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The price of Cameron’s isolationism is our own jobs and prosperity

July 1, 2012 2:09 pm

Author:

Glenis Willmott

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Cameron once again let down the UK at last week’s EU Summit. He has continued to preach austerity to a Europe that is more and more aware of the limitations of such a short sighted and ill judged policy. This is not a minor matter in an international game of “summitocracy” and meaningless prestige. It matters because the jobs and prosperity of the people of Europe are at risk and it matters because our own economic recovery, and incidentally that of countries around the globe, also depends on the economies of continental Europe returning to growth.

As Douglas Alexander, Labour’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, said after the summit, the EU Growth Compact was agreed:

“despite, and not because of, the efforts of our own Prime Minister. Cameron doesn’t accept the need for this at home and he has hardly been leading calls for it abroad.”

Douglas’s views are echoed by Charles Kupchan, lead U.S. National Security Council official for Europe under President Bill Clinton, who recently said:

“You have the G20 meeting: the euro zone is in trouble, Iran and Syria represent urgent challenges. And where is Cameron? He’s sparring with the Argentinians over the Falklands and upsetting the French. That’s really not helpful… What’s really striking to me is the extent to which Cameron seems to be taking the UK out of the game. London’s relevance on the world stage seems to have declined since he became prime minister. Part of that might be inevitable given the circumstances … but Cameron’s statecraft is also leading to self-isolation.”

Furthermore, the FT last Tuesday wrote that:

“The City of London has raised deep concerns over David Cameron’s strategy in Europe, warning that the prime minister’s wish list of “safeguards” in December could actually have damaged its standing as Europe’s financial centre.”

The eurozone is in a serious crisis, a crisis created in large part by the greed of bankers, exacerbated by a structural weakness in the creation of the single currency. Cameron and Osborne’s austerity have brought us a double dip recession at home, soaring youth unemployment, falling tax revenues and soaring government borrowing. Lecturing other EU countries to take the same medicine simply pushes the UK out of the game.

The real danger however is that Cameron’s head in the sand approach will permanently damage our standing and efficacy in Europe. The price we will pay will be in jobs and prosperity.

Quiet_Sceptic

Quite right, it’s all Cameron’s fault preaching his austerity non-sense from the sidelines.

It’s not the ECB and its management of monetary policy during the boom, its binding rules and failed interventions which resulted in runs on the banking systems of the weaker states, sovereign debt being assaulted by the market and nation states forced into insolvency.

Nor is it the fault of the EU institutions which failed time and time again to take the steps necessary to resolve the crisis, forcing austerity far worse than anything Cameron is dishing out onto their fellow European citizens.

It’s all that Cameron’s fault I tell you!
- treborc
  
  “The Institute for Fiscal Studies described Alistair Darling’s budget as ‘treading water’.
  
  Alistair Darling admitted tonight that Labour’s
  planned cuts in public spending will be “deeper and tougher” than
  Margaret Thatcher’s in the 1980s, as the country’s leading experts on tax and spending warned that Britain faces “two parliaments of pain” to repair the black hole in the state’s finances.
  The
  Institute for Fiscal Studies said hefty tax rises and Whitehall
  spending cuts of 25% were in prospect during the six-year squeeze
  lasting until 2017 that would follow the chancellor’s “treading water” budget yesterday.
  Asked
  by the BBC tonight how his plans compared with Thatcher’s attempts to
  slim the size of the state, Darling replied: “They will be deeper and
  tougher – where we make the precise comparison I think is secondary to
  an acknowledgement that these reductions will be tough”.
  
  Glass houses and stones again.
  
  Spending has always be the way out of a recession, but this is now not a recession it a depression, but labour does a great job of knocking the Tories without actually putting any meat on the bones of what you would do.
  - robertcp
    
    The coalition increased the cuts that Darling was talking about and the economy stopped growing.
    - treborc
      
      Yes but we have seen labour work over 13 years, if labour had won the last election it would have had Brown as leader, and god help us.
      - robertcp
        
        Labour was never going to win a majority in 2010 but there was a majority for a more sensible rate of deficit reduction. The Lib Dems could have insisted that the Tories did not cut so fast. Instead, they told Labour that they wanted more cuts, which was the opposite of what the Lib Dems had argued for in the campaign.
        
