EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Spain. Show all posts

Ulla+Schmidt[i-Ulla+Schmidt]Through the MPs' expenses scandal, one occasionally heard noises off from our European "partners" who seemed to be amazed that there should be so much public outrage about what is, in other climes, perfectly normal behaviour.

Now, it seems, the Germans are having their own version. Social Democrat Health Minister Ulla Schmidt has raised a storm of protest after it emerged that she had flown out to Spain on holiday while instructing her official chauffeur to drive her ministerial limousine down from Germany to meet her at her holiday destination.

After the 3,000-mile trip in the official Mercedes, the chauffeur was kept on duty for two weeks, at the beck and call of his minister, being paid handsomely as overtime, while he shuttled her to and from the beach.

Embarrassingly, the chauffeur never got to do the 3,000-mile return trip as enterprising Spanish thieves nicked the motor, thus leading to the revelations in the press about the minister's little arrangement.

Interestingly, the minister was perfectly within the rules to use her official car for this purpose – so we have another "I was only obeying the rules" scenario, which went down so well in the UK.

The revelations have come at a particularly unhappy time for Frau Schmidt, now dubbed "S-Class Ulla" after the Mercedes model that disappeared. With a general election in the offing, the Social Democrats are positioning themselves as the party best equipped to lead the country out of the economic and financial crisis.

In her defence, I suppose, Frau Schmidt could claim that she was creating employment – not least for Spanish car thieves – and no one could complain that these were ruinously expensive "green jobs" so beloved of our ruling classes.

COMMENT THREAD

Alberto_Saiz[i-Alberto_Saiz]Some light relief for our readers while the boss concentrates on the really important news of the day. But it seems that in some countries highly placed officials resign after being accused of misusing public money.

The chap in question is The Director of the Spanish Secret Service, CNI, Alberto Sáiz, who resigned after several weeks of revelations and claims about him in the press, led by newspaper El Mundo.

There are some entertaining aspects to the story:

The paper printed a list of claims saying that Sáiz had made private use of the CNI facilities, including international hunting and fishing trips, and used his post to help family and friends.

When the revelations about him surfaced in the press he was then accused of using sophisticated lie detector equipment against his own agents in an attempt to track down the leaks to the press.

I wonder why some of our people, politicians and officials have not thought of those "sophisticated lie detectors". Or, perhaps, they did and they do not work any more than the less sophisticated thumb screws do.

The Times has some details on the accusations.

COMMENT THREAD

green+jobs[i-green+jobs]While the stupidity of president Obama continues to break new records, one would struggle for find anything more facile than his claim that his obsession with global warming will create millions of new green jobs and so spur the US economy toward recovery.

Now, even Reuters is beginning to notice, offering a details of a Spanish report which rather confounds Obama's enthusiasm for Spain as an example to follow.

The report is produced by economics professor Juan Carlos of the University of Madrid, who has found that for every green job "created" by the Spanish government, an average of 2.2 other jobs have been destroyed. And, of those fabulous green jobs, only 1 in 10 was permanent.

"Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the US should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created," writes professor Gabriel Calzada in an introduction to the study.

"The study's results demonstrate how such 'green jobs' policy clearly hinders Spain's way out of the current economic crisis, even while US politicians insist that rushing into such a scheme will ease their own emergence from the turmoil," Calzada writes.

However, Reuters has found a way of dismissing this inconvenient truth, relying on a Wall Street Journal clog which notes that Calzada, as the founder of a libertarian think tank, "might not be completely objective" – as against railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri, of course, who is totally objective.

COMMENT THREAD

hms_daring1[i-hms_daring1]Edward Leigh – he of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) – is at it again, his committee this time reporting on the ill-starred Type 45 Destroyers.

This warship type, as readers will know, is to form the backbone of the Royal Navy's air defence capability, replacing the ageing Type 42s. To that effect, the ships are fitted with the French manufactured Aster missile, known by the acronym PAAMS (Principle Anti-Aircraft Missile System).

Leigh's main beef is that, although the first (of six) Type 45 will enter service in 2009, "it is a disgrace that it will do so without a PAAMS missile having been fired from the ship, and will not achieve full operational capability until 2011." He (or his committee) also complains that other equipments and capabilities which will enhance the ship's ability to conduct anti-air warfare operations will not be fitted until after the ship enters service in some cases.

As to the committee's diagnosis of the main problem, it notes that, although the Type 45 was based on 80 percent new technology, the MoD failed to take sufficient account of this in its assessment of technical risk or in the commercial construct that it agreed. Thus, it decides that the Ministry "needs to improve its understanding of technical risks at the start of its projects" and should "factor in more realistic allowance for risk on its more technically complex projects."

To say that this is a somewhat superficial finding is something of an understatement. What the committee does not identify is that PAAMS is another of those ghastly European co-operative ventures, with the French having the design lead on the Aster missile. The delays in the deployment of the weapons system, therefore, owe as much to our French partners as they do the MoD.

Further, as we rehearsed nearly four years ago, the genesis of the Type 45 goes back to 1985, with the ill-fated NFR-90 (NATO Frigate Replacement for 90s) programme, a multi-national attempt at designing a common frigate for several Nato nations, including France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the United States and Canada.

Inevitably, with such an ambitious project and with such disparate requirements, the project could not succeed and it was abandoned in the early 1990s, after US and the UK had withdrawn, the latter in 1989 after fears that the design would not meet the requirements for replacing the Type 42 air-defence destroyers.

It was then in 1992, on John Major's watch, when he was imbued with the desire to be "at the heart of Europe" that his Conservative government opted for a "European" solution, setting up the Horizon "Common New Generation Frigate" project with France and Italy.

The project comprised two separate but linked projects – the basic platform (ship), and the missile/radar complex. And while the platform was a common venture, and the British elected for their own radar, the missile system – known as the PAAMS (Principal Anti-Aircraft Missiles system) – was to be French-built by EUROPAAMS.

It was a Labour government then in 1999 that abandoned the Horizon project, the MoD then electing to go for a British-built platform, which had been the original intention back in 1985 before a Nato solution had been considered. A year later, a "fixed price" contract was awarded to BAE Systems for twelve ships, scheduled to enter service by the end of 2014.

Interestingly, the entire programme was budgeted at about £6 billion, including PAAMS, the development of which had been agreed in 1995 by a Conservative government, despite fears over escalating costs. The target cost per ship (excluding missiles) was about £270 million, with as much again for the missiles.

The PAC now observes that it is "disappointing" that the MoD has taken so long - over 20 years, it says - to deliver its replacement for the Type 42s. But it then refers to the Type 45 entering service over two years late and £1.5 billion over budget. In fact, it is 20 years late, and more than £6 billion over the originally planned budget.

The crucial issue though is that this is another of those "legacy" procurement projects started in the days when European co-operation was all the rage, and many of the problems currently experienced stem from that – making the Conservatives jointly responsible for the cost over-runs and delays.

It jars, therefore, to find Liam Fox - as always – scoring party political points on this project, claiming that: "This report highlights the extraordinary risk that this Government is taking with our nation's defences in an increasingly volatile world."

"Its appalling incompetence," he adds, "has left the Royal Navy having to "juggle and hope" with only half the new ships it was supposed to have, and a fleet of exhausted Type 42s that are more than three decades old."

But for the Euro-enthusiasm of the previous Conservative government, the Type 42 replacements would already have been in service for some years. And, instead of relying on the European fixation with developing highly sophisticated technical projects like missile systems from scratch, we would possibly have relied – as do the Americans – on evolutionary projects such as an enhanced Sea Dart, developing the technology already in service on the Type 42.

To reduce costs, we could also have shared Spain's philosophy. Put off by the French insistence on a new European combat system, it went for the "proven and ready to go" US sales pitch for its F100 frigate, which features the Aegis system and Standard missiles, the current US maritime anti-aircraft systems.

