ONE THING CAMERON CAN DO ABOUT EUROPE
pdf link: Eurofacts Vol 15, No 2, (pp5,6), published 16 October 2009
Now that the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty is inevitable, the Conservatives’ policy of holding a referendum has a fatal hole in it. David Cameron’s always forlorn promise depended upon ratification being incomplete by the time of the expected Tory Victory at the forthcoming General Election. That will evidently not be the case.
If he does become prime minister, Mr. Cameron could, of course, go for what some would see as the nuclear option of a full-blown referendum on British membership of the EU, but that is hardly a possibility - it would blow the government apart. There is, however, one thing a new Tory government could do about Europe, writes Anthony Scholefield.
As the three main parties vie with each other to promise the most swingeing public spending cuts, with the least possible pain, in order to cut a government deficit of £100-l75 billion a year, none of them has mentioned the £165 billion paid to the EU (less the Fontainebleau abatement of £4.8 billion - net billion). Mr. Cameron can remedy this. There is, in fact, good reason why the complete axeing of the gross contribution to the EU should be at the top of the list of spending cuts.
There are three points to make about British EU contributions.
First, they have to be paid in euros. There is no question of Mervyn King printing some extra money and handing it out to the EU. It may be possible to pay British government liabilities in the UK in “funny money”, but the EU demands hard cash.
Second, the headline gross contribution 5.16.5 billion consists of three parts. There is the abatement of £48 billion, which can be reasonably said to be a deduction from the gross. Then there is the part which is spent in the UK, about £5 billion. The rest, nearly £7 billion, is simply given to the EU and is a total loss to the British taxpayer.
Third, the £5 billion given back to the UK is spent on EU mandated activities. Some of these, such as EU promotion activities, are plainly wasteful, but much goes to agricultural subsidy and various social programmes.
That some activities may be considered useful and others wasteful is irrelevant. The question from an accounting viewpoint is whether the gross (less abatement) or the net contribution is the correct figure to consider when assessing the taxpayers’ EU burden and identifying the amount to be cut.
The answer is simple. In all aspects of government spending, cuts are considered in relation to what is spent. Secondary and tertiary effects are ignored.
After all, having found out that MPs’ expenses include moat-cleaning and wisteria-cutting, the fact that cuts mean moat-cleaners and Wisteria-cutters will see a fall in income, and even lose their jobs, is not a reason to continue paying MPs’ outrageous expenses.
Quango employees or consultants spend their incomes on all sorts of expenditure which forms the income of others. All parties are committed to cutting quangocrats and consultants but do not take account that those who receive their income from the expenditure of quangocrats or consultants will lose part of their income.
The same logic should apply to EU contributions. The yardstick on which cuts should be based is the gross contribution (less the abatement).
Certainly, some people in agriculture, some landowners, fake academics such as Jean Monnet professors, those engaged on EU-funded social programmes or promotions, will lose their income or their jobs.
It is impossible to take account of secondary or tertiary affects. The only figure that matters is what is actually spent by the government. Over to you, Mr. Cameron.
BOOK REVIEW - pdf link: Eurofacts Vol 15, No 2, (p1), published 16 October 2009
Immigration: the canary in the European coalmine
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West
by Christopher Caldwell - Allen Lane, Pbk 364pp 2009
[Available from The June Press, price £14.99 (ISBN 0713999365)]
Christopher Ca1dwell’s new book has attracted much media interest. The Economist, a very pro-immigration journal, concluded that “this is an important book as well as a provocative one: the best statement to date of the pessimist’s position on Islamic immigration in Europe”.
That such a clear, candid book is written by an American mainstream journalist is important in itself. The book is subtitled quite clearly Can Europe be the same with different people in it? and Caldwell says equally clearly, “the answer is no”.
His main title, of course, echoes Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and, like Burke, Caldwell looks to the long-term consequence of the phenomenon he characterises as Western Europe becoming “a multi-ethnic society in a fit of absence of mind”. He views immigration in the way Burke saw the French republican revolution, as aggressive, dangerous and, ultimately, leading to violence. Much of his book centres specifically on the importation of Muslims, since he regards Islam as an anti-European culture. Like Burke, he believes the current population of a nation and its rulers are trustees, with duties both to their past and to generations yet unborn.
Caldwell starts by facing up to the fact that importing mass Third World labour was a disaster. “Europeans... overestimated their need for immigrant labour. The economic benefits immigration brought were marginal and temporary. They now belong to the past. The social changes immigration brought, however, were massive and enduring.”