        I have some sympathy for the situation of the Lib Dems but they were at fault on their attitude towards deficit reduction in the coalition negotiations.
  - JoeDM
    
    Darling was the only Labour politician that seemed to understand the nature of the problem and the actions that were needed.
    - treborc
      
      Yes and it’s working well is it not
      - JoeDM
        
        It’s payback time.
http://twitter.com/AmericanTomo Tom Peter Bone

The Tory way in Europe is just outdated. We need a more positive and co-operative role which inevitably would require an attitude completely the opposite of Cameron’s which is stubborn and xenophobic.
- jaime taurosangastre candelas
  
  That only makes sense if you like the idea of greater European integration. Many people do not. And to be honest, it is extremely hard to see Europe as an “ever-closer Union” being anything other than a ridiculous experiment that has demonstrably failed, and yet the mad Eurocrats want to keep tightening the noose.
  
  Euro Free Trade Area – that is all that is needed.
  - Brumanuensis
    
    But the Eurozone crisis illustrates the consequences of trying to create an over-large monetary union without a fiscal transfers union to complement it. The Euro was too weakly integrated, not over-integrated.
    
    It’s also impractical to have a free-trade area with no common governance mechanism. The EFTA has the EFTA Association Surveillance Authority to supervise trade between members and an EFTA Court to enforce the ASA’s authority. It makes sense to establish common standards between trading partners and even more sense to negotiate these through a single supra-national body, rather than through dozens of individual treaties, negotiated separately. The logic of economic globalisation and modernisation is towards closer and closer economic and political union, although this doesn’t mean that all initiatives along these lines will be well-constructed or optimal.
    - jaime taurosangastre candelas
      
      I think we agree – without the fiscal union the Euro will never work. As you say, it was too weakly integrated. Thank Heavens! It has been a failure, it is unwinding, and it has fatally undermined any more Euro-nonsense for several generations. It may take another five years to be finally killed off.
      
      Do you think I said that a free trade area could get by with no common governance? Of course it cannot – look everywhere around the world where such zones exist and there are lots of examples of coordination and arbitration. What you do not need – on top of those – is useless Eurocrats like van Rompuy or Barroso (neither elected, it will not escape you) trying to convert 27 sovereign nations into a new anti-democratic empire.
      
      I don’t agree with your last sentence, as people are still proud of their citizenship and country. Your view outlines a theory that while logical will never be completed, because people are human, and we value groups and difference.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        But its not just a free trade area, and that’s not on offer. I don’t think anyone can foresee exactly what will happen but the idea that the EU will somehow retreat into becoming purely a trading zone is unlikely. No-one other than a section of the British Conservatives is actually calling for that solution. For example, the anti-EU Left is sympathetic to the social agenda of the EU but argue against the EU because it is too neo-liberal and doesn’t encourage protectionism!
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        It (free trade area) may not be on offer now, but life is not static – things evolve. Across Europe, you can see a steady rise in anti-EU parties of both left and right, but many of them also advocate a free trade area. This is the position of UKIP, for example, and yearly we see them take supporters from the tories.
        
        So in five years the picture may seem very different. If a protectionist manifesto is published by some party, well let us see how popular it is at an election.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        The right wing ones might, but many are ‘little Whoevers’ and are strongly protectionist. Our Tory party is actually , in its pro-market and anti-protectionist enthusiasms, closer to European Liberals, but they are very pro EU. Remember how difficult the Tories found recruiting members for their right wing Eurosceptic group? UKIP tends to be libertarian, which is why it doesn’t fit in very well with the European anti-EU right
        
        You are assuming that the UK position is typical. It isn’t. Britain is by far the most negative country in the EU. But to fundamentally change the EU, it would require similar attitudes to the UK dominating the EU, and we are a long way from that. The UK may have to decide if it wants to go it alone, but the free trade zone ideal may not be on offer.
        