Spain's IZAR shipbuilders formed industrial bonds with Lockheed Martin, enabling it to build its own platforms while benefiting from state-of-the-art technology, delivering ships with greater capabilities than the Type 45 which included Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-submarine missiles – at around half the cost for each platform.

Arguably, had the previous Conservative government followed this route, the massive cost increases could have been avoided, in which case we would have twelve ships instead of the six now being purchased. Dr Fox, therefore, is playing politics.

COMMENT THREAD

Booker+crops[i-Booker+crops]Building on our pieces about global weather conditions and the harvest prospects, Booker launches into the issue today in his column.

The simple thesis is that accumulated evidence points to the beginnings of a global cooling trend which, inevitably, is having an impact on food production. But so besotted are out politicians with their myth of CO2-induced global warming that they have not noticed what is happening in the real world.

Booker also notes that it is more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, he tells us, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century.

Right on cue comes another article on sunspot activity from Watts up with that, adding strength to the overall thesis, which tells us something serious and disturbing is happening.

It really cannot be stressed enough how close are the margins of global food production. With total world consumption of grains in 2009/10 forecast at 1,736 million tons, actual production is expected to reach only 1,721 million tons – and even that is an optimistic forecast which is being revised downwards as each month passes.

This means that the global community will, over the next year, be living off accumulated stocks, currently standing at 344 million tons, representing 17 percent of total production.

That is a healthy enough position for the moment, except that most experts believe that global production has peaked while consumption can only continue to increase. Even without the weather effect, it will not take very long at all for global stocks to erode but, if the harvest conditions are replicated next year and beyond – which looks increasingly likely – it will not be at all long before we are looking at real shortages.

Increasingly though, it is not only the politicians who are wrapped up in the global warming myth. Just as the so-called science begins to crack apart and the warmist religion looks less credible each day, The Daily Telegraph appoints as it environment editor Geoffrey Lean, a fading refugee from the bankrupt Independent on Sunday, to promote the discredited creed (this marking a further stage in the newspaper's retreat from conservative values).

Grasping at the last gambit which the warmists hope will rescue their creed, Lean tries to make the case that promoting green issues is actually good for the economy, jobs, the universe and everything. He fails to note, of course, that Spain's drive for renewable energy has cost 2.2 jobs for every job "green energy" created, and that much of the capacity is now off-line to avoid destablising the grid.

What Lean is actually doing though is pointing up the fact that greenery is now big business, something we have pointed out before, presenting the corporates with yet another opportunity for plundering the private purse. As The Times noted last March, "green" investment is making a lot of rich people even richer

Now wonder, as Lean points out, the chief executives of 100 top companies ranging from Dupont to Deutsche Bank have called for tough measures to cut emissions of carbon dioxide. And to drive the point home, we also learn that WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) now enjoys an annual income exceeding $650 million. Green activism is seriously big business.

On the other hand, agriculture and food production are mature industries, fragmented and delivering poor margins, without the opportunities for government-sponsored "rip-offs" which characterise the green movement. Thus, the "smart money" is still in global warming because that is where the fortunes are to be made. That a very significant proportion of the world faces starvation is clearly a small price to pay for the greed and stupidity of the green lobby.

COMMENT THREAD

Airbus+350[i-Airbus+350]
The leading producer of imaginative computer graphics of non-existent aircraft (example above) is back in the fray again, this time seeking state loans of €3.6 billion for its latest set of graphics.

Codenamed the A-350, representing a long-range medium-capacity airliner not dissimilar to the Boeing 787, the project is intended to produce a range of high-definition graphics which may be turned into a real aeroplane some time after 2013. The producer, Airbus Industries, is thus turning to France, Germany, Spain, and possibly Britain for the money, which it says will account for 30 percent of the development.

Needless to say, the developer of real aeroplanes, which actually fly and make money, is none too happy at the prospect of having to compete in the crowded computer graphics market and is warning that this could re-ignite a trade dispute between the EU and the US over subsidies.

Ted Austell, Boeing's vice president for public policy, says "We can only reiterate our position that Airbus should finance its computer graphics aircraft development using its own cash and commercial loans."

However, tiring of the existing set of graphics code-named A-400M, government ministers representing France, Germany, Spain and Britain are to meet on 15 June at the Paris Air Show to discuss the new set. They have not been given the approval to work out an agreement, so the negotiations may be protracted, especially as Britain is still considering whether to contribute.

Should Britain decide to take part, the wing representations will be produced in a studio in Bristol by Polish émigrés, ready for presentation to the contributing states in 2017, in time for a loan request for a further €10 billion, in order to generate the wiring diagrams.

Safety experts applauded the developments, remarking that the current generation of virtual aircraft had been almost entirely accident-free. So far, no lives had been lost.

If this trend continues, says Dr Norbert O T Goodenough, the A-350 graphics will outstrip all previous efforts and possibly even exceed the safety record of the A-400M graphics. This can only be spoiled if they actually produce the aircraft, he says, although the chances of this are so slight that Goodenough remains unconcerned.

COMMENT THREAD

eu+elections[i-eu+elections]This is our running post, on which we'll follow the UK results as they come in. Updates added at the bottom.

In the 2004 elections the Tories pulled 26.7 percent of the vote and Labour got 22.6. UKIP grabbed 16.1 percent, beating the Lib-Dems into third place, trailing with 14.9 percent. The Greens got 6.3 and the BNP 4.9 percent.

Then, the candidates were fighting for 78 seats, the electorate producing a turnout of 38.2 percent. Under the Nice rules, only 72 seats are being fought.

20.30: It's going to be an interesting night. In the North East, with only three seats up for grabs, Labour seems set to take one. But the shock is that - at this time - the Tories and UKIP are "neck and neck", with the Lib-Dems coming fourth. Last time round, it was the three main parties that took the seats.

20.33: East Midlands … Keith Vaz believes the Labour vote is holding up. This is the region where, in 2005, Kilroy was standing, bringing in two seats. UKIP is on the back foot here.

20.41: First official estimate of the EU-wide turnout - 43.01 percent of eligible voters voted, compared with 45.47 percent last time.

20.49: In Ireland, Brian Cowen's "embattled Government" is under massive strain after its worst ever election meltdown and opposition claims it no longer has any credibility. The Dail will resume on Tuesday with a resurgent Fine Gael, now the largest party in the state for the first time, preparing to table a vote of no confidence.

20.50: A reminder - Northern Ireland takes three seats. The count there does not start until 9am tomorrow. Thus, we only get 69 results tonight. Official results start coming in from 9pm this evening.

20.53: Cornwall: Labour in sixth place?

20.59: Eastern region – UKIP looks as if they could have two, possibly three (outside chance). BNP vote collapsed.

21.00: Denmark - UEN and Greens each gain a seat. Sarkozy gets 11 more seats in France. Not an anti-government vote there, but likely to be an anomaly. Greens also up. Anti-capitalists also up.

21.04: North West - Lib-Dims claiming BNP will not get a seat.

21.10: Labour meltdown in Wales and Scotland predicted.

21.12: Swedish exit polls suggest the new populist Pirate Party has polled 7.4 percent of the vote. The opposition Social Democrats are getting 25 percent, up slightly from 2004. The biggest losers seem to be the the Left Party. Exit polls give it 5.1 per cent.

21.17: Romania's ruling coalition won the most votes. Each are expected to take one third of the 33 MEP seats on offer. The centre-left Social-Democrats have won 30.8 percent of the vote. The centrist Democrat-Liberals were just 0.3 percent behind. Each party is expected to win about 11 seats.

21.23: Eastern region: UKIP looking almost certainly three seats. UKFirst lead the rest of the minority groups, beating BNP.

21.36: In Lebanon, on the other hand, the turn-out was 52 per cent; somewhat higher than across the EU. Just thought I'd mention it.

