One of the elephant traps which is potentially enlarged by modern opportunities for instantaneous comment is that all too many people in public life engage their laptops, Blackberries, or iPhones before they have fully engaged their brains.
I am struck by the number of people who commented within hours of the breakdown of last week’s negotiations in Brussels. Some were howling with delight, others were howling with horror. Distinguished contributors to these pages were forecasting boom or doom for their respective political viewpoints.
The champagne-fueled glee of some euro-sceptic MPs on Friday evening was clearly premature. In my view, the Prime Minister was wise to eschew that triumphalism when he made his statement to the Commons on Monday. Meanwhile, the Deputy Prime Minister’s hard-headed assessment of the summit’s outcome on Andrew Marr’s show the day before was a brave departure from the tendency of Government Ministers to “hold the line” no matter how questionable it is.
The comments of past masters (Heseltine, Mandelson, Brittan, Clarke for example) reflected the DPM’s concerns. As so often, these seemed worth a great deal more study than the purple prose of hysterical rent-a-quoters. Though there was clearly substantial public support for Cameron’s veto (it would be silly to deny as much), I detect that even some of the eurosceptic papers began to worry about its implications once the dust had settled.
For one day, and one tweet, a bit of two-fingers-to-Brussels isolationism may be appealing. Indeed, much of the most outlandish Conservative euro-phobia was addressed at local party activists who will have the deciding voice about who gets which seat when constituency boundaries change. But MPs seeking re-selection ought to remember that views exaggerated to appease influential fanatics in Conservative Associations may not be so appealing to the rather more temperate, wider public.
This may be yet another case of “Sound Bite versus Sound Sense” : I suspect that Winston Churchill gave himself plenty of time to think before he suggested joint Anglo-French nationality and urged the creation of a “United States of Europe”. Do his successors give themselves that luxury?
@Lord Tyler:
From the moment I first became aware of politics, on any serious level, I was immediately in awe of Churchill’s speech in Zurixh on the United States of Europe. And no matter how events have taken over, with ups and downs, and the Eurosceptic press, which is certainly steeped in hatred of our amazing civilization and culture as one force, my hope for it has never diminished.
I went to a talk given by Dr Otto von Hapsburg in 2003. He was born the Crown Prince of Hungary and his account of the rise of the Paneuropean-Union excited me in the extreme. I understood at once, what a world changing movement this would be. And for the benefit of all.
This man became a Member of the European Parliament at the first direct election in June 1979. His life was an enlightenment, even though it veered here and there. And he was dedicated to this peace promoting concept.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Habsburg
For the UK to think of separating from this part of ourselves is more than a betrayal of the concept, it is a betrayal of our future as a united people for the betterment of mankind.
Those who walk away from this union should hang their head in shame. Their petty preferences and idiot ill will is Luddite in the extreme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvRznNKYl08
And that speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oUyFS556s
“it would be silly to deny there was clear public support for Cameron’s veto”
—
It would be even sillier to claim that such veto and such instant public support were either right or had their “brains engaged” first,
now wouldn’t it ?
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“Doom and Gloom – ” ?
Isn’t this one-and-only Human Civilisation already CAUSING real Gloom, to this Earth’s Lifesupports, by FORCING two (2) Earthsworth of human-life-supports out of this one-and-only Earth, just to maintain the 2010 worldwide 7 (seven) billion human status quo ?
and causing real Doom, by already implementing further Plans to increase that ‘back-breaking’ Demand to three (3) Earthsworth, to maintain 2010-standard-of-living but by 11 (eleven) billion humans, still ‘marking-time’, by 2050 ?
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Evidently, Lord Soley, it is much more than mere “brains” that need to be engaged here; don’t you think ?
(Sorry, above last sentence should have been:)
Evidently, Lord Tyler,
(it is much more than mere “brains” that need to be engaged…)
If one contorts and looks up one’s own backside, it is amazing how twittish some of the very serious remarks one made five, or ten years ago, do seem.