        I am quite sure that protectionism will come, because globalisation cannot work, and is unsustainable in any case
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        Oddly, I find myself trying to evaluate whether to vote for the Lib Dems (again) or UKIP at the next GE. Neither Labour nor the tories attract my interest at the moment, and despite the Lib Dems infidelity to what most thought they stood for in 2010, I have come to accept that their Orange Book economic policies and their view on welfare make sense to me.
        
        Of course, whatever decision I make is only a personal conceit. The tory vote will as ever be weighed, not counted in this constituency. Strangely, it was where Oliver Cromwell had his power base 400 years ago, so times do change.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        I wouldn’t consider voting f0r either of those parties, to be frank – if not Labour then I’d vote Green , but no-one supporting neo-liberal Orange Book type ideas. UKIP are also a free market party, but eurosceptic.
        I’m still pro-European in principle, but I’m not happy with its direction – but for me its gone too far in the other direction. Too economically liberal, I actually want to see Fortress Europe
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        One problem with “Fortress Europe” – apart from whether it would ever work, which I think not and you think yes – is in the sub-components of machines.
        
        I do not know anything about car manufacture or any other complex items with thousands of parts, but I know how blood oxygen monitoring machines work. Ours are made by Philips, a Dutch company, and they are very good indeed (thank you PFI provider, even if we will pay 4 times the cost over the years).
        
        It turns out that it is not possible to make such a machine from european supplies. The rare earth magnets are almost exclusively provided by Asian sources – Europe has no supplies of these elements. Looking in a little deeper, it seems that is the case for almost all high end electronics.
        
        So, if you want a Fortress Europe, you should also have a policy for importation of commodities that Europe cannot itself supply, and to acknowledge that if we are being a Fortress, then others will retaliate with tariffs, and the cost of many things will rise a lot.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        Or we may have less ‘things’. I’m not convinced that the everlasting expansion of consumerism is sustainable. But you never know what will happen in terms of technological advance which makes all of these debates so unpredictable
      - John Dore
        
        Protectionism is the domain of fools.
      - Bill Lockhart
        
        ”But its not just a free trade area, and that’s not on offer”
        
        After the Euro’s collapse, there will be little else to offer.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        It won’t collapse, though it may well either become two tier or a smaller and tighter group. The point is that the EU is far more than just ‘economic’ and I don’t see that part of it changing very much, because no-one else wants it to
      - Bill Lockhart
        
        The Euro is collapsing right now, and trying to take the world with it. Did you not hear?
      - Brumanuensis
        
        The Euro might collapse, but the EU will survive. It existed before the Euro after all.
      - treborc
        
        Could England now force a referendum on say Wales, with Wales basically having it’s own Assembly. I cannot think the Welsh Assembly would want to leave the EU, the Airbus 380 wings are built in North Wales with massive funding from the EU jobs we could ill afford to lose.
        
        And the loss or removal of jobs and money would be massive for us.
      - Bill Lockhart
        
        Airbus buys the wings on a fully commercial contract, not the EU. BAe is not subsidised by the EU.
      - Hugh
        
        ”no-one else wants it to”
        
        Apart from extremely large numbers of voters among most of its members, who remain remarkable unenthusiastic about the project of ever-closer union, but hey, who cares about them?
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        But the ‘free trade zone only’ stance is a largely British obsession. There is much between federalism and free trade only!
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Jaime, the problem you seem to have with the EU isn’t the principle, but the fact that the structures ought to be more democratic. I agree, but that doesn’t mean the EU has failed – you can be pro-European whilst thinking the Euro was flawed, as I do. It certainly doesn’t suggest that the logical solution is to dissolve the EU.
        
        I am proud of my citizenship and country; I also think that we’re better off in the EU. I don’t think the French believe themselves less French for being in the EU, nor the Dutch less Dutch.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        @ Brumanuensis,
        
        the problem is that not everyone in the EU project – in fact very few people – are as sensible as you. It should be admitted that what the real euro-enthusiasts want is a single United States of Europe, and the method by which they have chosen to advance this aim is via the EU institutions, and the euro fiat money.
        