21:40: Orkney led the pack, beating all the other local authority areas to announce its outcome. Lib-Dims secured 31.9 percent, SNP second on 20.2 percent, the Conservatives on 15.2 percent, Greens on 9.2 percent, UKIP on 8.5 percent, and the Labour Party trailing in sixth place on 7.0 percent. Turnout was 25.9 per cent.

21.43: North East: Labour 147,338, Cons 116,911, Lib-dims 103,444, UKIP 90,700, BNP 52,700, Greens 34,081, English Democrats 13,007, Socialist Labour Party 10,238, No2EU 8,066, Christian Party 7,263, Libertas 3,010, Jury Team 2,904. Labour gets one seat, second goes to Tories and the third to the Lib Dims. No change ... UKIP misses out with 15.4 percent of the vote, up 3.2. Labour down nine percent, Tories up one. At a rough count, the "tiddlers" (apart from BNP, Greens and UKIP) took 43,000 votes. If half had gone to UKIP, it would have got the seat.

21.48: Farage very defensive on BBC.

21.55: Tories might top the poll in Wales. UKIP might just get the fourth (of four) seats.

21.59: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives suffered around a six-percentage-point fall in their share of the vote but had a clear lead over other parties. The vote is seen a litmus test for Merkel ahead of the general election in September. FDP set to take 12 seats.

22.09: Less than 35 percent turnout in Germany.

22.14: Highest turnout recorded in Belgium at 91 percent.

22.17: The Fragrant One (Margot Wallstrom) calls the low turnout "a bad result." It shows the need to work to "change the perception" that the European Union is detached from its citizens. Not that the EU is "detached" - this is just a "perception". The voters got it wrong again.

22.32: Projections show Germany's Social Democrats heading for their worst showing in a nationwide election since the Second World War. But, with a 35 percent turnout (against 37.5 percent in 2004) it is difficult to judge. The Incidentally, the largest federal Land, North Rhine-Westphalia, only polled 18 percent.

22.33: Bruno Waterfield reports that the EU parliament has passed 404 laws since the last elections in 2004. Another 233 are in the pipeline, meaning that MEPs are currently "churning out" two pieces of EU law a week.

22.36: Yorkshire - Con Home suggests 2 Cons and one each for Lab, Lib-Dims, UKIP and BNP.

22.40: Count almost finished. Looks as if the Yorks result stands ... BNP's first seat, outperforming the North West.

22.44: Turnout in the North West was 31.9 percent. Manchester and Liverpool well down at 24 and 27 percent respectively. Results expected at around 11.30pm.

22.47: East Midlands expected in half-hour. UKIP vote well down.

22.50: Spain: "Right wing" People's party wins its first national victory for nine years. Socialist prime minister Zapatero sees a loss of 3.75 percentage points just 15 months after winning a general election.

22.51: In Cornwall, South West Region, the Cornish Nationalist Party seems to have beaten Labour, pushing it into sixth place.

22.52: Three updates have gone AWOL while everything the boss puts up stays up. I suspect a plot. If this goes on there will be a rebellion in Shepherds Bush.

23.00: One last attempt to report on a few items from other countries. If this does not work, the rebellion will take off. It will be painful for all concerned.

In Denmark Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen's Liberals are expected to keep their three seats while the Social Democrats, though in the lead, may well lose one to the Danish People's Party, usually described as anti-immigrant. It is, also, a centre-right conservative party that opposes further erosion of Danish sovereignty and Denmark's entry into the single currency. The People's Movement against the EU, which campaigns for Danish withdrawal from the bloc, is expected to hold on to its one seat. But the Eurosceptic June movement will not gain any MEPs. The turn-out was actually higher than in 2004 at 51 per cent, up from 47.9 per cent.

In Hungary the opposition FIDESZ party is set to take 16 seats out of the 22 allotted to the country. The Social Democrats are likely to have 4, down from 9 and the right-wing nationalist party, the Jobbik, looks like taking 2.

In Finland the Eurosceptic 'True Finns' party and the Finnish Christian Democrats are each expected to win two seats. The centre-right National Coalition Party, the liberal Centre Party and the Social Democratic Party are all projected to lose a seat each, taking them down to three, three and two MEPs respectively.

The Greens and the Swedish People's Party, who are also in the government, are expected to maintain a seat each.

23.12: Eastern Region result - Conservative 500,331 (31.2 - up 0.4 percent), UKIP, 313,921 (19.6 - no change), Lib Dims 221,235, Labour 167,833, Greens 141,016, BNP 97,013, UKFirst 38,185, English Democrats 32,211, Christian Party, 24,646, No2EU 13,923, SDP 13,599, Animals count 13,201, Libertas 9,940, Independent 9,916, Jury Team 6,354, Rejected 13,164. MEPs ... three Con, two UKIP, one LD, one Labour. Labour loses six percent.

23.28: Yorkshire: First BNP victory - Two Con, one Lab, one UKIP, one Lib-Dem, one BNP. Andy Burnham says "a sad moment". Share: Conservatives on 25 percent (no change) Labour down 8 percent.

Detailed results: Cons 299,802 (24.5 percent, down 0.2), Lab 230,009 (18.8 percent, down 7.5), UKIP 213,750 (17.4 percent, up 2.9), Lib-Dims 161,552 (13.2 percent, down 2.4), BNP 120,456 (8.5 percent, up 1.8) Greens 104,456 (8.5 percent, up 2.8), English Democrats 31,287, SLP 19,380, Christian Party 16,742, No2EU 15,614, Jury Team 7,181, Libertas 6,268. Turnout 32.3 percent - 1,226,180 voted out of an electorate of 3,792,415.

24:44: Wales: One Conservative, One Labour, One Plaid and one UKIP.

Euros+Wales[i-Euros+Wales]

00.01: A quick break from the UK results. Why, incidentally, is it taking so long to count them? Counting started at 4pm and so far we have had three results. What is keeping the others? Can find nothing about London, incidentally. Surely, those drongos aren't leaving the counting till tomorrow?

Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic the centre-right ODS has done reasonably well. It has gained 28.9 percent of the vote and retained nine seats. The Social Democrats gained 24.6 per cent and will have 7 seats. The Communist Party, unreformed since 1989, saw its vote drop from 20.3 to 15.5 percent and therefore lost two seats. The Christian Democrats gained a second seat, despite seeing their share of the vote drop from 9.6 to 8.2 percent.

00.09: Welsh results: Conservatives 145,193 (21.2 percent, up 1.8), Labour 138,852 (20.3 percent, down 12.2), Plaid 126, 702 (18.5 - up 1.1), UKIP 87,585 (12.8 - up 2.3), Lib-Dims 73,082 (10.7 - up 2.0) Greens 38,160 (5.6 - up 5.6) BNP 37,114 (5.6 - up 2.5) Christian Party 13,037, SLP 12,402, No2EU 8,600, Jury Team 3,793.

00.16: West Midlands - could be two UKIP.

00.18: Nigel Farage says: "So far there are tremors but before the end of the night we could have created a political earthquake."

0021: Vote share (BBC projection): Cons 27 percent, UKIP 17 percent, Labour (third place) 16 percent, Lib Dims 14 percent, Green 9 percent, BNP 6 percent. "The bottom end of Labour's expectations - it would be difficult for a major national party to do any worse."

00.22: London result delayed by "computer failure". (Typical. HS)

00.23: Turn-out in Slovakia was 19.6 percent, up from 2004 when it was 16.7 percent. Centre-left are in the lead. European Voice calls Slovakia the most apathetic country in the EU. Maybe they are just more honest about their politicians.

00.29: Worst Labour result in Wales since 1918.

00.34: Richard Corbett is the casualty in Yorkshire. He is deputy leader of Labour MEPs - and a rabid europhile.