Perhaps poetry improves with age, like a good bottle of wine , hopefully having no ephemeral, or political, axe to grind.
Perhaps historians are the only ones to make politics interesting, and then…poetic, with liberal use of true and false myth.
Historians will find it a nightmare to piece together the strands of history given the move away from simple exchanges of letters to telephone calls, twitter exchanges, emails, Facebook and electronic versions of newspapers. It would be a miracle if the evolution of the thinking of a biographer’s subject can in future be tracked, or if the development of events in a crisis period like the Fall of France in 1940 could be tracked any more. History and those who enjoy its study will be the poorer.
Perhaps politicians should also be concerned about the lies that come out of their mouths when they open them.
Oddly though, no one seems to matter (apart from the victims) about the massive frequency of lies from the politicians.
Shame on the lords for not at least blogging each time say Cameron, Osbourne or IDS lies.
Mind you, it would keep the lords busy if they did.
But the public might have some respect for them if they did..
“Historians will find it a nightmare to piece together the strands of history given the move away”
But we do need a concept of history at the present moment, tweets or no tweets.
Either Dave H or Dan commented on the Federalist approach, which we all ignored, myself included. I have done so for 25 years or more, simply because at that time it was certainly not a wise response.
One theory for dealing with a superstate, a cartel of states, such as the EU, which is in permanent crisis, is to start a Federalist revolution!
In the past Federalist theory has been employed , generally in, unsuccessful, attempts to deal with Quebec secession, or the Irish question or, and such local state problems, but to revive the Maastricht Treaty and Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe, use of the terms, without hesitation, might well effect the air of permanent crisis that the EU seems to be in.
I’m less interested in federalist solutions to nations falling apart and more in those to nations too small to prosper alone. What I fail to understand is why the USA has held together and prospered, despite obvious strains (even setting aside the revenue deficits since President Carter), under a federal structure and a common currency, when the EU under an even more loose federal structure and a not wholly common currency does not seem to inspire faith that it will hold together, let alone prosper. Is the solution to define more precisely that federal structure and try to move to a more coterminous single currency (push out the non-EU states, drag in the recalcitrants like, er, the UK)? But that’s a big debate.
Meanwhile, on the issue of tweets, politicians cannot help revealing their thoughts sooner or later. The problem is for historians, as there is no long term database for tweets, only those that get reported in the more permanent press are on record.
I don’t suppose many US citizens understand that either!
I was a member of the European Movement Council in the 80s when Federalism was on the agenda and yet it was scarcely ever discussed and certainly not by me. (Graham Greene the writer was a companion of ours at that time on the Council; his rare public appearances).
I don’t think it was relevant then; there were far more important issues to discuss but in a Union of, going on, 28 states, it would be no bad thing to discuss it in more detail.
Especially since there are a good many other
Cartels of nation states even in the European region.
The SEECI (South East European Cooperative Initiative) and the SEECP (SEE Cooperative Process) are two distinct groups of cartel
with similar mebership but founded in different capital on Sofia and the other Bucharest, one promoted by outside agencies and the other Self creating.
They obviously don’t consider that the EU
of which both nation states are themselves members, is sufficient, or adequate as an organization for them NOT to establish another one with states further afield than
the EU can consider extending.
The states that they do include are geographically integrated, but are far from being “deliberative supernations” (only founded in 1996/7) a legal concept, an understanding of the supremacy of European law over national law.
An extended discussion, certainly in the UK
about the meaning and possibilities of Federation, would at this juncture be useful both internally to the UK and externally to the EU as a whole……. Federal Law of the EU; how would that sound???!!
The whole issue of the Lockerbie bomber being repatriated by Scottish law, but not by UK law might have thus been avoided,
campaigning US citizens at the time, blithely ignoring the possibility that THAT is very nearly what we have got, just like they have, but on a much smaller scale.
The repatriation of US citizens without a by your leave or thank you to a European nation state where a crime may have been committed might also, by the reverse procedure, be avoided.
Are European citizens supranational citizens or not, the same as US ones? A US passport does better.