Locking Horns
Now here's an intelligent article by Michael White writing in The Guardian on politics in general and the politics of Europe in particular.
I canot imagine Ed Milband, or any other political leader for that matter, giving such a robust and clear-headed response to that hoary old question inspired by Monty Python - "What has Europe ever done for us?"
Here's a reminder from Life of Brian on just how ridiculous politics can become if no one stands up to the zealots.
Faced with Nigel Farage, what would Tony Blair do?
Admit it – Labour's triple election winner would have known how to handle the threat from the Ukip leader
How did Tony Blair deal with William Hague's 2001 election campaign, run on xenophobic themes? He ignored it. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
What would Tony Blair do about the threat posed by Nigel Farage, Ukip's pub quiz champion who always sticks to his special subject? "Who cares?" is the usual answer from some grander pundits on both left and right who share an interest in denigrating Labour's triple election winner. A pity – they might learn something.
Actually, we know what Blair would do because he has already done it. He would largely ignore the European issue as presented by Ukip itself. All polls confirm that it is low on the list of most voter concerns compared with bread-and-butter problems such as rewarding jobs or the state of the NHS. Europe is shorthand for alienation from the political process and dismay at the pace of change in our globalised world – including immigration, carelessly handled by Blair's complacent government.
As Tory leader in 2001 William Hague, a true child of Margaret Thatcher, decided to run his election campaign on xenophobic themes – Britain as "a foreign land" and the like. Blair ignored it. Watching Labour candidates defending marginal seats that year in Kent, exposed as it is to some downsides of immigration, I heard voters complaining about jobs, schools and the poor state of some local hospitals, not about "saving the pound". New Labour creamed Hague (and Gordon Brown saved the pound).
That does not mean Blair or his team would ignore Farage completely. When the Ukip leader slips up the old pro would be on him like a tiger. Vladimir Putin as an admired international statesman? Both Alex Salmond and Nigel Farage, Little Britain nationalists (different bits of Britain), have expressed respect for Putin's reassertion of Russian national pride. So have other rightwing populists across Europe (Salmond's genius is to be both right and left). It is a mistake Blair would have hammered.
Putin runs a lawless, authoritarian state, overdependent on oil and gas, heading the wrong way in the modern world. You can hear Blair saying it, can't you? Cheeky chappie that he is, he might even add that, for all its woes, post-war Iraq is struggling not to do the same – in the face of religious fundamentalism and thin-skinned nationalism.
As a matter of fact, largely forgotten, Blair and Farage have clashed directly. Nigel Farage v Tony Blair in 2005
It happened at the Strasbourg parliament in 2005 after Blair cut a compromise deal on Britain's EU rebate – Maggie's famous handbag rebate in Tory-speak. He did so in return for reform of the bloated agricultural budget (it's happening, though painfully slowly) and Farage complained that he had been completely outclassed ("game, set and match") by President Jacques Chirac of France, this in the year – irony alert – that Chirac won the 2012 Olympics bid for Paris.
Watch that clip again. For once Farage turns up and fights his corner. It can't have been easy in a hostile setting like that. Good for Nigel. You may think he came out of the exchange best. What is not in dispute is that Blair had a coherent answer which sounds like a man doing a man's job instead of pandering to Ukippery as David Cameron does.
He did it to win the Tory leadership in 2005 (he foolishly promised to leave the conservative group in Strasbourg and did) and has done again too often since. Fat good it has done Cameron since every concession leads to more "transitional demands" – as the left comrades would put it. The anti-EU camp and its backers in the oligarch press want us out. Not since they helped force a vengeful peace at Versailles in 1918 have they done such harm to British interests (unless you count pre-war appeasement in 1938).
Here's what Blair told Farage. For all the feebleness and folly of EU leadership since then, for all Blair's own greedy excess, it remains the correct answer:
"Let me just tell you, sir, and your colleagues: you sit with our country's flag; you do not represent our country's interests. This is the year: 2005, not 1945. We're not fighting each other any more. These are our partners. They're our colleagues and our future lies in Europe. And when you and your colleagues say: 'What do we get in return for what we contribute to enlargement?', I'll tell you what we get. We get a Europe that is unified after years of dictatorship in the east. We get economic development in countries whom we have championed. We get a future reform that allows us – once and for all – to put an end to discussion about rebates, common agricultural policy, and get a proper budget for Europe. That's what we get if we have the vision to seize that opportunity."
Of course by 2005, Blair, though re-elected for a third time, was mired in the legacy of the bloody Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, and much enfeebled at home by his own civil war with Brown. Unwisely persuaded by Jack Straw, he had promised a referendum on the EU constitution which the French and – of all people – the saintly Dutch torpedoed on his behalf when they voted it down.
Never glad confident morning again for Blair or the EU, which staggers on preoccupied with its internal economic problems, overextended and unable to say boo to the Faragiste pin-up in the Kremlin as he unleashes forces he may not be able to control in Ukraine.