Euros+seats[i-Euros+seats]
00.36: BBC projects thirteen seats for UKIP.

00.42: London: Conservatives 479,037, Lab 372,590, Lib-Dims 240,156, Greens 190,589, UKIP 188,440, BNP 86,420, Christian Party 51,336, Ind - Jananayagam 50,014, English Democrats 24,477, JT 7,284, N2E 17,758, Pl 8,444, SLP 15,3006, SPGB 4,050, Yes 2 E 3,384, Ind 1,972, Ind, 4,918, Ind, 3,248, Ind 1,603, Rejected 11,374

Three Conservatives, two Labour, one Lib-Dim, one Green, one UKIP. One less seat ... Labour loses one, otherwise no change. UKIP vote down 1.6 percent.

00.51: BBC predicts UKIP and Labour will gain same number of seats.

00.53: East Midlands. Two Con, one Lab, one UKIP, one Lib-Dim. Kilroy effect strikes ... UKIP down 10 percent, loses one seat. Lib-Dims gain one.

1.02: Pirate Party in Sweden will take only one seat with 7.1 percent of the vote. Shame. The four government coalition parties (moderately centre right) have won 42.5 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats and their allies, the Left Party and the Greens won 41.1 percent. Voter turn-out 43.8 percent, which is actually up on 2004.

1.07: According to the BBC UKIP is now in third position with 1,096,380, which is 15.5 per cent and 6 seats. Labour is second with 1,263,567, 17.8 per cent and 7 seats. Conservatives lead with 1,911,549, 12.0 per cent (1.6 per cent up) and 12 seats.

01.21: South West Region: BNP 60,889, Christian Party 21,329, Conservatives 468,742, English Democrats 25,313, Fair Pay, 7,151, Jury Team 5,758, Lib-Dims 266,253, Cormwall 14,922, No2EU 9,741, Pension 37,785, Libertas 7,292, SLP 10,033, Greens 144,178, Labour 118,716, UKIP 341,845, YD 789, Ind 8,971

Three Conservatives, two UKIP, one Lib-Dim. Cons gain one – no Labour MEP, in fifth place.

01.26: South East Region: (partial results) BNP 101,769, Christian Party 35,712, Conservatives 812,288, English Democrats 52,526, Fair Pay, 7,151, Jury Team 14,1725,758, Lib-Dims 330,440, No2EU 21,455, Pension 16,768, Libertas 7,292, Greens 144,178, Labour 192,592, UKIP 440,002.

Four Cons, two UKIP, two Lib-Dim, one Green, one Labour. No change in seats. Hannan gets back in. Labour in fifth place. Marta Andreasen is in. Could be fun. She knows where the bodies are buried.

01.29: "Nothing is solid anymore," says The Guardian. Where do they get them from?

01.32: Eight declared ... two to go tonight. NI and Scotland tomorrow.

01.43: Polly Toynbee calls for Brown to stand down.

Labour down seven percent overall, on results so far declared. Philip Webster, The Times's political editor is reporting that Gordon Brown's allies and at least some of those who want him out appeared to agree yesterday that he should be given a breathing space after the shock of the European election results.

01.55: UKIP is on course to finishing second after the Conservatives and there are rumours that Nick Griffin has won a seat.

01.56: West Midland: Tories two, UKIP two (as predicted), Labour one, Lib-Dims one. BNP and Greens didn't make it. Only one more to go. Hurrah.

02.01: North West - unofficial declaration. Nick Griffin gets in. Three Tory, two Labour, one UKIP, one Lib-Dim and one BNP. Labour loses one. That's it folks. More later today.

02.11: Heh! North West declares officially. Conservatives: 423,174, 25.6 percent (+1.5), 3 seats - no change; Labour: 336,831, 20.4 percent (-6.9), 2 seats - lose 1; UKIP: 261,740, 15.8 percent (+1.7), 1 seat - no change; Lib-Dims: 235,639, 14.3 percent (-1.6), 1 seat - no change; BNP: 132,094, 8.0 percent (+1.6), 1 seat. Nick Griffin is in. More details in the morning. This time truly so.

COMMENT THREAD

In other words, let us return to our muttons. (For some reason I have always attributed that one to Diderot but it seems to come from an anonymous 15th century French farce. Well, you live and learn.)

The muttons in this case are those continuing negotiations over the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty. It is assumed that the Irish Government will be put under pressure at the forthcoming European Council meeting in June to name a date for the nuptials second referendum.

In the meantime, feverish negotiations are going on to ensure that the people of Ireland vote yes this time, as it will be a little difficult to have a third referendum and nobody wants go back to the negotiating table for yet another treaty.

Ireland, as the European Voice explains, wants three Protocols added as well as a Declaration (which will have no legal validity) on workers' rights.

The protocols on security and defence, ethical issues and tax will be Irish-specific and are not expected to include any opt-outs from EU policies. But a declaration on workers' rights has raised a number of questions from other capitals, which are suspicious about state obligations to employees in the middle of a financial crisis. As a result, the declaration is expected to state what guarantees already exist on workers' rights in the EU, according to Irish official sources.

Diplomats in Dublin are currently in negotiations with the Council of Ministers' legal services over the protocols. The protocol on tax will be a short statement that the Lisbon treaty gives no extra competences to the EU on tax matters.

The reference to ethical issues will state that nothing in the treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights or in the chapter on justice and home affairs policy will affect the Irish constitution as regards the family. References to security and defence are unlikely to include an opt-out of the European Defence Agency (EDA), but Ireland is expected to give its parliament more powers of scrutiny over EU defence policy.

They can have all the powers of scrutiny they want - it will make no difference to EU policy but that is not the objective. All the Irish government wants now is to fool enough people in that country for long enough to get that dratted yes vote.

Open Europe think this is becoming achievable.

Meanwhile, the Spanish are becoming a little difficult. That is not precisely news but it is always entertaining. According to El Mundo, quoted in the same article in the European Voice, though the Spanish piece is clear enough:

In a separate move, Spain has also asked for a protocol that would guarantee its right to have an increase in its number of MEPs, as provided for by the Lisbon treaty, as soon as the treaty comes into effect. But EU leaders are not expected to discuss this at the June summit since it might appear to prejudge the results of the Irish referendum.

This could open a can of worms if Spain insists on renegotiating the Treaty to get that Protocol. Other countries might think of a few changes as well. Clearly, that cannot be allowed by Czech European Affairs Minister Stefan Füle thinks that some kind of a compromise can be found. I expect so - historic experience tells one that what Spain wants Spain gets in return for unswerving loyalty to the project, which just happens to pump a good deal of money into that country.

Oh and in case anyone is wondering, there is a "temporary" government in the Czech Republic (apart from the real government in Brussels).

COMMENT THREAD

During a Starred Question in the House of Lords yesterday the Noble Minister, the Lord Malloch-Brown admitted to being stumped not once but twice. Luckily his supporters, Lord Dykes (yes, him again) and Baroness Ludford (yes, her again) came to his rescue.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked

Her Majesty’s Government whether they have commissioned a recent survey of the attitudes of United Kingdom citizens to the European Union; and, if so, whether they will publish the results.

The answer is that they have not commissioned anything of the kind and have no intention of doing so; and if they did commission a survey they would never publish its results because they are unlikely to show what Lord Malloch-Brown and his cohorts would like us to think.

Then again, the FCO has been kind of busy:

My Lords, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has recently commissioned some focus group work which does not provide any quantitative results like a survey but has helped us better understand people’s level of knowledge about the EU and the types of EU activity they were interested in. We will publish information from the focus groups on the FCO website.

Lord Stoddart mentioned one or two recent poll results but these were pooh-poohed by the Noble Minister who was later to be stumped by questions about supply of milk to schools and, much more importantly, since that milk supply is hardly needed these days, labelling of food.