        The problem they have is that the people don’t really want such a thing as a US Europe. They like being Danish, or Italian, or Irish, or whatever they are. They will take short term benefits (e.g. no exchange controls, work where you like), but don’t really want to give up their identity. What no Frenchman wants is to be seen as equivalent to a Portuguese, no Portuguese wants to be on the same level as an Italian, and so on. We are all proud of our countries. We should continue to be.
        
        So the unelected pursue their agenda without bothering to put the destination to the people in a referendum. That way the unelected gain an entire career’s worth of public pay and pension with no mandate, and the people get the easy jet flight from Dublin to Warsaw with no problems.
        
        And also, Greeks pretend to be as rich as Germans, and the Polish buy a bock of uncompleted flats on the Costa del Sol with money they borrow from the Dutch, and the French farmer still makes 7 times his investment for a field of maize when he turns it over to bio-diesel production through a european agency,
        
        Except now, reality is intruding, and both the Eurocrats and the people are going to have to look into the bottom of the cliff.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        I’ll leave aside the fiat money point, because we’ve had that discussion before and had to agree to disagree.
        
        But I still don’t see how EU membership contradicts national identity. A single market works on the basis that separate trading partners eliminate trade barriers in order to benefit from comparative advantages in trade (as Ricardo pointed out in the early-19th century). So the EU does not require the dissolution of national sovereignty but qualifies it, as do all international agreements. The EU also recognises that if free trade and free movement of labour are to have their benefits maximised, there must be common social standards in order to mitigate ‘social dumping’.
        
        Treating EU citizens equally doesn’t make national citizenship meaningless, mainly because EU law constructs this equality in relation to matters between EU members – movement of workers, goods, etc – not within the Member State – this is how the Scots get away with charging tuition fees for non-Scots, but none for Scottish students. So EU citizenship is not an exact replacement for national citizenship.
        
        In terms of democracy, the EU is more democratic than the IMF, NATO, the WTO or the World Bank. Pages 148 – 150 of the Treaty of Lisbon (the A set of protocols), specifically mandate close co-operation with national Parliaments, and that their wishes and concerns be accommodated and treated with due seriousness. So whilst still lacking, the EU is better than many other equivalent bodies that we belong to.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        That’s all well, and almost like a civil service argument in its’ reasonableness, but it deliberately obscures the main point (I find this even when talking with county level civil servants – they have a wonderful line of rehearsed argument along one narrow line, but no acknowledgement of the wider context, and never a halfway position. It is actually easy to out argue them, as a result, particularly if you have invested time in pre-briefing and talking with “stakeholders” also present at the meeting).
        
        Do you want your budget set from London, or Brussels? Do you want your policies on welfare set abroad? If it is better for Britain to do Plan A, but on balance better for wider Europe to do Plan B, are you happy to suffer relative disadvantage so that the Greeks and Italians have a lift up?I am not.
      - Brumanuensis
        
        The point about budgets only applies if we become members of the Euro, in which case I think it would be a reasonable economic trade-off in return for the use of a common currency. This also illustrates why the SNP’s claim that Scotland can keep the Pound, post-independence, is so monumentally stupid.
        
        The central point in discussions about the EU, as I see it, is ‘are we going to cut ourselves off from a trade area of 500 million consumers, with whom we have close political and historical affinities, and which serves as the destination for almost 50% of our exports?’ Bear in mind that if you don’t like EU regulations, how do you fancy being subject to them and having no say over how they’re made?
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        The Euro is doomed to failure, in my opinion within a couple of years. People across Europe are not ready for becoming citizens of a United States of Europe, nor should they be asked to. So we will never join the Euro, it is a busted flush, and I believe increasingly an irrelevance.
        
        Of course we are not going to cut ourselves off from Europe as a trading partnership.
        
        I cannot advocate anything, because I am merely a single citizen, so what I hope for is not for Britain to isolate itself from Europe, but for Europe to collectively come to its’ senses, to tell the EU institutions that there will not be a United States of Europe, and to isolate the Eurocrats from any public positions. Let us not leave the EU, but let Europe collectively collapse the EU back to a mere trading arrangement.
        