He shoots down the constantly advanced argument that the arrival of low-skilled immigrants is of benefit to European countries. He recites again the obvious fact that welfare states transfer benefits to low earners and demolishes again the idea that immigration can support the ageing of Europe, by quoting the well-known estimate of the United Nations that to maintain the ratio of labour to dependants, Europe will have to import 701 million people by 2050.
Caldwell is clear that the peoples of Europe never wanted mass immigration. Why should they? Immigrant labour without capital increases the supply of labour and reduces wages.
He excoriates the political class from the l950s to the present. In the beginning, in the 1950s and 1960s, “Those elites, to the extent that they thought about the long-term consequences at all, made certain assumptions; immigrants would be few in number. Since they were coming to short-term gaps in the labour force, most would stay in Europe only temporarily. Some might stay longer. No one assumed they would be eligible for Welfare. That they would retain the habits and culture of southern villages, clans, market places, and mosques, was a thought too bizarre to entertain.”
It is worth noting, however, that at least one politician was fully aware of the long-term consequences. Ian Gilmour, then editor of The Spectator, recorded an interview with Winston Churchill in 1955 when Churchill told him: “I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.”
When the elites realised how unpopular mass immigration was, this did not change what became a rigid. almost sacred view. All that happened was the arrival of a panoply of suppressive efforts, including diversity training, ethnic quotas and vilification and muzzling of opponents.
The reality was that "for all the lip service paid to diversity, people tend to flee it” and “in no country in Europe does the bulk of the population aspire to live in a bazaar of Cultures". Despite inflicting these pressures on the poorest natives, the political class was conspicuous by its absence in “diverse” residential areas or sending its children to “enriched”schools.
Caldwell estimates that most European countries will have an immigrant (plus descendant) population of between 25 per cent and 33 per cent by 2050. He points out that only one group is more favourable to immigration than the national political elites and that is the EU institutions.
Immigration is the canary in the coalmine. Caldwell says: “If Europe is getting more immigrants than its voters want, this is a good indicator that its democracy is not functioning”. Indeed, the whole EU process is designed to put some policies beyond democracy. “European leaders have chosen to believe. . .that its immigration and asylum policies involve the sort of non-negotiable moral qualities that you don’t vote on.”
While approved political debate remains in a narrow range of opinion, nothing will change the political class until it loses a lot of votes. This is slowly happening and Caldwell’s book, as The Economist noted, is a sign that Enoch Powell’s arguments are becoming dangerously mainstream.
Reviewed by Anthony Scholefield
If he does become prime minister, Mr. Cameron could, of course, go for what some would see as the nuclear option of a full-blown referendum on British membership of the EU, but that is hardly a possibility - it would blow the government apart. There is, however, one thing a new Tory government could do about Europe, writes Anthony Scholefield.
As the three main parties vie with each other to promise the most swingeing public spending cuts, with the least possible pain, in order to cut a government deficit of £100-l75 billion a year, none of them has mentioned the £165 billion paid to the EU (less the Fontainebleau abatement of £4.8 billion - net billion). Mr. Cameron can remedy this. There is, in fact, good reason why the complete axeing of the gross contribution to the EU should be at the top of the list of spending cuts.
There are three points to make about British EU contributions.
First, they have to be paid in euros. There is no question of Mervyn King printing some extra money and handing it out to the EU. It may be possible to pay British government liabilities in the UK in “funny money”, but the EU demands hard cash.
Second, the headline gross contribution 5.16.5 billion consists of three parts. There is the abatement of £48 billion, which can be reasonably said to be a deduction from the gross. Then there is the part which is spent in the UK, about £5 billion. The rest, nearly £7 billion, is simply given to the EU and is a total loss to the British taxpayer.
Third, the £5 billion given back to the UK is spent on EU mandated activities. Some of these, such as EU promotion activities, are plainly wasteful, but much goes to agricultural subsidy and various social programmes.
That some activities may be considered useful and others wasteful is irrelevant. The question from an accounting viewpoint is whether the gross (less abatement) or the net contribution is the correct figure to consider when assessing the taxpayers’ EU burden and identifying the amount to be cut.
The answer is simple. In all aspects of government spending, cuts are considered in relation to what is spent. Secondary and tertiary effects are ignored.
After all, having found out that MPs’ expenses include moat-cleaning and wisteria-cutting, the fact that cuts mean moat-cleaners and Wisteria-cutters will see a fall in income, and even lose their jobs, is not a reason to continue paying MPs’ outrageous expenses.