Lord Dykes thought the results were absolutely wonderful as so many people were still in favour of the project despite the fact that the government has not made a particularly good case for it. In particular the government has not reminded people that:

There are 1 million British companies now in the EU doing business; nearly 2 million Brits living in other EU countries, including Spain; 3.5 million jobs directly linked to membership of the EU; and 50 million individual journeys to EU countries, mostly on low-cost airlines, were taken last year. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, is independent Labour but why is he so nervous and old-fashioned?

Setting aside the usual personal insults, and for Lord Dykes there can be no greater insult than "independent", one wonders where the noble peer has been all this time if he has not noticed the government trotting out those old canards endlessly.

Baroness Ludford informed the House that as an MEP she was fully aware of the possibility of her being voted out, though if she is top of the list in her region, that seems extremely unlikely. What she forgot to explain was how that made any difference, EU legislation not being dependent on either elections to the Toy Parliament or the choice of a new Commission. Baroness Ludford does not seem to have taken in anything Gisela Stuart said yesterday.

Good points were made by Lords Pearson of Rannoch, Howell of Guildford and Tebbit. A very stupid point was made by the Barness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde. So what else is new?

a400maustaire1024[i-a400maustaire1024]If there was only one reason why the UK should pull the plug on the A400M – and there are many – it came yesterday in a comment from Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders, as retailed to us by Reuters.

This smug, overpaid, cerebrally-challenged excuse for a human being has the unmitigated gall to tell us that the heap of machinery he is trying to palm off as an aeroplane should be kept going because 40,000 jobs in Europe are directly linked to the project, including 15,000 in Spain. "You can't just look at the plane as a product," he says.

Notwithstanding that any aerospace manufacturer who calls an aircraft a "plane" should not be allowed to live, what this human garbage needs to understand is that the A400M is a product, a machine that is supposed to do things, very specific things, one of which is to fly. It is not a job creation scheme for euroweenies. Furthermore, it is a product that was promised by his dismal excuse for a company and one which it has singularly failed to deliver.

"Are budget restrictions going to put at risk the programme, which still needs investment?" Enders asks the Spanish newspaper ABC. "It means asking if Europe is prepared to not go ahead with the A400M and what alternatives there are."

Wrong questions. "Europe" is not an entity – it is a continent. The people who have the misfortune to be saddled with this overpriced, non-performing heap of junk are soldiers, and they need military airlift, not computer-generated pictures. If he can't deliver – and it is very clear that he cannot – then there are companies that can – on time, to price and to specification.

That is the crunch. It is about time the defence contracting industry woke up and smelt the coffee. The purpose of military equipment is to equip the military, for the sole purpose of enabling that said military to do its job. It is not there for any other purpose and, if the industry cannot deliver, on time, to price and to specification, then it needs to go to the wall.

If he is worried about all those jobs, well perhaps Mr Tom "it's not just a product" Enders could give all those 40,000 euroweenies packs and rifles and send them off to Afghanistan where they can do something useful. I am sure Lockheed could arrange the transportation.

When they get there – with him at their head – he and his fellow euroweenies could then reflect that, in the military, if you do not deliver on time, to price and to specification, the wrong people die. "You can't just look at fighting wars as a product," you know.

COMMENT THREAD

So much was expected from His Messianic Dedication President Obama on the left and by the European elites (but I repeat myself). He was going to do such things but, above all, he was going to punish all those upstarts who had dared to usurp the American Administration, using, as their pathetic pretext, the fact that President Bush had been elected by the people of the country. Pshaw.

Everyone knows that only Democrats can be elected and Republicans are usurpers. This is shown quite clearly that since the war more years have been spent under Republican Presidents than under Democrat ones. Errm, shum mishtake shurely.

Anyway, back to the new boss. It seems that he is not going to fulfill those left-wing hopes after all. Actually, looking at his rather feeble foreign policy, he is not going to fulfill any kind of hopes, but that is a separate issue.

A few hours ago The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department "will not prosecute CIA officers who used harsh interrogation techniques against terrorism suspects with the blessing of lawyers".

The newspaper is trying to soften the blow by pointing out:

Both Obama and Holder for months have indicated a desire to look forward rather than ignite investigations that could alienate the intelligence community and ignite partisan rancor. "This is a time for reflection, not retribution," Obama said in his statement this afternoon even as he bemoaned the recent passing of a "dark and painful chapter in our history."

Already authorities are preparing to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And this afternoon officials reaffirmed that they would no longer rely upon any Bush legal advice related to interrogation of terror suspects. A Justice Department led task force is evaluating other options for questioning of such suspects.

Anybody making any guesses as to what those options might be or what will happen to all those Guantanamo inmates who have recently been described by members of the Administration as being rather dangerous?

No comfort from Spain either. The Spanish judges, in particular Judge Baltasar Garzón, like to see themselves as the representatives of international law; the people who, in their wisdom, decide who is and who is not to be prosecuted for breaking that rather nebulous concept. Curiously enough, they are all Americans, Israelis with the odd other pro-American Westerner thrown in.

It seems that there will be no prosecution of former President Bush or former Vice-President Cheney or anyone else from that Administration, after all. In fact, Spain's Attorney-General has announced that there will be no investigation of those "crimes" in Spain as the proper place for such procedure was the American courts.

Candido Conde-Pumpido's remarks severely dampen the chance of a case moving forward against the Americans, including former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Conde-Pumpido said such a trial would have turned Spain's National Court "into a plaything" to be used for political ends.

"If there is a reason to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local courts with jurisdiction, in other words in the United States," he said in a breakfast meeting with journalists.

Spanish law gives its courts jurisdiction beyond national borders in cases of torture, war crimes and other heinous offenses, based on a doctrine known as universal justice, but the government has made clear it wants to rein in the process.

And quite right, too. Are there no crimes in Spain that its courts can go around pretending they are in a position to try everybody else?

As Ed Morrissey points out, some time has elapsed since Spain had ruled any part of the Americas and a fine mess they left behind, too. Then again, as Barcepundit says cheerfully, there is no reason to suppose that the self-important Judge Baltasar Garzón will follow the Attorney-General's instructions. So there is still hope.

perfect+storm[i-perfect+storm]For years now, an Irish friend – not particularly political – has made a point in every conversation of complaining about the euro, driving up prices and making business difficult. With that, and the general management of the Irish economy, it was pretty obvious that the "Celtic Tiger" was due for a fall. The only question was "when".

It now looks like that "when" has happened – or is about to happen in a big way, with the government having announced an emergency austerity budget and now, according to The Guardian, Irish bank shares taking a nosedive "as fears grow over financial crisis".

This, or course, the financial crisis that the collective brains of the EU, the G20 and any number of alphabetical soup organisation are supposed to be sorting, the only problem being that every time they "sort" it, things seem to take a lurch for the worse.

As it stands in Eire, this former glittering economic star has the worst public finances in the euro zone, to the extent that the EU commission has become increasingly concerned that it, along with Spain and Greece, represents a threat to the euro's stability.

Cue Anatole Kaletsky in The Times who seems to be deputising for Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Armageddon states, telling us that the eurozone is bracing itself for the perfect storm. Further, he asks, if a financial emergency required immediate action, could Europe cope? That, he says, is the big question for the world economy

Setting out a dire tale of woe, which spans the usual culprits, from Ireland, though Greece and Spain, Kaletsky alos takes in Peer Steinbrück, the German Finance Minister, who, despite his swaggering boasts about the triumph of the Rhenish social-market model over Anglo-Saxon capitalism, presides over the weakest leading economy in the world outside Japan.

Europe, he wites - even more than America or Britain - is caught in the global financial storm and if the world suffers another blow in the months ahead, comparable to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is most likely to involve a crisis in the eurozone. Is it possible, he then asks, that Europe, whose biggest economies - Germany, France and Italy - never experienced an Anglo-Saxon style housing and credit boom, will suffer more damage than Britain or the US?