        And when van Rompuy and Barroso, and the tens of thousands of Eurocrats and MEPs and their staff, with the ridiculous travel between Brussels and Strasbourg find that their gravy train has been derailed, well, as the French say, tant pis.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        You bare speaking from a very ‘British’ stance – but there is a huge gap between a US of Europe and typical British Euroscepticism
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        And so there should be.
        
        It is a real shame the Labour has so much abandoned the population of this country to try to stay true to “internationalist” roots, when in reality that never buttered any bread or did any good for either Party or nation in the time of Labour’s existence, and now still pushes a completely passed over idea about Europe when it has been proven not to work, and no one wants it.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
        
        But I couldargue your enthuisiasmfor free trade isjust another sort of misplacedinternaionalism
      - Brumanuensis
        
        Jaime, I think it’s already been pointed out that an trade area cannot exist without a bureaucracy to oversee it. That requires ‘Eurocrats’. They’re part and parcel of the arrangement.
      - jaime taurosangastre candelas
        
        Yes, but less than 1/1000th of those needed for a full blown Euro state (I base that number on existing levels, and then halving for a lack of productivity).
- Mick1234
  
  I dont like Cameron but he’s not xenophobic. As for the resof your post you are wrong. The EU is a fxxxed experiment for politico’s.
- JoeDM
  
  If you like it so much I suggest that you go and get a job in Greece or Italy or Spain or …… Nice weather this time of year, you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy it. LOL
wg

And, of course, not one single job was lost to migrant workers from Eastern Europe.
- Brumanuensis
  
  http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/09/27/labour-are-apologising-for-their-record-on-immigration-in-office-they-are-wrong-to-do-so/
  - wg
    
    I suggest you read the comments below the article you point to – I just can’t be arsed to argue with individuals such as you who wish to see our people on their knees.
    - Alan Giles
      
      Reading remarks by the likes of “wg” remind me that the politicians old trick is working.
      
      We did it, just as the Conservatives/LibDems do it – when we are in trouble (usually of our own making), we wheel out one of three topics to cause a diversion from our own ineptitude.
      
      Last week was welfare reforms (never fails)
      
      This week a half hearted dalliance with the EU
      
      Next week we will probably be back to the third hot topic: Immigration.
      
      When the possibility of a referendum on the EU is dangled before the public (YET again!), you know that damage limitation mode is at triple red status. We have had some big names making an ass of themelves lately:Cameron, Gove and Lansley, sounding as slippery as ever on radio yesterday.
      
      Cameron sounded a bit like Lear in his vagueness: “I will do such things, as yet, I know not……”
      
      Instead of harping on these three devisive topics the government would be better advised on working on things now that can help the coungtry now, not at some vague time in the future.
      - treborc
        
        And now Liam Fox or Liam Byrne hard to tell them apart these days, Fox was on TV now telling us Merkel is right she is a true leader, yes one who will be biting the dust next year.
        
        But Fox is on about moving away from the EU, about more austerity, because they have no other view.
  - Hugh
    
    The article you link to proves itself nonsense in the first few paragraphs. First, it’s simply a fact that at the time the government’s forecasts (and they were the government’s forecast – whether they originated in the Home Office or not) of number of migrants were key to its arguments for allowing immediate access.
    
    Second, since it got this forecast – which is pretty fundamental to the economics, practicalities and geopolitical consequences – so enormously wrong it is impossible to convincingly argue its decision was made on any sensible basis. Even if you want to contend it ended up with the right result it can only be concluded that it was entirely by luck, rather than judgement.
    
    You might also want to notice that the studies he references say it’s hard to find evidence of “much displacement” of UK workers “on average” while conceding data on the impact on wages was “less conclusive”. I’d say there’s probably wriggle room in there for a few UK plumbers going out of business in there, don’t you?
    
