Tuesday 8 June 2010

Power or Prosperity?


“I want Europe to have one currency; it will make trading much easier”

One could be forgiven for thinking the original rationale for the single currency uttered from the EU?

Mais non…….

But the written word of one Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon used military force in his attempt to politically unite Europe, and failed; Hitler tried it too and failed.

But the EU (France and Germany) learnt their history lessons well and have used the existing institutions within national governments, citizen inertia, and even the tactic of totally ignoring referendum in its drive for integration and unification.

But will fail also…….

I hope……

For the Euro was not an economic decision for the benefit of many, or even trade, it was a political one for the benefit of the select few.

And politics is a dangerous game…….

Especially when we little people, under free market economics begin to feel the pain.

As we do now.

And now we get the EU telling us that the only way to solve the problem is for sovereign national governments to ‘submit’ their budgets for approval to Brussels before announcing them to their own elected MP’s.

And George Osborne resists…..

And rightly so………….

Because this sticks in the craw somewhat, especially when it is from the same EU Parliament that has repeatedly had auditors refuse to, year after successive year ‘sign off’ The EU’s own budgets because of the endemic ‘corruption’ and patronage that only fools fail to see.

Or the corrupt don’t want us to.

And meanwhile in a seemingly ‘unconnected’ event in Washington last month, the US Senate (who provide a third of the cash for the IMF) voted unanimously to prevent the IMF from using its cash to bail out economies locked into debt spiral.

Ergo the PHIIGS (Portugal, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain) all within the Eurozone.

Unconnected…..?

Well perhaps not for these two events share a similar theme; in that the elite political ‘club’ who rule our lives are at last starting to realise (perhaps) that the main barrier to resolving these crises and reinstating business-as-usual is not so much our ability to afford it, but the little people, yes us the electorates, un-willingness to pay for it anymore.

As Angela Merkel is finding out.

And yet the French remain remarkably quiet about it all.

Somewhat contrary to national character……

Unusual indeed……

For what have they got to hide?

So at a time when Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, and now Hungary’s spiraling debt issues are squeezing the Euro down in value, while economists (who will argue for ever and a day over how long it has got left to live) many people are looking for the reason to explain the Euro mess.

An interesting explanation as any comes from Dani Rodrik of Harvard when he states on his blog that the current crisis is putting politicians face-to-face with his own theory he calls the Rodrik Trilemma.

I have an ‘impossibility theorem’ for the global economy….It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full.

And if you attempt to force to combine all three ingredients, you get, well you get The European Union.

But the trilemma is not a universal problem in my view.

It is only a leftist socialist problem.

That's because in The EU, at least, only the socialists who run it want to maximise the power of the state while giving the illusion of delivering prosperity via economic integration. For in socialist-speak, "democracy" and "national sovereignty" are code-words for the slogan "Centralise all Power to us the Socialists."

Socialists acquire and maintain political power by distributing privileges and bounties to their supporters.

While smearing and attempting to destroy their detractors credibility’s with labels such as “racist” or “fascist”.

Or maybe worse……..

The ‘sofa politics’ of the Anthony Blair years are testament to that in Britain, the European Commission and how it appoints said commissioners and other un-elected officials is evidence of the same within the EU.

And so when socialists decide to rule in this way, you inevitably press the pedal to the metal ‘on all power to us’ under the guise of "democracy" and "national sovereignty." And that means that you sacrifice individual and national prosperity with the sacrificial knife of ‘borrow tax and spend’ on the altar of politics.

And it is no co-incidence that in the Eurozone countries GDP has fallen decade after decade in inverse correlation with the rise of political and economic integration of the EU.

But sooner or later, as long distance runners would say ‘you hit the wall’. Just like we see happening in The EU and the eurozone now.

In other words, under socialism, democracy means the out-and-out conversion of the limited constitutional state with its traditional checks and balances on the power of the executive into a patronage state and a select state citizenry mutually dependent upon one another.

And also on borrowing.

Lots of borrowing…….

And on spending.

Lots and lots of spending………..

And when will it stop?

Look no further than the countless Quango’s, the local and central government agencies along with the overly generous welfare budgets that consume our collective wealth and dominate but blight our lives here and in the EU to see the fruits of this profligacy.