After much more verbiage, we eventually come to the point. Yes there is likely to be a crisis but Germany will probably come to the support of the eurozone casualties. Thus, an "existential crisis" of the eurozone remains unlikely.

But herein lies the intriguing prospect. In a variation of the theme, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, Kaletsky poses the scenario where an emergency package had to be organised over a single weekend in response to a European crisis. Is it obvious, he asks, that the EU and Germany would cope any better than the US Government did in the Lehman collapse last September?

That is a question nobody seems to be asking - which probably makes it the biggest risk facing the global economy today, concludes our man. And that is indeed an intriguing thought. By the time the great European supertanker has started to turn, the waves could have swamped it.

COMMENT THREAD

euro[i-euro]It cannot be a coincidence that we are now getting a rash of media stories speculating about the possibility of the collapse of the euro. And, of course, it isn't. Ambrose, after all, has been banging on about this since before the ink was dry on the first euro note. What is different now is that the theoretical possibility now looks closer to reality.

Perhaps the most thorough of the most recent analyses comes from The Times which chooses a fairly level headline for its dissertation, simply noting "Cracks in the euro". Its strap tells us nothing we did not know already, that the economic downturn has exposed harsh differences between EU members. The stronger states are likely to have to bail out their weaker neighbours, it says.

The piece starts with a historical perspective, reminding us of the launch of the euro in 1999, when 3,000 blue and yellow balloons were launched into the grey Brussels sky, and "Europe's financial leaders popped corks on 9-litre champagne bottles." It misses a small but entertaining detail though, which we record in our book, The Great Deception. As the corks popped, the band struck up with a rendition of "Land of hope and glory".

There is very little glory now, and a lot less hope now that the euro – which hitherto has enjoyed a charmed life – is locked into a battle for survival, rocked by the deepest recession in living memory. But all The Times can do, as the strap itself does, is re-state exactly that of which the naysayers were warning at the time – that the "one size fits all" economic regime which accompanied a single currency could do nothing else but create problems.

The central issue, as it always was, is the arcane issue of "fiscal transfers", the willingness of the richer countries to bail out the poorer areas which are deprived from seeking their own salvation by competitive devaluation and adjustments of interest rates.

As long as the good times rolled, this was not a problem but now that whole economies are heading for Carey Street, this is top of the political agenda. Greece and Ireland are at the top of the list needing bail-outs, followed by Portugal and possibly Italy, Austria and Spain. And then there are the central and eastern European countries, not in the eurozone but also needing assistance, which muddies the water no end.

Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg and head of the euro group of finance ministers, is telling us that, "The credibility of monetary union is at stake." But it all boils down to whether the taxpayers of the bigger and historically wealthier countries like Germany are prepared to carry the additional tax burden of problems elsewhere, at the fringe.

With a general election in Germany this year, Merkel is going to have to box clever if she is to get this past the voters and the indications are that she is going to have problems. Thus we get Derek Scott, former economic adviser to Tony Blair, suggesting that the chances are that the eurozone "leaders" go for a short-term fix rather than address the fundamental issues. Perception, as always, will outweigh substance.

It is this which is having serious players asking whether the euro can survive. The Times tells us that half of top American investors already consider the break-up of the euro to be a "done deal". Central banks in Asia and the Middle East are slashing their exposure to the euro, according to debt and foreign-exchange traders, and there has been a collapse of investment from foreign buyers into euro-denominated assets.

Interestingly, Credit Suisse economist Neville Hill is rehearsing precisely the issues that the eurosceptics were raising way back, although they are now becoming mainstream. "It's about the problem of having one central bank and 16 individual policy-setting regimes," he says. "Nobody ever resolved those issues, but they were gradually forgotten about over time."

Chickens are now coming home to roost, and all the clichés can come out to play, not least the observation that our gifted leaders are "flying by the seats of their pants".

The original plan was to go ahead with a flawed construct on the basis that the Monnet dynamic of engrenage would eventually create such stresses that there would be a growing constituency for increased central economic governance, the trigger being the "beneficial crisis". Now that strategy is being tested to destruction and it is anybody's guess as to which way it will go.

Cue therefore, Newsweek with a piece written by Holger Schmieding, chief European economist at Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch. He asks, "Is the euro at risk?" The risk being considered is its ultimate death, with worries that "Europe's most ambitious integration project to date, could break apart under the strains of the recession."

Schmieding concludes that the notion of a full-scale euro breakup looks vastly overblown, suggesting that the worst of the global crisis will be over, with luck, sometime later this year. Once that happens, he says, trading nations with a focus on investment goods, like Germany, should be able to recover lost ground. Thus, he tells us, the medium-term outlook for core Europe is still encouraging.

Crucially, Schmieding notes that the political logic argues very strongly against a demise of the common currency. All member countries have invested a lot of political capital into the European venture. They are not going to let that go without a gargantuan fight. As we ourselves observed, it is a question of hanging together or hanging separately.

The bottom line says Schmieding is that global investors have bigger things to worry about at the moment than a breakup of the euro zone. In the medium term, he concludes, the crisis may even enhance the position of the euro.

In the third of today's crop, however, we find that no such sanguinity troubles Roger Bootle. He freely writes of "the budding eurozone disaster", a tiresome epic of shallow triumphalism which need not detain us overlong. It revels in the travails of the euro, allowing Bootle to conclude that "we should thank our lucky stars that we have managed to escape the budding economic and political disaster across the channel."

Disasters over the channel, he might recall from history, have an unfortunate habit of exerting their malign influence here. It is one thing, therefore, rejoicing in the British escape from the euro. It is quite another to take any comfort from its demise.

In any case, though, the fat lady ain't sung yet and reports of the death of the euro may be a tad premature. Beyond speculation, no one has the first idea what is going to happen. We are in uncharted territory - all we have is our clichés.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]Some stories you are aware of, but only half watch: "car maker in trouble … ". One yawns and moves on. As the GM story moves into high gear though, the extent of the crisis suddenly dawns when you realise that the company has made an $82 billion cumulative loss since 2004. That, by any measure, is a serious hunk of money.

With the company mooting Chapter 11 protection – or even outright insolvency – the shockwaves radiating out from Detroit are giving the Germans a hard time. Interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble is telling the European subsidiary Opel to stop messing about and "jump". It should opt for insolvency as a more favourable way of dealing with the company's problems.

Unsurprisingly, there is an ulterior motive here. Schäuble is worried that if he does dosh out some state money, which Opel would prefer - it will be siphoned off by the parent company and end up lining pockets in Detroit. That is definitely not what German money is for.

On the other hand, the sheer scale of the problem is daunting. Opel has four plants in Germany and directly employs around 26,000. There are thousands more workers in Poland, Britain - where the Vauxhall is produced - Belgium, Portugal, Sweden and Spain. The knock-on effect on distributors and dealers would cost 300,000 jobs in Europe as a whole and 100,000 in Germany.

However, time is running out. General Motors has warned that it will go bust within 30 days unless it gets some more money from the US treasury, having already received a $13.3 billion in loans and now wanting another $16.6 billion more.

These are such staggering sums of money that they are barely conceivable, although we are already blasé about such sums, having seen Brown "invent" an extra £75 billion to dole out to his pals in the banking industry.

The bottom line, though, is that it is real money that has to come out of our pockets one way or another. GM shares fell 22 percent yesterday in New York and have lost 94 percent of their value in the past 12 months. A lot of people will be paying for that in reduced pensions.

The trouble is that there does not seem to be any end to these eye watering losses, and soon enough the plug is going to be pulled. And what will the "colleagues" do then, poor things, when they put out their hands and there is nothing there for them.

Perhaps we'll have Mr Barroso telling the starving masses: "let them drive cars". There's plenty of them about.