    Finally, he’s obviously the economist, but I personally find it strange for someone to simultaneously invoke Adam Smith, concede the supply of labour dramatically increased, and maintain that this had no impact on prices or, seemingly, the existing competition.
TomFairfax

Realistically DC doesn’t have to impress anyone outside of the UK to stand a chance of keeping his job.

His post summit press conference was a lesson for anyone interested in him demonstrating his priorities and the message he’s still using to support this.

Namely it’s ‘profligate borrowing by a Labour government that’s causing all our problems’. That message has now achieved the status of accepted conventional wisdom because it wasn’t challenged in 2009/10 due to internal infighting and hasn’t been effectively challenged since. A classic case of the facts not getting in the way of a good story, and a PLP that seems to enjoy having a paper label attached to their collective backs with the words ‘Please kick me’ emblazoned on it.

Every single coalition interview or speech, regardless of subject includes some repetition of this statement, now so stale that no one even bothers to pass comment on it, but none the less effective for the repetition.

Labour policy seems to have been not to challenge it. In the week it was announced that government borrowing was at a seven year high, the idea we never contradict the big lie of ‘out of control expenditure’ under Brown seems a complete mystery.

Frankly DC’s ineptitude abroad from Georgia onwards is irrelevant because he has no say in the policies of these other countries, just an ‘opinion’ framed to appeal to as many British voters as possible and hang the consequences in the long term, because he doesn’t have a long term future unless he gets re-elected.

A bit like that Bliar.
Hugh

So that will be Charles Kupchan, who in 2003 was gushing that the Euro meant ‘Europe is
arriving on the global stage” and is about as enthusiastic a europhile as it’s possible to find outside the ranks of failed European politicians; the FT, which warned that Britain would be left behind if it didn’t join the Euro; and Dougie Alexander, who, well – why should we listen to Douglas Alexander, exactly?
http://twitter.com/tristanpw1 TristanPriceWilliams

His problem of course as well as his right wing ideology is that I don’t think he really understands what is going on.

He thought it was all shaking hands with royalty and presidents and having his picture taken.

He is a little like a lad from further down the social scale who wants to be a pop star, and having got there discovers that the bit the public sees is about 1/10th of the work that goes into the job.
John Dore

“The price of Cameron’s isolationism is my own job and prosperity”

Thats a very selfish attitude. IMHO we give Europe far more than we get back.

Thanks,
Mr A Voter (Labour).
Amber Star

Europe will rise like a phoenix from the ashes; she’s good at it because she’s had lots of practise.

British politicians need to either love her or leave her. Blair, allegedly passionate about Europe, used not one iota of his (at that time) electoral popularity on convincing the voters to love Europe. Ed Miliband may be in favour himself but he has allowed himself to be linked with people like Glasman & Jon Cruddas who certainly like to give the impression that they are anti-EU. And Douglas Alexander has written a good article for the Guardian today in terms of the need to wait & see… I’d like to think he shares my sentiments: That Europe will be showing signs of a renaissance three years from now.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Mike-Homfray/510980099 Mike Homfray
  
  There will need to be an alternative on offer – and at the moment, there isn’t.
  - John Dore
    
    …. and given that we run a deficit and Europe needs all the trade it can get, do you think they turn round and tell us to F off?
- Bill Lockhart
  
  I think most Britons have a very good relationship with Europe- it is the irredeemably corrupt, wasteful and oligarchic EU politicians we detest. It is a characteristic EU strawman to pretend that a nation which holidays in Europe, trades with Europe and eats European cuisines is nevertheless “xenophobic” for mistrusting the unelected rulers of the EU. It’s a lie.
  - Amber Star
    
    I’m guessing that not all her charm can persuade you to put up with the EU politicians. So that’s a ’leave her’ then?
    - Bill Lockhart
      
      No, we change the EU into what its citizens want it to be, not what its politicians decree. We return the politicians to their proper function of servants rather than the oligarchs they now are.
      The insistence that this “can’t happen” or is “too difficult” is pathetic. It denotes the willing serfdom amongst many inadequate politicians who actually prefer “powerful” people to do their thinking for them.
- Hugh
  
  ”Europe will rise like a phoenix from the ashes; she’s good at it because she’s had lots of practise.”
  
