear all along that whereas we were happy to increase our sub to the IMF we would only do so if it were for the benefit of IMF members generally and not only or specifically to eurozone members. Funny isn't it that euroland fails to understand that when we make to statements we mean them but saying no on this second occasion may take longer to heal the rift although other EU countries may well be emboldened to follow a similar line. I have never understood why we should pay anything towards euro crisis suffering eurozone member countries when we warned of the consequences of joining the euro and when there was a solution at hand namely for Germany and the other strong euro economies to help Greece and perhaps Portugal (Dan Morris of JP Morgan thinks the fund being put together is far from enough and that . Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a good blog on this here. 

A Funny Thing Happened at the EU Summit

I hear from someone with good Downing Street intelligence that at last week's EU summit Cameron had all other 8 non eurozone countries ready to say 'no' to the Merkozy proposal but that van Rompuy persuaded them after hours of debate to change tack as to do so would satisfy the markets that something was being done to save the euro and furthermore would result in the talks concluding within probably an hour but certainly in no longer than two hours. Cameron pleaded with the other 8 to stand firm with him as the markets would not be taken in for a moment and saying he would vote no anyway. Cameron was quite right about the markets but why has this story not been reported by the media? My guess is that Cameron does not want to embarrass the other 8 particularly as several of them now seem to be back tracking from the qualified 'yes' they gave to the Merkozy plan. Clegg's attitude to the events of last week get curiouser and curiouser. First he says he supports Cameron, then he says Cameron got it wrong and has left us a pygmy amongst other nations, isolated and without influence and now it seems he is saying we still have influence over the EU agenda and it is significant that we have been given observer status at talks about fiscal union. Clegg is clearly a hard man to pin down, rather like the Vicar of Bray. Perhaps the way the French have behaved has persuaded him that even LibDems would agree with normal people that the French need taking down a peg or two. Perhaps he is struck by the fact of Mrs Merkel calling Cameron since the events of last week in what is understood to be a friendly exchange. Clegg presumably knows the detail of what was discussed between Merkel and Cameron and realises things are not as bad as he thought them to be and that he went too far with his remarks on the Marr show last Sunday. Whatever, Clegg has demonstrated his irrelevance.  

Play Up! Play Up! And Play The Game!

The euro crisis descends into farce and will shortly reach its end. The so called plan evolved by Merkozy last week is no plan to save the euro. It is a plan for the future governance of those members of the EU who think there is benefit in joining a half cocked fiscal union. Already it is no longer 26 for and 1 against. Those against are growing as the politicians of those members now harbouring doubts realise that they might find it difficult if not impossible to sell the loss of sovereignty to their electors that a fiscal union implies, even a half cocked one. Cameron's stand against the nonsense of a fiscal union (let's believe that that was what he was doing in Brussels in the early hours of Friday last week) is shown to be more prescient as each day goes by. Even van Rompuy has realised that the madcap scheme will founder unless Cameron is seen to be involved in trying to get it off the ground. That can be the only reason why Cameron has been asked to attend the deliberations of the EU on the whole fiscal union subject. Cameron should make his attendance conditional on our getting what we want by way of treaty change and, it being too late now to save the euro at least in its present form, that for all our sakes an orderly wind up be agreed urgently. Maybe it is still possible for the euro to be split into two with France and the southern european states in eurosud and Germany and the northern countries in euronord. If not each country will have to return to its own currency. Cameron at the moment has centre stage (given to him in particular by the antics of Sarkozy, Noyer and Baroin) and has a chance in a lifetime to become a world  statesman of stature if he pursues the logic of what he's started and what this country wants. Clearly the europeans are crying out for the leadership that the two big beasts, Merkel and Sarkozy, have singularly failed to give them. Cameron must now come to the crease. He must play up, play up and play the game.  

French Mustard

The French are really quite extraordinary. Not only does Sarkozy call our Prime Minister an 'obstinate kid' if you read the papers or a 'petulant child' if you listen to the BBC but now the head of the Banque de France is saying that France's rating should not be down graded but that ours should be instead. What else are they going to throw at us? I know that earlier this year they were complaining how unfair our victory over them at Agincourt was as we had used weapons of mass destruction, i.e. longbows, that had apparently been ruled illegal by the medieval version of the European Court of Human Rights or something. As usual the French are exercising their ancient right of special pleading which of course they have always done whenever they have felt hard done by. Nobody likes being downgraded but the thing no Englishman has ever understood is why the French believe themselves to be so special. Are they cleverer than we are? Are they more inventive than we are, more cultured, more intellectual, better dressed, better educated, etc? Not really, if we're honest, although I have to admit I would not know how to measure these things. If we were to take the number of Nobel Laureates as a measure the French would lose. They have 58 and we have 120 - over twice as many as they have. This is a ridiculous comparison though and who cares other than the touchy French as demonstrated by the undiplomatic statement of that low flying frog about Cameron and the petulant remark by the head of the Banque de France. Perhaps it is our indifference to them that makes them unhappy with us. Perhaps it is because we look out to the world whereas they only look out of their backyard. Perhaps it is our easy going manner. Perhaps it is because we share a common heritage with the anglosphere which is of greater significance than the heritage they share with the francosphere. Whatever it is it is bemusing or would be if you wanted to waste time worrying about it. If it's any consolation to them we are still happy to drink their wine.