And when you get many socialist political parties wedded to the patronage concept you get the ultimate icon for such.

The European Union.

For the misplaced folly of the socialist state still thinks it knows better than you or I on how to spend our hard earned money.

Nominally, socialists are not too keen on national sovereignty, and democracy either. Because they are an anathema to the socialist mantra and their raison d’être of ‘State knows best’.

They seek to use the ‘fear’ created by any crisis (9/11 and the London tube bombings are good examples) to galvanize and mobilize support for more State power, intrusion, control and intervention while using soothing phrases like “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.

But the opportunity to acquire political power is too tempting and ultimately far too desirable to wait for the odd crisis or two to come along.

So the other part of their arsenal is that they have replaced real wars with the "moral equivalent of war," so making every issue real or imagined into a domestic political war, spending hundreds of Billons of Pounds and Euros to win gussied up national wars on diversity, health and safety, equality and hate.

But all the while reinforcing the power of the State and Police monopoly on force by bullying, cajoling, threatening and criminalising the middle class and honest poor with countless rafts of petty minor offences, infantile advice on how to live our lives enforced by reams of senseless rules and regulations.

Just ask anyone who puts a bread crust ‘biological contamination’ in the plastic recycling container!

Or puts too much in that the lid won’t close.

Or who wants to defend their family and home against an intruder.

Or fights back against mindless relentless torment from street thugs who are continually ignored and unchallenged by the police force service.

Or wants to defend and express deeply held Christian beliefs.

While still failing utterly to tackle the real problems of the age; the economy, immigration, debt, poverty, crime, breakdown of family, of local communities of the rule of law and loss of cultural identity and pride in ones heritage.

And so now, to distract us even more from their failures we have the new War of the age;

The invented, fabricated man made global warming crisis now thoroughly discredited and exposed for the sham it is, that requires a national mobilisation (and more taxation) that will need to cover almost all of Britain (that even if we were to do so would not generate even one fifth of what we need) in pointless wind farms to produce "green energy."

But only when the winds blow……

And it doesn’t always do so.

This folly will cost Billions for consumers in higher energy bills to implement, herald a true age of ‘fuel poverty’ for millions and mean the lights go out and our computer screens go blank within a decade or so when our nuclear and coal fired power plants reach the end of their lives.

All because the EU says we have to under directives thrown about like confetti at a wedding by the un-elected un-accountable B-EU-rocrats in Brussels and implemented with fervent zeal by our home grown power drunk petty officials in our town halls and police HQ’s up and down the land.

Yet they believe in it all…..

Or will do so until they find the new ‘ruse de guerre’……

But true Conservatives don't want to plunder the state to service special interests.

Democracy for conservatives is merely the election and accountability of motivated practical ‘real’ life experienced honest men and women to write practical laws, repeal senseless ones and to secure the liberty of individuals from State control.

True Conservatives don't want to deploy national resources into moral equivalents of war that divide the nation. They just want to use national power to empower people locally, to defend the Queens peace and allow law abiding citizens of the crown to go about their lawful business, all the while generating the prosperity to pay for it all, while occasionally delivering a sharp, fair and just but severe moral message to the wrongdoers that they will be punished.

And all of this can be done with limited government powered by a reasonable, fair and affordable share of the take in tax of our GDP.

But only if we find the courage to take back our national sovereignty.

And the brass balls to implement the far reaching reforms required.
The single currency in the Euro may come one day to represent both the Zenith and Nadir of the aims of the European project, a political decision driven and locked into free market economics.

It was doomed to fail, economically at least (whether it will be allowed to politically is another thing) for sham entities don’t normally survive if free markets don’t believe in or buy the goods.

Unless they are state subsidised of course…..

I used to think naively that once conservatives had shown socialists under free market economics and limited government what could be achieved, then they’d go home enjoy the fruits of this prosperity, having seen the light and live happily ever after.

But after the experience of the Blair/Brown years and the formative Cleggeron coalition and the relentless drive of the EU project (that no majorities in any country voted for, including here, and in some even voted against) I have become more pragmatic, sadder too but also wiser.

For I have learned one universal truth……..

Socialists won't ever stop preferring power over prosperity.


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