Politics

Greece Capitulates, And The Euro Project Claims Its First Victim

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

 

Much of what Guy Verhofstadt shouted at Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras in the European Parliament the other day – captured in the video above, which has since gone viral – is perfectly true.

Yes, Greece has dragged its feet making necessary pro-market economic reforms, not just over the past five years but since that country joined the European Union in 1981. Yes, tax collection is not what it should be in a modern western economy. Yes, there remain too many closed industries, stifling competition with their restrictive practices and deliberately insurmountable barriers to entry. Yes, corruption is still a real problem in some cases. And yes, the Greeks voted in a left-wing Syriza government well endowed with socialist rhetoric but less so with reforming zeal.

And yet when you watch a democratically elected leader – the prime minister of one of the EU’s own member states – being lectured and belittled in view of the whole world by a European parliamentarian, something does not sit right in the stomach. Unlike Britain, Greece is an enthusiastic EU member, viewing their membership of the organisation and the single currency as a marker of national progress and development. But must this be the price of their ongoing membership, their leaders summoned to Brussels for public rebuke and their ministries thrown open to clipboard-wielding EU technocrats?

As was perhaps inevitable, Greece has largely capitulated in the ongoing standoff with their creditors and the European Union. Austerity measures, even more than were demanded before the “Oxi” vote in the Greek referendum – which itself tells you a lot about the real motivations behind the EU’s negotiating strategy, not seeking a sustainable deal but wanting to punish a small member state for not immediately doing what it was told – are now being willingly accepted in the latest Greek proposal.

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Don’t Congratulate George Osborne For Stealing Labour’s Living Wage

Samuel Hooper13 Comments

George Osborne - Budget 2015 - Living Wage - Minimum Wage - Conservative Party

 

We are in danger of getting so carried away praising George Osborne’s tactical genius in commandeering Labour’s compulsory national living wage that we forget to notice his total betrayal of conservative principles.

On a purely tactical level, George Osborne’s Budget of 2015 – the Conservative Party’s first for nineteen years – was a masterstroke.

At the nadir of Ed Miliband’s dismal attempt at being Leader of the Opposition, the Labour Party attempted to wow voters with their feeble plan to increase the minimum wage to £8 per hour – by the year 2020. And yet despite having defeated Labour resoundingly in the 2015 general election, it seems that the Tories were only just getting started – they have now twisted the knife by neutralising Labour’s main line of attack against the budget with their secret weapon, a re-branded “national living wage” of £9 per hour by 2020. With Tories like this, who needs the Labour Party anyway?

A fair question. But given George Osborne’s shameless appropriation of a flagship Labour policy, here’s another equally valid question: why bother voting Conservative ever again, either?

The national minimum wage – state control over the wages and employment conditions of over one million people – is a thoroughly un-conservative idea. What’s more, George Osborne’s rush to embrace the living wage makes a mockery of conservative arguments against government-controlled pay – either the Chancellor is deliberately riding roughshod over conservative orthodoxy, or he genuinely believes that conservatives were wrong about the minimum wage all along.

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Why Should Britain Help Germany Reform The EU?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

David Cameron - Angela Merkel - EU - 2

 

You have to hand it to Michael Fuchs, deputy chairman of Angela Merkel’s CDU party in Germany. If you genuinely want Britain to remain part of the European Union – for intentions noble or otherwise – the best way for other countries to achieve that outcome is by convincing the British people that they too are frustrated by Brussels bureaucracy, that they yearn for real reform, and envisage our humble selves at the heart of this great effort.

And this is exactly what Fuchs has done, presenting the face of German concern about Britain’s place in the EU while his ally Angela Merkel is preoccupied with the far more pressing matter of the Greek crisis.

From the Telegraph:

“I want the UK to stay in the EU, and I cannot even imagine an EU without the UK. I don’t want to imagine it,” [Fuchs] said.