Love him or hate him, do we really think Blair, the wannabe global plutocrat with a flair for elective politics, would not have made a better fist of coordinating EU policy if he, not Herman Van Thingy, had been in charge? Or a better fist of sticking it to good old Nigel? Go on, admit it, you know he would have been better.
Admit it – Labour's triple election winner would have known how to handle the threat from the Ukip leader
How did Tony Blair deal with William Hague's 2001 election campaign, run on xenophobic themes? He ignored it. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
What would Tony Blair do about the threat posed by Nigel Farage, Ukip's pub quiz champion who always sticks to his special subject? "Who cares?" is the usual answer from some grander pundits on both left and right who share an interest in denigrating Labour's triple election winner. A pity – they might learn something.
Actually, we know what Blair would do because he has already done it. He would largely ignore the European issue as presented by Ukip itself. All polls confirm that it is low on the list of most voter concerns compared with bread-and-butter problems such as rewarding jobs or the state of the NHS. Europe is shorthand for alienation from the political process and dismay at the pace of change in our globalised world – including immigration, carelessly handled by Blair's complacent government.
As Tory leader in 2001 William Hague, a true child of Margaret Thatcher, decided to run his election campaign on xenophobic themes – Britain as "a foreign land" and the like. Blair ignored it. Watching Labour candidates defending marginal seats that year in Kent, exposed as it is to some downsides of immigration, I heard voters complaining about jobs, schools and the poor state of some local hospitals, not about "saving the pound". New Labour creamed Hague (and Gordon Brown saved the pound).
That does not mean Blair or his team would ignore Farage completely. When the Ukip leader slips up the old pro would be on him like a tiger. Vladimir Putin as an admired international statesman? Both Alex Salmond and Nigel Farage, Little Britain nationalists (different bits of Britain), have expressed respect for Putin's reassertion of Russian national pride. So have other rightwing populists across Europe (Salmond's genius is to be both right and left). It is a mistake Blair would have hammered.
Putin runs a lawless, authoritarian state, overdependent on oil and gas, heading the wrong way in the modern world. You can hear Blair saying it, can't you? Cheeky chappie that he is, he might even add that, for all its woes, post-war Iraq is struggling not to do the same – in the face of religious fundamentalism and thin-skinned nationalism.
As a matter of fact, largely forgotten, Blair and Farage have clashed directly. Nigel Farage v Tony Blair in 2005
It happened at the Strasbourg parliament in 2005 after Blair cut a compromise deal on Britain's EU rebate – Maggie's famous handbag rebate in Tory-speak. He did so in return for reform of the bloated agricultural budget (it's happening, though painfully slowly) and Farage complained that he had been completely outclassed ("game, set and match") by President Jacques Chirac of France, this in the year – irony alert – that Chirac won the 2012 Olympics bid for Paris.
Watch that clip again. For once Farage turns up and fights his corner. It can't have been easy in a hostile setting like that. Good for Nigel. You may think he came out of the exchange best. What is not in dispute is that Blair had a coherent answer which sounds like a man doing a man's job instead of pandering to Ukippery as David Cameron does.
He did it to win the Tory leadership in 2005 (he foolishly promised to leave the conservative group in Strasbourg and did) and has done again too often since. Fat good it has done Cameron since every concession leads to more "transitional demands" – as the left comrades would put it. The anti-EU camp and its backers in the oligarch press want us out. Not since they helped force a vengeful peace at Versailles in 1918 have they done such harm to British interests (unless you count pre-war appeasement in 1938).
Here's what Blair told Farage. For all the feebleness and folly of EU leadership since then, for all Blair's own greedy excess, it remains the correct answer:
"Let me just tell you, sir, and your colleagues: you sit with our country's flag; you do not represent our country's interests. This is the year: 2005, not 1945. We're not fighting each other any more. These are our partners. They're our colleagues and our future lies in Europe. And when you and your colleagues say: 'What do we get in return for what we contribute to enlargement?', I'll tell you what we get. We get a Europe that is unified after years of dictatorship in the east. We get economic development in countries whom we have championed. We get a future reform that allows us – once and for all – to put an end to discussion about rebates, common agricultural policy, and get a proper budget for Europe. That's what we get if we have the vision to seize that opportunity."
Of course by 2005, Blair, though re-elected for a third time, was mired in the legacy of the bloody Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, and much enfeebled at home by his own civil war with Brown. Unwisely persuaded by Jack Straw, he had promised a referendum on the EU constitution which the French and – of all people – the saintly Dutch torpedoed on his behalf when they voted it down.
Never glad confident morning again for Blair or the EU, which staggers on preoccupied with its internal economic problems, overextended and unable to say boo to the Faragiste pin-up in the Kremlin as he unleashes forces he may not be able to control in Ukraine.
Love him or hate him, do we really think Blair, the wannabe global plutocrat with a flair for elective politics, would not have made a better fist of coordinating EU policy if he, not Herman Van Thingy, had been in charge? Or a better fist of sticking it to good old Nigel? Go on, admit it, you know he would have been better.