Better Isolation Than Integration

It is always interesting to know what our critics in the EU think of us. Not much it seems, certainly not after Cameron's refusal to play the Merkozy tune last week. If that pompous, arrogant, idiot Verhofstadt, MEP and head cheese of the Liberals in the joke European Parliament (a perfect partner for Huhne), is anything to go by we are to be punished for Cameron's action. Verhostadt's reaction just goes to confirm the view held by many Britons that the continent is governed by people who prefer rule by an elitist clique rather than by democratic mandate. The ultimate evidence supporting this view is the way the EU elite has forced Italy and Greece to replace their governments with an unelected council which of course reflects the way the EU governing body is itself constituted. Perhaps that is why the EU is disliked so much in this country on those occasions when people are forced to think about it and at other times just dismissed from the people's mind. The EU elite think we are a bunch of coarse vulgarians. Maybe they are right but so what. At least we are democratic vulgarians who believe in the rule of law. Having only been around for less than 7 decades in their current form it is uncertain how much the continentals believe in the rule of law. I would prefer a country where everything is possible rather than one where nothing is possible unless you are in some way attached to the elite. An American friend who has lived all of his adult life outside the United States and most of it in France but with stretches in the UK and other places has returned again from France to live in London. He had been living in La France Profonde and felt isolated there but did not want to live in Paris because Paris is a closed, non-cosmopolitan city and he prefers the worldliness of London. So much therefore for the insults thrown at us by the likes of Verhofstadt. Such insults reveal not only their hatred for this country but also their jealousy. Members of this elite seem to hate their own countries too. Are their own countries so awful that they have to deny them? Verhofstadt comes from that unnatural country Belgium so I suppose one can understand his desire to be a citizen of anywhere else.

Praise Where It's Due

At the time I would usually be thinking about writing a blog I was on the way to the Western Eye Hospital in Marylebone late yesterday afternoon to find out what was wrong with my right eye. On arrival I was walking to the receptionist's desk behind a little old lady when I and the little old lady, two feet away from the desk, were overtaken by a young woman with a friend running to get ahead of us. I told the young lady to get back in line and although she most unwillingly let the little old lady be dealt with first she certainly was not going to allow me to do likewise. Despite this irritating introduction to the Western Eye Hospital the rest of the experience was surprisingly easy. The receptionist in the 24/7 A&E clinic told me that I was lucky as there were so few people waiting to be seen.  I had to wait about 20 minutes to see a nurse who took the details and gave me drops. I then waited about 40 minutes to see the doctor who spent some time examining my eyes and who found a tear in the right eye's retina. He got his superior to have a look to see if he had made a correct diagnosis. They carried out one or two other tests and got me to sign a waiver for the laser procedure they wanted to carry out. There was then another 20 minute wait before the senior of the two doctors took me into a treatment room and lasered my retina around the tear. I have to go back in a week's time to get the all clear. All in all I was at the hospital about 2 hours forty minutes which passed quickly enough as I had taken a good book to read. No wonder a good percentage of those in the clinic were from overseas one of whom was absolutely amazed that she did not have to pay anything for the treatment she had received. "It was an emergency," the receptionist said.    

Euro Crisis? What Euro Crisis?

I had thought the EU Summit was to sort out the euro crisis but nothing was done to do so. Everything that was proposed is for the future. The euro is burning and yet those great captains Merkel and Sarkozy, who rule the eurozone, fiddle. Why is that not a surprise. It speaks volumes of the quality of the people involved. Not only of Merkel and Sarkozy but of the other EU member leaders too as well as of their advisers and of course of the eurocrats. They are acting like rabbits caught in the headlights, frozen into inaction. All they can do is to recite the mantra of Monnet or of whichever of the nuts it was who dictated that each crisis in the EU should be used to advance the integration of its members into another country called Europe. Their idea of fiscal union is to ensure that each country has the same tax rates etc. unlike the USA where each state has its own tax regime with a federal tax rate set by the federal government. Janet Daley has a good take on this point in the Telegraph here. By trying to set up a fiscal union where everything is controlled from Brussels by unelected eurocrats the europeans show their distrust of democracy. They are proposing a soviet style of government that I fail to understand how the more democratic countries in the EU are prepared to sign up to. Perhaps in the last analysis, when the full details of the fiscal union become clear, they wont. As for France and Germany, with their historical predilection for dictatorship, it is no surprise at all that they are prepared to propose such an undemocratic construct. Of course the fun will come when they have to comply with their own rules, for example the 3% of GDP deficit limit. We have been there before when they excused themselves from so doing    shortly after the euro was introduced. This is a mess we will be far better out of and thanks to Cameron we now have the opportunity to change our relationship with the EU. Not of course that Clegg and the LibDems are happy with what happened. Indeed it took Clegg only a day to change his tune from saying that he and Cameron had discussed the tactics to be taken at the Summit to complaining that Cameron blew the negotiations. Does Clegg want the financial transaction tax that Merkozy were insisting on? Talking of which it seems that Merkozy agreed that it would not be imposed on Ireland so the inference is that Merkozy don't really care one way or the other about the tax but that they were determined to make the UK the scapegoat for their own inadequacies in solving the euro crisis.