Quango employees or consultants spend their incomes on all sorts of expenditure which forms the income of others. All parties are committed to cutting quangocrats and consultants but do not take account that those who receive their income from the expenditure of quangocrats or consultants will lose part of their income.
The same logic should apply to EU contributions. The yardstick on which cuts should be based is the gross contribution (less the abatement).
Certainly, some people in agriculture, some landowners, fake academics such as Jean Monnet professors, those engaged on EU-funded social programmes or promotions, will lose their income or their jobs.
It is impossible to take account of secondary or tertiary affects. The only figure that matters is what is actually spent by the government. Over to you, Mr. Cameron.
BOOK REVIEW - pdf link: Eurofacts Vol 15, No 2, (p1), published 16 October 2009
Immigration: the canary in the European coalmine
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West
by Christopher Caldwell - Allen Lane, Pbk 364pp 2009
[Available from The June Press, price £14.99 (ISBN 0713999365)]
Christopher Ca1dwell’s new book has attracted much media interest. The Economist, a very pro-immigration journal, concluded that “this is an important book as well as a provocative one: the best statement to date of the pessimist’s position on Islamic immigration in Europe”.
That such a clear, candid book is written by an American mainstream journalist is important in itself. The book is subtitled quite clearly Can Europe be the same with different people in it? and Caldwell says equally clearly, “the answer is no”.
His main title, of course, echoes Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and, like Burke, Caldwell looks to the long-term consequence of the phenomenon he characterises as Western Europe becoming “a multi-ethnic society in a fit of absence of mind”. He views immigration in the way Burke saw the French republican revolution, as aggressive, dangerous and, ultimately, leading to violence. Much of his book centres specifically on the importation of Muslims, since he regards Islam as an anti-European culture. Like Burke, he believes the current population of a nation and its rulers are trustees, with duties both to their past and to generations yet unborn.
Caldwell starts by facing up to the fact that importing mass Third World labour was a disaster. “Europeans... overestimated their need for immigrant labour. The economic benefits immigration brought were marginal and temporary. They now belong to the past. The social changes immigration brought, however, were massive and enduring.”
He shoots down the constantly advanced argument that the arrival of low-skilled immigrants is of benefit to European countries. He recites again the obvious fact that welfare states transfer benefits to low earners and demolishes again the idea that immigration can support the ageing of Europe, by quoting the well-known estimate of the United Nations that to maintain the ratio of labour to dependants, Europe will have to import 701 million people by 2050.
Caldwell is clear that the peoples of Europe never wanted mass immigration. Why should they? Immigrant labour without capital increases the supply of labour and reduces wages.
He excoriates the political class from the l950s to the present. In the beginning, in the 1950s and 1960s, “Those elites, to the extent that they thought about the long-term consequences at all, made certain assumptions; immigrants would be few in number. Since they were coming to short-term gaps in the labour force, most would stay in Europe only temporarily. Some might stay longer. No one assumed they would be eligible for Welfare. That they would retain the habits and culture of southern villages, clans, market places, and mosques, was a thought too bizarre to entertain.”
It is worth noting, however, that at least one politician was fully aware of the long-term consequences. Ian Gilmour, then editor of The Spectator, recorded an interview with Winston Churchill in 1955 when Churchill told him: “I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.”
When the elites realised how unpopular mass immigration was, this did not change what became a rigid. almost sacred view. All that happened was the arrival of a panoply of suppressive efforts, including diversity training, ethnic quotas and vilification and muzzling of opponents.
The reality was that "for all the lip service paid to diversity, people tend to flee it” and “in no country in Europe does the bulk of the population aspire to live in a bazaar of Cultures". Despite inflicting these pressures on the poorest natives, the political class was conspicuous by its absence in “diverse” residential areas or sending its children to “enriched”schools.
Caldwell estimates that most European countries will have an immigrant (plus descendant) population of between 25 per cent and 33 per cent by 2050. He points out that only one group is more favourable to immigration than the national political elites and that is the EU institutions.
Immigration is the canary in the coalmine. Caldwell says: “If Europe is getting more immigrants than its voters want, this is a good indicator that its democracy is not functioning”. Indeed, the whole EU process is designed to put some policies beyond democracy. “European leaders have chosen to believe. . .that its immigration and asylum policies involve the sort of non-negotiable moral qualities that you don’t vote on.”
While approved political debate remains in a narrow range of opinion, nothing will change the political class until it loses a lot of votes. This is slowly happening and Caldwell’s book, as The Economist noted, is a sign that Enoch Powell’s arguments are becoming dangerously mainstream.
Reviewed by Anthony Scholefield