“In particular, for us it’s not good because the UK is a partner promoting a free-market economy, much more than the southern hemisphere in Europe. [Some of these countries] want to have a more state-regulated economy, and the UK is more like us, for instance, like Holland and the northern hemisphere, so we would not be very happy to see it go.”

Mr Fuchs described Brussels as a “huge” bureaucracy that needed to be scaled back. “I fully agree with certain statements of [Prime Minister] David Cameron saying that Brussels need not be such a huge bureaucracy, with so much red tape.

“That’s quite important, I think, and we need Cameron’s help to change it.”

Unfortunately, when someone you normally expect to be an antagonist starts acting very friendly, there is usually an ulterior motive at play. Feigning concern for and agreement with a difficult negotiating partner is straight out of Hostage Negotiation Strategy 101, and just as the man in the FBI jacket doesn’t really care that your wife left you and isn’t really going to arrange that escape airplane filled with cash, so Germany isn’t really about to let awkward old Britain stop the wheels of an EU juggernaut which has been rolling and gaining momentum since the 1950s.

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Oxi: Greek Referendum Result Is A Damning Indictment Of EU Imperialism

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

Bookshop - Greece - EU - Euro Crisis - Germany

 

Final referendum result: Yes – 38.7%, No – 61.3%

If nothing else happens as a result of the dramatic “Oxi” (no) vote in Greece’s referendum today, can we at least finally disabuse ourselves of the notion that Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, is somehow a formidable and effective world leader?

We hear time and again how Merkel is the most powerful woman in Europe (or sometimes the world), and how she is such a shrewd and canny operator, driving hard bargains in the EU and commanding respect on the world stage. But Margaret Thatcher she ain’t. The European Union may like to think of itself as a warm, fuzzy family of nations, but in reality there is only one country, Germany, which plays the role of parent when it comes to economic matters, particularly within the eurozone. And Angela Merkel’s “bad cop” Pyrrhic victory in keeping the door closed to any form of debt relief for Greece, even in the face of entreaties from President Obama and mounting evidence that some form of debt restructuring is an essential precursor to the return of growth, has just driven Europe off a cliff.

As the eurozone goes into meltdown and the European Union faces what could become an existential crisis, everyone is looking to cover their backs as the recriminations fly. And Lord knows that Greece shoulders some of this blame, having governed itself irresponsibly over many successive decades and governments, as this blog has repeatedly acknowledged. But what excuse do the sharp-suited EU bureaucrats and eurozone politicians have for their collective failure to contain the Greek situation? What excuse does Angela Merkel have?

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The EU Aims To Depose The Greek Government, Again

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Greece - Greek Crisis - Euro - Austerity

 

By Ben Kelly, blogger and editor of The Sceptic Isle.

‘Mr Dijsselbloem suggested even if Greece voted to approve the bailout plan it would be hard for its eurozone partners to continue to trust Mr Tsipras’s leftwing Syriza government to implement it — hinting a new government would be necessary.’

The EU is escalating its campaign of intimidation against the Greek electorate in order to push them towards the “yes” vote they seek. Now efforts are escalating to oust the democratically elected Greek government whatever the result of today’s referendum. President of the EU Parliament Martin Schulz has called for the Syriza government to be replaced by “technocrat” rule until stability can be restored in Greece after its economic collapse. We have been here before. 

We have already witnessed a post-modern, bloodless coup d’état in Athens before, as we did in Rome. Elected prime ministers were given a final, firm push and removed from power and replaced with Eurocrats appointed from Brussels, a former Vice-President of the European Central Bank and a former European Commissioner no less. They were appointed with the mission to impose policies approved by the EU but rejected in general elections.

Mario Monti appointed himself finance minister as well as prime minister and a government was installed in Italy without a single elected politician. The fragile pretence of EU democracy collapsed, and the dictatorial nature of the centralist new European empire was exposed. Apparachiks in Brussels ruling through colonial governors in Athens and Rome, overseen by the ECB in Frankfurt and the government in Berlin dissolved national democracy. The electorate in the Euro colonies were cut out altogether.

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