COMMENT THREAD

Merkel[i-Merkel]Deutsche Welle and many others are remarking on how the stresses of the global financial crisis are affecting the unity of the EU.

In particular, it makes some interesting observations on the meeting in Berlin last Sunday, "designed to forge a common EU response to the global financial crisis ahead of a G20 summit". The talks, it says, called by Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, were attended by the leaders of France, Britain, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, the latter in its capacity as the "rotating EU presidency".

This, of course, was not the EU and the "dwarves" are being left out. Sweden's Carl Bildt is complaining bitterly that "six to eight" EU member states had been left out of the decision-making loop.

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb then admitted to being "extremely worried about the EU's institutional chaos," adding gloomily: "Never in the EU's history has there been a period like this with so many cliques." He goes on to say that: "This confusion is not only undermining small EU member states and the (European) commission, but the council (of all 27 EU members) itself."

This was at the General Affairs Council, where the EU commission took another knock, when the Council refused to endorse its grandiose plans to swipe €5 billion from the EU budget to fund its latest raft of pork-barrel projects.

It is quite strange how little publicity that has got in the British media, but then of course our gilded fourth estate have much more important things to concern themselves about. But this is a major setback for Barroso. The Council has not only rejected the cash grab but has also refused to accept any alternative proposals for funding the projects.

It has to be said that if the government in Britain had put up a €5 billion project, on very dubious legal grounds, and had been slapped back with not even a figleaf on which to rely, it would be all over the headlines but, once again, because it is in Brussels – even though it is our government and our money (part of it), no one wants to know.

DW suggests that the "divisions" witnessed in Brussels on Monday highlighted the EU's difficulties in remaining united "as it struggles to deal with its worst economic downturn in decades."

Furthermore, those divisions are very real. As Ambrose "Armageddon" Evans-Pritchard wrote yesterday, the Germans are having to consider financial measures which fly in the face of eurozone rules, which the commission would be hard put to oppose.

Gradually, step-by-step, the power and authority of the commission is draining into the sand.

Ambrose notes that the architects of EMU were well aware that a one-size-fits-all monetary policy for vastly disparate nations would create serious tensions over time. They gambled, he says, that this would work to their advantage.

The EU would then be forced to create new machinery to safeguard its investment in the euro. It would be a "beneficial crisis", bringing about the great leap forward to full union. We are, predicts Ambrose, about to find out if they were right.

Not a little while ago we enjoined our readers to remember the words of the 19th Century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche: "What does not kill us makes us stronger." Then, we observed, if by the end of this financial crisis – if it ever ends – the EU is not a smouldering wreck, it will emerge stronger, more powerful and more arrogant than before.

It is beginning to look as if the smart money should be on "smouldering wreck".

COMMENT THREAD

falling_apart[i-falling_apart]An intriguing article in The Financial Times pulls together some of the recent events, under the label "protectionism" and concludes that we are looking at "economic nationalism".

Examples it gives are the strikes against the use of foreign workers in the UK; French carmakers told to buy domestic components and not close factories in France; and a minister in Spain urging consumers to buy Spanish. It also notes that many of the banks which have been bailed out by their national governments are now under considerable pressure to lend to local enterprises rather than play the international market.

The piece is rather convoluted but what stands out is a comments that some of the financial integration that EU policymakers laboured to promote during the good times has already been rolled back by the current crisis.

One such is the splitting up along national lines of Fortis, the Belgo-Dutch finance group. Bank bail-outs have had similar effect, such as with France offering to inject €21bn into the country's six largest banks to ensure they were not at a competitive disadvantage to UK or US rivals.

Then we get Nicolas Véron of the Bruegel think-tank in Brussels saying that, "There is a very strong law of unintended consequences taking place after all the bank bail-outs. We will see more and more activist government policies that distinguish economic activities according to the nationality of the actors." It should be a big concern to everybody, he adds.

To put the icing on the cake, we then hear from Daniel Gros of the Centre for European Policy Studies. He says: "The consequences of such protectionism are likely to test Europe economically, politically and legally … Unravelling the integration of the banking market will cause a lot of damage."

"Unravelling" is a word I love to hear. The "colleagues" are getting a tad worried. In highly technical ways, that are far from clear, step by step, the "project" is being dragged backwards. The "British jobs for British workers" strikes were just a start.

For decades, the colleagues have been telling us that the process of integration is "inevitable" – unstoppable even. But the fact is that, when the chips are down, self-interest comes to the fore. Call it "economic nationalism" if you like. A better name for it is simply nationalism. It is the only thing that works, and it looks like its coming back into fashion.

COMMENT THREAD

euro-currency-01[i-euro-currency-01]Opinion on the other side of the Pond seems to differ. The Wall Street Journal appears to think that it is, indeed, just that and it will not be long before what they call Reykjavik on the Thames (that would be London, one of the largest financial centres in the world until the EU's financial directives and the determined vandalism of this government destroy it) will see the usefulness of being inside that big tent.

The article disposes of the argument that the present financial crisis and the various governments' twisting and turning may lead to various members of the euro dropping out of the club or, according to some, freeing themselves from a straitjacket.

The thinking of those who believe Greece or Italy may drop the euro goes something like this: Freed of the shackles of a one-size-fits-all monetary policy and back in charge of their own currencies, these countries could devalue themselves out of the crisis, giving their industry a competitive advantage.

But this makes little economic sense. Any benefit from a devalued currency would be short-lived; it would surely lead to wage inflation, thereby neutralizing the advantage for exporters. The pitfalls of leaving the euro, though, would be enormous.

Through various tortuous arguments the article proves to its own satisfaction that countries are safer and more secure inside the eurozone. Not only would they be foolish to abandon it but those outside should really start thinking of joining it as soon as possible. Of course, that argument should apply to countries outside Europe as well. If the eurozone is such a good idea, why don't they all join it?

The euro is an anchor of stability, particularly for small members that otherwise would be much more exposed. Denmark may hold a referendum on joining the euro next year and in Iceland, which hitherto has declined to join even the European Union, a clear majority now favors adopting the single currency.

Perhaps the euro skeptics in the other Reykjavik, the one on the Thames, may soon rethink their position as well.

The trouble with all those majorities that they often disappear when the referendum actually comes round and people are faced with the reality of joining the EU (in Iceland's case and fish is not mentioned in the article at all) or the euro in Denmark's case.

I suspect this may be another effort by Alistair Macdonald, the egregious UK politics, economics and European financial regulation correspondent.

Landon Thomas in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune thinks otherwise.

In Europe, after a brief lull, the financial crisis is back with a vengeance. Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries, though stronger, if also ailing, are mounting stimulus programs and building fences around their banks. The peripheral European economies are being left to twist in the market winds.

For many years, countries like Greece, Spain and Italy took advantage of the easy money that came their way. Trade deficits remained wide and governments borrowed up to their treaty-set limits - sometimes beyond.

Now, with the need for stimulus to deal with the severe downturn, these countries find themselves caught in an awful policy bind: credit is available, but only at punitive short-term rates; and further borrowing not only breaks with European Commission dictates but raises broader questions of solvency.

The situation is not exactly rosy in Britain with another bank bail-out, which, presumably, though Mr Thomas does not put it quite so bluntly, will be as efficacious as the last one.

For Mr Thomas the weakest of all links is Greece, something that will not surprise any of our readers as that country managed to scrape into the euro only by a great deal of fudging. There is the additional problem, not mentioned by Mr Thomas: most of those weaker, peripheral countries have had a great deal of money transferred into their economies from the other, somewhat stronger ones. That, too, may come to an end now.

COMMENT THREAD

Brussels+art[i-Brussels+art]One has to admire the impish sense of humour of Lord High President (Temporary, Rotating) of the EU, Vaclav Klaus, who has commissioned a "controversial" sculpture for the Justus Lipsus Council Building in Brussels.