  When? Individual European countries have risen from the ashes a fair few times in history – usually after being burned to the ground by some other European country. There’s precious little evidence of “Europe” rising – unless we count securing the “right” result after forcing various of its different populaces to re-vote when they inevitably reject the European project whenever asked.
  
  “British politicians need to either love her or leave her.”
  
  Why? French politicians have repeatedly shown the success of loving Europe when it gives them what it wants and defying it when it doesn’t. Germany, similarly, the other driving force behind the European project, now more clearly than ever can likewise be seen to principally be concerned with its own national interest before any sentimental attachment to “Europe”. Simply deciding to “love” Europe as a point of principle almost guarantees being walked all over.
  
  Finally, I think you’re wrong to imply the British (and various other nationalities, come to that) can be persuaded to love Europe. The dislike is well justified by the profound disregard those pushing the project forward have for the views of the continent’s population. That shows little sign of ever changing.
  - Amber Star
    
    So are you saying we should stay or we should leave?
    - Hugh
      
      That’s plainly a different topic, but we can start by restating the point I did make: that claiming that we must either leave or be starry-eyed Europhiles is a false choice.
- JoeDM
  
  The fundamental imbalances within the Eurozone are huge.
  
  The ongoing Euro-fudge solutions are nothing but a plaster covering the festering sore of a failed economic experiment.
- John Dore
  
  “That Europe will be showing signs of a renaissance three years from now.” Well it been a boring night, but I’ll go to bed laughing at this post.
  We dont have the debt that others in your Pheonix like Europe have. Have a read of this.
  
  http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2012/06/28/%E2%80%9Cgrowth-not-austerity%E2%80%9D-is-the-new-%E2%80%9Cstop-the-cuts%E2%80%9D-and-will-be-just-as-successful/
madasafish

When I read an analysis like this “ The eurozone is in a serious crisis, a crisis created in large part by the greed of bankers, I give up.

Bankers mainly only lend to people who want to borrow. So bankers were greedy but those who borrowed and are unable to repay are not.?

Given the Last Government’s support for the banking industry, hindsight is wonderful… So G Brown and Tony Blair and Ed Balls are no longer Labour Party members then?

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Comment
Where are the women over 50 on our TV screens?

By Harriet Harman

Most people like to think that we live in a society that is fair and equal but for some it is still not equal at all. When it comes to TV presenters, women disappear when they reach over the age of 50. As part of the work of the Older Women’s Commission, I wrote to the six main UK broadcasters asking them how many older women they employ on screen and behind the camera. The figures provided by broadcasters show [...]
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Featured
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Leader

By Stefan Stern

That’s it. Enough is enough. I try to be reasonable. But you can only push somebody so far. It’s time to sort this out once and for all. I am fed up with this huge and growing army of sycophants and cheerleaders constantly bigging up Ed Miliband, and making helpful or supportive interventions on his behalf. The list is endless. Let’s shine a spotlight on the guilty men and women. There’s… well, there’s… er… you know… er… thingy… on a [...]
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Comment Europe
We do not stigmatise your country, Deputy Prime Minister. It is you and your party we find distasteful

By Rob Marchant

Last Saturday a senior European politician wrote an article in the British press which made you want to shout at the computer screen. Not such an unusual event, you might think, but this was not a debater’s disagreement as one might have had with the viewpoint of a Tory, a Gaullist or a Christian Democrat. It was one which also left the reader feeling a bit nauseous. And that is because, rather than an honestly-expressed case justified with some evidence, it was [...]
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News
Watson urges investigation of “supressed” Leveson evidence – Media roundup: May 21st, 2013

Subscribers to our morning email get the best of LabourList – including the Media and blog round up – every weekday morning. If you were a subscriber you would have already received this in your inbox. You can sign up here. Labour proposes teachers spend time in industry “All teachers involved in vocational education would have to spend a period of each year in industry, under Labour plans to integrate further education with emerging skills gaps identified by businesses. The strategy – announced on [...]
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