Recognisable to plastic modellers, the structure is a giant representation of a sprue frame to which model pieces are attached, each piece in the "art" depicting a member state of the EU. All, that is except the UK, which is missing – a space being left where it should be.

The sculpture – for that is what they are calling it – has been created by 27 European artists, each piece "his/her vision of the native country playing with well-known European cliches and prejudices." Thus, the British author has cut out the UK from the EU map to hint at Britain's "dubious relations to the EU."

If real life mirrors fiction, all we can do is look at the UK absent from the line-up and say, "I wish".

Bulgaria, by the way, is one giant lavatory, France has gone on strike and Spain's construction industry has concreted the entire country. Netherlands is submerged in seawater, with just minarets still visible. Italy is represented by a display illustrating its "autoerotic" obsession with soccer and Sweden is a do-it-yourself furniture flatpack.

Meanwhile, you can tell that the euro-elections are on their way. The Conservatives are playing their usual games, pretending that they will do something useful and genuine, as long as we elect lots and lots of their Meps.

To that effect, David Cameron is telling the Financial Times that he will "wreck the EU's Lisbon treaty if he emerges victorious from any early general election in the first half of this year." Since there will not be such an election, Cameron is onto a pretty safe bet that his bluff will not be called. But it makes him sound nice and tough, just in time for the voters to come flocking out for the euros.

Cameron also has ideas for the provincial assembly in Westminster. He says he has plans to axe more than 60 MPs if the Conservatives win the next election, reducing the overall 650 by as much as ten per cent.

Dave thinks that "the House of Commons could do the job that it does with 10 percent fewer MPs without any trouble at all." His is, of course, dead right. But, since 80 percent or more of its work is now done by Brussels, he should be looking for a much bigger cut. Given the impotence of the institution, some might even suggest going the whole hog.

Perhaps, in that context, we got Vaclav Klaus's sculpture wrong. The missing space does not represent the absence of Britain. Merely, it depicts how much power will be left to our toy parliament when the EU has finished integrating us all.

COMMENT THREAD

bundesbank01[i-bundesbank01]Any which way you cut it, the management of the euro has been largely dictated by Bundesbank monetary policy, predicated on keeping inflation within acceptable bounds. Other euro members' needs have always played second fiddle to this core priority.

To that extent, the euro experiment has always been driven by German self-interest and, therefore, it should come as no surprise that Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is telling us today that that self-interest continues unabated.

In a piece headed, "Bullying Germany gets a free ride with its beggar-thy-neighbour policy," Ambrose confesses that, for the first time in his life, he is starting to feel twinges of anti-German sentiment, sharing what he describes as a loss of patience "with the antics of the finance ministry and Bundesbank, and with the dictatorial turn in Berlin's EU strategy."

His thesis is that Germany "is pursuing a beggar-thy-neighbour policy." It is not fulfilling its responsibilities as the world's top exporter and pivotal power of Europe's monetary union. It is leaching off global demand, even as it patronizes Anglo-Saxons, Latins, and Slavs.

For sure, Ambrose nods in the direction of "binge debtors in the Anglosphere" who he acknowledges "are much to blame for this crisis". But, he reminds is, "Germany rode the boom too." It made those Porsches and BMWs driven by the new rich. Its banks are among the most leveraged in the world.

His thesis is, as one might expect, highly contentious, with well over 100 comments on the online edition of his piece – and some unfavourable comment flying round the internet. But Ambrose has a point. The whole idea if the EU experiment is that national interest should be suppressed. We are all "partners" is this brave new enterprise, and being communautaire is the new black.

With Germany and France long considered the "motor" of European integration – and Germany the dominant economic power – this sets up Germany as the key player, imposing on it a strong responsibility to approach economic issues from a "European" perspective rather than putting national interest first.

What, therefore, Ambrose is pointing out is the difference between "European" rhetoric that has been spewing out from Germany in the last 50 years and more, and the harsh reality. When the chips are down, Germany has reverted to type and is looking after its own national interests and putting “European” needs very much in second place.

That Germany should do so is hardly surprising, but its own actions should be measured against its euro-rhetoric. Either Germany is a core member of the EU or it is an independent nation state, entitled to promote its own interests irrespective of the effects on its "partners".

In theory, it can't be both but, in practice, it is turning out to be a "fair weather" member, fully communautaire when it suits it – and when it benefits from other members so being – but just as nationalistic as it ever was when there is any conflict. But, while Germany is by many judged right to pursue its own interests, measured by its own rhetoric, it is wrong to pursue the line it is taking.

What Ambrose does not point out (in this particular piece), however, is that behind the scenes this nationalistic action is placing enormous strains on the EU construct. We know that the economies of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy – to say nothing of France and Ireland – are groaning under the additional burden of euro membership. But for the common currency, we would be seeing a number of European currencies going into a nosedive alongside the pound.

What the euro is doing though, is hiding the cracks – but that does not mean they are not there. They are indeed there and serious stresses are building up in the system which are bound to give vent in the not too distant future. When that happens, the national interest that Germany is so obviously following, will become evident amongst all the players, with the EU left on the margins, a fractured and impotent entity.

By comparison, Brown's mismanagement of the British economy will seem of minor importance, as the fracture lines grow to earthquake proportions. What is happening in Germany is only the start.

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Greek+riots+33[i-Greek+riots+33]As the Greek riots pass their fourth night with no let-up, the situation – as reported – seems to be getting more grave, with a general strike adding to the nation's woes.

What marks this out us the comment from Stathis Anestis, spokesman for a federation of private sector unions. He says: "Participation in the strike is total, the country has come to a standstill." Banks, schools and public transport are shut and hundreds of flights in and out of the country have been cancelled as air traffic controllers also went on strike.

The level of unrest here, and the huge support for direct action, is clearly more than a rump of disaffected youths running amok. The whole country is crying out, and there is clearly something seriously and fundamentally wrong.

It is perhaps typical though that one of the primary architects of the current crisis, prime minister Costas Karamanlis, is the one who is so strident about the "enemies of democracy," seeking to dismiss the riots as "acts of vandalism". Yet even the headline in the popular daily Ta Nea proclaims: "Government and police on the brink of collapse".

It is, as you might expect, Ambrose Evans Pritchard who takes a broader perspective, looking at the economic issues. He remarks that these riots illustrate "the slow-burn effects of Europe's monetary union" as they "begin to corrode the democratic legitimacy of governments."

Greece's euro membership, he writes, has led to a warped economy. The current account deficit is 15 percent of GDP, the eurozone's highest by far. The deficit ($53bn) is the sixth biggest in the world in absolute terms. The public debt is 93 percent of GDP, well above the Maastricht criteria, and international investors are treating Greek debt as if it were the plague.

Year after year of high inflation has eroded the competitive base of the economy and the underlying rot, disguised by the global credit bubble and the Greek property boom, is now being laid bare.

Nevertheless, Ambrose expresses a little surprise that the "riot phase" of this long politico-economic drama known as EMU has kicked off so soon, and that it has done so first in Greece where the post-bubble hangover has barely begun. The crisis, he says, is much further advanced in Spain, which is a year or two ahead of Greece in the cycle.

This notwithstanding, he predicts that the picture is going to get very ugly as Europe slides deeper into recession next year. The IMF expects Spain's unemployment to reach 15 percent. Immigrants are already being paid to leave the country and he argues that there will be riots in Spain too.

No doubt, he adds, events will be ugly in Britain as well. He could be right, although he adds that he is "certain" that the British people still feel that the authorities who set economic policy are ultimately answerable to Parliament and to the democratic system.

If that is the case, then all that stands between us is a false perception. Our authorities have long ceased to be answerable to parliament – just the theatre remains. When perhaps more people realise that, we will no longer have to watch rioting in distant lands on our televisions (those who still watch them). We will be able to look out of our own front doors.

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